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The American demon called race

Dickson Igwe. Photo: Provided
By Dickson Igwe

This story asserts that race in the USA is a national dilemma. Race defines American culture and society. The Trayvon Martin matter is symptomatic of a malevolence that states that the US has arrived at the place where even the prized jury system cannot be trusted to give a non racial, fair, and unbiased verdict.

No longer can it be guaranteed that a jury will be fair and neutral to a black, white, Hispanic, or Asian, if that jury is overwhelmingly made up of members of another race, not of the race of either the defendant or victim.

Circa July 19, 2013, and President Barack Obama’s statement on the Trayvon Martin matter stressed the fact that whites and blacks looked at the trial of George Zimmerman for second degree murder, through a different set of social and historical lenses. The US Leader is right.

Now, this story is not about the culpability of George Zimmerman: of whether or not the Hispanic American was guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter, in the killing of an African American teenager ‘armed with nothing but soda and candy.’ No, it is not about that at all, and terrible as this tragedy was. This article is instead about the social and political environment of the trial: before, during, and after that drama. It is a story about race in contemporary America.

It is a narrative that strongly states that history, culture, and politics usually precede the rule of law in molding a fair society. Historically, laws came from ancient kings who used them to control populations and empires. Modern democracy and rule of law, in the timescale of written history, are a very new affair. And a look at the law in various countries will clearly portray that legal systems are frequently the sketch and product of the past social, cultural, and historical narrative of those countries. Without laws however, anarchy will prevail, so law is a good thing.

In the USA, like everywhere else, laws derived from the story of history: the Revolution of the late 1700s, Slavery, the Civil War of the 1860s, Jim Crow, controlling the power of the Robber Barons at the dawn of the 1900s, and Civil Rights of the 1960s. Interestingly, Slavery and civil rights for blacks is a dominant theme in American history.

In Egypt, the idea of the supremacy of history and politics has been on display. Mass protests by a significant cross section of the Egyptian population saw legality and a new constitution easily thrown away, when popular emotion reared a head. Street power, an important equation in politics, will undermine any established legal system, especially if the feeling against a status quo is strong enough. That is the power of revolution and mass movement.  This is what is happening in the US in the black population, albeit, not on the Egyptian scale. There is a seething anger in the black soul over this verdict that will not be appeased by rationality and right perspective.

And that is why, when politics rears a head, all the pontificating about the rule of law can easily evaporate: and even look absurd. This is what is happening in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin saga.

Zimmerman may have believed his acquittal in a southern court of law- a court in which the shadow of race hung over like an invisible quilt- was the end of his problems. However, racial politics, and mass movement by blacks, and a significant number of white liberals, will ensure Zimmerman gets very little sleep, for a very long time.

Zimmerman may not be behind bars, but he remains in a virtual prison governed by US racial politics. He faces years of legal and social harassment. And if his ‘’mouthy’’ brother does not zip it, that ‘’talkative showoff’’ will suffer a similar fate.   

Politics is always a factor in law. And all the talk of the evidence pointing to Zimmerman’s lack of culpability in the slaying of an unarmed black teenager is simply ‘hogwash’ to millions of US citizens. Most blacks, and a significant number of whites in the US, are not as naïve as to think that Trayvon Martin was not tried in the court of racism. This case was underlined by race from the very start. The institutions of the law in this matter were simply a mask covering up the racial ugliness of the face behind it. This is where the prosecution in the matter got things very wrong.

Yes, one wonders how so called legal experts could have got it so wrong. How could they have allowed the case to go forward with a practically all white jury, knowing the history of racial prejudice in the southern part of the USA? What world are they living in?  

Many black lawyers, who supposedly objectively observed the matter on behalf of the ever ubiquitous US media machine, are only now admitting to their own naivety over the matter. They were flatfooted. Of course, race is the prism through which Americans view each other, and their wider society! Race enters into everything in that most powerful of countries. Why? That is a social mystery that has not been solved in decades. The most brilliant minds in academia are yet to give a plausible explanation for America’s obsession with colour. So, to expect a jury of all whites, or all blacks, to be fair and unbiased, is clearly a myth: a stretch. In today’s USA it cannot happen.    

In all societies, politics and power sketch the constitutional, legal, and judicial reality. And as many a black lawyer in the USA with mistaken notions of racial fairness in US jurisprudence rudely understands this day, post the Trayvon Martin matter, race in America is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. It influences every aspect of US society.

And the fight at the federal level to bring civil rights charges against Zimmerman is simply part of the continuum of US racial politics. A civil suit will be fully financed and supported by black groups, just as various white groups, including apparently, a white owned multi-billion dollar business patronized by millions of blacks, financed Zimmerman’s defense in his murder of an innocent black teen. Racial hate and racial prejudice in the US is always just below the surface.

Will the US ever get over this racial dilemma? Maybe. When the older generations pass away, and a new demographic emerges that is built on racial crossover, mixed marriage, liberal politics, and a new culture that adopts an overt tolerance. The US President made the allusion, that his daughter’s generation was better than his own, on matters of race. Yes, race or racial prejudice in the USA is a product of centuries of history, and it will take another century before it disappears altogether.

