Betrayal of hope: From ‘Yes we can!’ to ‘I can’t breathe!’

The election of President Obama in 2008 was a moment of big hope for minorities in the US and for blacks in particular. Many hoped and believed that finally Martin Luther King’s hope that one day, America would judge a person by the content of his character rather than by the colour of their skin had come to pass. Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ campaign slogan inspired millions of people across the muti-cultural diversity of the US, arguably the world’s most diverse country. ‘Yes We Can’ was for all of America but it had added importance to the African American community. They saw in Obama what they could have only dreamt about, a black person succeeding in being nominated to run for president by a major US political party – the Democratic Party. When he won the presidency, ‘Yes We Can’ became even a more pronounced reality. America today for the first time has a black president, even though others would say his mother was white, so he is not truly black. Again another first, America has a black attorney general, Eric Holder. Cause to celebrate. Yes! But?

I never like to make sweeping generalizations, however, recent shootings leading to the death of innocent black people in the US has somehow tilted my opinion. What is even more disturbing is that the alleged murderers are always white and always freed by a Grand Jury. Does this mean that there is no justice for blacks in America? I would not say so, but I am less convinced of the reverse. Someone can argue that compared to the treatment they receive in the US, black people fare worst in many other countries including in Africa itself. But let me remind them, being better than the worst does not mean you are good. Let’s just look at some recent cases. In February 2012 Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black high school student was shot dead by George Zimmerman in Florida. Martin was unarmed. Police took Zimmerman into custody, questioned him and later released him on the grounds that there was no evidence to refute his claim that he acted in self-defense. The police added that Zimmerman had a right to defend himself with lethal force.

As expected, tens of thousands of fair-minded people took to streets across the US calling for Zimmerman's arrest and a full investigation. The shocking news came in July 2013. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and of manslaughter charges. This is justice. Yes, justice for blacks. People again made their disatisfaction with the system known but it seems the US justice system has a terrible inability to graduate itself from bias against non-whites.

What did President Obama say or do about it? Nothing, except calling for calm and saying that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. We fully understand that Obama is president of all America and not only the president of the African American community. He was not elected by African Americans alone. Neither is he expected to promote their welfare at the expense of others. We are also well informed of the fact that neither he nor Attorney General Holder is in charge of the justice system. And even if they were in charge, we would not encourage them to be biased in favour of blacks. We do not also expect Obama to say anything that can divide his country along racial lines. Nothwithstanding, we expected him to initiatve robust measures to reorganise the justice system with particular emphasis on minority rights. Unfortunately the police who should be the guardians of law and order are themselves totally deoxygenated when it comes to dealing with black people as we shall see.

In July 2014, Eric Garner died in New York after a police officer stranglehold him, despite the fact that the practice is banned by the New York City Police Department. According to sources, Garner was being arrested for allegedly selling cigarettes without tax stamps. What a frivolous “crime”! In a video recording of the event, lying facedown on the pavement surrounded by four officers, Garner is heard repeating "I can't breathe" 11 times. But his cry was not enough for the officers to change their mind or tact. Everyone thought this time with video evidence available, there was no way the police officer responsible for the fatal stranglehold, Daniel Pantaleo, could walk away free. However, on 3 December, 2014, a grand jury decided that Pantaleo had no case to answer. Yes, this is America, the land of democracy. What form of democracy? That is now open to everyone’s interpretation.

August 2014 was another dark day in Ferguson, Missouri, where an 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer Darren Wilson. Whatever the truth surrounding the events leading to the shooting, one thing was clear: Brown was unarmed. We expect the US police , one of the world’s best trained and best equipped, to be able to arrest a teenager with ease if it wanted to. We cannot but suspect that there was a deliberate desire on the part of Wilson to kill Brown knowing full well that killing a black man in America is a crime only if there is no other crime to tackle. Three months later, in November, a so-called grand jury ruled that Darren Wilson shall not be indicted.

In his first television interview with a US network, Wilson said he had a clean conscience. He has no regrets over killing Brown. What does that tell you about him and the police as an institution?

The next black victim was Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, shot by police in November 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio. The officer who shot him, Timothy Loehmann said he did so because Rice had a gun. What he refered to as Rice’s gun was later found to be a toy.

It was President Bill Clinton who said, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” If that is so, America needs to gather all the good it has to end civil disregard and disrespect for blacks as well as police brutality against them.

How could this be done? The US state must reassert itself and make the necessary intitutional reforms to right this wrong. However, we have depended on the state for more than two hundred years to lift blacks from the valley of disregard it has put them, to the summit of recognition they derserve - but it has not worked. It seems that things only work when black people leave the state out or challenge it to listen. Slavery did not end because President Lincoln was generous enough as we are told by American history books, written by whites. No, it ended because Lincoln and others around him realised that blacks were no longer prepared to be slaves and that their cause was tearing the country down in the 1860s. Segregation was not abolished because presidents Kennedy and Johnson loved black people. No, it was because blacks starting with the substantial and symbolic stand of Rosa Parks pressured them to live up to the America constitutional ideal of equality for all..

Obama did not become president because of affirmative action by the American state. No, it was because he manifested, at least in 2008, that the content of his character was politically impeccable.

Blacks must now fight their cause by not only organizing demontrations but embarking on what I call a massive “education assualt”. Let black people enroll their chilldren in school and help them through. Let them have from the family level upwards a very aggressive desire to be educated. Invest more in education and place less emphasis on music and sports. We know the US education system is not entirely friendly to blacks, but it would be dishonest to say the opportunities are not there for the determined. Blacks will never be “free” if they continue to have fewer doctors, lawyers, teachers, senators, judges, soldiers, police officers etc. And they will never be in these positions in satisfasctory numbers if they are not well educated. Education, I belive is the next frontier in black civil rights in the US. Should they wait until the situation becomes favorable? Well, the situation will never be favourable until they are favorable. I have never doubted the indefatigable will of African Americans. The monsters of slavery, segregation and lyncing have all failed to keep them down. There is probably no group of people who have gone through the lethal persecution that African Americans went through and emerged unscathed.

* Abdoulie Sey is Managing Editor at the Gambia Radio and Television Service.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

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