Without a serious effort to desegregate our society and achieve racial and economic justice, the United States will increasingly begin to look like an apartheid state. Some argue that the US is already an apartheid state, with various classes and races of people living in completely separate worlds, detached and alienated from one another, unable to develop proper community relations. Unfortunately, the empirical data and my anecdotal experiences indicate such. Yet, as always, there’s plenty of reason for hope, as people are mobilizing throughout the country, particularly young black organizers and activists.

Ongoing Divisions

According to the Washington Post, unsurprisingly “a full 75 percent of whites” do not have any black, Latino or Asian Americans in their “social networks.” Unfortunately, the numbers are similar for black Americans, as “slightly less than two-thirds” do not regularly hang out with white people, although they spend almost nine times as much time with white people, as white people do with black people in the US. All of this is troubling enough, yet what’s even more bothersome is the ideological divide between black and white America.

Back in August, 2014, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll which examined how white and black Americans reacted to the killing of unarmed Michael Brown at the hands of white police officer Darren Wilson. The results were startling and quite telling.

Over 80% of black Americans answered “yes,” when asked, “Does this case raise important issues about race?” Only 37% of white Americans answered “yes” to the same question. In the same poll, over 65% of black people said the police response “has gone too far,” while only 33% of whites agreed with that statement. When asked, “Do you have confidence in police shooting investigations?” ­ — 18% of black respondents answered a “great deal.” Meanwhile, 52% of white people have a “great deal of confidence” in the investigations of police officers. In addition, the polling data shows that young people are more likely than their older counterparts to criticize police investigations and shootings.

The data also shows sharp divisions between Democrats and Republicans, and shifting views among the white population:

“While on balance whites think that the issue of race was getting too much attention in the Ferguson shooting, a higher percentage of whites expressed that view last year after a Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. After the Zimmerman verdict, 60% of whites said race received more attention in that case than it deserved; today, fewer whites (47%) say that about the shooting of the unarmed teen in Ferguson.

Partisan reactions to the two incidents are similar. Majorities of Republicans think that in both the Brown (61%) and Trayvon Martin (68%) cases, the issue of race receives too much attention. Majorities of Democrats say both cases raise important issues of race that need to be discussed (68% Brown, 62% Martin).”

What’s also interesting is the fact that, “Public interest in the Ferguson events was similar to interest in the April 2001 Cincinnati riots after a police officer killed black teenager Timothy Thomas (24%).” In other words, Americans are no more interested today, than they were fourteen years ago, in the killing of unarmed black men, yet the response on behalf of protestors and social media has made a difference in terms of sustained response, protest and direct actions.

Black and Brown Divisions and White Supremacy

During the first week following the killing of Michael Brown,  54% of black people “closely followed news about the shooting and protests, compared with 25% of non-Hispanic whites and 18% of Hispanics.” Upon examination, the numbers representing Hispanic opinion are not drastically different from that of white Americans. In fact, their opinions on any number of these issues falls almost exactly between white and black America.

I find those statistics interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the majority of black voters chose Rahm Emanuel over Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in the recent Chicago mayoral election, even though Emanuel closed over 30 schools and several mental health clinics in primarily poor black neighborhoods. The cultural, political and economic separation is more than clear. It’s not just white and black American who are divided and alienated from each other, it’s also Hispanics who are increasingly detached and alienated from both white and black Americans.

In other words, when people talk about race in the US, they often focus on the divide between black and white America, or the divide between white America on one side, and black and brown America on the other. Yet, that’s an overly simplistic way of viewing the racial context in the US. Nuance is important, particularly when we’re discussing something as important and complex as race relations in the US. There is no easy formula or equation to understand these events or how people will react to them.

The onus, of course, is on white America. Without question, white Americans have benefited greatly from the legacy of White Supremacy. The socio-economic numbers bear out that statement, so we won’t rehash commonly understood data. Everyone knows that white people are dramatically better-off than their black counterparts, regardless of which class we discuss. On the other hand, white people have been morally stunted and psychologically and socially distorted by the legacy of White Supremacy. To put differently, there are material benefits for white people under the current system, but their well-being as individuals, or as a class within society, has been utterly warped.

Images of baseball fans, wealthy enough to attend a game, and wealthy enough to lounge around the bar and eat dinner afterwards, throwing materials at protestors and calling them “niggers” and “nigger lovers,” will undoubtedly be seared into the memories of many young black residents of Baltimore. In my thinking, the US public will start to see more white people speaking openly and honestly about race. It’s not as though white people have drastically changed over the past forty years, it’s that they’re simply not allowed to speak their minds. It’s now culturally inappropriate to be outwardly racist.

