O
n Sunday, June 7, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council acknowledged that the current system of policing is not working
and that they intend to “defund and dismantle” the city police department. Council President Lisa Bender stated, “(We need) to
listen, especially to our Black leaders, to our communities of color, for whom policing is not working and to really let the solutions
lie in our community.” While still in the process of planning exactly what these new, transformative and community-based initiatives
may look like, the goal is to implement a model of public safety that actually keeps each community safe. Conversations of defunding
and dismantling police departments have popped up all over the country, and many are concerned about what exactly this means.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan In Color
8 — Monday, August 31, 2020
At the turn of the 2010s, the
ingenious use of social media
by young activists during the
Arab Spring set the world
ablaze. In the blink of an eye,
young
people
transformed
social media from a prom pic-
ture party hub to an outlet of
revolutionary information. Via
fledgling platforms like Face-
book and Twitter, users shared
demonstration sites, tear gas
remedies and even tips to avoid
identification by authorities
should one choose to partici-
pate in civil disobedience.
With
its
unprecedented
ability to deliver not only cru-
cial information, but also the
sights, sounds and unmistak-
able aura of social upheaval to
the palm of any user’s hand,
social media seemed to be the
last missing link to achieving
real global equality.
In case you missed it, the
2010s were not quite the pax
romana we hoped they would
be.
Just shy of a decade after
the events of the Arab Spring,
social media’s stature as a
beacon of hope, a catalyst of
universal change has under-
gone quite the reversal. As
Generation Z came of age over
the course of the 2010s, we
watched in real time as the
sanctity of information found
and distributed on social media
was forever compromised. In
addition to issues with misin-
formation,
overwhelmingly,
the outward facing nature of
these platforms spawned a
culture of normalized “slack-
tivism,” wherein the culti-
vation of the image of being
“woke” by privileged groups
has taken precedence over the
actual substance of the soci-
etal issues which predicates
such activism. The issues most
often co-opted for social clout
are related to the continued
extrajudicial murder of count-
less Black Americans. But, this
shouldn’t come as much of a
surprise for a country which
enjoys its temporary forays
into Black culture more than
Miley Cyrus.
More so than any other
instance of Black-led rebel-
lion seen in the previous
decade, the most recent upris-
ings beginning on May 26
have been characterized by a
suspiciously high amount of
white endorsement and par-
ticipation. But, these were not
the usual white allies — these
were white moderates. In the
past week, my social media
feeds have been flooded with
the feverish reposting of art-
ist’s renditions of the deceased,
text posts demanding account-
ability on the part of all non-
Black Americans and of course,
the black tiles. Although an
increased awareness of the
horrors
of
police
brutal-
ity appears, superficially, to be
indicative of promising social
progress, I cannot help but
shake my suspicions that these
displays — like most things on
social media — are just a part
of a facade.
While my skepticism could
be misconstrued as a selfish
attempt to “gatekeep” who
can and cannot be politically
active, in reality, this cynicism
is a byproduct of coming of
age in the span of years sepa-
rating Trayvon Martin from
George Floyd, Ferguson from
Flint and Obama from Trump.
Through these years, time and
time again in school, and even
in some social situations, I
was looked to by my non-Black
peers to rationalize why “all
lives” and “blue lives” did not
matter and why violence some-
times could be the only appro-
priate answer. And with each
repetition of this cycle, with
every new Black life taken pre-
maturely, the same peers still
refused to educate themselves
any further than the informa-
tion that was already labori-
ously spoon-fed to them by
young Black people like myself,
just clamoring to make their
people’s humanity known.
As I observed the same
people who were once “so
concerned”
with
educating
themselves retreat back to the
comfortability of their privi-
leged existences at their con-
venience, I began to see my
efforts to inform had not just
fallen on deaf ears, but actually
replicated the existing system
of Black subjugation to white-
ness — where still, Black labor
is readily substituted in the
place of white effort.
