The Master’s Mehserle Can Never Dismantle the Master’s House

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 13 T heemphasisontheconvictionandsentencingofJohannesMehserle, the BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, in Oakland on New Year’s morning, 2009, is actively preventing us from addressing the real systemic sickness that led to this death and many millions gone. Let’s be clear: The shooting of Oscar Grant in the back by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was horrific, but it was not “crazy.” It was not the act of a rogue cop or even a “poorly trained” one. In reality, the forces of unbridled self-interest and private ownership, interlinked with and supported by white supremacy, have so shaped what it means to be a police officer that Johannes Mehserle was doing little more than what he was set up to do. Thejobofapoliceofficeristo“preserveorder,”andspecificallytopreservetheexistingorder. In the American context, this means preserving a fundamentally unjust order, a culturally and economically imperialist system that subjugates and exploits large numbers of people in order to secure privileges and spoils for a few. Thefictionalrealityof“race”hasbeenandcontinuestobeusedtojustifythesubjugation and exploitation of communities of color and the consolidation of power and resources in the hands of white people. To be specific, white people seized control of national, political, andeconomicpower;informedblackpeoplethatbothGodand nature had divided human populations into the white race and the black race and made the white race better; imposed a system of free-market capitalism; segregated housing, jobs, health care, and education along the color line so that the white race gets the best of everything; attributed TheMaster’sMehserleCanNever DismantletheMaster’sHouse byLynicePinkard Rev.LynicePinkardisapastor,teacher,andhealerinOakland,California.Herworkisdedicatedtodecolonizingthehumanspiritandtofreeingpeoplefromwhatshecalls “empireaffectivedisorder.” It wasn’t so much a cop as a system that killed Oscar Grant. Above, police in riot gear defend that system during July 8, 2010, protests in Oakland, California, about the “involuntary manslaughter” verdict received by Johannes Mehserle, the police officer who shot Grant. CREATIVE COMMONS/JONATHAN MCINTOSH the differences in life opportunities to individual merit or fortune—not race; and prohibited public expressions of race hatred or favoritism while privately nursing race pathologies that influence every sphereofpublicactionandpublicpolicyin America and around the world. As part of this same effort to “preserve order” in a racist and imperialist system, white people have maintained their power to use race to oppress black people and other people of color by appearing to concede that black people need some protection from “discrimination” and then giving them “race” protection. Race protection means formal race equality—that neither thewhite-controlledgovernmentnorcertainwhite-ownedprivatebusinessesmaydiscriminate because of race—anybody’s race, black or white. Whites are able to maintain their political and economic power because any request made by black people for help to recover from their race exclusion is characterized as “race” help, and that is the very thing antidiscrimination law has forbidden: “discrimination on the basis of race.” So, whites, having aggressively seized power from blacks, now use deadly “anti-racist” reforms, like “colorblindness,” as a reason to deny material assistance to blacks, because such help favors one racial group over another. As custodians of the race concept, white people decide when raceisreallytheissueinanycontestbetweenblacksandwhites,andthuseffectivelyprevent blackpeoplefromgaining,inthenameofraceneutrality,anybenefit,i.e.,affirmativeaction, or more to the point, any right, i.e., justice in American courts, that doesn’t benefit whites equally, or indeed more. These are the “race” facts of life in America—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Is it any wonder that black people are angry? This anger, bred of centuries of disenfranchisement, threatens to fuel the dismantling of repressive systems and thus “requires” policing. Mehserle as Bewildered Overseer And that brings us back to Johannes Mehserle. As “Officer” Mehserle, Johannes Mehserle served as one of the many law-and-order functionaries of the United States,sentouttocontainthepotentiallyexplosiveforceofrighteousanger.Inorderforhim toeffectivelyimplementhisrole,itisimportantthatthewhiteofficerbeconfusedaboutthe systemheservesandthepotentiallyrevolutionaryforcehemustpolice.Ifheunderstoodthe system, he would understand who and what he is “serving.” Of course Officer Mehserle is bewildered by Oscar Grant when he confronts him on the BART platform, not only because his experience is incommensurate with Grant’s experience , but also because the “hate” and “contempt” in Grant’s eyes reflect Mehserle’s true positionfartoowelltomaintaincomfort.Theofficerisstartledandconfusedbytheloathing expressed by the colonized...