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In Boston An Anti-Racism Protest Sparks Disruption and Calls for A Reckoning Justice
In Nubian Square, a frenetic commercial district located on the outer ring of Boston’s black community, a young woman — barely twenty — arrived at a hastily organized anti-racism rally with a Black Lives Matter sign appointed with blooming red roses and sparkling calligraphy.
In someways her ad hoc sign spoke to the wisdom we must proceed toward as we Americans engage the acid aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police one week ago today. The sign is cogently emblematic of how a carefully calibrated logic of redemption and social repair must transcend a soured history of woeful bitterness and black betrayal.
The founding of our nation was established with a canard that disputed the humanity of black people. That canard was established through anti-black civic codes, a hostile menu of mores and the propagation of trenchant social dispositions that deepened into institutionalized oppression which were carried for centuries on the malevolent wings white hatred. The canard was weaponized with laws and practices that advanced housing and neighborhood segregation in Boston, income inequality, health disparities and poor schools — all indicia of a city and nation divided against itself.