As our economic and political system continues to fail society, I expect more ugly and brutal honesty from white America. In the worst case scenario, I expect white cops and citizens to become increasingly violent and explicitly racist in the future. There is an element in US society that we will not be able to organize, regardless of their economic position. Here, Marxists have a hard time understanding the importance of race and culture. It’s not automatic that black and brown Americans will join in solidarity to fight against White Supremacy or Global Capital.

Politics in the Rust Belt

I spent my formative years in Northwest Indiana, only 45 miles east of Chicago. My family moved out of the city in the mid-1990s. There are many different worlds and realities within Northwest Indiana, let alone between Northwest Indiana and Chicago. There are towns such as Chesterton, Indiana, which is about 95% white and quite affluent, that is located less than fifteen miles from Gary, Indiana, a town that’s devastatingly poor and 95% black. Two different worlds, separated by some highways and a steel mill. That’s the reality of the Rust Belt: rich towns and poor towns, separated by formerly industrialized spaces.

What I can say is that I do the majority of my political work between Milwaukee and Detroit. I have travelled often overseas and around the country for speaking events, but otherwise, my political organizing experience is largely confined to the Rust Belt.

The Rust Belt, at least demographically and socio-economically speaking, represents a good cross section of the US. The Rust Belt represents the past, present and future of American politics. To be fair, I know there are areas on the east and west coasts that are similar to Chicago, Detroit, Ferguson, Gary, Benton Harbor, Cleveland, Youngstown, etc. I’ve been to Baltimore, Philly, Camden, Stockton, Eastern Kentucky, etc. It all looks and sounds similar to me. But the Rust Belt, particularly places like Detroit and Gary, were once the crown jewels of Capitalism. Today, they’re wastelands, barely capable of maintaining basic infrastructure and sanitation facilities.

Participatory Democracy and Hope

A few days ago, we held the 7th Annual Participatory Democracy Conference in Gary, Indiana. Usually, we get around 120 participants, some of them are students who are required to attend the event, others are community members who attend on their own accord.

It’s a two-day event, loaded with information, workshops and presentations by union members, students, community activists, church groups and professors. Overall, it’s a good mixture of residents from the region: mostly black folks, which makes sense because the event was held in Gary, some Hispanics, some white people, and multigenerational. In that way, it has been a radical action just to have these people in the same room talking politics. Again, most of these groups don’t usually hang out, converse, go to school or live near each other.

During this year’s event, most people were on the same page. The tide is shifting, no doubt. The first year we did this event, we spent at least half the time explaining to students and some community members, mostly white, why the US isn’t the greatest nation in the world. This year, a lot of the students were at least somewhat aware that people around the world have been protesting austerity and so forth. That was promising.

We listened to summaries and testimonies at the end of the event and one woman mentioned that she spoke with a white girl from her class who she had been going to class with for months but never spoke to. Another woman told a story about a white guy from her class who cried when he hugged her because he had to admit that he had never touched a black person before in his life. That is the sort of reality we’re dealing with on the ground in my area.

Lots of Work Moving Forward

Looking back, I’m struck by the various levels at which people are operating politically. To put differently, some people were ready to conduct campaigns, boycotts, direct actions or civil disobedience, while others required very basic forms of political education. Some attendees were ready to start forming coalitions and talked about values, strategy and so forth. Others were reluctant to even speak about these issues in public. It’s always challenging.

That’s what’s happening, at least from my limited perspective here in the Rust Belt. I can imagine it’s similar elsewhere. I don’t think most Americans have extremely developed politics, let alone visions for a utopian future. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that such things can’t be encouraged and engendered. At our little conference of 120 people in one of the most impoverished cities in the US, we talked about very interesting, complex and prescient subjects, such as democratizing the workplace, dismantling the US Empire, combatting police violence, re-imagining the public sector and much more.

Where I live, people are very angry and I think that anger, if channeled in the correct manner, could be the spark that’s needed to really kick start a serious movement focused on reforming and hopefully, eventually, dismantling our dominant systems of oppression. It’s a long road, but I see reason for hope. If not, why do this work?

Vincent Emanuele is a writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt. He’s a member of UAW Local 1981. Vincent can be reached at [email protected]