Why, like, why don’t we all loot? Why, why doesn’t everybody take, why doesn’t, because we’ve agreed on things.
僕らみんなが略奪するわけじゃない、それはなぜだ?なぜみんな盗みをしない?それは、合意があるからだ。
There are so many people who are starving out there, there are so many people who don’t have, there’re so man people. There are so many people who are destitute, there’re people who, when the virus hit and they don’t have a second paycheck, are already broke, which is insane, but that’s the reality.
But still, think about how many people who don’t have, the have-nots. Say, you know what? “I’m still gonna play by the rules, even though I have nothing because I still wish for the society to work and exist.”
And then, some members of that society, namely black American people watch time and time again how the contract that they have signed with society is not being honored by society that has forced them to sign it with them.
When you watch Ahmad Aubrey being shot and you hear that those men have been released and, were it not for the video and the outrage, those people would be living their lives, what part of the contract is that in society? When, when you see George Floyd on the ground and you see a man losing his life in a way that no person should ever have to lose their life, at the hands of someone who is supposed to enforce the law, what part of the contract is that?
And a lot of people say, “Well, what good does this do?” Yeah, but what good doesn’t it do? That’s the question people don’t ask the other way around. “What good does it do to loot Target?*1 What does it, how does it help you to loot Target?” Yeah, but how does it help you to not loot Target? Answer that question.
Because the only reason you didn’t loot Target before was because you were upholding society’s contract. There is no contract if law and people in power don’t uphold their end of it.
And that the things I think about people don’t understand sometimes is that, is that we need people at the top to be the most accountable because they are the ones who are basically setting the tone and the tenor for everything that we do in society. It’s the same way we tell parents to set an example for their kids, the same way we tell captains or coaches to set an example for their players, the same way you tell teachers to set an example for their students. The reason we do that is because we understand in society that if you lead by example, that is a good chance for people to follow that example that you set.
And so, if the example law enforcement is setting is that they do not adhere to the laws, then why should the citizens of that society adhere to the laws when, in fact, the law enforcers themselves don’t?
There’s a really fantastic chapter in Malcolm Glagwell’s book, “David and Goliath.”*2Where he talks about the principles, what is it, it’s… He talks about the principles, the principles of legitimacy. And he says "in order for us to argue that any society or any legal body or any power is legitimate, we have to agree on core principles. And those three principles, if I remember correctly is number one, we have to agree on what the principles are, number two we have to believe that the people who are enforcing the principles are going to enforce them fairly, and number three, we have to agree that everyone in that society is going to be treated fairly according to those principles.
It is safe to say, in this one week alone, and maybe from the beginning of the coronavirus really blowing out in America, black Americans have seen their principles completely de-legitimized. Because if you’re a black person in America right now and you’re watching this, if you’re a black American person specifically and you’re watching this, what principles are you seeing?
I think sometimes the things we need to remember, and it’s something I haven’t remembered my whole life. I like, it’s you start to learn these things, you know. When you travel the world, when you read, when you learn about society, I think is that like, when you are a have and when you are a have-not, you see the world in very different ways. And a lot of time people say to the have-nots, “This is not the right way to handle things.”
When Colin Kaepernick kneels*3, they say, “This is not the right way to protest.” When Martin Luther King had children as part of his protests in Birmingham, Alabama*4, people said “Having children as your protests is not the right way to do things.” When he marched in Salma*5, people said, “This is not the right way to do things.” When people march through the streets in South Africa doing the apartheid, they said, “This is not the right way to do things.”
When people burn things, they say it’s not the, it’s never the right way because there’s never, there is never a right way to protest, and I’ve said this before there is no right way to protest that’s what protest is. It cannot be right because you are protesting against a thing that is stopping you.
And so I think what a lot of people don’t realize is the same way you might have experience even more anger and more just visceral disdain watching those people loot that Target, think to yourselves, or maybe it would help you if you think about that, that unease that you felt watching that Target being looted. Try to imagine how it must feel for black Americans when they watch themselves be looted every single day. Because that is fundamentally what’s happening in America. Police in America are looting black bodies.
And I know someone might think that’s an extreme phrase, but it’s not because here is a thing I think a lot of people don’t realize. George Floyd died. That is part of the reason the story became so big is because he died. But how many George Floyds are there that don’t die? How many men are having knees put on their necks? How many Sandra Bland*6 are out there being tossed around. We don’t, it doesn’t make the news because it is not grim enough, it doesn’t even get us enough anymore. It is only the deaths, the gruesome deaths that stick out,
but imagine to yourself, if you grew up in a community where everyday someone had their knee on your neck, where every day somebody was out there repressing you every single day. You tell me what that does to you as a society, as a community, as a group of people. And when you know that this is happening because of the color of your skin. Not because the people saying it is happening because of the color of skin, but rather because it’s only happening to you and you are the only people who have that skin color.
And I know there’s people who’ll say, “Yeah but like, well, how come black people don’t care when black people kill.” Man, that’s one of the dumbest arguments ever. Of course they care. If you’ve ever been to a hood anywhere, not in America but anywhere in the world you’d know how much black people care about that.
If you know anything about under-policing and over-policing*7 you would understand how that comes to be. The police show black people how valuable their lives are considered by the society, and so then those people who live in those communities know how to or not deal with those lives. Because best believe, if you kill a white person, especially in America, there is a whole lot more justice than is coming your way than if you killed some black body in a black neighborhood somewhere.
And so to anyone who watched that video. Don’t ask yourself if it is right of wrong to loot, don’t ask yourself, what does loot help, no no no. Ask yourself that question. Ask yourself why it got you that much more, watching these people loot because they were destroying the contract that you thought they had signed with your society. And now think to yourself, imagine if you were them, watching that contract being ripped up every single day. Ask yourself how you’d feel.