Old Racial Demons Emerge Again in Land of Uncle Sam (L'Expressions, Algeria)
"It was
thought that racism against the Black population of the United States had
disappeared with the Klu Klux Klan. It was believed
that the racial segregation which separated Blacks and Whites was just a bad
memory. It was thought that Martin Luther King Jr. was the last victim of this
human stupidity. Any doubts were thought to have been dispelled when, for the
first time in its history, America elected to the White House Barack Obama, a Black.
… We forgot that there are those who are 'experts' at reopening old
sociological wounds and choosing the most conducive time and place to inject
their poison."
Endless
rioting in Ferguson, a small U.S. town in Missouri. Since August 9,
the day a young 18-year-old American was shot dead by a policeman, violence has
reached the point in which a state of emergency and curfew have been declared.
Tear gas, arrests, burned-out cars, looting, vandalized public facilities,
injured police and civilians -it is a sorry scene that is now part
of the daily life of this American city.
What in other circumstances would only have been a police
blunder has taken on a racial dimension that is resurrecting old demons in the
land of Uncle Sam. The young man was Black and the police officer who shot him
was White, so the racial segregation long suffered by America is back on the
agenda.
It was thought that racism against the Black population of
the United States had disappeared with the Klu Klux
Klan. It was believed that the racial segregation which separated Blacks and Whites
was just a bad memory. It was thought that Martin Luther King Jr. was the last
victim of this human stupidity. Any doubts were thought to have been dispelled when,
for the first time in its history, America elected to the White House Barack
Obama, a Black.
We forgot that there are those who are "experts" at
reopening old sociological wounds and choosing the most conducive time and place
to inject their poison. Ferguson is a small town in the state of Missouri that
has 21,000 inhabitants, 20,000 of which are Black. Yet the local police is comprised almost entirely of Whites. It was one of those officers
who killed the young 18-year-old Black on August 9.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Versions of events differ. Some argue that the young victim
had tried to take the police officer's weapon. Others say he was shot with his
hands in the air. What is certain is that the victim's body was riddled with
six bullets - too many bullets to support claims of self-defense.
The current context
In 2008, Missouri voted for Republican John McCain over
Obama. In 2012, that vote was confirmed with the
state's support for Republican Mitt Romney - once again, who ran against Obama.
It is hard to interpret this as simply a preference for the agenda of Republicans
over that of Democrats, since in both cases the candidate who failed to win
over the electorate was Black. This is especially true because Missouri, since
the beginning of the 20th century, had always voted for the presidential
election winner. In 2008 and in 2012 that was Barack Obama. This doesn't mean
that Missouri remains attached to the Jim Crow laws of the 19th
century (which replaced slavery with racial segregation), but in a city
populated mainly by Blacks, where police are almost exclusively White, it is
easier to manipulate the situation and reawaken old demons. This, unfortunately,
seems to be the case, to the point where President Obama has been forced to cautiously
intervene in an attempt to restore peace to Ferguson. He faces what might be called
"psychological terrorism."
If we paid enough attention to it, we would realize that it
is this is the type of terrorism that prevailed among us, in Ghardaia. After centuries of
division [between Berber-speaking Mozabites and
Arabs] imposed on us by the [French] invaders to maintain their hold on our country,
we managed to overcome this diabolical tactic on November 1, 1954 [beginning of
Algerian War of
independence]. No one thought that the city which gave us MoufdiZakaria - a man who in addition to having fought colonialism
gave the country its national anthem - was to be the target of an attempted return
of that ancient poison - regionalism. It is human stupidity. The fire was extinguished
only with great time and effort. In Ferguson, it is this same stupidity which
is attempting to spread!
