(ThyBlackMan.com) Some current thoughts on my comments from last year about things that would shape the narrative of 2020. It has truly been a year unlike any other.
The numerical expression “20/20” is widely recognized as synonymous with perfect vision. And given what we have witnessed in 2019, we definitely have to face the year 2020 with eyes wide open. Four news stories this year provide insights to where we are and where we’re headed:
- The 1619 Project
- Industry 4.0
- The Rise of White Terror
- Impeachment
The 1619 Project
From the removal of confederate monuments, to Major League Baseball admittance of the Negro Leagues into the sport’s official record book, to the President-Elect making racial equity one of the pillars of his upcoming administration, these actions owe a debt to the 1619 Project. If nothing else, it forced recognition of a complete “warts and all” re-telling of American history.
Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones came up with the idea for The New York Times’ 1619 Project, a groundbreaking re-examination of the role slavery played in the British colonies, later the United States. Especially the centrality of slavery to the growth of American capitalism. It is a seldom told story of how wealth was accumulated and general prosperity spread throughout the newly formed country, founded on freedom, by the enslavement of Africans.
In the decade leading up to the Civil War, the wealthiest county in the country was Adams County Mississippi and eight out of the ten wealthiest counties, in terms of per capita income, were in the South. By 1860, the largest cotton market was not in the South but in New York City. Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the country until the financial market crash of 2008, started out as a cotton trading outfit in Montgomery, Alabama before relocating to Wall Street.
Black bodies were commoditized, insured, collateralized and sold and the product they produced, cotton, was shipped to mills in New England and Great Britain fueling the beginnings of the first industrial revolution. No institution in American life – the Church, Universities, Wall Street and the government itself – was beyond the reach of the “slave-industrial-complex” that made America an economic world power in a relatively short period of time.
A look ahead: The conversations that The 1619 Project started will continue in the coming year. Universities and businesses will continue to wrestle with how to reconcile their complicity with the slave trade and some way to repair the damage – dare I say reparations – for their former injustices. American society has had to come to terms with horrific events, like the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that were rarely spoken of, let alone portrayed in popular TV shows like The Watchman. More “Hidden Figures” will emerge. And there will be more discussions about the aftermath of the legacy of discrimination in the 2020 presidential campaign (if we ask them) as candidates are forced to debate how to reverse the effects of “redlining”, “white flight” and “gentrification” in cities across the nation.
Industry 4.0
COVID accelerated the move to “on-line everything” that was already underway. Many of the jobs lost during the pandemic will never return. New ones, however, are being created.
Twenty-nineteen was the year we began to see the concrete effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, all around us. Big data, artificial intelligence and automation were shown to be both blessing and curse to modern life. Social media transformed how we get and disseminate information and added to the “tribal” nature of our politics.
Two of the more striking aspects of Industry 4.0 that became increasingly noticeable were the effects of automation on the future of work and the ubiquity of A.I. Robot arms and self-driving vehicles threaten to eliminate low-wage jobs much in the same way that bank tellers and check-out cashiers have quietly disappeared, replaced by ATMs and self-service kiosks.
Facial recognition software is being used to unlock your cell phone or board an airplane. But the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that Asians and African Americans were up to one hundred times more likely to be misidentified than white men. This has dramatic implications for both one-to-one matches (unlocking cell phones) and one-to-many matches (police work). It means if you’re black, your phone can more easily be hacked and you are more likely to be a victim of mistaken identity by law enforcement during an investigation.
A look ahead: There’s no stopping progress and we have come to take the many conveniences of Industry 4.0 for granted in our everyday lives. Like any tool, however, we also see that A.I., automation, big data and all that comes with Industry 4.0 can have downsides as well. Rather than a single standard, we also see the beginnings of a splintering of internet platforms and 5G networks, particularly between China and the United States, with Europe perhaps forming its own standards.
The Rise of White Terror
Vigilante violence (Ahmad Aubrey), plots to kidnap, try and execute two sitting Governors, the Proud Boys being asked to “stand back and stand by” at a presidential debate; the continued rise of far-right domestic terrorism is one of the most dangerous 2020 events. Nashville?
Testifying before Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that white supremacist violence is more lethal than any other terrorist threat in the U.S. today. And it’s not just in America, these terrorist attacks and ideology have spread around the world: with a great assist from social media.
From the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting to the New Zealand Mosque attack, similar themes have been discovered in the written “manifestos” of these supposed lone-wolf attackers. They speak of “the great replacement” and “accelerationism”; the fear of replacement of “white civilization” by dark skinned immigrants and the need to “accelerate” what they see as the coming race war.