Although many white Amer-
icans — particularly Gen Z’ers
too self-righteous to recog-
nize their own similarities to
their Boomer grandparents —
are quick to ridicule the glar-
ing hypocrisies of attempts
to appear “of the people” by a
Kendall Jenner or Gal Gadot,
significantly fewer conversa-
tions are being had regarding
the abruptness with which
they themselves hop on the
bandwagon of social responsi-
bility, only to retreat back into
the complicit silence of their
“normal” existences once their
friends stop posting Instagram
stories, hashtags stop trending
and the media moves on to the
next Big Story™. It becomes
difficult to read their mobili-
zation as anything but hollow
box-checking,
particularly
when Black people watched the
2010s close with no real prog-
ress made to the state of sanc-
tioned murder. Oh, and Donald
Trump was elected president.
So, there’s that.
The desecration of social
media from subversive outlet
to vehicle of self-congratu-
latory displays is pretty well
encapsulated with the trend
that emerged earlier this week,
#BlackoutTuesday. This phe-
nomenon, hauntingly similar
to the promotional tactics used
for Fyre Fest, involved non-
Black people posting an image
of a black screen to their social
media profiles. What was orig-
inally intended to be a mass
silencing of the trivial uses of
social media (e.g. beach selfies,
Harry Styles fun facts) during
a time of national protesting
proved to be an all too easily
accepted invitation for white
people to engage in their favor-
ite political strategy: passive
silence. Predictably, I awoke
Tuesday morning from more
participation than I had seen
all week. My feed was now
populated by more black tiles
than a Home Depot, and not
to my surprise, the majority
of people posting these empty
gestures had been relatively
silent for the past week.
In theory, this trend was
intended
to
highlight
the
severity of the issue of police
brutality and the importance
of listening to Black voices.
However, the eye-roll induc-
ing irony of this asinine trend
is that it blatantly ignores the
usefulness of privileged white
voices to the movement. In
civil rights history, substan-
tial change has only ever been
achieved when those in privi-
leged positions finally feel
compelled to stick their necks
out for marginalized groups.
When white people hold other
white
people
accountable,
magic happens. The only thing
that has resulted from the
proliferation of black squares
has been a clogging of crucial
hashtags with vacant displays
of wokeness — a complete 180
from the example set during
the Arab Spring.
But that’s the problem, isn’t
it? The people who jump at
the opportunity to conform
to what they view as “trendy”
give no credence to the his-
torical precedents of social
protest. The same people vap-
idly posting the square because
they saw someone cool do it
have no discernible politi-
cal conscience beyond “I miss
Obama” posts, and certainly
have no grasp on Black his-
tory beyond what their APUSH
teacher taught them. Posting
a picture does not mean you
have educated yourself on the
complexities of systemic rac-
ism. Posting a picture does not
mean you will diversify your
social circle beyond who you
went to high school with. Post-
ing a picture does not change
the fact that your boyfriend
voted for Trump.
As our collective nostalgia
for the socially transforma-
tive 1960s indicates, many
young people have a desire to
be swept up in a movement, to
feel as though they are a part
of something that will bring
about positive change to their
worlds. However, my burning
(and
unanswered)
question
for those suddenly compelled
to channel Gloria Steniem is …
where the fuck have you guys
been?
I acknowledge that, for those
of us who have grown up Black
and in America, the issue of
police brutality is interwoven
into the fabric of our existence.
Whereas
whiteness
func-
tions to insulate people from
the harsh realities of our rac-
ist country, Black people are
met with constant reminders
unmatched outside of our com-
munity. Despite this truth, so
many white people’s collec-
tive realization of the urgency
of these injustices smells a bit
funky to me because … when
have Black people ever been
anything close to silent about
our outrage with police brutal-
ity?
The maliciously fatal Min-
neapolis officer’s actions were,
indeed, uniquely deplorable,
but
did
mainstream
white
America forge a secret pact to
just forget the Rodney King
tapes? Were Philando Castille,
Michael Brown, Eric Garner
and Sandra Bland just figments
of Black America’s imagina-
tion? George Floyd’s untimely
death is nowhere close to being
the first Black death at the
hands of law enforcement, so
why the shock? Why the refus-
al to look in the mirror when
confronting how such a brutal
system has been able to persist?
