In the eyes of the American academic and intellectual Eddie S. Glaude Jr., it is almost impossible to think that a scene like Wednesday’s on Capitol Hill could be starred by black protesters.
The author of several titles on the complex dynamics of race in his country maintains that, had this been the case, the police would have attacked with all their force to stop the assault on the headquarters of Congress.
“We would now be talking about more deaths and a violent response from the police,” asserts the also head of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.
Glaude, like many other authoritative voices in the country, including that of the president-elect himself Joe Biden , question the disparity in the use of the force occurred on Wednesday compared to protests against police brutality and racism that took place since last May since the death of George Floyd .
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. He is the author of several books on race relations. Despite the chaos unleashed in Congress ended with four deaths, images of the police taking photos with some of the mutineers or escorting them out of the Capitol without arresting them have also been highlighted.
Glaude spoke Via telephone with BBC Mundo about the political and social crisis that the United States is going through. The conversation has been edited for length and understanding reasons.
What reading makes of the attack on Congress that occurred this week?
It was an insurrection, an obvious demonstration of the breakdown of democratic norms, with Trump somehow trying to undermine the democratic process. But it was also an extraordinary expression of anger, resentment and fear on the part of white people. This is accompanied by Trump’s rather youthful attempt to cling to power.
Visual guide to the invasion of the US Congress by Trump supporters How do you think the police handled the situation?
Horribly. And it may be due to various reasons. It could be that they were ordered to behave like this. It could also be that they sympathized with the protesters, it could also be the case of poor planning or a combination of all three. But I do know that it was illustrative of how Americans are perceived from different positions in this country.
Why was it so easy for Trump supporters to break into the Washington Capitol? If those protesters had been black, if they were protesting for a more egalitarian society, now we would be talking about more deaths and a violent response by police. There is no way that the African American protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement could have been on the steps of the Capitol, let alone forcing their way into the building.
Many have denounced the great difference in use of force by the authorities compared to protests mainly led by black citizens. Why do you say there would be no way for that to happen?
I think we should ask ourselves who has the right to protest in the United States, and what we saw yesterday are these different citizenship registries that exist in the country. There are people, who are white, and who have a robust understanding, an expression of their citizenship. They have the ability to exercise their freedoms and to protest with impunity and without fear of suffering consequences, because they are not afraid of the police.
Others have a kind of attenuated citizenship in the sense that we all have rights But some of us should be grateful to have them, and we can’t necessarily exercise them. So African Americans can be stopped by the police and end up dead. We can walk into our garage from home and end up dead, we can be in our house and end up dead. Our children can be playing in the park and end up dead.
Trump changes his tone, condemns the assault on the Capitol and admits the end of his term But in this situation of the Capitol, there were people literally defying the police and what was seen was patience, the police giving them the space, the moment to express themselves.
And what did we see last summer during the protests? We saw tear gas, rubber pellets, the militarization of the police because black people represent a threat.
The protests after the death of George Floyd were confronted with strong police contingents. President-elect Joe Biden said this Thursday : “Nobody can tell me that, if it had been a group of the movement Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they would not have been treated very differently by the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that this is the case and that is unacceptable ”. What do you think of what you said?
I think it’s a good step because it’s true. And it’s not that I’m advocating that the police treat white people the way they treat black people. I am not suggesting that they are indiscriminately killed or beaten or shot at with rubber pellets.
What I am saying is that we are not treated equally under the law. What I am saying is that, due to this attenuated conception of citizenship, our relationship with the police is very different.
Think about it: on Wednesday there were people in the Capitol trying to replace the United States flag with a of Trump. Colin Kaepernick (American football player) knelt in protest (during the US anthem ceremony) and was said to have desecrated the flag.
Silent protests by black men they were seen as anti patriotic because we do not have the right to protest and rather we should be grateful.
What happened to Colin Kaepernick, the player who originated the protests during the US anthem and was the center of controversy with Donald Trump? In fact, I think the country is more comfortable with protests from the right than from the left.
What do you mean?
There is a notion, especially from the middle of the 20th century with the black civil movements that defined that period, that this was an anarchic moment, a kind of threat to stability, that these were people so somehow they were going to undermine American democracy.
Congressmen and Capitol personnel took refuge in their offices and improvised barricades to protect themselves during the assault. The protests of the right, on the other hand, are often seen as patriotic. I give you the example of Cliven Bundy (a rancher who was part of a group of militiamen who confronted the police in 1247), who together with others defended some lands with weapons.
Cliven Bundy, the rancher who challenges Washington with armed militias There is a notion that in the United States populism on the right has always gained more traction, I would say, than that on the left.
¿ What is the right wing in America?
In the technical sense, almost all Americans are liberals. Usually, the right groups people with a limited vision of government, and they usually insist on the importance of local and state government. They are also committed to the free market and are skeptical of social programs.
Within the Republican Party there are several components: the libertarians, who insist on the freedom of each individual and on leaving out the government of individual decisions; then there is the one who is inclined to corporate thinking and cares about creating the conditions under which corporations prosper and the rich get richer; evangelicals, generally conservatives, and voters who are white nationalists.
How was the chaotic “day of infamy” that USA lived with the violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters Those nationalist whites have metastasized and are the source of that civil war inside the party right now. And Trump is his avatar.
Thousands of Trump supporters broke the human barriers that formed police officers. You have mentioned in your most recent book the need for a moral awakening in the country. What do you mean by this?
I would not say that we need one, but that we are living that moment of awakening and that it is about answering the question of who do we think? We are.
There are conditions right now, a turning point that pushes the nation to confront itself. These conditions are given by the moment when a police officer kills a man, George Floyd, and that causes Americans from all walks of life to risk their lives in the midst of a global pandemic to protest against police brutality.
And it is combined with a way of governing that exploits hatred, fuels fears and resentments and that every day fails to respond to a pandemic that is killing Americans indiscriminately, especially blacks and other minority ethnic groups.
We are in the middle of a storm because the United States is broken, it does not work.