As long as the US celebrates ‘the lost cause’ of the Southern States during the Civil War, 150 years ago, it will still be a racist country
The violent protests that have engulfed the US in the aftermath of the brutal murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by a White Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, were marked by some extraordinary visuals. Of course, some malevolent forces trickled into the protests, driving both the looters and criminals. It is extremely likely that the sight of looting and the viral videos on social media of high-end stores being vandalised and looted will be beneficial for US President Donald Trump in the presidential election scheduled later this year. However, Trump’s penchant for making wildly inappropriate comments, coupled with Democratic contender Joe Biden maintaining a relatively studious silence, may still change the outcome.
But sitting in India, without much knowledge about contemporary American history, it is difficult to know about institutionalised racism and how poor race relations remain over there. The fact is that most Indians, indeed most global tourists and business persons who travel to the US, usually visit cosmopolitan cities, the likes of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. For a casual observer, seeing the tremendous success of some African-Americans — from former US President Barack Obama to the many, many such people who dominate professional sports such as basketball star LeBron James and the many actors like Morgan Freeman with an omnipotent voice, Beyonce’s dulcet tones and the scientific genius of Neil deGrasse Tyson — one would wonder why Black men and women do not receive acceptance across the nation. Popular culture would make an outsider believe so.
One could rightly wonder why is it that at a time when America is sending astronauts into space in nearly a decade, other parts of the nation are burning? Comparisons between happenings in the late 1960s, when the American Apollo mission was in full swing and when racial riots broke during the civil rights movement, with that of the “crew dragon” mission and race riots happening today are telling. The only thing missing today is high-profile political assassinations; Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr and Democratic presidential contender Robert F Kennedy were shot dead during that time frame. We should be grateful that things have not become so bad this time around.
Now, I must clarify, I have spent a lot of time in the US (indeed the last country visited by me before the virus shut down everything) as a traveller, visiting various parts of that great and vast nation, both along the coasts and even the interiors, including the “Deep South.” I haven’t studied there. However, I have a strange and fascinating interest in “American” football. Being a bit of a war nerd, I spent a lot of time reading about some of the battles of the US Civil War that took place between the Northern “Union” States and the Southern “Confederate” States. This was a fascinating war, the first mechanised one of sorts that gave portends to the tactics used in the killing fields of World War-I. However, this is my perspective. It might seem infantile to some but this is what I believe sitting half a world away.
In India, what we learn about the US Civil War — with a few sentences being accorded to it in our school textbooks — is that it was fought between the progressive “North”, which was against slavery, and the pro-slavery “Southern” States. The “North” found a great political leader in Abraham Lincoln, who signed the emancipation declaration, thus freeing all the slaves. After much bloodshed, the “North” finally won and all was well with the world. This is the end. Go through the history textbooks, I’m sure this is a better explanation than many others.
Wars, in general, are too complex, not just because of the fighting but on account of the causes, too. Occasionally, there can be an overall societal acceptance that one side had a completely horrible cause; World War-II and Nazi Germany being examples. Now, modern Germany has eviscerated Nazi symbols. One can be charged for celebrating Nazi leaders or selling Nazi memorabilia in Germany today. In general, the German political leadership has accepted that their predecessors between 1930 and 1945 did something terrible even before the Jewish Holocaust. It is not as if the Germans have forgotten about the war. Indeed, some of their Generals, such as Erwin Rommel, famously known as the “Desert Fox,” are fondly remembered, partially because of their opposition to Adolf Hitler.
It would, therefore, seem logical to believe that the side that precipitated, fought and lost a war over the cause of keeping human beings enslaved should have suffered the same fate as Nazi Germany. Of course, one can make arguments like “degrees of evil” and all that but as an outside observer, it is extremely puzzling that instead of that, the US celebrates the rebels. It celebrates the Confederate Flag in popular culture. Television shows and subsequent movies like The Dukes of Hazzard had a Dodge Charger, the “General Lee”, with the Confederate Flag painted on its roof. Even a cursory car fan would have heard of this car.
Talking about “General Lee”, Robert Edward Lee, the man who led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, is remembered in America as a hero even though he defended a lost cause. Lee was a great tactician but he did lead his army to a devastating loss at Gettysburg. The man who beat him, General Ulysses S Grant, one who became the US President soon after and one who is as brilliant a tactician and leader as Lee, is not remembered fondly. Thankfully this is changing today.
A lot of this has happened due to a number of reasons. Many Americans, particularly from the former Confederate States, remember the war as one about “States’ Rights” in a federal structure. And not as a war that had as its underlying cause the defence of basic human dignity, the fact that no man should be owned by anyone else. Something that one hopes that no matter what your current political affiliation today, you can agree with.
Although when one delves into it at a deeper level, he/she would realise the complexities and contradictions that happened on both sides many years ago. In today’s increasing simplistic age where nuanced arguments have withered away, it is easier to remember this as a war where the “rights” of States were trampled upon rather than remembering it as a war of conscience because it makes some Americans feel nicer about their forefathers.
There is no doubt that the US has made some great strides but one can easily question whether a person of colour could become the top elected official in any other Western nation. Yes, to this day, there are doubts whether Obama could have won if he did not have a White mother and was raised by his White mid-western maternal grandparents but he was a two-term President. Even then, the killings of Black Americans by White police officers or even White civilians, who saw the Blacks as a threat, continued with little or no judicial prosecution. Take the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black school student, who was shot dead by a White man, George Zimmerman, in “self defence”, an argument that was even accepted by the court.
The sad fact is that there are countless other such incidents — the famous Rodney King case in Los Angeles where nothing happened to the police officers who brutally beat the eponymous Black man.
Sure, the police in America is a highly militarised and trigger-happy force. It does have the right to defend itself in violent situations. That said, there are a disproportionate number of Black men, who are killed by the police in America. It is also a fact that within the police forces, there’s an inadequate representation of Black people. Institutionalised and accepted racism in the police forces, for the reasons outlined above, too, exists.
However, do not think that the irony of someone from India talking about police “brutality” is lost on this writer. This is a country where State-sanctioned “encounter killing” is celebrated by many with evidence that such “encounters” have been biased against minority communities for decades. This is a country where extra-judicial murder of rape-murder suspects in Hyderabad just a few months ago was celebrated by all and sundry on social media. This is also a country, where much like the US, the poor and those from the minority community are often jailed for years by a slow, inefficient and corrupt criminal justice system. The need for police and criminal justice reforms have been felt for years. One should not use the shield of what is happening in the US to pretend that India is any better.
As long as the US continues to celebrate the Civil War as one where States fought for their “rights” rather than uphold an abhorrent system, things will really not change. Having spent time in both Georgia and South Carolina, it is painfully clear to an outside observer, a man of colour like myself, that things are unlikely to change anytime soon. No matter how much people protest, casual discrimination is ingrained in the minds of many, just like it is back home.
(The writer is Managing Editor, The Pioneer)