The amount of white Ameri-
cans shocked into action by the
video is not indicative of prog-
ress, rather a pervasive culture
of naivety. This newfound fer-
vor towards the Black cause
only
indicates
a
laughably
obtuse ambivalence towards
the last 10 years in America,
let alone the last 400. As we
find ourselves in week two of
national protests and await the
Moron-in-Chief’s
legislative
response. I have grown weary
of social media’s role in the
social revolution. I have grown
weary of the cacophony of voic-
es repeating the same empty
platitudes with no actual prog-
ress to match.
A phrase which summates
my frustration with America’s
cyclical mishandling of police
brutality is “History doesn’t
repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
While the issues being protest-
ed may not appear the exact
same as the ones from 50 years
ago,
the
principles
under-
cutting each conflict remain
unchanged.
This
phrase
instantly comes to mind when-
ever I stumble across footage
of elderly Black people march-
ing for similar, if not the same,
causes they did when they
were our age — revealing the
depressing truth that they’ve
spent an entire lifetime with-
out real rectification of soci-
etal issues. Band-Aid solution
after Band-Aid solution.
Regardless of the vogueish
popularity
of
these
social
media trends in white spaces, it
doesn’t appear as though any-
one is itching for the displays
to end and the change to begin.
Because if they did, I wouldn’t
be writing this piece. So, white
and non-Black America, if you
want us to actually take your
“activism” seriously, put your
money where your mouth is. I
would love to be proven wrong.
As the privileged majority of
the population, real change
cannot happen without your
efforts. So, let’s hope you’ve
got something better dreamed
up than Black tiles.
ALEXANDRA OWENS
MiC Staff Writer
Ok, America. Prove me wrong.
The revolutionary nature of
Glen Sean Coulthard’s book, “Red
Skin, White Masks: Rejecting
the Colonial Politics of Recogni-
tion,” serves as a salute to radical
scholar Frantz Fanon’s postcolo-
nial work through its exposure of
Canada’s systematic marginaliza-
tion of the Native population. In
like manner, the piece introduces
an uncomfortable notion of indoc-
trinated white values, instilled
to naturalize the corruption of
Indigenous culture and self-value
which persist today in relation to
the Aboriginals who suffer from
psycho-affective attachments to
colonialism and an internalized
justification of their own subjuga-
tion. Coulthard proposes that this
subconscious surrendering of the
Aboriginal people creates a stable
environment for the Canadians’
perpetual, yet subtle, reproduction
of colonialism today. However, at
some point, the colonized becomes
“aware” of the colonizer, birthing
resentment within the colonized,
and forcing progress toward prop-
er recognition and reconciliation
from the colonizer.
Coulthard expresses modern
society’s colonial persistence as
straddled between the colonizer’s
denial of the oppressive structure
and the indoctrinated submission
of the colonized. He does this by
probing the non-Native’s refusal to
decolonize through the implemen-
tation of “transitional justice” in a
non-transitional structure and an
ignorance regarding resentment’s
political value. However, he goes
on to challenge this “unchange-
able” system, making use of
Fanon’s embracement of resent-
ment as an essential instrument in
the resurgence of self and cultural
affirmation.
Attempts to reconcile injus-
tices against Canada’s Indigenous
people have taken form of repara-
tive commissions and elaborate
promises to rectify the unbalanced
system, yet the implementation of
these reparations have failed as a
result of the non-Natives contra-
dictory denial of colonial history,
and a palpable refusal to practice
their own proposed processes.
Meant to guide the Canadian
State through a somewhat seam-
less process of reconciliation, the
Royal Commission of Aboriginal
Peoples details a productive prac-
tice of “transitional justice”: an
approach to justice which must
take place after the injustice has
ceased and there is a clear distinc-
tion between the time of injustice
and the time following. In Canada,
society has perpetuated a “non-
transitional” loop that maintains
the settler-colonial relationship
and erases any distinction between
that of the past, present and future.
