America Burning: The discomfort of racism!

There is always a distant distillation when sitting on a different continent and watching the painful burning of America. It creates a compelling reason to understand the pain that has caused this rioting and to better understand this label ‘racism’ which is at the root of the current upheaval.  The persuasive narrative is that this is a Black – White issue, it’s a racist event laden with the provocations and reactions that such emotionally charged and painful occasions bring. Yet sitting abroad one can flick the TV to some period drama series and not have to even hear the sirens or the gunshots on an American street. But then such escapes are not sustainable as the burning of America comes back to haunt you.

If you are white and do not subscribe to the white supremacist hatred for Black people, then you have two choices; sit on the sidelines and add the occasional voice to social media, or become active in supporting the moral right of the Black people. For someone like me, being brown, is a step closer to understand the pain of the Black man, but still being closer is not enough. One has to dig deeper into this malaise that plagues American society where the color of the skin creates hatred that demeans the life of the person with that color. In a sense the knee on George Floyds neck was symbolic of the knee that has been on the neck of Black people in America for decades. While slavery was abolished in 1865 it was only with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that discrimination based on color sex or religion was officially banned. Yet, as numerous studies show, till 1980’s segregation along race was common in US schools and colleges.

In recent times, and to the present day, a policy of ‘redlining’ creates the de facto denial of equal opportunities to Black and other minorities in the USA. The practice makes mortgages, education and jobs more difficult for Black people to secure by simply raising the qualification criteria or the cost of the education and mortgages much higher. As systemic as those redlining measures are the current upheaval concerns the unlawful killing of a Black man by police officers and is the watershed of many such incidents in the past.

The issues concerning Black people and their treatment run deep into the core of American society, almost to the concealed psyche of the white people who have treated them badly. Yes it is true not all white people are there to kill Black people, and indeed the vast majority of white (and brown) Americans are appalled by the recent events.  Yes this also becomes that moment when we quote Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and seek to understand how this anger can lead to rioting and looting. How an American President can call the protesters ‘thugs’ and how we can simply ignore the weight of history that has caused this. One is often asked if one supports the protests, and after affirming one does, the next question is ‘do you support the looting and burning of shops?’

There is a logical unequivocal answer that one cannot support the looting? However, supporting and understanding it are two different things. I can understand why it happened without agreeing to the fact it happened. At the outset racism, especially against Black people, is spun together in a historical context and since the abolition of slavery in the US back in 1865 with the 13^th Amendment, slavery has continued without chains through policies of denials, inequalities, and a system of justice that seems to modify itself with the color of the skin.

This is not only about the killing of George Floyd. It carries with it the symbolisms of the anger over the many other killings that were treated with the same disdain and sense of apathy that we see today. Those 9 minutes of a White police officer’s knee on the neck of Mr. Floyd were not just the nine minutes that prove that in the United States Black lives do not matter, but epitomises that Black lives do not matter in general. Mr. Floyd it must be said, based on the words of this closer relatives and friends, would not be happy to see the looting and burning, but the weight of the anger is not only of Mr. Floyd but the many more Black Americans who have been killed; Rodney King 1992, Tyrone Lewis 1996, Timothy Thomas 2001, Oscar Grant 2009, Michael Brown 2014, Freddie Grey 2015, and the list goes on.

What is more alarming is that the political leadership is absent in action and empathy to defuse the situation. The incumbent President has seen the recent riots much like the COVID 19 pandemic, from his personal political perspective. When the news is not fake to him it is then something to do with the enemies of American society. There has not been an iota of understanding shown by the President to simply comprehend why people are angry. Sadly the broader US political coterie, from both sides of the political divide, have also been chillingly subdued in speaking to the angry people directly.

Not all the protests have been violent and yes there has been looting in many instances but the dynamics of this run deep into the soul of America. While a looter may see a Wal-Mart store as symbolizing white capitalist exploitation (which is may well not be) he does see it in these hard times as a means to redress the economics of ‘injustice’. None of this makes it right, in fact each looter defaces the solemnity of the protest and the reason for the protest and gives the likes of Mr. Trump an excuse to call all the protestors thugs’.

One has to wonder where will America go from here? In a political and social landscape that has been divided by race already, thanks to President Trump, is there enough sentiment of empathy out there to help the healing? Will this be like the many other protests that eventually run out of steam and every body goes back to their cocoons of hatred, self pity, and anger? Will America as a nation in one voice say ENOUGH and then bring about the change that will truly make a difference, that will truly work to reform their society where any killing of anyone, black, white, yellow, brown or Technicolor, will be seen as an erosion of the very principles for which decent American’s have, through the centuries, fought for and died for!

This is that defining moment, buried under the knee of a white police officer what killed a Black man. From this rage will a collective nation rise what will kill racism once and for all? This is what every American has to ask himself tonight.