Top 10 Reads: Anger, Hope & Breonna
+ more views and ideas on the effects of the country-wide protests.
Your Top 10 reads for the week:
“'I Cannot Sell You This Painting.' Artist Titus Kaphar on his George Floyd TIME Cover” (TIME)
Because this is a powerful meditation on TIME’s work-of-art cover. As with most things in life, art can help us better process complex realities.
“White Americans, resist the temptation to disengage” (WaPo)
Because “the problem is that the level of commitment needed to address a history marked by slavery, segregation and rampant inequality is far greater than what the white community has ever been willing to give.”
“Why Aren’t We All Talking About Breonna Taylor?” (NYT)
Because this is just another facet to the bigger picture playing out right now, and the framing of Breonna Taylor’s story in the bigger picture matters.
“James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution” (The Atlantic)
Because Gen. James Mattis, once a darling of the Trump Administration, has spoken out in a very direct way on the Administration’s handling of the protests.
“It Really Is Different This Time” (Politico)
Because Politico asked 12 experts why they think this year’s protests are different from, say, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Most obviously, time will tell, on this idea.
“The Police Are Rioting. We Need to Talk About It.” (NYT)
Because this column from Jamelle Bouie lays out some arguments on one of the main areas of focus of Black Lives Matter and protesters: the framing of police conduct and police reform.
“Shouting Into the Institutional Void” (The Atlantic)
Because the more recent hollowing-out of institutions is a big concern to me and Michael. George Packer writes: “The urban unrest of the mid-to-late 1960s was more intense than the days and nights of protest since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis policeman. More people died then, more buildings were gutted, more businesses were ransacked. But those years had one advantage over the present. America was coming apart at the seams, but it still had seams. The streets were filled with demonstrators raging against the ‘system,’ but there was still a system to tear down. Its institutions were basically intact. A few leaders, in and outside government, even exercised some moral authority.”
“Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful” (Vox)
Because if you’ve followed Coates’ work over the last several years, you know he’s had a lot to say on hope. Well, he now has hope.
“I’m Finally An Angry Black Man” (NYT)
Because this is just an infuriating article about a Black man who was part of white evangelicalism for years and his journey towards this moment.
“American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go” (The Dispatch)
Because David French is writing to his fellow conservatives on how people are influenced and formed by where we sit.
That conversation between Coates and Klein was both brilliant and fascinating, and one of the most sustained dialogues on nonviolence I have read in our current political discourse. I think they are both right that our imagination for what the state is and does must change, and that our assumptions about the state’s monopoly of violence and our deep attachment to the myths and pedagogical purposes of war (even the way war functions as a kind of school of virtue) must give way. For me, Christians are particularly prepared to both proclaim and embody an alternative to the violence of the state. Of course my mind jumps immediately to Hauerwas and The Peaceable Kingdom but I also can’t recommend enough Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics by Ted Smith at Emory University. Thanks for this latest selection, Michael. Very very good (as always!).