The police killing of George Floyd has created a massive movement that will not back down. American democracy for the majority has proven to be a paper democracy, and much like a paper marriage, has yet to be consummated. And rightly so, the demonstrations and rebellion we have witnessed following the death of George Floyd are nothing but an attempt to seek a final divorce from this paper democracy, and liberation from the oldest Anglo colony.
With the long history of political and racial exclusion “brown” people have faced throughout the country’s history, the US today resembles an Anglo colony, rather than a democracy. The notorious Dred Scott Decision of 1857 explicitly racialized blacks as of “inferior race,” thereby institutionalizing racism that continued long after the civil war. The Plessey v. Ferguson decision of 1896 paved the way for school segregation of “separate but equal,” where schools serving black students received a tiny fraction of funding compared to those serving white students. The famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed educational segregation; however, segregation has continued into the 21st century according to a 2014 Harvard study, affecting mostly African and Latino American students. There’s also the wealth gap, where the median wealth of African Americans stands at $1,700 vs. that of whites at $116,000.
Other non-European Americans haven’t fared any better. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII provided further proof that fully assimilated, law-abiding, English-speaking, hard-working, economically successful non-white citizens could instantly find themselves at the receiving end of an institutionalized Anglo-lynch-mob mentality. Just before the Civil War, the Manifest Destiny American doctrine led to the expansionist war with Mexico in mid-19th century, allowing the US to annex large swaths of Mexican territory. The Spanish-speaking inhabitants of California and the Southwest suddenly found themselves under the rule of an Anglo democracy, but only as racialized cheap labor to work on farms owned by white settlers, having little to no rights of a democratic society and its privileges that the settlers enjoyed. The people of Puerto Rico met the same fate and have struggled for independence as a colonized state in the union, and their marginal status came into sharp focus in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s devastation, with Donald Trump’s refusal to mobilize federal resources to help Puerto Rico. (African Americans of New Orleans saw even worse neglect and predation after Katrina.)
The creation of Guantanamo Bay prison solely for so-called “enemy combatants” but really for innocent brown men belonging to the Muslim faith, abducted from their countries, only to be tortured and deprived of freedom in spite of the exculpatory evidence against their detention. Their subjugation even under a black “liberal” president, Obama, who promised to close down the prison, but instead gave Gitmo authorities a green light to force feed prisoners engaged in hunger strikes, terrorizing and dehumanizing them further with violent insertion and removal of feeding tubes through their noses. When the hunger strikers made headlines, Obama declared quite casually, “well, we don’t want anyone to die [of hunger].” Donald Trump built on Obama’s legacy by imposing a “Muslim ban” on people entering the US from certain Muslim majority countries.
This nation has continuously witnessed the hideous murder and execution in broad daylight and public spaces of black men and children at the hands of the police, or a white lynch mob of father and son that took the life of Ahmaud Arbery. There was also the grisly killing of James Byrd Jr. in 1998, when three white men in Texas chained his legs to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him for three miles, dismembering his body. The longstanding racist oppression has resulted in the African and Latino American communities, along with other marginalized populations, bearing the brunt of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, inflicting disproportionate fatalities upon them. The centuries of social, political, economic, and racial exclusion of non-European Americans at such a systemic level reminds us of South Africa under Apartheid. Or it reminds us of the oppression of native people in European colonies around the world, having no rights, and purely at the mercy of settlers to work, whip, starve, or to kill them.
The country’s history and state of affairs provide us with a view through the thin veneer of constitutional American democracy as only for the majority white. The demonstrators and their rebellion touched off by the barbaric killing of George Floyd will not end until a true democracy for all replaces this oldest Anglo colony.
Author’s note: This short article has willfully remained silent on the decimation and plight of the indigenous people of the Americas, for a tragedy that remains unparalleled in human history deserves more than just a few lines and paragraphs; it deserves an entire library.
With the long history of political and racial exclusion “brown” people have faced throughout the country’s history, the US today resembles an Anglo colony, rather than a democracy. The notorious Dred Scott Decision of 1857 explicitly racialized blacks as of “inferior race,” thereby institutionalizing racism that continued long after the civil war. The Plessey v. Ferguson decision of 1896 paved the way for school segregation of “separate but equal,” where schools serving black students received a tiny fraction of funding compared to those serving white students. The famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed educational segregation; however, segregation has continued into the 21st century according to a 2014 Harvard study, affecting mostly African and Latino American students. There’s also the wealth gap, where the median wealth of African Americans stands at $1,700 vs. that of whites at $116,000.
Other non-European Americans haven’t fared any better. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII provided further proof that fully assimilated, law-abiding, English-speaking, hard-working, economically successful non-white citizens could instantly find themselves at the receiving end of an institutionalized Anglo-lynch-mob mentality. Just before the Civil War, the Manifest Destiny American doctrine led to the expansionist war with Mexico in mid-19th century, allowing the US to annex large swaths of Mexican territory. The Spanish-speaking inhabitants of California and the Southwest suddenly found themselves under the rule of an Anglo democracy, but only as racialized cheap labor to work on farms owned by white settlers, having little to no rights of a democratic society and its privileges that the settlers enjoyed. The people of Puerto Rico met the same fate and have struggled for independence as a colonized state in the union, and their marginal status came into sharp focus in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s devastation, with Donald Trump’s refusal to mobilize federal resources to help Puerto Rico. (African Americans of New Orleans saw even worse neglect and predation after Katrina.)
The creation of Guantanamo Bay prison solely for so-called “enemy combatants” but really for innocent brown men belonging to the Muslim faith, abducted from their countries, only to be tortured and deprived of freedom in spite of the exculpatory evidence against their detention. Their subjugation even under a black “liberal” president, Obama, who promised to close down the prison, but instead gave Gitmo authorities a green light to force feed prisoners engaged in hunger strikes, terrorizing and dehumanizing them further with violent insertion and removal of feeding tubes through their noses. When the hunger strikers made headlines, Obama declared quite casually, “well, we don’t want anyone to die [of hunger].” Donald Trump built on Obama’s legacy by imposing a “Muslim ban” on people entering the US from certain Muslim majority countries.
This nation has continuously witnessed the hideous murder and execution in broad daylight and public spaces of black men and children at the hands of the police, or a white lynch mob of father and son that took the life of Ahmaud Arbery. There was also the grisly killing of James Byrd Jr. in 1998, when three white men in Texas chained his legs to the back of their pickup truck and dragged him for three miles, dismembering his body. The longstanding racist oppression has resulted in the African and Latino American communities, along with other marginalized populations, bearing the brunt of the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, inflicting disproportionate fatalities upon them. The centuries of social, political, economic, and racial exclusion of non-European Americans at such a systemic level reminds us of South Africa under Apartheid. Or it reminds us of the oppression of native people in European colonies around the world, having no rights, and purely at the mercy of settlers to work, whip, starve, or to kill them.
The country’s history and state of affairs provide us with a view through the thin veneer of constitutional American democracy as only for the majority white. The demonstrators and their rebellion touched off by the barbaric killing of George Floyd will not end until a true democracy for all replaces this oldest Anglo colony.
Author’s note: This short article has willfully remained silent on the decimation and plight of the indigenous people of the Americas, for a tragedy that remains unparalleled in human history deserves more than just a few lines and paragraphs; it deserves an entire library.