Americas broken society will struggle to heal itself
Those who
have marched in the streets under the
slogan Black Lives Matter should be
asking: when will black lives matter?
Maryam Ismail
In the Holy Quran it is said: I have made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know one another. Do you notice that there is no reference to having to fear one another?
And yet, one thing that has become so apparent during the aftermath of the 2012 shooting of African-American youth Trayvon Martin by a white neighbourhood watch supervisor, George Zimmerman, is how much Americans seem not to want to know each other and are afraid.
In the past few days, I keep hearing the voice of Diamond Reynolds, who live-streamed the aftermath of the shooting by police of her partner Philando Castile, saying: Jesus, please, dont tell me that hes gone.
And then, I hear her four-year-old daughter tell her to stay calm.
Those who have marched in the streets under the slogan Black Lives Matter should be asking: when will black lives matter? This may seem to reek of victimhood, but isnt this really what they mean?
Racism affects both the victim and the perpetrator. Each persons heart is cracked and shrunk by the fear of someone else.
Its been 11 years since the floods of Hurricane Katrina washed away the veneer of whiteness from the landscape and the world saw how black America really is.
Those bodies floating in the waters of New Orleans should have been enough to make sure that the lives of African Americans were improved. But no, they were called refugees, and corralled into a football stadium without water, food or proper sanitation.
It has not always been this way. It could be argued that the Black Power movement of 1960s and 1970s gave African-Americans some historical respite.
There were films and literature that showed African-Americans as regular people, people with pride, and how they were doing their best to get over the wall of racism.
The poet Nikki Giovanni told African-Americans they could fly like a bird in the sky; singer James Brown implored those same people to say it loud, Im black and Im proud.
Every parent of a black child in America faces the challenge of preparing that child for a world in which their appearance alone negates their innocence in the eyes of some empowered to wield violence on behalf of the state. Even if they survive physically, they carry the psychological scars of knowing that any of those victims could have been them, and that the perpetrators are rarely held to account. The slogan Black Lives Matter! is a challenge to a system whose actions clearly devalue black lives. One of the more remarkable statements following last weeks tragedies came from Newt Gingrich, would-be Donald Trump running mate, who declared: If you are a normal white American, the truth is, you dont understand being black in America. Mr Gingrich added that white Americans instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.
That much is confirmed by a Pew study on American racial attitudes released two weeks ago. Only half of white respondents believe the US has fallen short and needs to do more to achieve racial equality; four in ten believed that enough changes had already been made. Thats compared with 88 per cent of black people who believe the US has more work to do. And after eight years of a black presidency in which there has been an unending stream of unarmed black people killed by police, 44 per cent of black respondents expressed doubt that racial equality will ever be achieved.
Only half of white respondents believe that police treat black people less fairly, compared with 84 per cent of black respondents.
And one-third of white respondents held the rather astonishing view that Mr Obama has made race relations in America worse. Six in ten Republican voters also told Pew that too much attention is paid to the question of race.
The writer is a sociologist and teacher
Similarly, today, if Barack Obama can become president, then why are so many black men and women being shot and killed?
The answer to that question is centuries old, but here are two very important events. In 1768, a regiment of British soldiers shot into a crowd of protesters killing Crispus Attucks, an African-American man. Seven of the nine soldiers were acquitted, and two were given the punishment of thumb branding. In 1857, Dred Scott, a Missouri slave, unsuccessfully sued for the right to American citizenship. It was declared by the Supreme Court that the fixed and immutable truths of the Dred Scott decision [were] to regard as enemies to the peace of the country, and indeed to the safety of society, all those who ... would render liberty for the white man impossible.
Now the killing of African-Americans is available to live-stream on your smartphone, and these deaths show no sign of stopping. And I ask myself, again: now that the world sees the truth, when will black lives matter?
