*(Top image: Black Lives Matter Protest Times Square New York City June 7 2020. Credit: Anthony Quintano/ Flickr)
The majoritarian catalyst prompted by George Floyd’s murder is being hijacked, albeit subtly --- in plain sight. Some members of the very forces that continued the settings, constructs and sustained the heinous, and all-pervasive institutions of systemic racism are now at the forefront of “taking a knee”. They are extolling --- posthumously, a victim who, had he survived asphyxiation by a racist cop taking his own murderous knee on his prey’s neck, would have been handcuffed, summarily subjected to incarceration and equally speedily forgotten. He would be swiftly elided into the ballooning American sack of collective amnesia. As have been millions of his fellow inmates before him. Many of them have joined the thunderous chorus of “defunding”. All have condemned the murder, only after the public’s posture sent a clear message that this time around, no free passage would be gifted the culprits.
Michael Jordan’s brand donating $100 million to “organizations dedicated to ensuring racial equality, social justice and greater access to education” would be a crucial long-term attempt at helping redress the balance in place of blanket calls for defunding, in place of meaningful law enforcement reforms. Education as currently served to Americans, reinforces subtle supremacist symbols on the one hand and thinly inculcate notions of inferiority in communities of color by massaging histories that serve imperial agendas. Inherent racism within police ranks or elsewhere in public and legislative sectors will not go away by a simple act of police defunding. Racism as an embedded creed requires dogged delivery of serious, well-planned objective programs to educate, not the feel-good singalongs masquerading as history.
In a token, deceitful gesture of ceding the longstanding monopoly of narratives, the Merriam-Webster dictionary for one is rehashing the definition of racism in response to an e-mail from, of all people, a young African American lady. In the immediate future, expect more patronizing gestures, albeit in stifled tones, to lull the citizenry into their habitual slumber and confusion. Crude versions of systemic racism, as those practiced by ignorant, unschooled KKK members, do not find ready and willing advocates among its more urbane and refined practitioners. It is their mission to craft a language replete with ambiguities, intended to camouflage essential racism, a phenomenon that has for centuries informed and nurtured their culture. Their comfort zone is one of subtle derogation and pegging their victims to a state of perpetual truckling.
The untimely death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant gave instant and unprecedented visibility to Black celebrities on mainstream media. Sentiments that are understandable and to be expected in the passing away of a prominent sporting figure; but their being granted prime time slots in the MSN, when on matters equally, if not more, profound, their views are never given a front seat. Exhaustive scouring of one’s brain for instances where these celebrities’ thoughts on the ineffable suffering visited on Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Palestine, the African political landscape, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela are sought would be plainly futile. Brutalizing a select group of Others is now so routine as to scarcely entice media attention. Not that Black celebrities lack opinions on such matters. But who would give a tinker’s curse? Not when handsomely paid “pundits” in the form of retired military officers that recycle the same imperial mantras are in abundant supply. The fodder from such pearls of wisdom handed a gullible public couldn’t be more gratifying for the ruling elite. An issue that once serves its purpose is quickly discarded into the dumpsters of history. The language used normalizes unprecedented violence abroad but subtly promotes fake notions of order at home, to keep Americans safely sedated and in lockstep with the imperial project. A crime of commission on one face of the imperial coin is nimbly expunged by one of omission on the other.
Then again, atrocities rained on societies have the unwelcome aftermath of whetting the ravenous imperial appetite for more innocent blood. None of those shaping and implementing policies amounting to war crimes has been held accountable. The net effect: indefinite postponement of even sham displays of compassion that could be summoned, on rare occasions, no matter how feeble. Criminals are thus emboldened. Enemies, real or (mostly) invented must be stopped, terminated dead in their tracks before America’s worst racist nightmares come to pass. Few instances can be more menacing to the male chauvinistic racist psyche than his women having carnal knowledge of Others or witnessing outsiders move next door in segregated neighborhoods, no matter how innocent, well-intentioned their miens or well-educated and cultured their upbringing and backgrounds.
Trump’s insistence that athletes unconditionally show unwavering loyalty to the flag and stop the baloney of taking a knee or face expulsion. In tragi-comic fashion, the NFL made a quick U-turn apologizing for Kapaernick’s very action that had initially received near universal condemnation from the usual suspects, thanks to George Floyd. The NFL and its belated bleeding heart for African American players and their right to protest police brutality is one of the latest to board the anti-racism bandwagon. There is a derogatory, a craven element in these reversals: America’s lazy penchant is for facile symptomatic treatment of phenomena that in reality should entail taking up the gauntlet, unmask the underlying roots and launch a frontal assault on the problem.
Burying heads in the sand goes back a long way in the American quest for reinventing narratives and repackaging them. It is the racist imperial lifeblood. That they may have the untoward effect of shoving heads deeper in the sand, is lost on the uncaring; epistemic benefits might accrue only to those with eyes to discern and scruples for sensing. Derogatory, as in insulting the intelligence of the public from whom transparency is ostensibly being withheld. Trump’s bigoted streak was not to be bested. With yet another of his fuming tweets, he angrily disparaged those who dared turn the flag into an object of protest. The constitutionally protected free speech against a flag for Trump, trumps a symbol of agony, suffering and death for many.
Floyd’s murder has taken much of the world by storm for much of the world, save for Africa, with some notable exceptions. In sum, three entities, African American, African diaspora and African Africa seem content to live somewhat detached from each member’s shared trepidations. The brutal extrajudicial killings by that country’s police force of a dozen Muslim clerics had not led to a single demonstration in any of the 3 African entities mentioned, other than a local one that tagged on to a protest against the Floyd murder. The brutal murder of an African American by a White policeman leads to justifiable outrage virtually global in scale, but the killing of 12 Kenyans is met with silence outside Kenya’s borders. The Muslim clerics became targets marked by their faith, Floyd by his skin color.
True, Mr. Floyd was killed by a system that has killed almost 100 unarmed African Americans in recent memory, via a practice that has gone on unchecked for centuries. It is tempting to speculate that even in suffering and agony, the imperial component is manifest. Domestic victims of imperial brutality and insouciance, in some bizarre fashion, are accorded high visibility of imperial magnitude. So much so that Dalits (the untouchables of India) who comprise nearly 200 million of India’s 1.2 billion strong joined the party expressing support for the widespread demonstrations against Floyd’s murder and used that protest to clamor for their own rights in the process. America’s popular culture that has conquered the world is in sync with the country’s political, military and economic hegemonies. That sheer imperial scale projected by America to the world seems to be mirrored too among the domestic victims of its imperial insolence at home.
It did not take long for brand name corporations to crash the anti-racism party. Visually appealing bulletins were being created to send toned down messages of support. Nike was especially creative in asking its clientele to “For once, don’t do it” adapting its brand name slogan of “Just do it”, finally naming racism as a problem. Nike’s earlier unscrupulous use of child labor in the Third World with --- what else --- a tongue-in-cheek apology is being softened by anti-racism messages. Anything to make a fast billion dollars: apologies, including anti-racist manipulated messages that turn calamity and abuse into ethically acceptable dispatches.
The bandwagon has also reached the Circuit Court of Appeals, that revived a civil rights lawsuit. Seven years have transpired since the shooting of Wayne Jones, a homeless African American who was brandishing a knife, but ran from the police. After he was restrained, Jones was shot 22 times. In September 2018, Groh had earlier ruled that Groh wrote in September 2018. “…the officers are entitled to qualified immunity and summary judgment must be granted.” The 4th Circuit thought otherwise. Next episode coming soon to a theater near you: Rayshard Brooks.
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