America on fire
8th December 2014 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
This is not a good time to be a Black, man, woman or child in America.
Not that there ever has been. It’s just that some times are far worse than others.
We are in the midst of such a tumultuous period right now, with the justice system allowing law enforcement officers to get away with killing two Black men within the span of a week.
Throughout U.S. history, there have been countless cases of federal and local government officials allowing individuals and groups ti get away with murdering innocent Black men, women and children. We’ve seen this since the dawn of American history in virtually every nook and cranny of this bitterly divided nation.
Many of those cases involving heinous crimes committed long ago continue to resonate with many today, among them the case of Emmett Till, the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., the Rosewood massacre, the murder of Yusuf Hawkins in NYC, Trayvon Martin in Florida, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio.
We’ve seen the police take innocent lives in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and New Orleans. We’ve read the stories about the torture tactics used by Chicago police to force confessions and the myriad of examples of police willing to fabricate evidence and outright lie to cover their unconstitutional and corrupt practices.
We’ve seen cops gun down innocent men, women and children and steal the skulls of their murder victims. We heard stories about them laughing after burning the remains of their victims and ordering hits on civilians who report their crimes to higher authorities.
As if that were not enough, we’ve also seen how federal agencies and officials have used their power to harass, intimidate, undermine and murder Black groups and individuals like the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton, Fred Hampton, Bobby Hutton and Malcolm X.
We know all too well what we are up against.
We know that the powers that be still see us as a people who were never brought here to be recognized and treated as free and equal human beings in this society. We were not brought here for a chance at a better life or for an opportunity to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.
We were brought here to beat back the wilderness and work from dusk till dawn.
History has taught us that law enforcement agencies and others have no qualms about attacking us and gunning us down like animals no matter how young or old we are while grown white men are allowed to aim assault rifles at federal agents while standing on federal land without fear of being killed.
We understand that 12-year-old Black boys are no safer today than Emmett Till was in 1955.
We also understand that the U.S. government can no longer be shamed into treating Black people better as it was during the Historic Civil Rights Movement more than a half century ago.
We get it.
The one thing that has remained consistent throughout U.S. history has been the illusion of justice and democracy in a land where skin color, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic status still largely determine one’s lot in life. It is made clear often in the highest seats of government that Black, brown, red, yellow and poor people have no constitutional, civil or human rights that whites are bound by law to respect. Not now, not ever.
While it is interesting to see whites marching in New Orleans to protest the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York City, it is equally confusing as to where those same brave and principled souls are when Black 14-year-olds are shot in the head by trigger-happy residents, Recovery School District officials make plans to build schools for Black children atop toxic landfills, police shoot unarmed Black people and local government officials consistently lock Black businesses out of the public bidding process and generally steamroll over the Black masses in a majority-Black city.
There is no way to separate the systemic racism, classism and injustice that characterized the Ferguson and NYC grand jury decisions from the many examples of racial injustice that occur daily in New Orleans and other cities.
Where’s the outrage over the way public school teachers, administrators and other employees continue to be treated by the state or the way Road Home officials shortchanged Black residents? Where’s the outrage about the way Black defendants are handled by local prosecutors, who have been caught more than couple of times engaging in prosecutorial misconduct and the way the tourism industry treats minimum-wage workers? Where’s the concern for the way the state continues to siphon money out of an already underfunded and overcrowded public school system and the existence of a three-tiered school system?
Where’s the outrage about the City’s mistreatment of civil service employees and the racial profiling of Black men and boys in the French Quarter? Where’s the public outcry for the federal government’s failure to protect the constitutional rights of Blacks and poor people in New Orleans and the criminal justice system’s inequitable treatment of Black and white suspects?
All of these things are forms of violence against Black people.
Those who oppress, control and exploit us will never admit that a host of ills — chief of among them is systemic racism — are responsible for rising tides of Black rage and violence. As has often been said, violence is the language of the oppressed and the outpouring of violence that plagues communities of color is a reflection of the chronic poverty, unemployment, hopelessness, despair, racial injustice that have come to define life for many Blacks in America.
We have been programmed to hate and doubt ourselves by our oppressors, a process that has literally been under way for centuries. It is that condition that is in large part responsible for the distrust and discord in communities of color.
Every time we look at one another, we see a reflection of ourselves that constantly reminds us of our plight in America. After centuries of oppression, economic exploitation, inequitable treatment under the law, mis-education and marginalization, we have taken the bait and learned to turn on one another instead of to one another.
Despite these efforts to permanently break us, there are still pockets of Black consciousness, resilience and resistance in cities like New Orleans, which has been called one of the last African strongholds in the Western Hemisphere. Despite a machiavellian local government, unforgiving criminal justice system, merciless business community and destructive educational system, some have still managed to master the fine art of revolutionary self-love and divine purpose. Despite overwhelming oppression, the resistance remains strong and focused on the prize.
With the recent push to undermine the legacy of Brown v. The Board of Education, efforts to put an end to affirmative action and moves to weaken the Voting Rights Act, we see a renewed push from White America to turn back the clock and do whatever is necessary to annihilate or subjugate people of African descent. At the very least, the goal is to make the Black masses a permanent underclass with none of the rights and privileges associated with U.S. citizenship.
Black people have a long, proud history of surviving and succeeding against all odds and that resourcefulness and resilience will be tested greatly in the days and years to come. We can’t depend on government agencies and individuals who have proven repeatedly that they do not have our best interests at heart to protect us and our rights — that’s our job. As we have so many times in the past, we need to get back to loving ourselves and believing in ourselves enough to step out boldly and fight for the rights the Creator has seen fit to bestow upon us. The same Creator who gave us those rights also endowed us with the power, wisdom and ability to effectively defend those rights.
It’s time for us to circle the wagons and get back to building strong and independent institutions and organizations to shield us as a people from the modern-day Black Codes, draconian laws and unconstitutional policing that are threatening our very existence.
At the end of the day, it’s up to us to protect us and our right to be by any means necessary. If not us, who? If not now, when?
I leave you with the defiant, prophetic words written by Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay in “If We Must Die”:
If we must die—let it not be like hogs/Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,/While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,/Making their mock at our accursed lot./If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,/So that our precious blood may not be shed/In vain; then even the monsters we defy/Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!/Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;/Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,/And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow/!
What though before us lies the open grave?/Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,/Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!”
This article originally published in the December 8, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
