What is it about America and race?
Why does that country obsess so much about it? And, if you ask Americans, I
doubt whether they themselves can give a coherent explanation why it looms as large
as it does in their nation’s psyche.
In less than one year, there have been at least half a dozen occasions when race in
America became the focus of not only national but international attention as
well. Here is a sample of some of the more notorious ones:
·
July 17, 2014, Eric Garner died in New York City, after a police officer locked him
in a chokehold.
·
August 9, 2014, an 18-year-old man, Michael
Brown, is fatally shot by Darren Wilson, a Ferguson MO cop.
·
April 4, 2015, Patrolman Michael Slager fatally shoots
Walter Scott in the back following a traffic stop for a non-functioning brake
light in North Charleston, South Carolina.
·
April 12, 2015 Freddie Gray suffers a fatal
spinal injury while being transported in a Baltimore MD police van that made several rough stops,
starts and turns. Gray did not have a seat belt on. His only restraint apparently
was handcuffs, a latter-day version of the Middle Passage.
·
June 5, 2015 Officer Eric Casebolt, a McKinney TX cop
is filmed pulling his gun on a bunch of teenagers at a pool party. He wrestles
a 14 year-old girl to the ground for good measure.
·
June 10, 2015 Rachel Dolezal, the Spokane WA NAACP
president is outed by her parents. She had been “passing” as black for many
years.
· June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof, a 21 year old joins
a Bible Study group in Charleston SC’s Emanuel AME Church and sits in quietly
for an hour. Then, declaiming hatred, he pulls out a gun and opens fire on the
group of churchgoers he was ostensibly studying with. He kills nine of them.
The thing about
these incidents is that, in nearly all, the victims are black. The
exception is Rachel Dolezal's, whose journey to victimhood may have been partially
self-mediated although eventually sparked by intra-family dysfunction.
When you stand
back, the dynamic in the majority of these encounters favours those with the
power. Yet, those wielding power, influence and authority never seem satisfied
unless the disadvantaged are rendered even more disadvantaged and, still better,
dead. True, no one in his right senses would describe Mr Roof, the alleged assassin
in the Bible Study murders as powerful and privileged (America, that bastion of
the classless society has a term for individuals like this) but such is the overwhelming grip of racism in America that it pops up in the most improbable of circumstances.
There are two
reasons why I am writing this post. One is that, what happens in America and
what America does have resonance for the entire world; American Law is virtually
World Law and all of us are expected to tow its line. Just ask FIFA. Besides, America would not have come about except for their expressed conviction thal all men are created equal. They say that upfront in their Declaration of Independence document.
The other reason
is that American racism is just another iteration of tribalism. And while we in
Africa now generally experience little racism, tribalism is alive and well throughout
the continent. It is an ism that is every bit as corrosive as America’s principal
moral failing. Perhaps even worse.
Tell Fren Tru
What is it about America and race?
Why does that country obsess so much about it? And, if you ask Americans, I
doubt whether they themselves can give a coherent explanation why it looms as large
as it does in their nation’s psyche.
