BY Chuks Ofurum
The outpouring of grief in the United States of America over the recent race-inspired killings is not only gut-wrenching but shows that the world’s acclaimed leader of the “free world” is painfully grappling with racism, impunity and routine violation of the basic human right to life.
The trigger for the crisis was the back-to-back killing of Philando Castille, 32, during a traffic stop by a policeman in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and the brutal slaying in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, of Alton Sterling, 37, by two policemen. Both were wasted in circumstances that have become familiar: white policemen apprehending or confronting black men and using excessive force even when their victims are unarmed, pose no visible threat or have already been subdued. Castile was submissive, but was shot four times before his girlfriend and her daughter. Sterling was wrestled to the ground and subdued, yet, an officer fired several shots at him.
The Civil War (1861-65), no doubt, is America’s greatest historical watershed. Before 1861, it was a much-disputed question whether the United States was merely a convenient alliance among independent sovereign states, which had every right to secede whenever they wished, or a single sovereign nation whose people chose to divide power among the national government and the state governments. After 1861, in both law and fact, it was established that the United States is, as every American schoolchild is drilled to know, “One nation, indivisible”.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the American Constitution, ratified in 1868, removed all doubt by declaring that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside”. In short, all ‘Americans’ are now primarily citizens of the United States, and derivedly become citizens of the state in which they reside.
One of the most important facts to recognize about the United States is that, more than any other nation in history, it is a nation of immigrants –only 2.6 percent of the population are of Native American ancestry. The rest are immigrants or descendants of immigrants from all over the world with Africa second to Europe and Scandinavia. Hence, from its beginnings, the United States has received far more immigrants than any other nation in history and it has the most ethnically and culturally diverse population the world has ever seen.
Two hundred and forty years after the reverberating ideals of liberty and freedom were set out in its iconic declaration of independence, the dream of egalitarian and equality before the law is daily being exposed as a farce where black folks are concerned. This is expressed across the country by white-dominated police and the criminal justice system.
Racism is endemic in US even 150 years after slavery was abolished and 52 years after the Civil Rights Act 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion,sex or national origin in the US. But, blacks routinely encounter discrimination, and even President Barack Obama has had such an experience. It is tragic that while the US pushes human rights abroad as a key plank of its foreign policy, police and judicial officials are oppressing blacks at home. According to the US Census Bureau, white officers dominate the police, judiciary and juries, even in areas where blacks constitute the majority population.
Police killing of black men has been consistent, pervasive and random. Worse, the culprits often go unpunished or escape with mild sanctions. A report in the Telegraph of London, said US police killed 102 unarmed black suspects in 2015, five times the rate for unarmed whites.
Though constituting only 13 percent of the population, the US Bureau of Justice reported that blacks represent 36 percent of persons killed in arrest –related incidents between 2003 and 2009; and 42 percent of inmates on death row in 2012; and about three percent of those in prison compared to 0.05 percent of the white male population.
Impunity is further bred by the cover-ups and mild treatment of the police killers. Black Lives Matter, BLM, a movement formed in 2013 in response to the police assaults, listed the refusal of grand juries to indict the killers of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, Michael Brown in Missouri in 2014, and Eric Garner in New York in 2014.
Researchers at Princeton University have also found a disturbing pattern of hate by white policemen against blacks. Only blind consuming hatred and inbred racism can explain the California fatal shooting in August 2014 of Ezell Ford, a mentally ill 25-year old, shot three times while unarmed, “or of Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia whose head, police in Cleveland, Ohio, fatally slammed on the pavement while taking her into custody. There are gory tales of white police brutality on fellow Americans. As Minnesota Governor, Mark Dayton, admitted after Castille’s killing, he probably would not have died if he (Castille) was a white man.That should be the knotty issue American authorities have to resolve quickly before the social divide descends into intractable violence. The last few weeks tell the story, the only twist being the reprisal slaying of five policemen in Dallas, Texas, by a black American, Micah Johnson, taking revenge for the random police killings of other blacks across the country.
Johnson’s recourse to self-help should jolt the nation of America to the possibility of more militant reactions than the peaceful demonstrations of BLM and associated activist groups. Already, on Sunday 17th July 2016, three Baton Rouge Police Officers were killed and three others injured in another suspected revenge killing.
While one is against such terrorist tactics, the Nigerian government must take cognizance of happenings in the US. Already, there are reported cases of injustice and police brutality in the country and recourse to self-help may be an option. Cries of harassment, intimidation and torture of residents of the Niger Delta, especially the people of Gbaramatu Kingdom and other communities in the oil-producing areas against the security agencies are deafening. The brutal killing of defenceless and unarmed IPOB members and other Biafran agitators in the South-East have been criminally ignored by the national political establishment led by President Muhammadu Buhari.
*n Ofurum writes from Owerri,