My first sixty-five years on earth have afforded me many experiences. At some point I hope to extract a modicum of wisdom from these collective experiences and share that wisdom with some one or some people coming along after me. We experienced race riots in my high school. My high school is located in the southern part of the United States. When I first st arted attending the school in the fall of 1970. There had been rioting at the school for at least a year prior to my attending. Riots occurred for my first two years at the school. Fresh on the heels of integration, the previously all White high school had Confederate symbols as its school symbols. The sports teams were known as the Rebels. A confederate flag would fly over all athletic competition

Fights began over the flying of the confederate flag. At the age of fifteen I recall fighting with White students. I actually through trash cans as classes were so disrupted that school had to be closed. These skirmishes even made the local news. I was all in with the fighting. In the land of King we did not speak of his dream; nor did we even consider nonviolence. At that time fighting seemed the only way. For about three springs straight, Blacks and Whites faced off against one another. The police were called in order to separate the warring factions. One awkward moment that I remember is that the phalanx of White officers was facing us with their backs to the White students. At the time, I did not truly understand just how outnumbered the Black students were. Nevertheless, the standoff ended when two Black students began fighting among themselves. With the fervor of the moment gone, we retreated.

The end of May and the beginning of June has seen a worldwide protest movement over the Minneapolis, Minnesota police killing of George Floyd in particular; and the police killings of Black and Brown individuals in general. As of this writing, more than nine days of protest have engulfed the United States. There have also been protests in England, France, Germany, and Iran just to name a few other countries. The energy and vigor of the protests hit the United States light a category six hurricane. Peaceful protests were accompanied by violence and looting. A counter narrative began to emerge. The nonviolent protesters are being infiltrated by radical leftists and common criminals bent on looting. In my thinking, the emergence of this counter narrative sounded a great deal like “the weapons of mass destruction” during the Bush Administration. A major purpose of this narrative is to derail certain truths about the protestors. The protestors were beyond angry over the police killing of George Floyd. They had a right to be angry. I was angry in high school when I threw trash cans and helped shut down the school cafeteria. Our group was not infiltrated. I find it impossible to believe that not one protestor through a rock or a bottle or help set a trash can on fire. Cross-referencing the Michigan state capitol protest over “stay at home” orders, one can only conclude that a discursive narrative exists which only permits White males to express political anger. For society to suppress my anger and to admonish me not to be angry is to deny my humanity. If you put your foot on my neck with the intent to end my life, you must become cognizant of my anger and desire to remove your foot from my neck. Your actions are a type of dark night; and Dylan Thomas said, “Don’t go gentle in that good night. Rage against the dying of the light.” Moreover, did not Jesus express anger when he cleared the temple of the money exchangers? Keep in mind that Thomas Jefferson did not only write that thing about “all [men] being created equal. He also wrote about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Jefferson stated that

…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…

In America, governmental policing authority has become destructive Black life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Setting forth the argument that the protestors are angry is not to say that a few infiltrators did not hide among the protestors with their own agenda. However, it should not be reported that my anger was criminal. America must acknowledge my political anger. My anger does not mean that I shall come across like Nat Turner, but does mean that I am in possession of humanity and intelligence. Consider Malcolm X’s quote at the end of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing:

I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence.

Dr. King also had a quote on violence at the end of Do the Right Thing. It is in the King perspective on violence that I place the violence carried out by the interlopers:

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

The Trump Administration was quick to jump on the violence narrative by designating ANTIFA (Anti-Fascists) as a domestic terrorist organization. By inference he was labeling the entire reaction to the killing of George Floyd as radical leftists bent on destroying America. As a consequence, Trump called out the active military in Washington, D.C. and threatened to send the military into cities all across the United States even with a governor’s request. When White Supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia killed a female protestor, Trump only talked about good people among their ranks. My only conclusion to this madness is that come November 2020, I believe it will be time to “institute new government.”

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Anthony Neal earned his Ph.D. in political science at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University). Dr. Neal is an associate professor at State University College, Buffalo. The author of numerous book reviews and journal articles, he has had his work published in the Western Journal of Black Studies, the Journal of Black Studies, and Black Issues in Higher Education. In 2014 Dr. Neal received the university’s Faculty Appreciation Award, was named Instructor of the Year by the university’s United Student Government, and Professor of the Year by the Student Political Society in the Department of Political Science. In 2015, he published The American Political Narrative which is a succinct yet poignant narrative about the development of the American political system and what is needed to maintain it. In 2016, he published a book of poetry entitled “Love Agnostic | from 9/11 to Charleston”