When Being Black is a Death Sentence
This is my belated but still relevant contribution to an issue that has captured the global imagination and on which it is impossible to ‘sit on the fence’.
After the vicious and brutal murder of George Floyd in the US; a black man by a white policeman, who clearly had no other intention, and who also apparently had personal animosity towards George (as well as a track record of racism) while his colleague stood by, protests erupted across many parts of the US and the World (According to some estimates, these were the biggest protests the US had ever seen.)
Enough was enough. We had all seen this familiar script before, and many were simply having no more. The same excuses, the same lies, the same repeated patterns of behaviour by the very people who are meant to protect and serve.
This wasn’t just about the actions of one policeman, but reflective of something much deeper, systemic, institutionalised, structural and old: racism and deep-seated racist attitudes. The same attitudes that justified slavery, mass incarceration, apartheid and much more.
The statistics tell their own story. In the US African-Americans are more likely to get shot than their white counterparts. In 2019, for example, although black Americans made up 14% of the population, they made up over 23% of those fatally shot by the police. Further, Black Americans are arrested at a much higher rate for drug abuse than white Americans and are 5 times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans.
For some such as civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander (in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness) mass incarceration is effectively a substitute for Jim Crow laws. The Reagan administration’s “war on drugs” was actually a war on black people, leading to the explosion of the numbers incarcerated (who were mainly black) so that mass incarceration “emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialised social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow”. In other words, while officially black people were being given legal rights, unofficially they were and are being denied them.
Here in the UK, the story is not very different. Statistically, Black people are more likely to face discrimination in virtually every area of society, are more likely to be incarcerated, more likely to be unemployed, have lower life expectancy, more likely to be stopped and searched, have less opportunity and are more likely to be homeless.
The David Lammy review of the UK’s criminal justice system found, among other things, that minorities made up a disproportionate number of young people behind bars and that young black boys were 10 times more likely to be arrested for drugs offences than young white kids. The picture in many predominantly white or Western nations is likely very similar. Lest we forget this is all on top of a history of slavery and an often brutal and deadly struggle for basic legal rights.
The protests were heartening to see, in many cases an authentic expression of built-up rage, anger and against years of injustice despite the prevalence of a deadly global pandemic. At the very least, they have initiated a desperately needed discourse; one that highlights the systemic injustices faced by black people and people of colour (POC). The black lives matter banner became synonymous with the protests.
As a consequence, we have seen statues of confederalists, slave owners and racists being dismantled, brands being shamed for their lack of diversity, firms being forced into reviewing their treatment of minorities (my company has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards racism)as well as calls for police reform and defunding of police (which I understand means to relocate some of the funding for police to other much-needed areas).
However, despite the protests and to reinforce how deep and structural this issue is we continue to see shootings of black people by the police in the US (as well as police assaults on black people from other parts of the World) on our television screens. It is clearly a long and challenging struggle; a struggle for something that no decent human being should object to: equality, equal treatment and equal respect.
As a minority myself, a British Muslim, I naturally and instinctively feel the pain of my black brethren for I have faced and continue to face many of the same issues. To be judged, mistreated, hurt, discriminated against, excluded or killed for merely having darker skin or being ‘different’ from the mainstream is immensely hurtful and impossible to accept. Black lives matter precisely because they haven’t for so long and still don’t.
