Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the George Floyd riots

Pratap Bhanu Mehta has an American PhD and taught at prestigious Colleges there. Yet every sentence he writes about America in this column in the Indian Express is egregiously wrong.

American history is a profound collision between two exceptionalisms.

Nonsense! The U.S was similar to Canada. Mehta, as an Indian, must know the history of discrimination against Indians in Canada. It parallelled what was happening in the US at the same time. Furthermore, there is the example of South Africa. Thus America wasn't exceptional at all. Like other similar democracies, it went through different phases with respect to enfranchisement  and civil rights of 'coloreds'. Being a large country, there were big regional variations. But that was also true of Canada and South Africa. What was lacking was any American 'exceptionalism' whatsoever.

The first is the exceptionalism of self-image:

Every country sees itself as very special and exceptional. Name me one nation whose citizen's proudly say 'we are bog standard. There is nothing special about us at all.'

A country providentially endowed with liberty, equality, rule of law, democracy and capitalism.

Britain saw itself that way. France saw itself that way. America wasn't exceptional at all.

But the second exceptionalism just requires putting “race” in front of these ideals.

Apparently, Mehta has never heard of Apartheid South Africa. It was a Rule of Law democracy on a continent where that type of polity was severely lacking. But it was as racist as fuck.

The story flips easily.

Because silly stories flip easily. That's why only fools bother to tell them.

The story of liberty turns out to be a story of one of the largest, racially structured mass incarcerations of any society in the world.

Then it isn't a story of liberty at all. It is a story of a country where former slaves remain an underclass.

The story of equality turns out to be a story of racial hierarchy, especially for African Americans.

There is no story of equality. There is a story about a Slave Society transitioning to a Society with an ex-slave underclass.

The story of rule of law goes hand in hand with a deeply violent society that uses law as an instrument to subjugate particular communities.

There is no story of the rule of law- which, in any case, only means whatever it is incentive compatible for the organs of Justice to supply at a given time.
What obtains is a story of parts of the USA developing advanced capitalist features such that the power of 'Robber Barons' was gradually curbed as organs of the State gained countervailing power thanks to advances made by organized labor. But this is a relatively recent development, some of the gains of which have already been eroded, in much of the country.

The story of democracy turns out to be a story of repeated attempts at democratic disenfranchisement.

There was some minor disenfranchisement in various American states in the first half of the nineteenth century. There was quite a big disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South after 'Reconstruction'. Why use the word 'attempt' when the thing has repeatedly happened?

And capitalism turns out to racially tinged: Who can or cannot participate in the market order, in urban spaces, has been profoundly shaped by race.

Capitalism is not 'racially tinged'. It is a word which means 'allocation of investment resources through financial markets'. Historical Societies have different rules or mores regarding who has access to markets and what markets can and can't do.

Incidentally, there could be a Capitalist Slave Trade based on racial characteristic. But there can also be wage, price and service provision discrimination on that same basis provided those characteristics are costly to disguise. The same could be said of a Communist or a Traditional Society.

The explosion of protest, violence, rioting, curfews and brutal police crackdowns in the wake of George Floyd’s suffocation by police in Minneapolis is another chapter in the long history of a democracy whose self-image often cloaks its more sordid realities.

Anything of any importance which happens in a country is a chapter in its history. It does not cloak anything- unless you are as stupid as shit or are paid to teach a shite subject.

It is a cliché

and therefore a foolish, misleading, statement

about American democracy that its original sin, “race”, shows up the pathology of each one of its ideals and its policies: Everything from gun control, voting procedures, federalism, and the politics of welfare is coloured by the shadow of race.

Yet, each of these things would exist even if the US was wholly racially homogenous. Clearly, people concerned with Race- perhaps because that is what pays their bills- will seek to link any issue with Race. They are adding noise to signal and seeking obligatory passage point status for themselves.

Each political movement forward to erase the sordid legacy of race seems to be accompanied by its own setbacks.

