George Floyd: Exposing America's Original Sin

Jun 26, 2020

Racism in American is still very much alive. It is pervasive. It is systemic. It’s often covert

Minorities in many countries face persecution and systemic denial of their God-given rights of freedom, equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Some countries do better than others. Persecution is often based on ethnic/racial/tribal or religious differences. For the last few years, the most recent example of wanton mistreatment of minorities has been the violent persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minorities by Myanmar authorities and the internment of the Uighur Muslim Minorities by the Chinese government.  

But the indescribable and outrageous public lynching of George Floyd on May 25th 2020 in broad daylight on a city street of Minneapolis, Minnesota by officers of the law has laid bare the systemic and persistent racism that has dogged America for over 400 years. As if the COVID19 pandemic, with its trail of hundreds of thousand deaths and the resultant word-wide lockdown, was not enough to shock us, George's graphic murder captured on video has been a sharp kick in our collective gut and has resulted in eruptions of protests across the globe. People all over the world are seeking explanation: why and how could this happen in the USA, a country that prides itself as the leader of the free world?

I lived in the USA for 27 years and what I can say is that, like any other country, America has the good, the bad, and the ugly.

America has strong institutions of government, with its famous three branches of government, the executive, the bicameral legislature, and the judiciary with checks and balances among the three. It is the superpower with the most advanced military might as well high per capita income. It is the home of the best research Universities in the world and it leads in innovation in many areas.

There is also no question that civil rights for African Americans and other minorities have improved over time. After all, just four years ago, the President of the USA was none other than Barack Hussein Obama, son of an African father from Kenya and a white American mother. African Americans can vote, and they hold positions of power as Cabinet Secretaries (e.g. Gen. Collin Powell; Condoleezza Rice) federal or State Congress members, as Mayors in many cities, as Police chiefs etc.

Blacks have also excelled in sports like basketball and American football as well as in Entertainment such as the music industry and the Hollywood movie industry. (But even here, it's only with the new breed of young artists like JayZ and Kanye West, who have smartly insisted on controlling their finances and negotiating better contracts that Black musicians have been able to build wealth from their earnings. Many of the older generation of great Black Musicians and actors in the 70s and 80s got little financial benefit because their managers, who were invariably White, took most of their earnings through unfair contracts. Many of them died when they were bankrupt). There is also a growing African American middle and upper-middle class in places like Atlanta, where I lived for 24 years, Houston and in the suburbs of DC and the surrounding States of Virginia and Maryland.

Despite the above gains, however, racism in American is still very much alive. It is pervasive. It is systemic. It's often covert. African Americans continue to experience in their daily lives unjust treatment, especially at the hands of those entrusted with authority. Some of these experiences, especially police brutality, are faced by all Blacks, irrespective of their social economic status. There are far too many stories of police brutality against African Americans. Often the perpetrators go unpunished. It is the practice of all Black parents to sit down their sons (and now daughters) as they become teenagers and educate them on how to behave or not behave in case they are stopped by a cop. "Don't argue with them; Follow their orders; Always show your hands, etc."  The White parents don't have to do this to their children because of the privilege they enjoy as de facto first class citizens. This is based on the unwritten but pervasive culture, because the written constitution and State laws all espouse equal treatment for all citizens.

One of the most consequential areas of systemic inequalities is in the area of education opportunities for millions of African Americans and other poor minorities. Although primary and secondary education is provided by the States for free, school funding is unequal as it is mostly based on local property taxes. You can hardly enroll your child into a school of your choice. To get your child in a good school you must live in a good neighborhood. Yet millions of African Americans are poor and therefore reside in poor neighborhoods or slums; their children are, therefore, destined for the schools in those localities and these are always poorly resourced, with less qualified teachers, and less rigorous academic curricula.

At high school level, there are often different curricula in the same school e.g. General Track, College Bound programme, and the superior Gifted Program or International Baccalaureate (IB) Programmes. To enroll into the superior programmes, you must pass a test. The African American kids disproportionately fail these tests because their primary schools were inferior or the parents are too poor to pay for tutors to prepare them for such tests. In fact, many of the Black parents are not aware of the superior programmes at their high schools, because they are not educated and are often kept unaware of these opportunities in order to maintain the required small sizes for the classes. I remember we had to lobby and insist on our son's enrollment into the IB program at his high school.

By the time the Black students complete high school in such a system, they cannot compete with their White peers in the superior programmes or those located in affluent schools for entry into good Universities.  In fact, many drop out in high school and the minority dropout rate is double or triple that of Whites! Without adequate education, the fate of the communities is sealed for generations.

The poor neighborhoods where the African Americans live are also plagued by gang activities, drugs, and gun violence. This leads to more and more African American males entering the justice system, which is plagued by discrimination policies and practices. This has resulted in disproportionally high incarceration rate for African American males, leading to the decimation of the Black family structure. Over 70% of African American children are born or raised by single Moms, who are overwhelmed by that burden.  These Moms are usually working low-pay jobs because of lack of education, so the vicious circle continues. They have to place their babies into child-care facilities at the age of 6 weeks, the average duration for maternity leave provided by employers! These 6-week babies often grow without the necessary love and tender care that only a mother can provide at that age. Meanwhile for their White peers, who are usually married couples, the new Mom usually takes off time to take care of the baby for 2 to 5 years, before returning to fulltime employment, as they meanwhile depend on the husband's salary. Or both continue working but in shifts, so that they look after their baby in turns.

