The State of Human Rights and Race Relations in America
by Global Black History, July 14, 2016.
Opinion- Democracy has to be the wishes of the majority but have protection of the minority. The United States of America which prides itself as the beacon of light the hope of the world, the model for which all democracies must aspire, has been rattled by the surge of protests regarding police violence and brutality towards African Americans. The reality is that if the videos of the treatment of black people in America had been in Zimbabwe, Russia or China the US government would have been the first to condemn them as human rights abuses. America stands up for minorities around the world but strike back with the barrel of an assault weapon when its own citizens demand justice.
Most people who live outside the United States are shocked that America has a substantial race problem. This is largely because the narrative of the justice for all that has been propagated by American main stream media like CNN, Fox or NBC has been the only voice for a long time. The advent of social media where everyone with a camera is a journalist and YouTube where anyone can broadcast events in real time without filters of main stream media has unraveled some deep seated issues in the country.
America has never been a place where there was justice for all but a place of constant contradiction, a true reflection of the human condition. When the America’s founding fathers drew up the constitution and said “All men are created equal” their actions reflected that they were referring to all men of European decent and certainly not all men created by God. They did not regard the Native American or Africans as men hence they did not see any contradiction in owning slaves, or carrying out biological warfare against the native tribes that owned the land as wrong or immoral.
In America today, the founding fathers are viewed as gods who are infallible. Even the Christians in America believe in the infallibility of the founding fathers. Given this scenario then the truth is not popular and anyone who points out that the systems of the original sin are alive and strong 270+ years later is viewed as an enemy of the state. Americans would rather speak the systematic racism under the carpet because it causes them to question their conscious and fix the broken system and question the infallibility of their gods. Questioning the founding fathers means to challenge the privileges that you have and many are not willing to do so.
In the past most American churches were on the wrong side of race relations. More recently, the American church has often been silent on the issue of race because it knows that this subject is very unpopular being that it is woven in the fabric of the foundation of this country. American churches are some of the most segregated institutions across the nation. There are many so called integrated churches with white pastors and few to no African Americans in leadership even when black people make up more than 40% of a congregation. There are 0.00001% churches that have black pastors and white congregants. The fact of the matter is churches are divided by race in a country where truth is whatever you feel or whatever you want it to be.
US police brutality against African Americans (New York Times & Washington Post):
- US police use excessive force 30% more times when dealing with African American people
- 30% of people killed by police between May 2013 & April 2015 were black. Blacks are only 12% of US population
- Black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men in last few years
- Black males between 15-19 are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than whites in same age range
- In 2016 Black men are 7 times more likely to be killed by police than white men
America has a human rights and race issue!