Nonsense! Political Movements don't want to erase whatever gives them their interessment mechanism and ability to corner rents. Thus, quite predictably, they never tackle the underlying issue till someone else, so as to capitalize an efficiency gain, does the required incentive compatible mechanism design.

Emancipation from slavery unleashed new and diabolical strategies for segregation, economic disempowerment and disenfranchisement.

Yet, such 'strategies' existed in Canada and Europe and so forth. This had nothing to do with the Devil and everything to do with Economics. A 'Law & Econ' approach can fix things. Obama, practicing as a lawyer, won cases where Eric Posner was the Judge. I imagine this shaped his thinking. It is why he didn't turn into a Mehta type shithead- useless to man or beast.

The New Deal was based on a political compromise that left the structure that sustained white supremacist politics in the South intact.

Nonsense! It was based on fixing things for White people. 'Scientific Racism' was at its height back then. The future Physics Laureate, Chandrasekhar was denied a Professorship because of his dark skin which, obviously, would cause him to indiscriminately rape White students. This was perhaps the finest compliment ever paid to an Iyer. Naturally, Chandrasekhar chose to settle in the US because women there attribute great virility to us Tambrams when the truth is we have to be bribed plentifully with dowry to marry and sire an heir. Even then, if wifey won't make us nice filter coffee we refuse to perform.

The “liberal reforms” in the aftermath of the Sixties were nullified by the use of crime and welfare as dog whistles for racism.

Crime is a real thing. Actual tax payer dollars are used to pay welfare. Communities once reviled ceased to be so as they were seen not to be engaging in crimes destructive of their neighbor's lives or property. They came to be thought of as 'model minorities' if they did well educationally and in business. Furthermore, some communities invest a little money in presenting an attractive image of themselves through literature and music and so forth. African Americans have shown great talent in this regard and this is one big reason 'Black Lives Matter'. On the other hand, one globally very successful type of Black Music, whose rise coincided with the 'crack' epidemic, may have glamorized crime for young African Americans. It may have had a negative effect on the Community.

The sunny optimism of the neo-liberal era of the Nineties opened up many political and elite spaces and some economic churn.

Many African Americans did well in the Seventies. Then came Crack which impacted even the 'talented tenth'. Many middle class families were hurt by it. One solution was simply warehousing violence prone youth in prison till they grew out of proclivities which Sociologists associate with Southern 'honor' codes of behavior but which have an economic explanation in gang wars to gain local monopoly power over the distribution of drugs.

Within the African American community, they probably deepened the class divides, leaving many disempowered.

Being locked up for decades is disempowering- true enough. Yet African American life expectancy inside jail was higher than outside it for much of this period. Desegregation, it is true, had led to Black 'middle class' flight but African Americans had a long tradition of close extended family ties- like Indians, I suppose- as well as the very Indian system of notional kinship ties with neighbors. It should be remembered that African Americans came up despite active persecution because of their Spiritual, Community and Family values and that tradition has not decayed though, no doubt, structural unemployment and the crack epidemic hurt them in the same way that deindustrialization and the opioid or meth epidemic hurt large sections of the White population.

But the cultural and institutional needle moved relatively little. Institutional racism in institutions like the police remained pervasive.

Black incarceration was 5 times that of Whites in 1960. But it increased considerably during the Nineties before falling back down, more recently, to a level 6 times higher. Drugs played a big role in this. But, it should be remembered that African Americans- because of their strong Religious and Family values- wanted harsh sentencing, e.g. Biden's 1994 Crime Bill. White Americans had a more relaxed attitude to drugs because they saw them as recreational rather than something which wrecked families and fuelled savage gang wars.
The Atlantic reports- Clinton himself pitched the bill as a boon for justice for black Americans. In a memorable 1993 address to a convention of the predominantly black Church of God in Christ at Mason Temple in Memphis, from the pulpit where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon, Clinton imagined what King would say if he came back from the dead. “I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed,” Clinton said, trying to channel King’s thoughts in a way that may seem presumptuous for a white politician in 2019, but that was generally praised back then. “I did not live and die to see 13-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do.”

