Defend young Black people

By Kobi Guillory

A few weeks ago during lunch I asked an 8th grade student if he had ever been to a protest. He said yes and described one of the “teen takeovers” as a protest against the way police treat him and his peers. I rarely hear people say a positive word about those gatherings, and that was the only time I have heard one get called a protest. That led to a conversation about racist police harassment, the variety of motivations of the children attending the “takeovers,” and systemic neglect of Black communities. 

Headlines are flooded with images of property destruction and chaotic crowds, and the moral of most news stories on the topic is “we need more police” and “parents should be held accountable.” We know from experience that these are not real solutions, and when we treat Black teens like people and speak to them about their needs and wants they can offer solutions to problems the racist ruling class wants us to think are insurmountable. 

Black people have faced relentless attacks from white supremacy during our entire history in the US. The youth are reacting to generations of exploitation and repression, which is today seen in decades of defunding housing, education, healthcare and other public services while funding for racist policing and mass incarceration always increases.

Alderpersons like Brian Hopkins have used the “takeovers” as an excuse to push legislation effectively denying Black youth the right to gather in public. Calls for “accountability” suggest punishments from fines to jail time for parents of the teens. Some are kind enough to say parents need mentorship in how to raise their kids. Very few talk about the material difficulties of supporting a family while under constant attack by the white supremacist ruling class.

175,000 families in Illinois had their SNAP benefits taken by the Trump administration in May. My school saw a dramatic downward turn in student behavior the following week. One morning a 6th grader told me he had been outside partying at 2am because his mother works night shifts and, like many children, he will choose the more fun and risky option if adults aren't present to make him choose the safe, boring one.

Long work hours is only one reason parents struggle to spend quality time with their children. Many are incarcerated by the racist legal system. Some are afflicted by unemployment, addiction, mental illness, or other problems made inevitable by capitalism.

So if it's clear that the “teen takeovers” are rooted in the same systemic cause as poverty and violence in Black communities, why are we talking about parenting?

In the 1960s the Johnson administration was giving concessions to the Black liberation movement in the form of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. They were also planning ways to keep Black people ignorant of the imperialist system which oppresses them as a nation and exploits the vast majority of them as members of the international working class.

In 1965 Lyndon B Johnson's Secretary of Labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published a report claiming that the main cause of problems in the Black community was not centuries of brutal exploitation and oppression, but a dysfunctional family structure. The report blamed Black women in particular as the heads of single parent households. 

People who ignore the economic and political roots of discontent in Black communities and blame children or their parents are playing into the strategy of the ruling class. Instead we should use the strategy outlined in the words and work of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr, Fred Hampton and Malcolm X who fought for working and oppressed people.

These strategists condemned the system, not the people struggling to survive within it. If we are concerned about violence at “teen takeovers” or any other time and place in Black communities, we need to support the movements fighting to improve conditions for Black people.

We should join the movement for community control of the police and an end to mass incarceration. We should fight for quality, fully funded public goods like housing, healthcare, and education. We should fight for worker’s rights and empowerment in unions. We should resist the imperialist wars and interventions of the US government so tax dollars are used to help children here instead of murdering families overseas. We should defend the historical gains of the Black liberation movement such as voting and civil rights.

Black people did not choose to be exploited and oppressed for 400 years on this land, but we have advanced historically when we chose to fight back. The choice today is to dwell on the individual decisions of children and parents impacted by the racist and greedy ruling class, or to join the movements uniting with families to oppose the ruling class.