And because it occurs at their heels, 'white-supremacy', to poor and working-class whites, is as much a reminder of their own precarity, as it is their privilege. (Not to mention, this is where most police come from.) Why, then, should we expect a raised awareness to be corrective? If we argue that competition causes suffering, how is 'fairness' attractive to people on the next-lowest rung?
Why are we protesting 'racism'?
'Racism' lets us socialize the guilt endemic to class society. But it doesn't explain its role in competitive society. 'White supremacy' reveals a bit more, since, even if we're appalled by it, we can still sick the Kevin Chauvins on the George Floyds. -Not because we're racists. But, because each of us must exploit any advantage we can get in order to survive under capitalism.
Still, it begs the question, why, when we pit everyone against everyone, does race continue to hand-pick the losers?
Republicans are dependent enough on that outcome to not care. Liberals depend on it, too. Thus, consciously or unconsciously they are quick to de-politicize it, and to think instead, it has something to do with them. It might clarify to call George Floyd's murder what it was: state terror. Instead, in a hurry to make peace or to hold onto our liberal allies, we (sounding very colonized) decry 'racism' and demand 'justice', and the Liberal class, quite without risk (unlike the at-risk, white working-class) confess', en masse, to being racist.
But figure, if racism killed George Floyd, what good is it to riot and loot? capitalism has arranged it that, just as the under-class absorb the downward punches for the middle-class, the 'community' -small business-owners, etc., are positioned to receive the under-class' return fire. Seeing their stores burn would only force 'neutral' (and 'repentant') persons to side with the police. Then our mayors, police chiefs, etc. have the luxury of appeasing both sides, hailing peaceful marches and condemning vandalism and violence as an attack on the community. Where 'rioters' sit in opposition to peaceful protests, an obstruction to the 'progress' of kneeling with cops instead of before them. -A tableau, by now as common and effective as voting. And every bit as nationalistic. (As the chant goes, "This is what democracy looks like".)
Worse still, we march/ clash/ etc. to demand 'justice', pretending what we want is a punitive response from the state. -Ratifying the very power that killed George Floyd. Or rather, invoking it to grow big and strong enough to even discipline its own.
Beyond
Besides racism"
MLK called riots 'the voice of the unheard." Perhaps, we should revise 'unheard' to 'talked-over'. The Black community raises very legitimate complaints of other movements (like the Democrats) commandeering their labor, or at least (like marriage equality) getting pushed ahead of them in line. (No disrespect, -nor to single out- marriage equality is just, but far less urgent than murder.) Regardless if 'rainbow' coalitions appear strongest or most just, it's debatable they have empowered the black community.
Black lives have to matter with or without a political goal in mind. But we must always keep class in focus. Because, while black slaves built our capitalists, and while capitalists still find 'black' useful to headcount their needed under-class, Capitalism is opportunist, not racist. (Recall, the first slave codes in America were in response to a biracial class rebellion against Virginia's large landholders).
Without a class schema, 'racism' becomes a commodity, instead, on one hand letting us (whites) truck and barter in the guilt (or 'woke') industry, while on the other, making 'bad' cops and egregious, mishap presidents culpable.
Guilt isn't liberative, and culpability only gets you so far. Cops are workers, not capitalists. (And even Trump has to pitch to his base.) They (cops and Trump) are as alienated from meaningful work as the people they hound, and subject to the same cycle of deprivation and release as so-called rioters. And unlike capitalists, they (cops) are racist and have cause to be racist. The alternative is to recognize they are part of the same working-class as the folks they're suffocating. Clarity would put them out of work.
Besides, even if capitalism found another group (perhaps clinging to life on our southern border) that made cheaper fodder, it would not mean black lives had improved. Capitalism needs a reproducing, not a lingering, under-class, but it makes both. A new underclass would be an act of creative destruction. (Stroll our ghettoes,) as a matter of principal, capital doesn't rehabilitate, it discards. Except bodies don't sit idle like vacant factories, so it would still need to police them.
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