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Officer Chauvin On Mr Floyd's Neck |
Every modern nation, and ancient
ones for that matter, has some form of law enforcement body to ensure that state
laws are obeyed and citizens are protected. The state's most powerful members and
its minions make laws that maintain a comfortable social hierarchy. The Police
in the United States, according to many sources are offshoots of slave patrols
from the days of slavery. The slave patrols were responsible for the
maintenance of societal hierarchy by ensuring slaves never get to run away and
most importantly, help to keep them in their place - as slaves. For a fee,
slaves were arrested, whipped and brought back to their owners, if caught
trying to escape. The services of the slave patrols were sanctioned by the state
and used by citizens who viewed slaves as mere property.
Though a black person could be
lynched for any number of inane reasons, the practice gained much momentum
after the civil war when slaves were freed. Lynching of blacks was a
celebratory affair with crowds of onlookers packing picnic baskets ready to
preserve the occasion in pictures or the lynched person's body parts as
souvenir. Families with children came to watch the macabre spectacle. Today,
public lynching of blacks still occurs but it is mostly through an implicit
contract with the police, or by white supremacists and hate groups. These
groups might be as near as your next-door neighbours. All that is needed, for a
black person to be lynched is a contrived accusation, suspicion or "fear
for life" - or a white person (usually women) not feeling comfortable in
your presence.
The recent killing of George
Floyd has once again brought to the fore the fact that the perennial trigger of
dehumanization in the white man's world is skin color. On the surface of
things, one might be tempted to think that Derek Chauvin, the officer who
placed his knee on George's neck for nearly nine minutes until he died of
asphyxiation was just a bad cop. The point however, is that Derek belongs, just
as in the days of slavery to an extant system that is designed to showcase the
worthlessness of black lives. Derek represents the arm of the state that is
designed to destroy the life of a black person on a whim. When these public
lynchings happen, apologists, both black and white give the usual refrain that "bad
apples" within the police force are responsible for the killing of
innocent black people. This notion is however hypocritical and misleading,
because in most cases, the police, deliberately escalate confrontations with
people of color leading to incarceration, maiming or even death. And those
calling the police on black people know exactly what potential danger such a
black person can be exposed to, and appear to relish it. And if it is just a
question of bad apples then there are too many of such in the police force as to
make it systemic. And the blatant, almost religious tendency of the police to
cover up crimes committed against blacks by colleagues is legendary. From most
encounters with blacks, the police as an institution are mainly concerned about
the imposition of the societal construct that black lives are expendable in
contrast to white lives. When black people are involved, the police, as agents
of state, tend to shoot or asphyxiate first and ask questions later. All it
took for George to lose his life was a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.
The recent case of Amy Cooper, a
white woman who got into an argument with a black man (Chris Cooper) at the New
York Central Park is a testament to how racist American society is and how
black people are viewed as less than full citizens. Mr Cooper (obviously no relation) had insisted
that Amy put her dog on a leash, as was the law for the part of the park both
were using at the time. The instinctive reaction from Amy was not that a law
for the use of the park was being violated, but that a black man was challenging
her privilege as a white person. Her weak arguments about how her dog needed
exercise and her determination to continue violating the rules prompted Mr
Cooper to inform Amy of possible consequences relating to an unleashed dog in a
public park. Mr Cooper had dog treats for just that type of occasion - to
protect himself. The combination of the challenge and the fact that Mr Cooper
was ready to do something about the situation unnerved Amy and she decided to call the
police on the baseless complaint that an "African American" man was
trying to attack her in the park. With
predictable histrionics and "white woman in distress" drama Amy called
the cops. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the incident. But the "Central
Park Five" black kids were not so lucky. They spent more than a decade in
jail for a crime they did not commit.
The black experience in the
United States has been historically tragic and currently condemnable. Black
people must recognize that they have no friends in law enforcement and
therefore need to avoid them as much as possible - even in distress. Jonathan
Ferrel was shot dead for ostensibly running towards police for help after an
accident. The police were called when
Jonathan attempted getting help by knocking on a nearby home. The owner
obviously "feared for her life" when she discovered it was a black
man knocking on the door instead of her husband. In America, it is dangerous for a black person
to look for help in white homes, or call the police for help when in distress.
They could easily shoot your mentally challenged family member instead of
helping out because their unconscious training seems to be "black is bad
and dangerous". They seem to derive a sadistic pleasure in our humiliation
and death. They kill and then joke about the corpse as in the case of Dreasjon
Reed who incidentally was shot dead in Minneapolis - somewhat presaging the
death of George Floyd. Some think the training of cops is deficient but I don't
think so. The police in America are recruited and implicitly trained to do what
they currently do. It is not a question of what they do, it is what they are.
Black people are arrested,
incarcerated or murdered for trying to exist like other human beings. Jon
Stewart recently suggested that the police are simply a border patrol keeping
segregation alive between whites and blacks. And yet, we think the problem is
just the police? The essence of American society is based on racism and
segregation, and no matter how integrated our lunch counters, school buses and
other public spaces are, the most important thing to desegregate is still
untouched - the human mind. This is
because of the fact that maintaining a racist society entrenches a de facto
royal rulership, which despite trenchant economic parasitism and lopsidedness is
able to placate the vast majority of whites that they should be thankful for being
the favoured color or race. Racism relies on a well-crafted implicit bias that
uses the police as enforcers. A just and equitable society in America and
elsewhere in the white world would mean that whites give up leadership, power
and privilege - something they sought and imposed on us more than five hundred
years ago. This is obviously never going to happen, no matter the riots or the
current guilt-induced behavioural and monetary pledges by whites and corporate organizations
to assuage our anger. How can we be equal when we own next to nothing after 400
years of slavery and deliberate ostracization? And do we really expect justice
on a stolen land? I don't.
The whole point of white
supremacy and its domestic police enforcers is to maintain the color line. A white
caller implicitly understands whose side the cops will take while the criminalized
black person gets schooled on what the color line means.
