The Strange Fruit of Racist Violence

Abstract

eds) (2014) Special issue: The roots of mass incarceration in the US: Locking up black dissidents and punishing the poor. Socialism and Democracy 28(3). ISBN 0885-430.Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Lyrics by Frost, Damon/Phiri, Aaron 1Beginning with the much publicized killing of Travon Martin in Florida, the news media has been chronicling the seemingly constant shooting to death of men and women, usually non-white and both young and old, in deadly encounters, primarily with members of local police departments or, in Travon's case, a self-proclaimed community guardian. 2 What has been increasingly apparent is, first, that killings by police is not a new phenomenon (see Cooper, 1999, reporting on the infamous shooting death of unarmed Amadou Diallo, killed in a building vestibule, shot 41 times), but, second, either we are becoming increasingly aware of this, or in fact these killings are happening with an alarmingly greater frequency. Those of us who recall the Diallo killing remember the shock and dismay at what seemed like an isolated incident. After all, most often police shootings were found to be justified and in the odd event it was not, that officer was quickly labeled as an aberration not representative of police in general. A recent news report (King, 2015) proclaimed that in the month of March 2015 alone, police in the United States killed 111 people, more than those killed by all the police in the United Kingdom combined since 1900, a staggering comparison. In 2013 British police officers discharged their guns only three times, killing no one. After adjusting for population, the Economist estimates that a British citizen is 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer when compared to people in this country (Democracy in America, 2014). Police violence, ever present, has been escalating to an alarming degree, especially within communities of color. Much was made about the introduction of body cameras as a way to check police action, and yet the prospect of being recorded (as we know, there is now a phone with recording capabilities ever present) does not seem to serve as a deterrent; a recent killing in South Carolina resulted in murder charges against the police officer who shot a fleeing black man in the back and then claimed he feared for his life. 3