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USA: Racial Divide Rules

By Countercurrents.org

26 November, 2014
Countercurrents.org

Amid unrest, demonstration, protest across the US, tightened security in Ferguson following a night of burning of police vehicles, buildings, breaking of shops, destruction and police firing, and thousands of people protesting Ferguson decision blocked traffic in New York city the important issue of racial divide in the country has emerged. While protesters hold high placards with slogans “RACISM KILLS”, “POLICE BRUTALITY IS TYRANNY”, “THIS IS RESISTANCE”, “ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE” and “NOTHING TO LOSS BUT YOUR CHAINS” the questions of racial divide in the US has surfaced.

In The New York Times, Michael Wines reported on November 25, 2014 :

“Paul McLemore, the first African-American to become a New Jersey state trooper, was on the streets of Newark in 1967 when riots following a police beating of a black taxi driver left 26 dead. He spent decades as a civil rights lawyer and years as a municipal judge in Trenton . His wife and children have gone on to enjoy accomplished careers.

“‘Of course, there's been a lot of progress' since Newark 's days of rage, he said in an interview on Tuesday. But asked whether a young black man today could find the justice that was believed to be absent in Newark 47 years ago, he gave a response that was starkly different.

‘No, period,' he said. ‘There's pervasive racism — white racism.'”

With the headline “After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains”,

Michael Wines' report said:

“For whites and blacks alike, that duality may be the takeaway from a grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a Ferguson , Mo. , police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a young black man: Much has changed, and nothing has changed.

“A nation with an African-American president and a significant, if struggling, black middle class remains as deeply divided about the justice system as it was decades ago. A Huffington Post-YouGov poll of 1,000 adults released this week found that 62 percent of African-Americans believed Officer Wilson was at fault in the shooting of Mr. Brown, while only 22 percent of whites took that position.

“In 1992, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 92 percent of blacks — and 64 percent of whites  — disagreed with the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers involved in the videotaped beating of a black man, Rodney King.

“‘What's striking is just how constant these attitudes have been,' said Carroll Doherty, the director of political research for the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington .”

The report cited a Pew polls that found black mistrust of the police and courts is far more pervasive than it is toward other institutions.

Citing another Pew poll taken earlier this year the report mentioned: “African-Americans under age 40 — the demographic that made up most of the people who took to the streets in Ferguson in August — are much less likely than their elders to believe that racism is the main force blocking blacks' advancement.” 

The report said:

“That whites and blacks disagree so deeply on the justice system, even as some other racial gulfs show signs of closing, is perhaps not as odd as it seems. Decades of changing laws and court decisions mean that the two races now work together, play sports together, attend school together. But they frequently go home to separate worlds where attitudes and experiences toward the police and courts not only are not shared, but are not even understood across the racial divide.”

The report mentioned the following facts:

# At the end of 2013, 3 percent of all black males of any age were imprisoned, compared with 0.5 percent of whites.

# In 2011, one in 15 African-American children had a parent in prison, compared with one in 111 white children.

The report cited Patricia J. Williams, a Columbia University law professor. The issue was war on drug and black and white members of the society.

Professor Patricia said that the war on drugs disproportionately affected blacks — in California in 2011, a black man was 11 times more likely than a white to be jailed for a marijuana felony — and that three-strikes laws kept many in jail.

Professor Patricia said: “Beyond such disparities, “it's the little things, like stop-and-frisk, like racial profiling and million-dollar block demarcations” — law enforcement tactics that saturate a high-crime area with police officers — that reinforce blacks' negative attitudes toward the justice system”.

The report cited Kenny Wiley, 26, a black man who grew up in a white upper-middle-class suburb of Denver . Kenny is one who has seen both sides. The Ferguson shooting, Kenny said, destroyed any notion that his race did not matter — that he could ‘opt out of the negative parts of blackness.'

“I grew up with a lot of economic privilege,” he said, “and still because of my race and my age and my gender, I'm still in certain situations perceived as a threat. When I walk down the street, they don't see my SAT score, they see a black man.

“I don't believe most white people are malicious. I think most white people are oblivious. And I think that there's a lot of work to do.”

The report added:

“Blacks and whites who are friends found the case a delicate topic of conversation.

In Atlanta on Tuesday, Nneka Ekechukwu, 23, a South Carolina native of Nigerian descent, was having lunch with Denise Henderson, 45, a white friend and co-worker at an information-technology company. The two discussed the Ferguson case and the racial minefield it epitomizes, tiptoeing through some elements so as not to cause offense.

“Ms. Henderson, who grew up in a heavily white part of Oklahoma , said she was concerned that the prosecutor in the Missouri case had brought too much of his own perspective to bear in bringing the evidence of the Brown shooting before the grand jury.

“‘I do think that so much of it was wrong,' she said. ‘But I do think it was wrong for Michael Brown to be fighting with a police officer.' Then she looked at her black friend. ‘But I feel like my saying that, I don't know, is that an affront to you?' It was not, Ms. Ekechukwu said, but the same words might rankle her if they came from the lips of someone she suspected of prejudice.

“For a person of color, she said, it is difficult not to view the Ferguson shooting as part of a continuum: the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin, an African-American man, by a white Florida man who was later acquitted of murder; the 2009 fatal shooting of an Oakland black man by a white transit officer who was found guilty of manslaughter instead of murder.

“When she heard the recent news that a 12-year-old Cleveland boy had been shot by an officer while wielding a toy gun, Ms. Ekechukwu said, ‘my first question was, ‘Is he black?'”

He was.”

A version of the report appeared in print on November 26, 2014 , on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: “A Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice”.

What does the Ferguson riot mean?

The New York Times editorial board in an editorial on November 25, 2014 said:

“The St. Louis County grand jury's decision not to indict the white police officer who in August shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, would have generated widespread anger and disappointment in any case.”

The editorial headlined “The Meaning of the Ferguson Riots” said:

“For the black community of Ferguson , the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses that they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police. News accounts have strongly suggested, for example, that the police in St. Louis County 's many municipalities systematically target poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops — partly to generate fines — which has the effect of both bankrupting and criminalizing whole communities.

“In this context, the police are justifiably seen as an alien, occupying force that is synonymous with state-sponsored abuse.

“The case resonated across the country — in New York City , Chicago and Oakland — because the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast. This point was underscored last month in a grim report by ProPublica, showing that young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk — 21 times greater — of being shot dead by police than young white men. These statistics reflect the fact that many police officers see black men as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.

“We get a flavor of this in Officer Wilson's grand jury testimony, when he describes Michael Brown, as he was being shot, as a soulless behemoth who was ‘almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I'm shooting at him.'”

The editorial said:

“The rioting that scarred the streets of St. Louis County — and the outrage that continues to reverberate across the country — underlines this inescapable point. It shows once again that distrust of law enforcement presents a grave danger to the civic fabric of the United States .”

The only way to express anger

An article in Time by Darlena Cunha argues that rioting is, for some marginalized communities, the only way to express their anger. "I would put forth that peaceful protesting is a luxury of those already in mainstream culture, those who can be assured their voices will be heard without violence, those who can afford to wait for the change they want."

Racism

Many Arabic-language social media comments are mocking the US government for mishandling the case.

Some of the comments say the verdict indicates that "racism" still exists in the USA .

A Twitter hash tag, " USA protests" in Arabic, has been used over 4,000 times over the last day.

Some comments say the decision not to charge a police officer shows that racism still exists in the US .

REN, a Russian private television channel, has described the protests as a "color revolution" and "an attempt to start a civil war in the US ".

 

 

 

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