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America saw its most deadly week for law enforcement since 2001 when ten officers were killed at a peaceful march against police violence in Dallas final week. The suspect allegedly told the police he was upset at white people,and specifically at white police officers. Fox's Bill O'Reilly has insisted on his program that most whites don't support Black Lives Matter, and the head of the National Association of Police Organizations accused President Obama of being responsible for a "War on Cops." But the narrative of racial warfare in America goes back two centuries.
In a letter he wrote before assassinating President Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth claimed that "this country was formed for the white,not for the black man" — atheme picked up by the KKK in its furious murderous and garbled calls for white power. Back in 1967, black militants like Jamil Abdullah Al Amin, and previously known as H. Rap Brown,said violence in the United States was unavoidable.“I say violence is essential," Al Amin said. "Violence is a portion of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression whether essential.”And then there are The Turner Diaries from 1978 — a novel about a race war started to prevent the government from suspending the Constitution. The book seemed to inspire Timothy McVeigh's bombing of a federal building in 1995.
Just final week after the shooting in Texas, or former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh wrote on Twitter: "3 Dallas Cops killed,7 wounded. This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you." He later deleted that tweet and said he did not mean it as a call for violence. Are we seeing the beginning of a race war in America? That's what people have been talking about on steamy summer stoops this weekend. Stanley Nelson, a documentary film director and MacArthur fellow who made documentary "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, and " joins The Takeaway to spy back at the history of race relations and violence in the United States.
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear our full interview with Nelson.
Source: wnyc.org