Do the purportedly racist children of Uncle Sam realize that most of them either descend from a subjugated slave clan or can find their origin mentioned in some uncorroborated immigration record of the early 1600s? In a nutshell, most of modern America can be described as a mere consequence of 300 years of European imperialism (1492-1783). In that case, our fellow 388,000 Africans, 4.8 million Brazilians, 1.2 million Jamaicans wouldn’t mind spreading their black arms to embrace the so-called forefathers of White America (not Americans), averting all violent measures to avenge 17 million black deaths during the transatlantic slave trade.
The US has yet again fallen into the resentful hands of civilian protesters using the names of Micheal Brown (Ferguson, 2014), Tamir Rice (Cleveland, 2014), Jordan Davis (Jacksonville, 2012) and Martin Luther King (Memphis, 1968) as slogans to confront unlawful police killings and acts of racism. The Civil War, Ferguson protests, the King assassination riots, Cincinnati riots (2001) and St. Louis protests (2017) are being relived by yet another generation that is looting stores, burning cars and even encouraging the mass transmission of a virus in times of global crisis.
“I can’t breathe,” another child in New York City cried when the fumes rising from an ashed police vehicle exhausted his lungs while his mother was busy burning another car. A protester who attended an estimated 10,000 person rally in Melbourne tested corona positive, just when the Australian health services could start bragging about reaching the last bouts of their combat against Covid-19. Ann Marie Dorn will have no one to spend the rest of her old age with, just because her black husband couldn’t mingle with a few young protestors looting a pawn shop (June 02, David Dorn, retired police captain was shot in St. Louis).
“My brother, Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal officer, was murdered 5/29/20 in Oakland California, while on duty during the riots. This Violence Must Stop,” Angela Jacob Underwood, confirmed her brother’s unfortunate death on Facebook.
About 15 American states including
Puerto Rico recorded their worst Covid-19 week (as per June 10) with African Americans constituting 25% of the total deaths, highest amongst all other races. Only with massive disdain for the ultimate purpose, will one solely blame the government’s discrimination for these deaths, when the coronavirus actually spread during the incautious protests.
How long are we ready to ignore the collateral damages?
Not white, not black, does America as a whole deserve to burn for justice?
Have we subconsciously chosen racism as a way of life?
When Borris Johnson’s spokesperson with no diffidence claims that the United Kingdom is not a racist country, what is he doing if not shaming ten million Asian, Arab and Chinese inhabitants, who refuse to forget the ‘Paki-bashing’.
When Prime Minister Johnson publicly admitted that he will not support or indulge those who break the law, or attack the police, or desecrate public monuments, was he specifically trying to protect Winston Churchill’s statue with a ‘was racist’ written all over it?
Well, he ended up teasing a thousand protestors at Trafalgar Square, who treated Gandhi and Colston in a similar manner.
The broken statues, public demonstrations and BLM graffiti across London don’t surprise when people choose a Prime Minister who calls all Black Africans as labelled ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ (2002), recognizes Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’ and bank robbers believes in Islamophobia and is unacceptably sexist.
When a prosperous country is led by someone who identifies the demonstrators as ‘thugs’ and wants looting to rhyme with shooting, Thomas Jefferson’s statue smiles a little bit more. No one can blame President Trump for his casual racist slurs when he’s building an economy rich enough to witness 1.54 million job losses in three months. Donald Trump never advertised himself as a welfare agent but played a clever businessman who made the US choose green over black. Now the US has less green and less black.
When a beloved Member of Parliament in India with all his arguably sound intelligence tried to resolve the long-standing Hindu-Muslim ruckus of the country, he ended up planning the next big emigration after 1947 by asking about 200 million Muslims to immediately cross the border, change their nationalities and start singing the Qaumi Taranah. The Forty-second amendment (1976) of the Constitution of India has defeated the ‘industry-oriented education system’ to become the biggest irony in the country’s history, where anyone but a Hindu is secretly a secondary citizen. On March 2, 2020, The Guardian published an article explaining how Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism complements Trump’s racism. The article also highlighted the Indian media’s efforts to present the entire CAA protest as a Hindu versus Muslim episode, or a big Modi debacle rather than linking the bill to the consequences of our own votes. The Dalits, Adivasis and Northeasterners have been eating racist slurs and dying miserable deaths in a country where we decide mostly by the polarized religious opinions.
