RACISM APARTHEID CIVIL WAR TRUMP AND FLOYD

The grotesque incident, which has screened again and again, where an officer of the law is graphically shown murdering a suspect, George Floyd, begs two questions:

1. How in 2020 an officer of the law felt he was in tune with society’s value system to brazenly kill an African American amid crowd shouts for him to desist, knowing full well that his actions were being recorded on a cell phone;
2. Why this particular homicide finally evoked anger disbelief horror and condemnation by the overwhelming majority of the American population as this barbarism has been the subject, recently, of intense discussion since the establishment of Black Lives Matter in 2013 and racism has been part of American society since its inception.

This month saw America’s centuries long history of overt and subliminal racism brought sharply into focus by the murder of a black suspect who allegedly passed a twenty dollar counterfeit note. This travesty evoked unprecedented national and world wide revulsion and protest. It also brought to light the discrimination that the African American sector has endured since time immemorial. The enigma is how a country known for its leadership in democratic principles and the integration of citizens of so many countries was capable, barely under the radar, to tolerate such prejudice. This discrimination was towards a sector that represented thirteen percent of its population whose ancestors were, for the most part, slaves.

CIVIL WAR ENDED SLAVERY BUT THEY WERE NOT QUITE “FREE AT LAST”.

America has been in denial since the Civil War reconstruction that its black citizens were being discriminated against. Following the Civil War in 1865  with the fourteenth, (1868), and fifteenth, (1870), amendments the battle for racial equality was considered to be all over bar the shouting.

A hundred and fifty years later there is still undisguised voter suppression, condoned in part by the Supreme Court which has a long history of enshrining racism and then undoing some aspects of it.  The whole sordid reawakening of underlying racism became front and center when a defiant policeman staring into a recording cell phone epitomized the disdain for the life of the modern day negro by squeezing the breath out of him while the victim pleaded for his life and then called for his “mama”. All hell broke loose as the nearly nine minute public lynching, with three of his colleagues standing nonchalantly by, became viral. It needed little imagination to be reminded of those faded photos of the four thousand black faceless victims hanging as a result of lynching.  A practice that had gone on into the twentieth century. Only this time the martyr wasn’t faceless and the onlookers yelled at the murderers to stop.  

This wasn’t the first such recent incident. As a matter of a fact to mount opposition to this barbaric practice a movement entitled Black Lives Matter had been founded in 2013. While there is consensus that the majority of law officers are a credit to their mission these events occur all too often. Now these episodes are recorded. They are not just notes in the official police record, “Suspect resisted forcefully and reached into his pocket for what appeared to be a gun”. 

HOW ON EARTH WAS THIS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN?

Jay H. Ell has noted that the American society is in denial as to the antagonism towards their African American citizens. This is in part because there has been on the one hand meaningful progress in their economic and political stiuations. In addition there have been exceptional African Americans that have made their way to the top against all odds. Nowhere has that been more epitomized in the ascendency to the Presidency by Barack Obama. Those, like the fifteen billionaires and the stars who have dominated sports and entertainment have also hit the jackpot. In addition there is widespread representation of African Americans at all levels of government. But to believe that the existence of all these giants belies underlying racism is as naive as to conclude that because of Einstein, Freud and Marx that anti semitism is dead.

So for the rest the males have a one in four chance of landing in jail, (they are stopped, arrested and sentenced more aggressively for minor infringements), they live shorter lives, (they are less likely to have health care), and are less likely to attain a College degree. This has been put down to the fact that in America “you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps” but as Martin Luther King stated what if you have no boots….. . 

So to a certain extent the success of those in politics and of course in entertainment and sports helped hide what was going on underneath. In addition there has been progress in the courts of law to enforce their civil rights.  Other than the denial that a problem exists, Jay H. Ell will get to some other hypotheses as to possible reasons as to why a police officer felt empowered to snuff the very existence of a fellow American in full view of the world in the belief that society has rigged it so that he can get away with it. 

DRURY AND MICHENER WEIGH IN ON SOUTH AFRICAN APARTHEID WHILE RACISM SMOULDERS ON AND ON IN AMERICA

While post war discrimination was endemic in America the focus was on South African “apartheid”. While the latter admitted that segregation was their official policy American Administrations denied the reality that existed. Nowhere was this reality better epitomized in the attention two famed authors Allen Drury and James Michener showered on South Africa’s racism rather than address what was happening in their own country.

Allen Drury, the novelist, who to this day is regarded as the author of the definitive description of the mechanics of American Politics, “Advise and Consent”, also penned a far less known non fiction work on South Africa entitled, “A Very Strange Society”. It has always fascinated Jay H. Ell, a native born South African, why he had not saved that title for the United States of America, for indeed that is what the United States is. Drury’s work was an attempt to delve into the social, economic, psychological, historical and political dynamics of a society whose government was openly segregationist under the label of “Apartheid” or separateness. 