Mehta lived in the States. Yet he writes about African Americans as if they were creatures from another planet whereas the fact is some of the best scholars in his own field were African American. Like us, they were one or two generations away from the land. They found joy in their extended family, their Church, and 'fictive kinship' such that all the elders in one's community were 'Uncles' and 'Auntys'. Like Indians, most African Americans were socially conservative and traditional in their diet and recreation. This could cause them to suffer 'moral panic' and demonize crack or rap or other things which the Media played up. But African Americans can't be 'stigmatized' or 'disempowered' by anything just as Indian could not be made to feel inferior just because a small number of Whites ruled over them for almost two hundred years. No Indian, meeting an African American has ever said- 'this fellow seems stupid, lacking in personality and assertiveness, physically weak and lacking in courage and fighting spirit'. On the contrary, the Indian is predisposed to like and admire the African American because Indians have seen great Movie and Music and Sporting stars from that community who project strength and courage. Muhammad Ali defied the American Government and helped raise money for Bangladesh. Mehta was a little child at that time. Ali was the most prominent sports personality in the world.

The sense of stigmatisation and disempowerment of African Americans continued.

A similar sense began to prevail among 'red necks' and 'deplorables' in 'fly over states'. But then everybody was busy cultivating an unappeasable sense of grievance. Old fashioned Feminists teamed up with Bible bashers to fight trans-gender rights. There are proposals in some states to criminalize sex-change operations. 'Essentialist' ideologies were causing 'Rainbow' coalitions to unravel. 'Wokeness' was an equal opportunity hate fest which, according to the film 'Undercover Brother II', was the new crack designed by 'the Man' to restore old fashioned homophobic, misogynistic, White Supremacy.

Obama’s delicate balancing act, rather than overcoming racial contradictions, politically sharpened them.

Very true. Obama did not overcome differences in pigmentation by turning everybody beige.

It paradoxically gave rise to both the Black Lives Movement

who weren't protesting police officers slaughtering African Americans at all

and White Supremacist Nationalism.

who were disappointed that Gas Chambers weren't sprouting up all over the place.

For many, Obama became, in Cornel West’s phrase, “the flag bearer” for exceptionalism of American self-image, rather than the “cross bearer” for racial injustice. And still he could not avoid a white nationalist backlash.

But he got re-elected. Hilary didn't get elected but that was not because of a 'white nationalist backlash' because she was herself White.

This brief history is important as a cautionary tale.

It is a pack of lies. The only thing we need to be cautious about is shite Mehta writes.

It is a reminder of just how difficult it has been for democracy to overcome deep racial or ethnic hostility.

Why the fuck would Indians, of all people, need any such reminder? The transition from Imperial Rule to Democracy featured huge ethnic cleansing, repeated Wars and an on going Terrorist threat. By contrast, America has seen no major internal convulsion since the Civil War. There is no European nation which has not had a very difficult time transitioning from Imperial to Democratic Rule. The very recent fate of Yugoslavia is a reminder that Democracy exacerbates racial and ethnic hostility. Why is Mehta pretending it does the reverse?

It is often an instrument of its perpetuation.

Imperialism was about a bunch of different nationalities having the same Emperor and thus having to get along with each other. Democracy was about Nations- like the Irish nation or the Czech nation or the Polish nation- getting out from under an Imperial family and electing their own leaders who, however, might ethnically cleanse the fuck out of people of a different religion, language or racial origin.
The history of the Twentieth Century makes this abundantly clear. No doubt some cretins pretended Democracy was about different races and religions living together harmoniously. But why pay attention to cretins?

But given this history, and the deep violence that has always accompanied it, perhaps the question is not why these riots are happening, but why they don’t happen more often.

