Columnists
Obama: Failing to balance Black and Blue lives
Obama’s America has become a nightmare for the blacks
The Government of the Bahamas has issued a travel advisory to its citizens wanting to travel to the United States. The Caribbean island nation’s population is 90% Black; and therefore, they duly have a concern about the lives of its citizens in the light of the racial cataclysm currently embroiling the US.
The latest fallout has come out of what is viewed to be unwarranted White Police brutality against African Americans. In the last few weeks, > two incidents typified this: the Police killing of Alton Stirling in Charleston, Louisiana; and Phillando Castile, in Milwaukee, Minnesota. Both murders brought outrage from the Black population in the US, who had a few weeks ago gone through a similar occurrence in the state of Baltimore.
In the case of Castile, the incident was filmed with her phone, by his girlfriend whom he had been out with. It showed clearly that this was an execution by the White Policeman, because suspected Castile was prostrate on the ground, and was in no position to have attacked the Policeman.(This marks a throwback to an incident in Cleveland, Ohio, when a White Policeman shot and killed a twelve year-old Black boy for pointing a toy pistol at him).
The reaction has been an outrage that has coalesced around peaceful marches organized by the activists of the “Black Lives Matter” movement in a score of cities around the country.
Such a protest demonstration took place in Dallas, Texas, which brought together a multi-racial crowd. Police, both White and Black (The Dallas Police Chief, David Brown, is an African American, were on hand to control the peaceful demonstration. Brown has since received death threats.)
Then, tragedy struck. A marksman started shooting into the crowd, picking out only White Police targets. At the end of it, five White Policemen were dead and seven others injured. The shooter, an African American, Micah Johnson, a former Army Reservist, who had served in Afghanistan, was also killed by Police detonating an explosive device to get him.
It has subsequently been revealed that Johnson had a gripe against White Policemen for killing African Americans – this was his way of expressing that outrage. It also came to light that he had been stocking an arsenal of weapons in his home. This is not strange in Texas, where the law allows people to carry arms, including assault weapons, even in public places.
Therein lies the dilemma about race relations and gun control in the US. On the one hand, it is uncontestable that there has been lopsided killing of Blacks by White Police law enforcement officers. In the last year alone, 1,134 African Americans have been killed by White Policemen. In the same period, a comparable 34 Policemen and women have been killed (The number of the recent fatalities is not added.). In echoing the Black Lives Matter movement, there is the formation of the “Blue Lives Matter”, a reference to the blue uniform of the Police.
On the other hand, the White establishment, characterized by the National Rifle Association (NRA), has so influenced the predominantly White Congress not to change the laws on gun ownership, invoking the constitutional Second Amendment that allows all people to arm themselves, even if not in self-defense.
Every time a murder happens of national proportion, President Barack Obama ineffectually goes on the airwaves, to express his concern about the carnage that unbridled possession of guns causes to the citizens of the country.
He does not overly put into account the problem of race relations, preferring to blame the whole issue of “sorrow, anger and confusion” on the failure of Congress to amend the laws in the manner of Police arrests and gun control.
On both issues, Congress, which is dominated by the opposition Republican Party, is unwilling to move. Obama says that America has moved away from the intensity of the C
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