The Island Editorial

When clay feet of gods crack

The best description of what caused the painful death of George Floyd at the hands of the US police has come from the lawyer of the victim’s family, Benjamin Crump: "It was not the coronavirus pandemic that killed George Floyd. It was the other pandemic. The pandemic of racism and discrimination." This particular pandemic, however, has hardly spared any nation.

Speaking, at Thursday’s memorial service for Floyd, rights activist Al Sharpton declared that the victim had changed the world and the fight would go on until the whole justice system was changed. His declaration may have struck a responsive chord with people the world over, but the question is how long the ‘change’ and the ‘fight’ will last.

Police brutality against, and racial attacks on, black Americans has a long history which is replete with mass uprisings. However, none of these events has brought about the desired change. The Harlem riots, in 1935, left about five people dead. Thirty-four people perished in the Detroit clashes, in 1943. The killing of a black teenager triggered violent clashes in 1964. Riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1965, led to the killing of at least 34 people. Race riots swept across the US, in 1967, and left scores of people dead. In 1968, the assassination of Martin Luther King sparked riots in most parts of the US and about 50 persons died therein. (Historians believe the number of deaths may have been much higher.) In 1980, the acquittal of four police officers involved in the killing of a Black youth, in Miami, led to a wave of violence, which snuffed out about 20 lives. The savage beating of a black man and the subsequent acquittal of police officers responsible for the attack resulted in race riots, which left about 63 people killed and properties worth billions of dollars destroyed, in 1992. A New York police officer killed a black man, triggering riots, in 2014. The following year another victim of police brutality died in Baltimore and violence broke out. In 2016, the police killed African Americans, triggering riots in some states.

Thus, one is being overoptimistic when one expects the murder of Floyd to help end institutional racism or change the US justice system. However, it will give the Black Lives Matter movement a new impetus.

Meanwhile, sundown towns and counties, which the so-called coloured people once had to leave before sunset, may not be there in the US, and Blacks may be able to move about without carrying the Green Book, but discrimination against non-whites is far from over. Behind America’s façade of ethno-religious tolerance and democracy, there exists a racist deep state. The election of Donald Trump as the President marked the resurgence of White supremacism.

Many thought the election of Trump’s immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama, signalled a new beginning in the US race relations and urged other nations, troubled by ethnic tensions, to follow the American example, but what is going on, in the US, at present, is proof that it was only a false dawn. His election had more to do with the depths of despair the Bush administration and the global financial meltdown had plunged the US into than any improvement in race relations.

That the US is not short of enlightened citizens who cherish the core values and principles enunciated by the founding fathers is evident from the salutary ethnic mix in the ongoing protests. However, institutional racism has eaten into the social fabric of the US as in other countries including the US allies that have taken upon themselves the task of defending global democracy and human rights. It finds expression in police brutality and various other forms of acrimony and hatred towards African Americans.

The brutal killing of Floyd was not the cause of the riots that are sweeping across the US; it was only the trigger that gave vent to people’s pent-up anger. One may recall the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign, which was fuelled by the frustration of the Americans, especially the youth, at income inequality, corporate greed and the influence of money on politics. That protest fizzled out owing to government resistance, but it gave rise to Black Lives Matters, etc.

It has become clear, once again, that the most powerful human rights god has feet of clay, and they are cracking.