Sadly, minorities lose disproportionately from riots. If they are smart or affluent, they run away. If they are stupid and poor, they stay put preying upon each other and only getting slaughtered by the majority if, like mad dogs, they are foolish enough to turn upon them.

This violence is always a lurking threat, held at bay by a combination of artful repression and political misdirection.

No. Violence is held at bay by counter-violence. There is nothing artful about beating and imprisoning large sections of a particular community.

It is no accident that we have riots now. A year ago, Trump issued a couple of anti-Biden tweets- ' Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you,” “I, on the other hand, was responsible for Criminal Justice Reform, which had tremendous support, & helped fix the bad 1994 Bill." Trump didn't want to run against Biden and was hoping rival Democrats would hurt him enough to drive him out of the race. The opposite seems to have happened. Bernie is endorsing Biden enthusiastically. It appears Biden is going to offer a comprehensive 'New Deal' alongside significant reforms to the Justice and Penal system. Perhaps he will de-unionize Police forces and break the 'prison industrial' complex. Many on the Right would welcome this. 'New Deals' run out of steam quickly enough but de-unionizing the Police is a permanent gain.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, there is a political culture that, even at the risk of some hypocrisy and complicity, has an investment in trying to build a common story.

It isn't lucky if some bunch of people get together to tell stupid lies. Recognizing the truth and working together to improve mechanisms is the first step in improving a collective fortune.

The minute that story disappears, anarchy is not far from the corner.

Anarchy is very very far from the corner in a country with a large armed force and a cohesive propertied class. As Trump says, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. The Democrats are taking a risk by holding off on this. They are doubling down on a touchy feely ideology in a country which may still be 80 per cent hang 'em high, cowboy.

The sheer pervasiveness of the rioting is a reminder of that.

The riots have not been pervasive. People who live in nice places are not affected. Shitty places have become shittier. Either Trump keeps the White House or it goes to Biden whose great achievement as a legislator was what most contributed to the underlying problem.

Four things make this moment of violence in the US even more fraught. The first is, clearly, a president who has a political investment in polarisation, and many would argue, racism.

Sadly, the racially polarizing slogan 'Black Lives Matter' is what helped put him in power in the first place.

Incitement is in his nature. The Republican Party and its supporters have, tacitly, made their peace with the white nationalism.

Does Mehta think either the Democratic or the Republican party has ever been at war with White Americans?

They will, tacitly, make this election about order and race, rather than justice and rights.

No. It has to be the whole Trumpian package. African Americans are only 12 % of the population. They simply don't matter enough. People vote as their economic interests dictate. Biden is still in with a chance. Everything depends on Veep pick.

The second is a deeper disenchantment in politics. There is a more energised Left (although what counts as Left in the US would be centrist everywhere else).

But the 'energised' Left is a circular firing squad.

But the Left has two challenges. It is not clear that many Democratic governors or mayors have shown greater capability in managing the politics or the institutional fallout from this crisis.

Thus the 'woke' Left hopes to displace the Obama generation of elected officials before turning on each other like savages.

This kind of violence also seems to reflect a pervasive disenchantment with normal politics

Becaue looters are normally totally enchanted with elite political discourse.

. Third, the general intellectual and social climate speaks to an even more pervasive and frenzied breakdown of trust than ever.

It's an election year. What do you expect?

All sides will build their own story from whatever information or video they can find. The police will come out aggrieved at being painted villains; those seeking justice will come out aggrieved since they will be unfairly painted as violent anarchists; the conservative forces of order will come out aggrieved that violence is being accepted in the name of justice. The politics of recrimination will dominate.

Some people have been telling stupid lies- e.g. that black police officers and black jurors and black politicians have been complicit in a White Supremacist agenda. The truth is that crap, Unionized, police men have been doing a terrible job because, like Unionized teachers, they think they can get away with it. Only if, as happened in Camden, entire Police Departments are shut down as not fit for purpose and replaced by something that costs more but is better will the underlying problem be solved.

