Choked, until he could breathe no more; rotten open wounds of racism in America
The preface to Elie Wiesel’s book on the holocaust, Night, notes:
“we cannot indefinitely avoid depressing subject matter, particularly if it is true … the world [has] to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear — the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured people, remained silent in the face of genocide.”
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In short, people must accept responsibility for the horrid past and to learn from that past for the sake of a sane future.
George Floyd
Racism in America
The police murder of George Floyd revealed the raw underbelly of racism in America: a genocide of black people which continues ever since the Atlantic slave trade about 400 years ago. My first experience of police racism in America was in the early 1970s as a student.
I lived in a white neighbourhood in Los Angeles bordering West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
One afternoon, as I pulled my Volkswagen into the garage, I was accosted — from the two corners of the garage — by two white policemen with guns drawn.
It was a scary moment: When those cops shoot, they shoot to kill! And I remember the ordeal to this very day.
At another time in Palm Springs, California — where I was seeking accommodation for the night after visiting the swap meet and antique shops there — the white lodge keeper pulled out a gun on a hunch.
Recently, visiting and driving my sister’s car in Los Angeles on Crenshaw Blvd south to Slauson Avenue, the sight of white policemen, in police vehicles, scouting from the corners of the streets, shook me.
Any dark-skinned person was a presumed suspect, right off the bat — to use a baseball jargon.
Tale, two police cultures
A few years back strolling in the alleys of Bangkok, Thailand, with my second daughter, I recall a policeman who stopped his car to ask if we needed help, and if he could offer it.
Patrolling the city in the middle of the night, he offered us directions to our hotel. I believe he’d have given us a ride had we requested it. As he drove off, he waved.
Looking back, the difference between the two police cultures was amazing. One presumed you a suspect, to be harassed and possibly shot; and the other offered to help you.
In an undergraduate class in the US — Critical Dimensions: The Art of Public Address Criticism — I remember an African American student openly ask the white professor, Anthony Hillbruner, “Why do white people hate us so much?”
He answered that it was the emotional character of people to find a scapegoat to pin their neurotic anxieties and fears on.
In a presentation project for that class, my paper was themed “The Dimensions of Kwame Nkrumah’s public addresses”. It was a steamy reactive delivery about how Nkrumah liberated black Africa from European imperial rule. That was in my mid-20s, and how I wish I could find that paper today!
Ugly underbelly of racism
The following transcript is from Eddie Glaude, Chair of the African American Studies at Princeton University, on MSNBC TV. It is a most articulate expose of racism. He said:
“You know, America is not unique in its sins. As a country, we‘re not unique in our evils. To be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them, and the legends and the myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide, cover, and conceal, to maintain a kind of wilful ignorance that protects our innocence.”
“See, the thing is that when the Tea Party was happening, people were saying, ‘Oh it’s just about economic populism. It’s not about race.’ When people knew, people knew! Social scientists were already writing that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographic shifts; that the country was changing; that they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials; that the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation any more, and people were screaming from the top of their lungs: ‘Yo, this is not just economic populism, this is the ugly underbelly of the country.’
“See the thing is this, and I’ll say this, and I‘ll take the hit on it. There are communities that have had to bear the brunt of white Americans confronting the danger of their innocence. And it happens every generation. So we somehow have to, kind of [ask], ‘Oh my God, is this who we are?’ And just again, here’s another generation of babies, think about it: a two-year old had his bones broken by two parents trying to shield him from being killed. A woman has been married to this man for as long as I’ve been on planet almost, lost her husband, for what?”
Tradition of hatred
“And so what we know is that the country’s been playing politics a long time on this hatred, we know this. So it’s easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It is easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders. It’s easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders. It is easy for me to place El Paso on his shoulders … this is us! And if we’re going to get past this, we can’t blame it on him. He’s a manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.”
“I had a privilege of growing up in a tradition that didn’t believe in the myths and the legends because we had to bear the brunt of them. Either we’re going to change [or] we are going to [suffer] this again, and again, and babies are going to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts and friends, while we are trying to convince white folk to leave behind their history that maybe, maybe, or embrace the history, that might set them free from being white. Finally, finally.”
The writer is a trainer of teachers, a leadership coach, a motivational speaker and quality education advocate.
E-mail: [email protected]
Blog: www.anishaffar.org