The United States is a Federation whose states are more diverse than the nations of Europe. Besides the indigenous peoples they were populated  by immigrants or slaves. In spite of the incredible diversity of cultures of the different states there has only been one major internal war as opposed to the myriads the Europeans have suffered over the same last two centuries.That war was to liberate slaves. Yet the result of that war has never been fully accepted to this day. This fact is reflected in the racism and discrimination that is evident and is the principle motivation to “voter suppression” that has reared its ugly head since the Civil War.  Professor Cox Richardson has written a thought provoking book on the subject, “How the South won the Civil War”. 

Ironically while Drury was patronizingly “understanding” of South African bigotry in the 1960’s, the period of his review, enough of it was going on in America. Only a decade earlier Rosa Parks had insisted on not standing for a white man on a bus and the Supreme Court in 1957 finally ruled that the very basis for segregation, “separate facilities” were inherently unequal. In the decade of the sixties African Americans were battling for their rights supposedly constitutionally enshrined a hundred years earlier.  An enlightened coalition of Northern Democrats and Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This legislation followed the legendary protests lead by the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King at its head. However the backlash to all of this was epitomized by three assassinations - those of King, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy who like his brother Jack was slain in the bloom of his life. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination cleared the path for Richard Nixon’s Presidency.

Lyndon Baines Johnson who engineered the Civil Rights legislation knew that was the end of the Democratic Party in the South as the bulk of the segregationists found all this a step too far to take. What he could not have foreseen was that the Republican Party of Lincoln would under Nixon’s Southern strategy take over the mantle of Southern Segregationists. 

An even greater literary giant James Michener weighed in on South Africa nearly two decades later with a tome entitled “Covenant”. The mantra was much the same as Drury brought forth but in the famed author’s compelling story telling historical style. Indeed the South African situation was complicated. Indeed all the citizens were not all bad. There were trends that Americans could identify with as both had been former colonies dominated by England, The South African Afrikaner Nationalists had felt dominated by  England who had stolen their country. They fought for their independence and believed that the more liberal English speaking South African whites would join with the indigenous Africans to oust them.Thus they would be forever denied voting rights in white South Africa. However at the end of the day Michener like Drury came down on the fact that apartheid was unsustainable if not inherently evil…. 

Meanwhile back home in America the eighties was the period dominated by Ronald Reagan. He outlined his attitude to African Americans on his campaign to get the Republican nomination from President Ford. In 1976 his key stump message became known as the “Welfare Queen” speech. He argued that the Federal Government wasted taxpayer money in their welfare programs, “…people were buying T Bone Steaks with their food stamps, a housing project in New York had eleven foot ceilings and a swimming pool”. Then Reagan added his most quoted stereotype of the freeloading Blacks, “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax free cash income alone has been running at $150,000 a year”. This woman became the symbol of the racist stereotype Reagan was projecting of the African American.

During the twelve years that Reagan dominated American politics, and in California before that, he made no secret of his attitude to African Americans. He used the term “states’ rights” which had been the code to discriminate since the time of the Confederacy. During the 1980’s twenty - two states passed laws that denied women further payments on the birth of a child. Inherent in this law was the belief that a poor black woman would have a child merely to obtain another hundred and thirty dollars a month. In 1988 Reagan vetoed the Civil Rights Act. His support of the South African apartheid government was attacked by Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu who commented that as far as blacks were concerned Reagan, “who sits there like great big white chief of old”, was the pits.

The DuBois Review first volume  notes that under Reagan the life chances of Americans became more unequal in all arenas including employment and income.

So Jay H. Ell does not bring up Drury and Michener to show them up as hypocrites. Rather to point out the denial mechanism, as reflected by these famed author/commentators, adopted by the Americans who were rightly condemning flagrant unhidden South African apartheid while under their own noses first Jim Crow laws dominated the South then the discrimination continued under Nixon’s Southern strategy which Reagan continued  by projecting the African American as a lazy crooked bum. 

However in spite of this racism no Administration came out and stated that segregation, racism or apartheid was their policy. It just gnawed away below the surface.

Let Jay H. Ell illustrate the impact that the above observation has on society’s awareness. In South Africa he lived in a white suburb. He was conscious that only he, “a white person”, could reside there as legislation mandated the separation of races. His colleagues lived in suburbs designated for their race. This was government policy there were laws. In America if one resided in a suburb where only whites had homes it would just be a fact of life. It would not be a daily reminder that Government policy enshrined racism. Racism in the period of Drury and Michener was not official Federal government or state policy. Nor has it been till the Age of Trump. 

WHY CAN’T AFRICAN AMERICANS DO WHAT IMMIGRANTS DO?

Implicit in the criticism of African Americans till this day is why can’t they achieve what the Asian immigrants, for example, do who “pull themselves up by their boot straps” achieve the American dream and graduate their children from College.  A key pointer to this problem is immigrants generally are more motivated than the general population even more than the whites as the Asians graduate from College at a far higher rate than their white brethren as well.

