Tear ‘Em Down, Slats and All

It’s hard to believe now, but when I was growing up in Kentucky, a jug band—four or five African-American men who played a variety of home-made instruments, including spoons and a whiskey jug—used to entertain us white people at Saturday night dinner parties. Two of my favorite jug band songs were “‘Twas The Last Time, Titanic, Fare The Well” (“How the men did scream and curse/When Captain Jones said, “Ladies First” into the lifeboats)—and another called, “TEAR ‘EM DOWN, SLATS AND ALL.”

Subversive humor was one way for black people to survive, then and now, but subversive humor is of no use when a white policeman is kneeling on your neck.

As protests have broken out all over the country, frightening us well-intentioned white folk who write checks for good causes, I’m remembering “Tear ‘Em Down.”

The words were explained to me as referring to the slats in a bed, but I doubted even then that that was the meaning. More likely, the singer was describing obliquely the violent rioting that is aimed at major institutions, such as the U.S police departments.

We won’t change anything without violence and destruction. Good intentions have done all they can do. The radical changes of the 1960’s would never have happened without violent confrontations. We are talking about problems that go back to the founding of this country.

How dismaying it was to hear, over the weekend, a police chief explaining that neither he nor his officers have the authority to intervene when a policeman is abusing a victim. Something about hierarchy, which excuses those at the top from obeying the commands of ordinary morality. It took nine minutes to kill George Floyd, and during that nine minutes, four or five white police officers stood around and did nothing. They would have had time to smoke a cigarette.

It’s not going to do any good for us well-intentioned white people to march around with posters and holler about police pigs. When these revolts are violently subdued by the white power structure, as they surely will be, we will put our posters in our closets and go our way.

The structure itself of the U.S police force must be exploded. The reason for the killing of black people lies in these statistics: of 796,000 total police in the U.S., 13.3 percent are black and 85.3 percent are male. The men make an average salary of $70,272 while the women make $61,850, reflecting the ingrained inequality in wages in the U.S. And the average age of these men is nearly forty years old, settling into the middle-aged conservatism that besets this country and the world.

It is impossible to imagine that this group of men would have any empathy for the black neighborhoods they patrol (and racial segregation in housing has never been defeated anywhere in the U.S.). But it is possible to imagine that the men at the top of this hierarchy would accept the responsibility for preserving human lives that their rank and salary suppose.

And so, yes, “Tear ’em Down, Slats and All,” or accept that violent death at the hands of the police is going to be the fate of many black men.

In Politics