America’s warped race relations

America’s warped race relations

The conscience of America was pricked once again with the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Quiet Ferguson was not prepared for such instant trauma so when it happened it shook the community and the entire nation.
The incident is not the first in the United States. The many times that such atrocities have happened have, in the main, ended in the dead victim becoming the aggressor. In other words, black people have always been responsible for their own deaths at the hands of white police officers. And tragically, the victims are mostly young black men. Driving a high-prized car as a black person is reason enough to irk the ire of an irate white law enforcement officer. There are numerous cases of white policemen abusing black men for no reason other than their skin color. All this in a nation that prides itself as the world’s leading democracy.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had this to say, “This is now a national moment of grief, a national moment of pain, and searching for a solution . . . We’re not just dealing with a problem in 2014, we’re not dealing with years of racism leading up to it, or decades of racism — we are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day.”
We add that this is not only a moment of grief, it is also a moment of shame. As if Ferguson was not enough, a chokehold on a black man in Staten Island, NY ended in the death of the poor fellow, but the police there call it an accident. Rodney King in California, and Ahmed Diallo in the Bronx, NY were never accidental. An unarmed black man, Trayvon Martin was gunned down by a white vigilante in Florida who was also set free by a jury of white people. The list is endless. One cannot but assume, wrongly or rightly that racial prejudice is the major reason the immigration reform bill has stalled in Congress.
This country is multi-ethnic and multi-racial. The founding fathers ensured that whoever came to the United States was privileged to enjoy all the rights afforded by the constitution. It is the intransigence of a few misguided elements who couldn’t think beyond their skin colors that have in the course of history plunged the nation into untold misery. We wish to drum into the ears of the few prejudiced characters that America includes black people who deserve the same treatment as every other citizen.

Posted by on Dec 16 2014. Filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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