Inequality Is Firing the Guns

       In the nearly half century between an infamous shootout in Cleveland in 1968 and the five Dallas policemen ambushed and killed yesterday the fundamentals of race relations in the U. S. have not changed.

 

        Forty-eight years ago in the Glenville district of Cleveland three police officers were killed in a shootout with Black Nationalists. Three of the Nationalists and a bystander were also killed. Fifteen other police, gunmen and bystanders were wounded; twenty-one casualties total!

       During these forty-eight years hundreds of encounters have occurred between police and people of color that mirror this past week’s killing by police of Philandro Castile in Minnesota, killed for a tail light violation, Alton Sterling shot point-blank while pinned to the ground by the police in Baton Rouge, La.  Among the worst was 12 year old Tamir Rice shot dead in Cleveland within milli-seconds of Police arrival, for which they were later exonerated.  On and on.

       We need not be clueless about the underground forces that feed ambushes or impulse shooting. One clue is that the ranks of police are filled by men and women who might have chosen some other, safer occupation if there were such job options; but the fact is that good career job alternatives are scarce, meaning jobs that pay healthcare and retirement benefits. What is making racism grow is the disappearance of good jobs from the whole American economy. That’s the underlying story of Dallas and Cleveland and everywhere else. Even in booming Silicon Valley there are clues to how racism is being fed. Murder rates are growing sharply and about 35 percent of the workforce make only minimum wage or less and have jobs with no substantial benefits.

       Three-fourths of African Americans fell below the definition of middle class in the 2010 census. The master-slave relationship that is central to American culture over hundreds of years is tragically reinforced by widening inequality.   While the parallel development over the past fifty years of wider opportunities for people of color (from president to corporate executive) is making for a new Clinton-Obama tribe of masters, the slave status of the workforce is deepening and growing.

       Before stating the obvious it needs to be underlined that four-fifths of world population occupies this same lowly status and it is increasingly clear that the guns of Isis and Dallas are cousins by virtue of their shared plight.

        Most obvious of all, it is Capitalism that creates the fertile ground where racism grows and because of increased inequality now grows worse.  Bernie Sanders remains one of the few U. S. politicians who have given clear voice to this obvious role of Capitalism feeding both inequality and racism.  His now dwindling candidacy can still become the beginning of a national and global campaign about regulating capital.  With the guns out around the world and Trump’s candidacy (read also the National Rifle Association) on an ascendant path the situation is very dire.  This age of grotesque wealth must be wound down, and quickly.  Strong coalitions must be formed now among faith groups, labor groups, progressives in academia and in government. 

       It was Jefferson, the slave owner, who nevertheless seemed to know that a revolution now and then in a democracy is a good thing.