Coulthard explains that regard-
less, Canada wields the proposal
of this transitional system to disas-
sociate past colonialism with their
modern-day cultural hierarchy:
“Where there is no period marking
a clear or formal transition from
an authoritarian past to a demo-
cratic present— state-sanctioned
approaches
must
ideologically
manufacture such a transition by
allocating the abuses of settler
colonisation to the dustbins of his-
tory.”
Canada relies on the internal-
ized system and manipulative
policy enforcement which they
exhaust to restrict the rights of
Indigenous people. The enforce-
ment
of
extinguishment,
the
Modified Rights Approach, the
non-assertion approach and the
Jobs and Growth Bill Act all served
as mediums of institutionalized
outlets for Indigenous subjugation.
Coulthard explains that decora-
tive language such as “restorative
justice” creates an environment
in which reconciliation becomes
fixated on the “legacy of past
abuse, not the abusive colonial
structure itself.” When colonial
corruption is categorized as his-
torical, it liberates the colonizer
from responsibility in today’s
disparate relationship, assuming
blame to the colonized who must
have an inability to move on. This
way, the colonizer can maintain
their systematic superiority by dis-
guising the current settler-colonial
structure as an invalid, negative
emotion harboured by the Natives
toward the non-Natives which
prevents the advancement of their
mutual relationship.
In embracing the standpoint of
transitional justice, the colonizer
assumes the Natives’ resentment
to be irrational and it is framed
as the primal perpetuator of the
social and political instability at
hand. This common misunder-
standing of resentment confuses
the emotion for the subjectively
less productive french term: res-
sentiment. Ressentiment is “por-
trayed as a reactive, backward, and
passive orientation to the world;”
under this definition, the once
subjugated has been liberated in
a literal sense but fosters this sub-
jugation in a conscious refusal to
move on from the past, ultimately
subjugating themselves.
The difference between the
two terms is resentment’s politi-
cized nature, making it a power-
ful foundation for reconciliation.
Resentment is formed against
a recognized “enemy of injus-
tice;” recognizing this “colonial
enemy” frees the colonized from
their internalized subjugation and
compels them to revalidate their
individual and cultural worth.
Coulthard defines this Fanon-
inspired process as, “a purging,
if you will, of the so-called ‘infe-
riority complex’ of the colonized
subject … In such a context, the
formation of a colonial ‘enemy’ …
signifies a collapse of this internal-
ized psychic structure.” This lib-
eration starts with oneself, but the
cultural validation also inspires a
unified “us” that is now conscious
enough to recognize specific injus-
tices and passionate enough to
demand desired reparations.
This is a necessary reallocation
of the Indigenous peoples’ once
internalized hatred and subju-
gation. Coulthard explains that
this external reallocation creates
an opportunity where “the colo-
nized begin to resent the assumed
‘supremacy of white values’ that
has served to ideologically justify
their continued exploitation and
domination.” Once these values
are resented by the colonized, they
realise that there is no justifying
the long-indoctrinated exploita-
tion or domination of their cultural
group, and therefore, there is no
validation in colonialism or the
persisting political structure.
What makes resentment par-
ticularly powerful as a political
tool, is the emotional passion. In
numerous situations likening the
colonial-settler relationship, the
“inferior” is aware of their posi-
tion, but helpless or unmotivated
in reversing the damage; resent-
ment instills the anger and pas-
sion that motivates action. In
the summer of 1990, a political
agreement that disregarded the
rights of the Native peoples and a
non-Native attempt to confiscate
Native owned land inspired the
unification of Indigenous people
to protect and assert their inherent
rights. This opposition energized a
new movement for the Indigenous
people in which they apply their
resentment to action, rather than
fostering it within; in the wake of
this, the RCAP was created, rec-
ognizing the demands of the colo-
nized and responding respectively.
“What originally began as an
education campaign against a
repugnant piece of federal legisla-
tion has since transformed into a
grassroots struggle to transform
the colonial relationship itself”
(Coulthard 128). The proposal that
an emotion serves as the founda-
tion for reconciling institutional
colonialism sounds absurd. How-
ever, I assert that this is a nearly
necessary step for the colonized
to validate themselves and their
culture, and vocalize the desire for
legitimate reparation and revolu-
tion.
