If violence isn't the way to end racism in America, then what is?

Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.

A riot is the language of the unheard

When you are oppressed there is no acceptable way to fight against your oppression. You get branded “unpatriotic” for peacefully taking a knee to protest against police brutality. You get vilified for using boycotts as a non-violent tool of resistance. You get called “THUGS” when, after the murder of yet another unarmed black man by the police, you protest in the streets.

The sickening video of George Floyd being killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, which followed the murders of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, has sparked demonstrations across America. In Minneapolis some of the protests have turned violent: buildings (including a police precinct) have been set on fire and a Target store was looted. Donald Trump reacted by promising bloody reprisal, tweeting: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Others have reacted with hand-wringing. There have been a lot of cries that “violence is never the answer!” and “rioting is counter-productive!”

But if violent unrest isn’t the answer then what is? How exactly do you go about ending police brutality and systemic racism in America? Should protesters go home and write sternly worded letters to their representative? Should they emulate Madonna and post videos of their kids dancing in protest? Should they peacefully take a knee? Should Americans simply vote Trump out and vote Joe Biden in instead? You know, the guy whose 1994 crime bill significantly contributed to mass incarceration in America? Should people patiently wait for incremental change?

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King Jr said in a 1967 speech that is currently reverberating through social media for obvious reasons. “And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that … the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity.”

That speech was 53 years ago and America still isn’t listening. The uncomfortable truth is that, sometimes, violence is the only answer left. We like to pretend otherwise, which is why civil rights movements are often conveniently sanitized. The women’s suffrage movement, for example, is often celebrated as “non-violent”. It wasn’t: if went through a very militant phase. “If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war,” the British suffragette Christabel Pankhurst wrote in 1913, “and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as a glorious and heroic deed. Why should a woman not make use of the same weapons as men?”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not glorifying violence – that’s what the president of the United States is doing. And I’m certainly not calling for violence. I’m simply saying we must interrogate what we call “violence” and what we call “policy.” Many of the people yelling “violence is not the answer” about the riots in Minneapolis are the same people who wholeheartedly support America’s endless wars. Many of the people condemning the looters in Minneapolis are the same people who venerate billionaires. Loot a TV and you’re a dangerous criminal; loot a country and you’re an enterprising capitalist.

America has no problem with riots or looting as long as it’s the “right” people doing it. And we’re all forced to pay for this worldview: American taxpayers have paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2tn in total for the Iraq war alone, according to a January report from the Brown University Costs of War project. Which raises the question: if violence is never the answer, then why does America spend so much money on it?

Pakistani actor Uzma Khan assaulted in viral video

This story reads like a terrifying soap opera: three women and an entourage of 12 gunmen reportedly entered Khan’s house in Lahore, smashed her stuff, and assaulted her and her sister. Apparently they were angry Khan had had an affair with one of their husbands. Affairs, you know, are always the woman’s fault! The incident was filmed and went viral. Two of the women involved in the attack on the famous actor are apparently the daughters of a powerful Pakistani property magnate, Malik Riaz (not the husband in question), which may be why much of the country’s media has been rather quiet about this.

Covid-19 crisis could set women back decades

Experts warn that decades of progress on women’s workplace equality will be unraveled in mere months, thanks to the pandemic. One recent report, for example, has found that mothers in England were 47% more likely to have permanently lost their job or quit and 14% more likely to have been furloughed during the crisis.

Lisa Su is first woman to top AP’s CEO pay analysis

Women as a whole may not be doing well at the moment, but a few individuals are doing great. Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), got a pay package of around $58.5m in 2019, making her the first woman ever to top the Associated Press’s annual survey of CEO compensation.

France elects first openly transgender mayor

Marie Cau was elected mayor of village in north-eastern France last Saturday. “People did not elect me because I was or was not transgender, they elected a programme,” Cau said. “That’s what’s interesting: when things become normal, you don’t get singled out.”

Pixar has its first gay lead character

He’s called Greg and he stars in the studio’s short film Out.

The week in monkey-archy

As if 2020 wasn’t already enough of a dystopian movie, monkeys have reportedly mobbed a health worker in India and made off with Covid-19 test samples. Thankfully, the boxes were later retrieved undamaged. So you can stop worrying about vicious diseased monkeys and get back to worrying about the aggressive cannibal rats. Nature really is healing itself.