Pre college school education in America to a large extent is funded locally. The richer the area a citizen lives in the more money garnered by property taxes and the higher the standard of pre college education. If you live in a black ghetto your chances of competing with the type of education you are receiving are minimal. So unless this education becomes Federally funded the deficit will remain. Black society as a whole will not benefit from College Affirmative Action programs where in College they recognize talent and allow the exceptional few to reach their potential.

WHERE DOES AMERICA STAND TODAY - TRUMP FOLLOWS OBAMA

The civil war was over the issue of slavery where six hundred thousand lives were lost so as to rid the continent of that curse of human bondage. Today, two hundred and fifty years later, the country is wracked in pain and anguish over the treatment of the descendants of those self same slaves. This only four years after the nation had celebrated that a Black man had completed an eight year term as the elected President. However rather than advance the cause of the average African American Obama’s ascendency brought the backlash of Trump who has traded on racism since the word go. His entry into politics focussed on the alleged illegitimacy of Obama’s right to be President. He claimed that Obama wasn’t an American. Rather than say because he was black he spread the calumny that Obama was born in Kenya.

Trump has continued his racist message whether it be on Blacks, immigrants, Latinos, Muslims and anyone else who is not pure white. For this and other reasons he has taken over the Republican Party ironically changing its direction. Following two triumphs  by Obama and the prospect of a Hillary Clinton victory and  the projection that whites would be in the minority in America in 2050, the Republican National Committee produced a report on how to become more representative of the minority groups in America. Trump’s winning of the Republican nomination and then in a perfect electoral college storm winning the WhiteHouse changed all that.

WHY OFFICER CHAUVIN AND HIS COLLEAGUES DIDN’T CARE THAT FLOYD’S DEATH WAS BEING RECORDED

For nearly two hundred years since the Civil War the perception of the average white American has been that his African American brethren are not prejudiced against, they are just not up to speed. In addition sympathetic administrations have intervened positively to rectify injustices such as the Jim Crow laws. Not until the Trump era has an administration been outright racist.

When Derek Chauvin looked at the cell phone defiantly as he choked the life of a handcuffed African American man never in his wildest imagination could he have imagined that America would revolt. Chauvin and the three police onlookers had heard the President prompt them not to be careful of suspects’ heads when they put them into the wagon. They had listened when the National Football League cow towed to Trump when they put an end to Colin Kaepernick’s career when he took a knee to protest that Black Lives Matter. Trump had harangued his faithful by misinterpreting what Kaepernick was protesting, “Wouldn’t you like to see one of those NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, get that son of a bitch of the field now”.They also knew that no cop had been successfully prosecuted in Minnesota for killing a suspect. 

However for the same reasons that reassured Chauvin that he was within his rights to kill a black suspect society could no longer deny that there wasn’t racism at work in this atrocity. The President had told them for over four years that he was a racist, had backed segregationists, revered their Confederate history and symbols and they now finally believed him. By Trump’s actions and words he had convinced them that, “Black Lives Didn’t Matter” and Chauvin and his colleagues were illustrating the sickening truth.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN BEGINS IN TULSA  - CIVIL WAR II WOULD NEED A LAW AND ORDER PRESIDENCY:

Jay H. Ell is  convinced that there is a new reality in America. Trump has albeit declared that racism is the official policy of the Republic Party. He is doubling up on his racism as he monotonously repeats that he is a Law and Order President. He is holding his first Nuremberg style rally in Tulsa Oklahoma where race riots killed an untold number of “negroes” ninety - nine years ago in what is considered the most infamous white race riot in American history. 

The original date of his restarting of his campaign, June 19, was the day of the Emancipation of the Slaves. Those who believe he will lead his confederate flag waving supporters in prayer to ask forgiveness for their sins and those of their forefathers are in for a shock. Rather he will use the opportunity to inform the African American minority how much his administration has done for them. However he will reassure his MAGA supporters that he is the Law and Order President. There is still the potential for chaos as a counter protest had been organized for Trump’s original date.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The latest  breaking shooting by a policeman of a black suspect in Atlanta adds a surreal reality to this sad sad episode in American history. The recorded episode pathetically puts an exclamation point to the belief that “Black Lives Don’t Matter”.

Whatever Trump may or may not do history will reflect that the Civil War was finally won when a citizen of African American descent was twice elected as President of the whole Republic. Although Trump and his freak show took over for four years, that Black Man’s second in command , posterity will show, thrashed him at the polls. Former supporters of apartheid will reassure the segregationists that the sky didn’t fall when Mandela acceded to power. 

Not surprisingly the remnants of the Confederacy ideal, with Trump as their leader, are relying on voter suppression to cling to power. 

Trump hasn’t entirely forgotten about the ongoing Coronavirus epidemic now ravaging the Southern States. He is making every attendee of his June 20 rally sign a waver that they will not hold him responsible if they contract Covid 19 at his gathering.  

What Jay H. Ell fears most is that Trump’s defeat in 2020 will not see the end of him but a new malignant beginning like there has been after each one of his bankrupt ventures.