Harry Targ
In
addressing violence, researchers, educators, journalists and religious leaders
have usually concentrated on its most visible forms: murder and war. The
central features of such violence include physical assault and killing. In our
own day terrorism has joined war as the most popular common subject for study.
Over the years, peace educators
have developed intellectual tools to uncover more diverse meanings of violence,
their differences and their connections. Structural violence has been
distinguished from direct violence. Researchers continue to analyze direct
violence, physical assault and killing, but also study structural violence, the
various forms of human suffering that take more time, impose pain and suffering
on populations, and are perpetuated by leading institutions and relationships
in society. Structural violence includes economic inequality, low wages and
poverty, inadequate access to health care and education, and the psychological
damage that economic suffering causes. These injustices, the concept of structural
violence suggests, are embedded in economic, social, and political institutions.
It is possible to disaggregate
further the structural violence that is embedded in institutions. Institutional
violence refers to unequal distribution of power and influence in major
societal institutions: political, criminal justice, and educational, for
example.
Finally, cultural violence refers
to the images, symbols, and educational materials that value some population
groups over others. Culture refers to the public consciousness of history,
traditions, and popular narratives that describe people. Stereotypes are
short-hand representations of a culture.
In total then violence is direct,
structural, institutional, and cultural. These kinds of violence may occur
separately but in most cases are inextricably connected. It is this fourfold
conception of violence that is relevant to the current crisis in Ferguson,
Missouri.
The tragedy of Ferguson, Missouri
came to national attention because of direct violence. A Ferguson policeman
shot and killed an unarmed young African American male. In response to the
collective expression of community outrage that followed, the local police
initiated a multi-day barrage of tear gas, strong-arm arrests, threatening
street protestors with military vehicles and loaded rifles. The images on
television screens nationwide have been of a people under assault, parallel to
Israeli bombings in Gaza and United States targeted air strikes in Iraq. The
fear that young African American males in Ferguson have historically felt every
time they stepped into the streets of their city have escalated since the
killing of Michael Brown.
Beyond the threat of direct
violence in Ferguson is structural violence, less visible but as important.
Brookings Institute researcher Elizabeth Kneebone (“Ferguson, Mo. Emblematic of
Growing Suburban Poverty,” brookings@edu,
August 15, 2014) reported that the community of Ferguson has experienced a
qualitative economic decline over the last decade. The city’s unemployment rate
increased from 5 percent in 2000 to 13 percent by 2010. Average earnings of
community members have declined by one-third. One-fourth of the population
lives in poverty.
Kneebone indicated that poverty
rates have doubled in suburban neighborhoods surrounding the 100 largest
cities. “By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents lived in the neighborhoods
with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black residents in those
communities, the figure was 53 percent.” Of course, poverty is highly related
to declining schools, inadequate access to health care, lessened prospects for
jobs, and large-scale youth unemployment.
Institutional violence is
reflected in a 300-year history of slavery and racism. Professor Clarissa
Hayward, Washington University, said: “The St. Louis metropolitan area has been
an extreme example of racial segregation for 100 years.” She pointed out that
St. Louis geographically was at the nexus of the South, the Midwest, and the
West and added: “The practices and politics of St. Louis created the problems
that underlie the tension that boiled out in Ferguson this week.” (Puneet
Kollipara, “Wonkbook: The Social and Economic Story Behind the Unrest in
Ferguson,” Wonkblog, The Washington Post, August 18, 2014).
In terms of the Ferguson
political system, two-thirds of the community is Black and the local government
is almost all white. Five of six city council members are white, the Mayor is
white, and six of seven school board members are white. Fifty of 53 police are
white.
Finally, cultural violence
addresses the issue of ideology, consciousness, images of the other, and
additional ways in which whites see African-Americans. Racist culture
socializes the dominant class and race to reflect its superiority. For example,
Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder said: “That’s one of the great advances of
Anglo-American civilization, is that we do not have politicized trials. We let
the justice system work it out.” The mayor of Ferguson recently declared that
his community was free of racism.
Since the killing of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, police and politicians have organized a campaign to demonize
the victim of the police killing. The tall young man, an African-American, was
a robber, a drug consumer, and violence-prone. Also, the days of protest in
Ferguson were framed to privilege the peaceful, religious, mourning adults and
to explain night-time violence (not as police violence) but violence by outside
agitators from New York, Chicago, and California. The fact that young African
Americans leave their houses at their own risk could not, the frame implies,
engender outrage.
So from police violence--killing,
gassing, beating--to economic despair, to lack of political representation to
cultural rationales for state violence, the basic characteristics of American
society are uncovered. And once again, the victimization of people of color, as
well as workers, and women, lead to the following conclusions:
--the root cause of exploitation,
racism, and sexism is structural violence (capitalism).
--physical violence is used to
crush rebellion against class exploitation and racism.
--unrepresentative political
institutions are dominated by the wealthy and powerful.
--dominant cultural stereotypes
and specific narratives about society reinforce the economic system, the
political system, and justify the police violence in the St. Louis area.
In
sum, in addressing violence, its multiple forms should be taken into
consideration.
