The delusion of a post-racial society

Shelley Walia
Professor and Fellow, English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University

A riot is the language of the unheard. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

As an active citizenry, people of all nationalities mourn the meaningless loss of yet another life. Millions of Americans being discriminated against is tragically painful. The riots that engulf America boldly challenge the state to uphold the ideas of justice and liberty in a resounding counter discourse to a world of racist hate and brutality with a commitment to freedom and humanity that is underpinned by structural renovation of social institutions. As Bayard Rustin, a civil rights activist, said in 1941, “If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence.”

The image of a cop sitting on the face of a man with his knee pressing into his throat has sent spasms of anger, pain and demonstrations across the world. When pushed to the ground with a knee pressing down on his neck, George Floyd, an African-American, could do nothing but plead: “I didn’t do nothing serious man, please I can’t breathe, some water or something please, don’t kill me please, I can’t breathe.” Had even one officer on duty stopped the cop’s violence towards a handcuffed convict being choked to death, Floyd would have survived.

Indeed, the situation of racism in the US has become acutely disturbing in the wake of protesters chanting “I can't breathe”, which has become the rallying slogan of ‘Black Lives Matter’, an international activist movement that campaigns against systemic racism, since the killing of Eric Garner in New York in 2014.

President Trump, true to character, while engaging in a tirade against the local democratic government, has threatened the state with military intervention resulting in violent protests that have set the nation ablaze. His incendiary tweet: “When the looting starts, shooting starts” is reminiscent of the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017, when a black protester was killed, to which Trump had responded provocatively that the killers were ‘very fine people’. In 1990, he complimented the Chinese government’s crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. During his 2016 campaign, Trump condemned ‘Black Lives Matter’ for demonstrating against police brutality. The mainstreaming of such offensive behaviour into public conversation is clearly an aberration reminiscent of the political climate of Germany of the 1940s.

In this volatile environment, what stands out as a sore thumb is the unfortunate emergence of Donald Trump, the biggest demagogue of all. He has built his entire campaign and presidentship on divisiveness, decrying diversity and lamenting that the White people and their culture have been overrun by other races. The blustering bigot has successfully tapped into this seething racial hatred, turning his regime into an unashamedly elitist drive to restore American greatness to where and how it was when the whites were dominant, and the colour of one’s skin determined one’s status in life. He has given voice to racism that has been unapologetically felt, but not explicitly expressed. He has brought differences of race, class and ethnicity to the forefront of the political narrative and underpinned his entire ideology on the racial divide.

Though liberal minded American leaders have exhorted the nation to acknowledge the ‘great American story’ of a life of equality and freedom for all, the question of civil rights remains a vexing complexity of race relations. In such times, it is important to ask — in the last 60 years, has America progressed on matters of race, or are we held up, or even moving backward? The meaning and limits of American freedom call for a serious inquisition of the appalling legacy that endlessly haunts America’s past right up to the present, in times of the Covid pandemic.

The world has watched with mounting horror as the US has gradually moved to the far right, bigoted stand on the age-old malaise of toxic racism. The terror of racism lives on, stronger and more emboldened than ever. From the pandemics starting in the 17th century with yellow fever to syphilis, influenza and Covid-19 in the 21st century, Americans have always been of the inherent view that black bodies are distinct with innate difference and at all times a ‘threat’ to the white population. Many prominent journals during the smallpox pandemic, according to Evelynn Hammonds, who chairs Harvard’s department of the history of science, “manifested the view that black bodies are dangerous, white people should protect themselves from black bodies, and black bodies and black people spread disease” owing to a different biology,

different physiology, and consequently, intellectually deficient.

Take for instance, the arrest of a 19-year-old black man for infringing the stay-at-home order in Toledo, Ohio, on April 7. Six young black men were also arrested while casually relaxing on a front lawn while ‘standing within six feet of each other’. In Cincinnati, a black man was charged with violating stay-at-home orders after he was shot in the ankle on April 27. According to a police affidavit, he was talking to a friend in the street when he was shot. On the other hand, what is deeply frustrating is the absence of police crackdown on major protests against the stay-at-home orders and mostly by whites. Surveys have shown that black people are at least four times as likely to be charged with violating the stay-at-home order as the white people.

Black communities long subjected to overly aggressive policing face similarly aggressive enforcement of social distancing. The fallout of over-policing is blatantly ignored and the public norms for preventing infections become the pretext of incarceration. Racial inequities daily burgeon, a double whammy for the blacks being cornered not only by the fatal virus but also by insensitive racial discrimination.

It is hoped that the riots will encourage systemic reforms and change. Mere suspension of the guilty officers is not enough. Charges have to be brought against them. Reform in the police departments and the functioning of the police force is necessary. Representatives of the black community must be more actively involved in the policymaking procedures. The marginalised have to be more bold and courageous to fight the status quo.

This is, indeed, not just a civil rights issue. It is a human rights issue with apparent denial of black people’s humanity, an archetypal truth of the American history of coldblooded lynching by the police state, accurately evidenced in the case of Rodney King in 1991 that led to a wild unleashing of violence, laying the groundwork for a deeply troubled relationship.