News & Comment
Black Lives are Cheap in America Today

News

Yesterday, 12th December, 2015, another black man was shot in the back by two U.S. policemen in Lynwood, California, and many are calling it murder. More than 30 bullets were fired at the victim, Nicholas Robertson, and though a hand gun was found at the scene, no bullets were fired back at police. The New York Times wrote, “Video Showing Fatal Shooting by Los Angeles Deputies Incites Protests” and the Washington Post wrote similar coverage of the story. Both new outlets released videos that showed the victim desperately trying to crawl away from the shooters who continued to unleash a hail of bullets upon him until he was able to crawl no more. He died at the scene.

Comment

Many Americans are expressing outrage at police brutality. The New York Times quoted one as saying: “If we have to protest, we’re going to do what we have to do. The only way we’re going to stop it is if the Hispanics and the blacks all stand together,” and quoted another who said: “This doesn’t feel like policing. It feels like an occupation.” Such incidents of black men being shot over and over again by police while lying on the ground have become so common in America that as soon as one incident fades from the news a new one replaces it.

The excessive force used by police in handling black subjects is perceived to be influenced strongly by racial stereotyping of black men that has its origins in the darker days of the slave trade, and the lynch mobs of the south that used to hang blacks in the last century for small crimes just to teach the black communities their place. As recently as 2 weeks ago the leading Republican Presidential candidate was tweeting that “blacks killed 81% of white murder victims,” and this was the day after a black activist was kicked and punched at one of his rallies in Alabama. His figures are wildly inaccurate; the latest figures available show that the real number of whites killed by blacks is 5.4 times smaller. This Republican candidate has become more famous since then for promising to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. for an undisclosed period of time!

Democracy can easily throw up lies and liars who sow fear and misinformation to feed the fear and prejudice of the majority at the expense of the minority. Donald Trump’s successes so far in his presidential bid are evidence of that, and the never-ending slaughter of black men by white police officers claiming to be so afraid for their lives that they spray their victims with bullets even while they are crawling in agony on the ground further evidences it. Democracy has brought tyranny at home and abroad, and darker days seem to lie ahead in the form of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-black rhetoric.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin