Demonstrators march down Oxford Street in central London on November 26,
2014 during a protest over the US court decision not to charge the
policeman who killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in the town of
Ferguson. AFP PHOTO | LEON NEAL
About 33 years ago while studying in the United States, I was a
relatively callow youth and a complete naïf when I encountered my first
taste of overt racism, which was to define my hatred for this
half-understood condition up to this day.
A friend and I
were walking below a hall of residence when some fellows on the fourth
floor decided to offer us a baptism of sorts; they tossed a plastic bag
of urine aiming for our heads. Luckily, a fellow student who was passing
by saw what was about to happen and pushed us out of the way.
What
I could not understand, and still can’t three decades later, is how
anybody in his right mind can urinate in a bag and then wait for any
passing black face to drench it in the stuff. But then in the next two
years, I was to understand that any black man was a potential target of
racial taunts and mindless persecution, the sole reason being that he is
black.
I have never been back since, and have never
had a hankering to revisit the country, though I still hold a soft spot
for it, mainly because this is where I acquired an education after three
wasted years at universities in Uganda and Kenya.
SHOT DEAD
This
week, many cities in the US were saved from burning by inclement
weather which dampened the spirits of rioters who had poured into the
streets to protest the outcome of court proceedings arising from the
shooting to death of a black teenager by a white policeman in Ferguson,
Missouri.
After three months, a Grand Jury declared
that the policeman would not be tried for pumping six bullets into the
18-year-old Michael Brown.
This aroused the ire of
Black Americans and sympathisers who demonstrated in several cities in
America, and even in London, a continent away.
It is
true that almost everywhere in the world, police officers have to lay
their lives on the line in the course of duty, and the use of excessive
force in certain circumstances can be understood, if not condoned. But
it is difficult to understand what fears can drive an officer to shoot
dead an unarmed teenager, claiming the boy made him afraid because he
looked like wrestler Hulk Hogan.
It is also difficult
to understand how the officer can say his conscience is clear, as though
dismissing the senseless execution and ensuing demonstrations as so
much fuss about nothing.
But this is not about officer
Darren Wilson or even the victim, Brown. It is about the relations
between police and African Americans — about racial profiling,
discrimination, and bigotry which seem to be “as American as mother’s
apple pie” to borrow an expression from that land. It is about a justice
system gone haywire in which black folk, especially the male of the
species, are particularly vulnerable.
BLACKS LIKELY TO BE ARRESTED
According
to statistics, one in three Black Americans is likely to have been
arrested or jailed in his life-time. And although Black Americans are a
distinct minority, they are the majority in almost all the jails. Also,
too many of them are ill-educated, and therefore more likely to be
unemployed and unemployable.
Nevertheless, even the
Federal Bureau of Investigations admits that, on the whole, white
Americans vastly over-estimate the number and seriousness of crimes
committed by their black compatriots, leading to exaggerated fear of
blacks.
Certainly, it is difficult for black people to
walk or drive their own cars in some neighbourhoods without being
stopped by police on suspicion that they have either committed a crime
or are planning to do so. It is even worse if three or more are seen in
the same vehicle; they immediately become suspects and have to prove
their innocence.
Is it any wonder that Black Americans
feel as alienated in their country as they have ever done since the
days of slavery and institutionalised lynching? Is it any wonder that
one of the most prominent Harvard scholars was arrested for breaking
into his own house, leading to a comical situation that would not have
happened to a white American?
What I am getting at is
that racism in America seems to be entrenched so deeply that no number
of protests — even if they assumed the magnitude of the race riots of
the 1960s — will ever change this reality. Even the election and
re-election of the first African American as President has not made an
iota of difference. Past subjugation of blacks throughout history still
informs race relations in America today.
mageshangwiri@gmail.com
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