Racism in US is too entrenched to be kicked out by demonstrations

What you need to know:

  • 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.
  • 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.

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.