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http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/9550-behind-americ
as-facade-of-democracy> Behind America’s façade of democracy
Thursday, 11 December 2014 08:33 By Andrew M. Mwenda
Lessons for Africa from the daily killings of young black teenagers in
America at the hands of racist police officers
The ink had not yet dried on the grand jury decision that exonerated police
officer Darren Wilson for the cold-bloodied murder of 18-year old Micheal
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri when another trigger-happy police officer,
Timothy Loehmann, shot and killed 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland Ohio.
The little boy was playing with a toy gun in a children’s park. And it took
the officer only two seconds upon arrival on the scene to shoot and kill
him. In both cases, and in many such cases on a daily basis in America,
black male teenagers are killed by white police officers for no reason
except the colour of their skin. And in almost all the cases, these white
police officers get away with it in this supposedly democratic country.
The subjugation of black people is a deeply entrenched aspect of U.S. social
and political life – first in form of slavery, then apartheid under Jim Crow
laws, and now the criminalisation of blackness. If there is anything like
democracy in America, its institutions stand in promotion and defense of
this injustice. The “democratic” process – with its free media, consistently
promotes the narrative that a criminal is a black male. So effective has
been the mass media propagation of the image of a black person as a criminal
in the U.S. that most Americans subconsciously equate crime to blackness.
This has led many otherwise well meaning white Americans to tolerate the
gross injustices promoted against blacks by law enforcement institutions.
For example, study after study in America shows that whites use drugs more
than blacks. Yet when, in 1995, a study was done in America asking people to
close their eyes and imagine and describe a drug user, 95% of the
respondents pictured a black drug user. These results were greatly at odds
with reality because blacks constitute only 15% of drug users in America.
Whites constitute the majority of drug users yet almost no one pictured a
white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like.
This criminalisation of blackness has been greatly aided by America’s so
called democratic institutions – the mass media and the electoral process.
The standard news script in America is so thoroughly racialised that
audiences imagine a black perpetrator even when and where there is none. In
one study (quoted in Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow), 60% of
viewers who saw a crime story with no image of a perpetrator falsely
recalled seeing one and 70% of those viewers believed the perpetrator to be
a black male. Today politicians stoke fear among the electorate by using
these stereotypes to promote “tougher law enforcement” – which is actually a
code word for jailing more black people.
Although whites use and trade in drugs more than blacks, the majority of
people arrested and sent to jail for drug offenses are black. Study after
study shows that even where a black and a white person are arrested for the
same drug offense, courts give blacks longer prison sentences than whites.
While people in the U.S. talk of an American dream, most blacks in that
country have lived only an American nightmare. But the system is smart. It
has a habit of picking out some few lucky blacks that have succeeded against
all odds as examples that it is colourblind.
Thus, the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, or the success of
people like Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice or Will Smith etc.
is presented as evidence of progress. In a way it is – but that is a small
part of an otherwise sad story.
This “progress” disguises the worst forms of injustice that continue to be
meted out against American blacks. The success of people like Obama and
Powell provides a smokescreen that allows the killings of young black males
like Trayvon Martin, Brown and Rice to continue – they are used as examples
to deny the existence of institutionalised racial discrimination.
How does America criminalise an entire part of its population and yet retain
this image as successful democracy in the minds of many people, especially
the African intellectual elite? One way it hides its crimes at home and
abroad is America’s consistent presentation of its self-image as a
democracy. By constantly positioning itself as the defender of freedom,
liberty, and human rights around the globe – and doing so with a pious
expression – America has successfully hoodwinked people to believe in the
fairness of its institutions. This campaign for human rights abroad is
actually a strategy to mask the gross racial and economic injustices at
home.
Having been born after independence and growing up in a country where the
injustices around me were by fellow Ugandans (or Africans), I did not
appreciate the depth of the meaning of the struggle against colonial rule.
Living in American and reading about its racial relations helped open my
mind’s eyes to the importance of our sovereignty. There are one million and
one injustices meted out against many individual Ugandans by our police. But
our police do not go killing people every day for being who they are.
We African elites have ideal illusions about America (and the Western world)
– as being free, fair, and democratic. These illusions make us see our own
systems as unfair and unjust. This is because consumption of Western media
and academic works have created a subconscious self-hatred in us – so we see
everything African as bad, backward, or evil and everything Western as
noble, fair, and just. We have become too quick to see our weakness and so
blind to our strength. Equally we are so anxious to see the good in other
societies, especially western, and so blind to the glaring inequities in
those countries.
Consequently, we have become subconscious promoters of our own
dehumanisation. You cannot improve a person or nation by focusing on its
weaknesses. You do so by leveraging their strength. We African elites need
to begin seeing what is good and great in our societies – our entrepreneurs,
citizens, leaders, institutions etc. Only that can help us see our strength
and use it to promote our progress. Otherwise, our self-hate will lead us to
invite those who shot Martin, Brown and Rice to come and shoot us here. It
happened in the 19th century through colonialism. It can happen again.
<mailto:amwenda_at_independent.co.ug> amwenda_at_independent.co.ug
Received on Thu Dec 11 2014 - 14:59:28 EST