In the meantime, adapting to the reality of race in the US post Trayvon Martin may well mean a new paradigm in jury selection in America, with the race and racial composition of a jury, a critical factor, in determining whether or not one gets a fair trial. 

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8 Responses to “The American demon called race”

  • rodent (20/07/2013, 09:29) Like (1) Dislike (17) Reply
    Race is really not a problem in the USA
    It's the race batters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who keep it alive so they can extort money from White businesses and their way to stay in the limelight while using race and the Blck pe
  • rodent (20/07/2013, 11:45) Like (1) Dislike (7) Reply
    Continue'd from above.
    While using Black people to further their agenda without caring and trying to put society back 50 years.
  • kkk (20/07/2013, 13:38) Like (0) Dislike (0) Reply
    talk about the racism here in the bvi from the white house down!!
  • Eagle and Buffalo (20/07/2013, 19:02) Like (3) Dislike (1) Reply
    Black-White relations is the huge, prancing and parading elephant in the room that many Whites, not all, and some confused, disillusioned and paid off Blacks do not want to have a conversation about.

    Too many descendants of White slave owners that have benefited and are still benefitting from the dehumanising, physical and economic exploitation treatment of Slaves want the descendants of these slaves and other person of African descent to pretend that slavery and and its lingering effect was yesterday's news or spilled milk or water under the bridge.

    No. The use, abuse,dehumanizing treatment, exploitation and rape of the foreparents of persons of African ascent is not a harmless event that can just be cast on the dump heap of history. The US, along with individual families, benefitted greatly from the blood, sweat and tears of slaves. The only people that have not benefitted for their forced labour was the slaves and their descendants.

    Free/force slave labour was so lucrative for White plantation owners that a war, Civil War, was fought to retain the forced labour. The Civil War over and with the South losing, slaves were freed. But were they really free? They were thrown off the plantation with just the rags on their backs. With no land or other means of making a living, they had to return to the plantation to work for measly wages or enter into exploiting sharecropping arrangements.

    Moreover, with time and in spite of monumental challenges both slaves and their descendants made minimal progress. However, the White, Southern Planter Class fearing that Blacks were getting too uppity and to preserve their superiority status and put the Negroes in their place, crushing and dehumanising Jim Crow laws were enacted. Some of you many remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Bull Conner's dogs and water cannons, Selma March, White only water foundations, White only restrooms, White only businesses.....etc.

    Fast forwarding, due to the agitating of Martin Luther King and host of others some equality was achieved with the Civil Rights and Voting Acts. Nonetheless, anxiously fearing that they are losing electoral ground and control with swelling minority numbers, especially among Hispanics, they are using the courts and other legislative tricks to erode any gains.

    Further, though too many Whites, along with some disillusioned Blacks, may want Blacks to pretend that the Black experience was just a dream, a mirage, it is not. Furthermore, slavery was several hundred years ago and Blacks should just get over it. That is easy to say when one set of descendants benefitted immensely and the other set benefited nought. In spite of slavery being several hundred years and Whites preferring not want to talk about it, the ill effects of slavery is real; the conditioning of Willie Lynch is still prevalent among descendants. Race is still an issue in America.

    Everything in America is tinged with race. Race is front and center in the uneven scales of justice, in employment, in education, in politics, in health care, in housing, in social services, in shopping, in religion, in transotation....etc. Was the election of Barack Hussein Obama, son of a Kenyan father and a White Kansas mother, the event that made race in America is a non issue?

    No. Many Whites and some Blacks erroneously believed that the election of President Obama place America in a post-racial period. But instead of healing America's racial wounds, his presidency has exacerbated race relations. Many Whites see his election as their losing their country; Blacks were getting too uppity. And instead of cooperating and collaborating with him to move America forward they throw up every road block imaginable. They would prefer to see America crash and burn before working with him. Why? Because he is a Black.

    Moreover, the journey to improving race relations, especially between Black-White, will be a long and arduous. It will take generations to see any glimmer of progress, if then. The most recent example of the state of Black-White relations is the Trayvon Martin judicial fiasco. Trayvon Martin,a Black, unarmed, 17-year old, was profiled for walking home from the store with some skittles and a drink and ended up dead. The person that shot him was found not guilty and is now a free man; Trayvon would never get the chance to fulfill his dreams. Why, probably because he was walking while Black (WWB).

    America, you got a race problem; face it and get to work fixing it.
  • USA student (21/07/2013, 12:45) Like (0) Dislike (1) Reply
    I agree with what the President said about the race thing..it could have been him!
  • Billfargo (21/07/2013, 14:09) Like (0) Dislike (1) Reply
    And that is why all BVIslanders should rise up and demand that Bob Hodge and the other 3 or 4 guys that the Government has been holding for extridition to the US be release imediately, because a Blackman in America will get no justice.
  • rodent (22/07/2013, 15:52) Like (0) Dislike (13) Reply
    Wow, your really excited.
    You say Whites fear they're losing their country because Obama is president.
    Remember if not for the White vote he would never have won.
    Today after seeing how incompetent he is as president the people want him out.
    He should resign and pick another career.
    Remember Obama's ancestors were never slaves.
    If anything they were African slave dealers.


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