Bhartiya Janta Party’s (ruling party of India) affiliation with the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and their joint venture to make India a Hindu state was not a mystery in 2014 and didn’t go off the table in 2019. But Indians very comfortably ignored the Gujarat pogrom (2002), and let BJP ace two consecutive elections. Then why do the CAA protests bother now? Did we not choose it?
Despite all the power at disposal, there has been no intention to create a safe environment for 60,000 Africans (in India) who are stereotyped as drug peddlers or for every person from Northeast India who ends up being called a ‘Momo’ or blamed to have developed coronavirus. Whenever the Indian media smiles thinking about the rarity of police killings in the country, Akha Shaloni and Nido Taniam’s not so happy faces must be flashed to make us realize the casually racist nature of our upbringing.
If a protestor had to govern a country here on, he/she would’ve countered systematic racism by immediately providing equal medical facilities to all races, especially when Covid-19 has already claimed over four hundred thousand lives worldwide. Unlawful police killings would be scrutinized and further punished. But when you punish one police officer in a country that cradles 17,985 police agencies (US), a thousand others could get provoked to make another statement. That means firing one unit, filing a case against one agency or taking down one president is not solving racism. It isn’t even a step towards an ideal solution if their successor continues to build a wall and recognize the Mexican immigrants as plain criminals.
The Washington Post, in their article published on June 8, 2020, mentioned how unlawful killings in the US have been claiming approximately 1000 lives a year. The police budget and the killing rate have escalated proportionately even in times of a global pandemic. According to Dosomething.org, 88% of the police stops in 2018 involved black and Latinx people. Black Americans were more likely to be arrested when compared to the white ones, and once arrested most of them end up convicted and experience longer sentences. The APA’s (American Psychological Association) experiment in 2016 proved that a subject easily kills an unarmed black person and hesitates to pull the trigger on a white one. A tinge of racial bias makes an officer who is aware of the consequences, place his knee on a black man’s face and suffocate him to death. George Floyd did not deserve to die over $20, but the policemen will suffer for the rest of their lives for doing something they were always trained to do. Is it the policemen or the system that needs to be punished?
Guangzhou, known as”Little Africa” in the Chinese mainland is flooded with 10,344 (2017) African immigrants, who have been maltreated for decades by a government that has been arresting most of them for drug-related offences. China has indulged in hardcore racism to assure 92% of its population (Han Chinese) that this communist state unlike the USSR of 1991, wouldn’t let diversity harm its existence.
In India, if one refuses to criticize the intelligent left-wing for crushing the right with its political knowledge, one cannot blame the right for any physical harm caused, of any kind. Both of them practice their defence mechanisms at the sound of intimidation.
Aristotle laid the foundations of racism when he said that “Certain humans are born to be slaves, be owned by the superior,” Politics,355BCE. Slavery born out of capitalism (Marx), was gradually transformed into racism due to economic reasons, that is now a defence mechanism employed by the majority to overcome their insecurities or even the possibility of a threat caused due to the mere existence of other ethnic groups.
Like Karl Marx explained in his Communist Manifesto (1848), the power structure continuously changes. The bourgeoise will lose their power to the proletariat, the blacks will be a majority someday and we’ll run rallies to save White America. Our great-grandchildren could be the one’s getting killed in a protest in outer space marked by the ‘white lives matter’ slogan. They’ll blame us for choosing the wrong people, for these choices we make every day, whether it is protesting or just killing another African American.
For not understanding the simple school proverb that says, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
