A society out of touch with its own past

What you need to know:

  • Thanks to the likes of Donald Trump, it has now become acceptable to be openly racist in America.
  • Notions of white supremacy are being reflected in his “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign that has been interpreted by many non-white people as “Make America White Again”.

The recent killings in the United States of two young black men by white police officers have reminded Americans that people of colour, especially black men, can be the targets of police brutality at any time and for any reason. These and other recent murders of black men by the police have laid bare the racial fault lines in America, which ironically, have become wider under a black president.

Thanks to the likes of Donald Trump, it has now become acceptable to be openly racist in America.

Notions of white supremacy are being reflected in his “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign that has been interpreted by many non-white people as “Make America White Again”.

One black woman told CNN: “People I never thought of as racist, people who borrowed money from me — I’ve seen things come out of them that I never thought of.”

People of colour, including Latinos, are suddenly feeling very vulnerable and afraid.

According to CNN, “a psychological shift is taking place among many blacks, and it can be heard in countless conversations over dinner tables, in barber shops and on social media. Some say they’ve never felt so much pessimism about white America.”

The reason racism is so endemic in America is that whites in that country have never fully come to terms with the “original sin” of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The majority of Americans live in denial about the role slavery played in building the United States.

Slave trade and racism

It took a civil rights movement and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to stir Americans out of their complacency regarding the immorality of the slave trade and of racism, its offspring.

However, despite the civil rights movement, being black in America is still no walk in the park. Blacks are more likely to be incarcerated and searched than any other race.

The Jamaican writer Garnette Cadogan, in an essay titled “Walking While Black”, explains how he became acutely aware of his colour when he moved to New Orleans.

“In this city of exuberant streets, walking became a complex and often oppressive negotiation.

“I would see a white woman walking towards me at night and cross the street to reassure her that she was safe. I would forget something at home but not immediately turn around if someone was behind me, because I discovered that a sudden backtrack could cause alarm.

“(I had a cardinal rule: Keep a wide perimeter from people who might consider me a danger. If not, danger might visit me.)” The African-American author Ta-Nehisi Coates says that fear is intrinsic to the black experience in America.

In his book Between the World and Me, he shows how after more than a century since slavery ended, black people in the United States are still under the threat of being locked up, beaten or killed.

He says that “White America” is arranged in a way that helps it retain its exclusive power, which it does by denigrating black people and making them feel inferior.

So black bodies can be arrested, punched and even killed, because they are considered dispensable.

In the final analysis, the killings in the United States are not so much about race as they are about power.

White police officers only reflect the power imbalance in American society.

White power and privilege is predicated on the notion that other races must be subjugated and made to feel worthless.

That is why the early settlers in the New World exterminated native Americans or banished them to reserves, where the majority still live.

In Kenya, the recent brutal murders of a human rights lawyer, his client and their taxi driver have reminded Kenyans that the rich and the powerful — or their agents, in this case, police officers — can literally get away with murder.

As Raila Odinga stated on his website, these murders show us that none of us is safe.

Whether it is young men in central Kenya who were accused of being Mungiki, or young men at the coast and northeastern Kenya who were accused of being terrorists, or whether it is a whistleblower, or protesters participating in peaceful marches, everyone is at risk of being killed.

“Now it has come to lawyers and the scope will keep widening,” he warned.

Rasna Warah is a Kenyan writer and photojournalist