Letter from AmericaL:with KENNETH MUFUKA
Last week, I would have surmised that US President Donald Trump has a very good chance of being re-elected in November 2020.
The murder of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, though not unusual, has turned out to be a game-changer. For reasons of space, I shall give details below, but avoid details.
Old fables no longer hold Floyd (46), was arrested for passing a fake $20 bill at a convenience market. Common sense would dictate that surely Floyd was not a master printer, and could not have originated the bill from his own sources.
Therefore, a more nuanced approach was required.
A store video shows Floyd walking from his car in handcuffs towards a police van. There is no sign of struggle. Then something happens, Floyd is laid face down on the tarmac, an evil policeman Derek Chauvin has his knee on his neck for eight minutes. George cries out: “I can’t breathe! Don’t kill me.”
The video is so gruesome, white Americans are in a state of denial. It can’t happen here.
The majority of Americans are agreed, beginning with President Trump, Attorney-General Bill Barr, New York governor Andrew Cuomo and all persons with a human heart, that an evil took place.
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There is nothing unusual in all this. In one of the famous Supreme Court cases, Judge Roger Taney, 1857, said: “It is too clear for argument,” that the Negro was never intended to be included in the declaration that all men are born equal. Just to make sure that he was understood, he added that: “The Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit.”
Alexander Keung, a policeman of Asian extraction, offers to turn Floyd on his side for better breathing. The evil Chauvin refuses. This is how Afros must be subdued. This is the picture that every black male child knows in his heart, and it is the picture, which white Americans find abhorrent and a reminder of an evil past of slave masters.
The game-changer comes about when the society’s structures, embedded in racism, recovered from the official shock of the image of Chauvin deliberately choking the life out of Floyd.
The ambulance first responder wrote that the brother was “irresponsive and showed signs of medical distress”.
The county coroner wrote in his report that there was no sign of asphyxiation as a cause for death. He added that some “underlying causes” were possible, which could have caused heart failure.
The record of the evil Chauvin is long and if I were to make an issue of it, there would be no end. Suffice to say that there was a case of shooting in 2006 and State Attorney Amy Klaubucher, who later ran for president, refused to prosecute. There were 16 complaints against him considered “meritorious enough” to warrant inquiries.
Oh, no, the systemic structures say: “We really don’t know what happened to cause Floyd’s death.”
Those old fables will no longer hold. The world saw Floyd being choked to death, and crying for help.
Hope for the future The new generation (called generation X here), black, white and Latino, will not stand for the old fables. The majority of the demonstrators were white. That is a game-changer.
Many years ago, in 1965, California educational publisher CD Heath surmised that: “If you allow us 50 years to school American kids, one day they will curse their parents for racism.”
That time has come. Dr Martin Luther King’s dream that one day, the children of former slaves and the children of former slave masters would sit on the table of brotherhood is here.
It warms the heart.
Floyd was born in Dallas, Texas. He was in Minnesota as a truck driver and sending money home to his six-year-old daughter Giana and his girlfriend Alexia Washington. He was trying to do right. The police say that 25 000 Dallasians came out for three days in protest.
In Houston, 50 000 are said to have come out in protest.
There is always hope of redemption in America.
Trump’s failure There is a time for everything, a time for peace and a time for war. Trump, a billionaire street kid from New York, who never ran for any office in his life, only knows how to fight.
While he was advised to seek for peace, he mixed his message with “war words”.
Among the protesters are some groups named by the Manhattan Institute as belonging to the provocative extreme left. These are Black Lives Matter, Latino High Road (translation should be Wezhira-immigrants from Latin America), Antifascist Organisation (Antifa) and Democracy Now.
These groups have received grants amounting to $500 million over the last 10 years from Ford Foundation and Soror’s Group.
Together, these groups are bussed into trouble spots in defence of black rights, and are ready to fight. They have been blamed for fires and destruction of property. In any case, even those who torched police cars in New York have been bailed out.
The New York Times, in an editorial five days ago, agrees with the idea, “No Justice, No Peace”.
Trump, who saw the destruction of property as his first concern, therefore, confirms the narrative that in the old white man’s world, defence of property is more important than the life of Floyd.
Trump’s pronouncements come out as crass at best and his opponents adopt his rhetoric in return.
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot on being told that she must call in the National Guard to defend property and possibly cause more deaths, said: “I have these words for Trump; Fu*k, You.”
Please readers forgive us the use of dirty words. I want to illustrate that Americans, even those who support him, squirm at the disrespect, which Trump has brought to the office of president.
Americans, who see themselves as role models, regard Trump’s time in office as a long nightmare.
Americans are the most generous people on earth, and every American child dreams of doing some good on earth. Trump destroys that image I must say, though, that his evangelical base has, in fact, solidified behind him. They see the organisations mentioned in the Manhattan Studies as godless and communistic.
The game-changer is whether they will be enough to carry him through the election.
Every time a tragedy involving the ill-treatment of a black occurs, white Americans tear their gowns, wear sack cloth in anguish. The historian laughs in his sleep to remind them that the past is the present.