The discriminatory policies and practices exact a heavy toll on the African families and communities. Research consistently shows Blacks faring disproportionately poorly in education, health, and employment, including getting Bank mortgage loans for the American dream of owning a house, with higher interest rates for them than their White peers. In fact, the casualties of Covid19 in the US have been mostly African Americans, because they suffer disproportionately higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma etc., the co-morbidities that make Covid19 lethal.

To the casual observer (including me, when I had just arrived in the US), it seems as though the Blacks are suffering in the US because they are lazy, they don't care about their education, they don't realize the opportunities around them, they want to depend on government assistance etc. Far from the truth. It is instead the cumulative effect of the political and socio-economic history of the US that best explains their status: from the insidious effect of the scourge of American slavery, to the Jim Crow laws enacted after slavery  (discriminatory apartheid-like laws pervasive in many Southern States where the majority of the Blacks lived) that persisted until the reforms brought about by the civil rights movement led by Rev. Martin Luther King in the 1960s; from structural inequities in education, health, and work place to white brutality practices such as the case of George Floyd or that of Ahmaud Arbery, who in February this year, while jogging, was shot dead by a White neighbour and his son.

Once you come to realize this pernicious ugly side of America, you cannot but marvel at the resiliency of the African American people. You begin to appreciate their endurance, their ingenuity, their survival skills, and their incredible spirit of retaining their humanity, with their attachment to the Black Church or Mosque, and with their, thank Goodness, characteristic humor and self-deprecation. However, far too many in their community live vulnerable lives of abject poverty and many males, with little education and no employment opportunities, live criminal gang lives always in and out jail.

One hopes that the blatant inhuman, grotesque, and public murder of George Floyd may jolt America into action to restore the civil and socio-economic rights of the Blacks and other minorities in the US.  I strongly believe that the video recording of the White police officer keeping his knee on George's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, in spite of George's plea and cries of "I can't breathe" and the plea of bystanders until his death, is a sign from God to expose for the whole American and global community, the evil consequences of America's original sin of slavery. It is very encouraging that across the breadth of the huge country, the American population, especially the young white, black, or brown, have strongly come out to demonstrate their utter disgust for what happened to George and to demand justice for him and his devastated family. However, as President Obama has advised, the next action is for this coalition to get engaged in the political arena, especially in the local elections of Sheriffs, Mayors, and local council members because in the federal system of the USA, it is at the local level that things happen.

Meanwhile, the bizarre and totally classless, actions of President Donald Trump have added salt to injury for those who, at such times of conflict, look to their President for empathy, understanding, and moral leadership. His predecessors have always reacted in such times by soothing and unifying the nation, seeking to diffuse the conflict and helping to pour water on the raging fire. Not Trump, whose core is now exposed. No class. No empathy. Divisive. Narcissistic. Only worried about his re-election, Trump saw the tragedy happen when he was already seeing his election chances slip because of his inept response to the Covid19 pandemic. According to some political analysts, his reaction to the protests is a copy from the Nixon playbook in the 1968 US election when there were anti-war demonstrations raging in Washington. Nixon won the election by declaring himself the "law and order" man, stoking fear of anarchy among the White voters. It is yet to be seen whether the same will happen for Trump, who unlike Nixon, is an incumbent and therefore has a record or lack thereof to run on. Whatever the case may be, I think President Trump has failed America, a country that has always projected itself as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world.

Perhaps the lesson to draw from George Floyd's horrible murder and Trump's erratic behavior is a reminder that instead of looking at itself as a "shining light on a hill", or insisting on its rather arrogant espousal of the notion of American exceptionalism, America needs to take a deep look into its national soul and rededicate to re-construct itself. America has a lot of good going for it, but it has to right its wrongs. Instead of constantly pointing fingers at other nations that are similarly discriminating their minorities, it must lead by example and with humility. As Rev. Al Sharpton said, while delivering the eulogy of George Floyd, George's cry "I can't breathe" was a collective cry of all African Americans, who are rightfully witnessing that white America has "kept the knee on our neck" for far too long and are unequivocally demanding that it be removed so that American Blacks can soar and pursue their dreams like any other American.

USA and all governments with similar minority grievances have the hard and arduous struggle to accord their minorities their God-given rights and to end the overt and covert discrimination that is usually baked into the countries' old historical and structural distortions and discontinuities. The majority in those countries naturally tend to either dismiss minority complaints or pay lip service to eradicating them; after all, they enjoy the status quo as it preserves their privileges and benefits. This has to change and the widespread diverse crowd that demonstrated across the globe seems to agree on this.

The majority, especially the youth, who are generally more idealistic, must therefore get involved in the struggle to build their nations based on the universal values of freedom, equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that every human being on earth aspires for and is entitled to. Aluta Continua!

The writer is an Associate Professor at the Islamic University in Uganda

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