There are a few silver linings. The fact that there were widespread protests and that these were far more multi-racial than would have been the case anytime in American history is encouraging.

No it isn't. The lockdown meant a lot of people had time on their hands. The good news, for Trump, is he can press for lifting the lockdown and pass the blame to the protestors. Obviously, there's no point stopping people from going to work if they go out looting instead.

But in a context where the political incentives are aligned towards polarisation, incitement and repression, it is likely this potential bridge towards conciliation will collapse easily.

There is no need to conciliate a mere 12 percent of the population. But there's no reason to spend tax dollars on incompetent cops who would rather shoot innocent people than go after bad guys.

All conspiracies will be let loose in an environment marked by institutional decay and a nervous uncertainty about the future. It is potentially very volatile.

The problem with stupid lies is that people see through them. Will the African American trainee cop charged with the George Floyd murder really be sent to jail? Is Mohamed Noor- the black cop who shot a white woman- going to be released from jail, as some protestors were demanding? No. The thing is silly.

Finally, there is the enduring dilemma of race politics in the US.

There is no dilemma. There is only the question as to how individuals can make money or gain office by it.  Trump wanted to instrumentalize this issue a year ago. The virtue signalling left have done his job for him. Still, Biden could say 'I made the mess. I know how to fix it.' Together with a comprehensive 'New Deal' package, he could be electable if he makes the right Veep pick. Either way, the loony left has displaced Democratic politicians of Obama's cohort. This helps the Republicans.

The Martin Luther King strategy of civil disobedience, whose task is to expose racial violence, not indulge in it, ends up with his assassination.

 LBJ had a strategy and it worked. Dr. King had a calling, as a Minister of the Lord, and, martyr to Christ's Truth, he fulfilled it in a manner we can only call sublime. Why pretend he was a politician like LBJ?

The normal course of democratic politics reaches, on the racial issue, a kind of dead end with Obama.

With hindsight, no-drama Obama could have done much more. Still, at the time, everybody thought Hilary had a lock on the White House. Obama's Task-force recommendations would be implemented in a balmier economic climate.

Any protest is easily hijacked by the forces of violence; and the violence becomes the pretext for denying the legitimacy of the underlying cause, and unleashing more repression.

This is nonsense. There was plenty of violence which LBJ could have used as a pretext to do nothing. Indeed, Nixon couldn't have won if LBJ hadn't been so determined.

What Presidents do is legitimate provided it is in accordance with the law. By contrast, no 'cause' has any legitimacy whatsoever unless it is espoused by elected officials. Professors may pretend otherwise, but they are cretins.

Even at this distance, it seems it has taken barely a couple of days for the narrative to shift from police brutality to the fear of violence.

Why? Because there was genuine police brutality and then there was genuine mob violence. That's why newspapers and TV channels chronicled both type of event.

George Floyd and the underlying moral issue his death represents become relegated quickly to history, overrun by the pre commitments and prejudices of politics.

This is nonsense. The 'moral issue' is wholly justiciable. A Court will pronounce on this. Politics is irrelevant.

So African American politics may retreat into a phase of disenchantment or take a form we cannot predict.

No. African American politics is as well developed as African American Music, of Cinema, or Sports. It will be reinforced by these events. There is no question of 'disenchantment'- more especially in an election year. There are deals to be done and platforms to be hammered out.

The political fallout is hard to predict. Nixon greatly benefited from the narrative of disorder in the Sixties; whether Trump can do so is an open question. But there is no question that he will try. America will come out of this, in the short run, more authoritarian and polarised.

No. America will come out of this with a leader in his Seventies. Obama's cohort has been displaced. The sort of shite Mehta and his ilk have been peddling by way of paideia has become as wholly risible as that of the Communist ideologues.  The future belongs to those who either made Billions or worked as baristas. The age of the Lawyer/ Professor/Politician is over. What a bunch of tossers they were!