In
“Understanding
Eth-
nic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and
Resentment in Twentieth Cen-
tury Eastern Europe,” by Roger
D. Peterson, and “On Resentment
and Ressentiment: The Politics
and Ethics of Moral Emotions,”
by Didier Fassin, the two authors
uncover
an
unacknowledged
“victim” of some ambiguous sort,
and debrief the instrumental role
of these victims’ resentment in
maintaining institutionalized dis-
crimination. Peterson interprets
resentment as an emotion based
on a nation or state’s structure,
which when shifted or reversed
hierarchically, angers the once
ethnically-dominant, and if fea-
sible, leads to extreme ethnic vio-
lence. This interpretation strays
from the notion that resentment
follows a history of subjugation;
However, what remains are clear
distinctions between who causes
the resentment, who possesses it
and why. Despite the clarity of this
approach, the manichean aspect
removes the universality of such
an emotion, almost restricting it
to people who can directly credit
their pain to a group, and restrict-
ing the “reaction” of resentment
unto those who did the harm. Fas-
sin, however, recognizes the global
accessibility of the emotion.
Fassin
specifically
analyzes
the French police force and their
ambiguous resentment as a more
societal and ideological position
that they release unto a feasible
target. This interpretation invites
a more palpable understanding of
resentment from the social and
individual perspective. Both con-
cepts result in pragmatic institu-
tional discrimination: Peterson’s
approach is rooted in a clear eth-
nic hierarchy that has been dis-
turbed and angers the formerly
dominant to an extent of extreme
violence, whereas Fassin’s concept
accepts the obscurity of emotion
and acknowledges the inaccurate
direction of consequential emo-
tional expression.
In “Understanding Ethnic Vio-
lence,” Peterson delivers a concept
of resentment that exists amongst
the shattering of a distinguished
ethnic structure, allocating blame
to the oppressed who “wrongful-
ly” gained power and are resented
by the “rightful” owners of said
dominance who will eventually
retaliate with role-establishing
violence. This concept of resent-
ment relies on three necessities:
a strongly established perception
of ethnic hierarchy, the domi-
nant group amongst the hierarchy
experience a role-reversal and this
now subjugated group see correc-
tion through violence as a feasible
option.
If a clear hierarchy is not estab-
lished, nor can be violence from
resentment. This interpretation
renders resentment similar to
the emotions rooted in national-
ism which strive for an “ethnic
homogenisation” where the “peas-
ant” and “imperial” populations
are ruled out alongside resentment
itself. Within these imagined and
consequentially forced communi-
ties, there is no alien within the
structure, nor is there any fear
of role-reversal. Whether this
approach to resentment remains at
the large nation with a maintained
hierarchical structure, or expands
to the forced homogenized com-
munities, institutional discrimi-
nation is pursued at a structural
level, rooted in the belief that the
dominant deserves to be dominant
at any justifiable means.
Similarly pursuant of institu-
tionalised discrimination, Fassin
explores resentment as it inhabits
the French police force, the ambi-
guity of the emotion’s roots and the
unfortunate misdirected reactivity
on the “vulnerable.” Fassin claims
the emotions felt by the police
force are relational to the emo-
tions exhibited by the surrounding
society: “the police are all the more
aggressive since they view their
public as hostile and through their
aggressiveness render the public
hostile.” This resentment against
society, matched with the neces-
sity for efficacy leads to targeted
brutality, and inherently perpetu-
ates the oppressive structure.
This is not a justification of the
cycle — rather a condemnation —
but it is important to recognize the
perspective that hierarchical roles
possess in order to understand
the process of one’s society on an
ideological level. Assumption is
political venom whether done by
the subjugated or the subjugator,
and equality can only see fruition
alongside understanding.
GABRIJELA SKOKO
MiC Summer Co-Managing Editor
Resentment: the politicization of
emotion to liberate the colonized