The outpouring of grief in the United States over recent race-inspired killings is gut-wrenching: the world’s acclaimed leader of the “free world” is grappling with racism, impunity and routine violation of the basic human right to life. And all this driven solely by racism! America needs to resolve the racial prejudice that drives white policemen to routinely kill blacks.
Two hundred and forty years after the reverberating ideals of liberty and freedom were set out in its iconic declaration of independence, the dream of egalitarianism and equality before the law is daily being exposed as a farce where black folks are concerned. This is expressed across the country by white-dominated police and the criminal justice system. While one flippantly gun down black suspects, the other routinely denies the victims’ family justice.
The last few weeks tell the story, the only twist being the reprisal slaying of five policemen in Dallas, Texas, by a black American taking revenge for the random police killings of other blacks across the country. The trigger for the crisis was the back-to-back killing of Philando Castille, 32, during a traffic stop by a policeman in Falcon Heights, Minnesota; and of the brutal slaying in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, of Alton Sterling, 37, by two policemen. Both were wasted in circumstances that have become familiar: white policemen apprehending or confronting black men and using excessive force even when their victims are unarmed, pose no visible threat or have already been subdued. Castille was submissive, but was shot four times before his girlfriend and her daughter. Sterling was wrestled to the ground and subdued, yet, an officer fired several shots at him. The national political establishment has risen to mourn five policemen killed in an ambush by an angry black, Micah Johnson.
US officials must go beyond the handwringing and rousing speeches that follow each tragedy. Police killing of black men has been consistent, pervasive and random. Worse, the culprits often go unpunished or escape with mild sanctions. A report in the Telegraph of London, said US police killed 102 unarmed black suspects in 2015, five times the rate for unarmed whites. Racism is endemic even 150 years after slavery was abolished and 52 years after the Civil Rights Act 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin in the US. But blacks routinely encounter discrimination, and even President Barack Obama has had such an experience. Though constituting only 13 per cent of the population, the US Bureau of Justice reported that blacks represent 36 per cent of persons killed in arrest-related incidents between 2003 and 2009; and 42 per cent of inmates on death row in 2012; and about three per cent of those in prison compared to 0.5 per cent of the white male population.
Researchers at Princeton University have found a disturbing pattern of hate by white policemen against blacks. Only blind, consuming hatred and in-bred racism can explain the California fatal shooting in August 2014 of Ezell Ford, a mentally ill 25-year-old shot three times while unarmed; or of Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia whose head, police in Cleveland, Ohio, fatally slammed on the pavement while taking her into custody.
Impunity is further bred by the cover-ups and mild treatment of the police killers. Black Lives Matter, a movement formed in 2013 in response to the police assaults, listed the refusal of grand juries to indict the killers of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012; Michael Brown in Missouri in 2014, and Eric Garner in New York in 2014. As Minnesota Governor, Mark Dayton, admitted after Castille’s killing, he probably would not have died if he was a white man.
That, we believe, should be the knotty issue America’s federal, state and local authorities have to resolve quickly before the social divide descends into intractable violence. Johnson’s recourse to self-help should jolt the nation to the possibility of more militant reactions than the peaceful demonstrations of BLM and associated activist groups. While we oppose such terrorist tactics, however, serious efforts should be put in motion to heal the deep wounds inflicted by the police. Federal, state, city, and borough authorities need to re-orient the 18,000 police formations across the US against ingrained racism and random killings. Equality before the law must be enforced by the scrupulous punishment and prosecution of all offenders. Since there is no statute of limitation for murder, all cases of hate-killing and unlawful use of force by law enforcement officers should be reopened and the perpetrators prosecuted.
It is tragic that while the US pushes human rights abroad as a key plank of its foreign policy, police and judicial officials are oppressing blacks at home. This is shameful. Correcting the lopsidedness in the criminal justice system that is skewed against blacks offers another step towards reconciliation. According to the US Census Bureau, white officers dominate in the police, judiciary and juries, even in areas where blacks constitute the majority population. Like in Ferguson, Missouri, where Brown was shot dead; though blacks make up about 60 per cent of the population, there were only three blacks in the 53-person strong police force.
The black community should not only peacefully resist and demand justice; there should be a determined effort to live the American Dream despite entrenched racism. Education, innovation, entrepreneurship and avoidance of drugs and crime offer a sure route to success as evident in Obama’s presidency, and in other African-Americans who have reached the pinnacle of their careers.
