Is violence ever the answer?

I’ve never been the type of person to resort to violence to address issues, no matter how unjustly I believe I am treated by individuals, groups, organisations or systems. I’ve never looted, burned down a building, or went into a mad rage and tried to get justice by physically hurting the people I believe have done me wrong. Instead, I take a Martin Luther King stance and use my words, most times emotionally, to get my message across. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.

But because I have never resorted to violence does not mean that I don’t get the urge to do it, or that I am not capable of it if placed under extreme psychological and emotional pressure that takes me to a breaking point, especially when it comes to my parental role. For instance, seeing my son having the life literally squeezed out of him by the knee of a police officer just because he is black, I believe, will no doubt awaken the Malcolm X in me to seek justice by “any means necessary.” Just as it brought out the “Mama Bear” mentality in the family of 46-year-old George Floyd, Minneapolis in the US on May 25 and the families of so many others who have witnessed the violent demise of their loved ones at the hands of racism.

Officers, responding to reports of the use of counterfeit money approached Floyd’s vehicle at the intersection of 38th St and Chicago Avenue, in Minnesota. Video footage then showed a white officer using his knee to pin Floyd to the ground by the neck as he, Floyd, groans "please, I can't breathe" and "don't kill me." The officers claimed he had resisted arrest. An unconscious Floyd was later taken to the Hennepin Healthcare emergency room where he was pronounced dead at 9:25 pm. In a statement on May 28, the medical examiner's office said it is "awaiting final results from laboratory studies to provide the most medically accurate cause of death determination possible." The four officers involved were subsequently fired.

That the family and friends of Floyd felt the need to take protest action over his death, as far as I am concerned, is understandable. Because apart from the fact that the incident reeks of racism and is certainly not one in isolation, the family is hurting in a way that many of us can’t even begin to imagine – the life of a loved one was snuffed out in such a cruel manner as the world looked on. A death that could have no doubt been avoided, like so many others, oftentimes even here in TT too.

Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told CNN he understands why the protesters are lashing out.

"I can't stop people right now because they have pain – they have the same pain that I feel," As he fought back tears, he said, the officers who "executed my brother in broad daylight" must be arrested and he hopes they get the death penalty. He said he’s "tired of seeing black men die."

"I'm never gonna get my brother back…We need justice."

The protest began as a peaceful demonstration when hundreds of people gathered at the intersection where the incident had taken place. Coronavirus physical distancing measures were kept while demonstrators chanted, "I can't breathe" and "it could've been me." Police officers were on standby. Eventually, the crowd grew into the thousands and violence erupted. Businesses were looted, fires were started and property was damaged. The 3rd Precinct police station was among the buildings that were burnt, and the governor of Minnesota activated the National Guard to respond to the protests. A state of emergency was declared in Minneapolis, St Paul and surrounding areas. The protests spread to other states. On Friday, Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck before he died, was been arrested.

How did a peaceful protest get to the point of violence, though? Especially since the majority of the protesters did not even know Floyd.

“Using AI and Twitter, researchers at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC discovered that people are more likely to promote violence when they are moralising the issue about which they are demonstrating…once a protest is sufficiently moralised, it becomes an issue of right and wrong instead of mere personal preference,” an article in Psychology Today said of a study conducted by the institute. And social media helps push it along.

“Extreme movements can emerge through social networks… We have seen several examples in recent years, such as the protests in Baltimore and Charlottesville, where people’s perceptions are influenced by the activity in their social networks. People identify others who share their beliefs and interpret this as consensus. In these studies, we show that this can have potentially dangerous consequences.”

In a study, 18 million tweets were analysed by researchers during the Baltimore protests of the death of Freddie Grey, a victim of police brutality, in 2015. “Over several weeks, these protests were punctuated by periods of peace and periods of violence, enabling the researchers to assess the association between social media rhetoric and violent incidents,” the article said.

Situations like these make me, as a parent, very uneasy. I try to teach my son to stand up for himself and others without using violence unless he absolutely has to. I also know that he lives in a different world to the one in which I grew up – a world in which social media wields a type of power that a few years ago only lived in the imagination. I worry for him – a little black boy trying to find a place in a world where discrimination knows no bounds. So what can I do? At this point, I believe all I can do is teach him that there is both good and bad in the world. That there is a time for Martin and there is a time for Malcolm. Who surfaces when, is totally up to him.