Floyd’s killing reminds us that we are still far from liberation

Like everyone else around the world, I was appalled by the latest reminder of the systemic white racism that so casually takes the life of black folk in the disUnited States of America.

Of course there is nothing new about police routinely arresting or killing unarmed and often innocent people for the crime of being black.

Yet there was something about the killing of May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that was especially chilling.

ROUTINE SHOOTING

This was not the routine shooting, stun gun, body slam, punch, chokehold, body slam or other common forms of assault, but a macabre slow motion strangulation employing a particularly novel method.

White police officer Derek Chauvin ‘took a knee’ on Floyd’s neck. Over nine excruciating minutes he slowly snuffed out the life of victim, ignoring his cries for help and the pleas of onlookers.

There was something both fascinating and revolting about smug and satisfied look on officer Chauvin’s face as his victim choked to death. It was a look of satisfaction and arrogance.

It was an affirmation of white power and centuries of domination and supremacy. I also couldn’t help but see an image of sexual gratification in Chauvin’s expression.

The knee on Floyd’s neck also represented for Chauvin a mockery of the ‘Taking the Knee’ protests popularised by American Football star Colin Kaepernick.

NATIONAL ANTHEM

It has been four years since the San Francisco ‘49ers Quarteback took to kneeling rather than standing for the American national anthem in protest against institutionalised police maltreatment of black people. Kaepernick was victimised by the National Football League management and denied a contracts by collusion among the franchise teams.

He was condemned by President Donald Trump, who continues to stand unapologetic as champion of white racists, and generally ostracised by the white power structure.

Floyd’s death remains testimony to that sad fact that in the meantime nothing has improved for the black community. Yet the killer policeman Chauvin has inadvertently unleashed something that may mean his victim Floyd did not die vain.

ALL RACES

Protests against the killing and racism have escalated beyond Minneapolis to all the major cities across the United States. They have grown beyond angry black protests to encompass all races and groups.

The protests and expressions of outrage have gone global, crossing borders and oceans to South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Kenya was not to be left behind, with a small crowd on June 2nd demonstrating outside the US embassy in Nairobi. Kenyans in America have been visible introducing the ‘Haki Yetu (Our Rights)’ chant popular in political protests at home.

There was also a sense of the bizarre when a hitherto anonymous Kenyan somewhere in Nyeri gained instant Internet infamy with a social media threat to burn the White House.

The idle proposal was swiftly seized on by the American extreme white right wing to back their contention that the anti-racism protests were part of a wider plot to destabilise the country and oven overthrow Trump regime.

The important thing, anyway, is that Colin Kaepernick has been vindicated. His lonely struggle has been reinvigorated and grown to a worldwide movement.

The unfinished campaigns against racism and discrimination pioneered in the United States by the likes of Martin Luther King and Malcom X have picked up afresh, and gone global with people of all colours, creeds, beliefs and political persuasions speaking out wherever they may be.

FREEDOM

The death of Floyd reminds us that even here in Africa, the struggles for freedom and justice by founding fathers such as Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Amilcar Cabral and Samora Machel may have brought political liberation, but not economic and social emancipation.

Which brings us back to the small band that gathered at the US Embassy in Nairobi. It is good that Kenyans and foreign colleagues can join the rest of the world in protesting racism and police brutality in the United States.

I wonder, however, if any of those fellows who congregated at a foreign embassy have ever protested police killings and brutality right here at home.

Too many of us are keen to jump onto the bandwagon of fashionable international protests, but consciously remain mute, blind, deaf, and uncaring to injustice, oppression, inequality and human rights abuses in our backyards.

Let us never forget that despite Independence in 1963, return of political pluralism in 1991 and enactment of a progressive new constitution in 2010, our own struggle is far from over. We still have a revolution to drive here at home. Aluta continua!!!

[email protected] www.gaitho.co.ke @MachariaGaitho