Recently the two oldest military academies – West Point and Annapolis – had to conduct investigations of Cadets and Midshipmen who were photographed flashing what appeared to be white supremacist hand gestures at the Army Navy game. Buried in the trillion dollar budget bill that just passed, language prohibiting white supremacists from joining the ranks of the military was stripped out before it was sent to the president for signature.
A look ahead: The threat of more white supremacist violence is almost certain to increase given the upcoming presidential election. The president has abandoned “dog-whistle” politics for outright racist and nativist appeals and members of his senior staff have been involved in trafficking white supremacist ideology. The New Zealand shooter even lauded Trump as the “white ideal.” We can no longer afford to look the other way and we have to treat investigations of white supremacist terrorism the same way we go after Islamic terrorism: find out who these people are communicating with, and getting inspiration from, and shut them down too.
Impeachment
At the end of the Senate impeachment trial Adam Schiff, Congressman from California and leader of the House Impeachment Managers, said “it’s going to get worse.” And here we are at the end of the year: pardons for murderous war criminals, clemency for cronies who “kept their mouths shut” like members of a crime family and a lump of coal for Americans in need…
As Nancy Pelosi said, “Donald Trump impeached himself.” The day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified to Congress, the president felt emboldened enough to ask for a “favor” from the president of Ukraine. As it turns out, that call was part of a months-long operation to have Ukraine “announce” an investigation that could hurt the electoral prospects of one of the president’s most feared political rivals.
When counting the number of Cabinet Secretaries who have resigned in disgrace and aides who have been imprisoned, this is by far the most corrupt administration in modern history, if not ever. The Ukrainian scandal is merely the latest in a long list of corrupt acts for which any other president would have been removed from office; or if caught in the act, would have resigned.
A look ahead: In 2020 the impeachment process moves over to the Senate where Majority Leader McConnell has said publicly that he is not going to be an “impartial juror.” Makes you wonder why Minority Leader Schumer hasn’t asked for a ruling from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who will preside over the upcoming trial, as to whether McConnell should be allowed to take the oath to do “impartial justice” since he has publicly declared he does not intend to abide by it and, if he can’t take the oath, should he be involved in the trial at all? Meanwhile, there’s no rush to send the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate now because there’s no one there to receive them.
The 2020 Story
When I wrote about a “Black Swan” event, I was not aware that one was already happening. COVID has now killed more people than who live in Pennsylvania’s second largest city, the dead could fill three University of Michigan (“the Big House”) football stadiums. Millions of jobs lost and a disinformation campaign denying the pandemic’s severity, or even its existence.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book called “Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” and it described events deemed unlikely to happen, yet when they occurred, had massive positive or negative consequences. Over the course of the last fifty plus years we have seen many Black Swan events: a political assassination (John Kennedy’s ushered in passage of civil rights legislation), a terrorist attack (9/11 began the ‘forever’ War on Terror) and a natural disaster (Super Storm Sandy halted Romney’s rise against Obama just before the 2012 election) each changed the course of history. So it’s difficult, to nigh on impossible, to predict with certainty the next year, let alone the next decade.
But I can tell you some things that should happen. We need to realize that the main struggle in the coming years is not actually between peoples but between ideas: freedom and acceptance versus domination and exclusion or open versus closed; that big tech needs to be classified and regulated like other media enterprises; and that the political contests at the end of the coming year are not just about Trump and trumpery, but about us, as Americans, and the kind of country we aspire to be. Will true equality become self-evident?
The 2020 story needs to be about the embrace of the future, not fear of it and a promised return to some mythical idealized past. The story needs to tell of our victory over racism and discrimination and not continued victimization by it. We’re still here, and times are much better than 1619 or 1919. Everyone has an “origin story” and some hardship was a part of it for most.
Entering the third decade of the twenty-first century, the story should not be a repeat of the past century’s “Roaring Twenties” that ended with the crash of capitalism and the rise of fascism. The Business Roundtable, comprised of CEOs of America’s largest companies, issued a statement saying that, going forward, capitalism has to be as concerned about stakeholders as shareholders. That would be an improvement. And we have seen some cracks in Trumpism, with its neo-fascist bent, as white evangelicals have begun to speak out against “immoral” leadership in the White House.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is yes. The sound is independent of the hearing of it. If you don’t see good around you, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It may mean you need to change your actions, surroundings or associations. Twenty-twenty, as any new year, is full of promise and peril; destinations and roads not taken. We now see that the American experiment cannot be taken for granted, will not always move towards greater equality. Elections have consequences and so does our inaction. The year 2020 will be an inflection point. We will either move up or down, forwards or backwards, but we will not be at the same place at the end as where we were when we entered.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell