Myeni another victim of US police who see black people as criminals
Killing of black men and women continues centuries-old racial brutality
There is a beautiful picture of Lindani Myeni and his family doing the rounds on social media. He is sitting next to his wife, the sea and a mountain rising behind them, their two children nestled on their knees.
Myeni is smiling, looking at peace with himself, his family and the world. There are other pictures on social media. The rugby player in a tuxedo, his handsome face lighting up. Friends from KwaZulu-Natal have been posting memories and pictures of him too: the gentle man, the fervent Christian, the sportsman. In one series of pictures his wife says: “He was gentle and loving and the best father and husband I could’ve asked for.”
Last Thursday police in Honolulu, the capital of the US state of Hawaii, were called to a home where a burglary was allegedly taking place. Myeni was sitting in his car outside the house. We know now a fight took place between the three police officers on the scene and Myeni, who had been pointed out by the house owner as the person who had earlier allegedly walked into the house, sat down and taken his shoes off. Three police officers against one man. They did not identify themselves. They shone a torch in his eyes. They tasered him, shot him and killed him.
Myeni did not have a criminal record. He was not armed. He had no financial problems. He posted videos about God on social media. It is infuriating to have to say these things to make a human being human. No human being, unarmed, should be shot and killed by armed police.
But Myeni, by all accounts a gentle soul, was a black man in the US. He could have been wearing a priest’s collar and gowns and he still would have been shot.
Last week a black man, in full US army uniform, was stopped and assaulted by the police. Every day there is another story of a black man being killed or brutalised by police in the US.
The New York Times wrote on Saturday that since testimony in the trial of Derek Chauvin (the policeman charged with murdering George Floyd a year ago) began on March 29, at least 64 people have died at the hands of lawenforcement officers in the country. Black and Latino people represent more than half of the dead. The average was more than three killings a day.
I wrote in this column about Botham Jean, a singer and Christian who was sitting in his home enjoying ice cream when he was shot and killed by a police officer. The Harvard graduate and birdwatcher was set upon by the police, who were called by a white woman who would not leash her dog. And so on.
The truth is, the possibility of death is clear and present if you are black.
The words of Ron Johnson, a retired black police captain in the US, are instructive: “What I see sometimes is in these encounters with people of colour, there is a different aggression ... In some cases it’s about humanity. We don’t see them in the same human way that we see ourselves.”
Last week video footage showed 13-year-old Adam Toledo being killed by a Chicago police officer chasing the teen down an alley. He shouts: “Show me your f **** ing hands”. The boy turns, his arms raised, with nothing in his hands. The officer shot him dead.
These police officers are not bad apples. They are trained to see black people as criminals, as a threat. This is what the police have been doing for centuries, from slavery to the US’s Jim Crow laws to the murders of civil rights leaders in the 1960s and the killing of black men and women today. This is the American system. By the end of this week other black men – and women – will have been added to this horrific, heartbreaking death count.
They are all victims of a system that refuses to look itself in the mirror and admit it is racist and has nurtured violent racists in its lawenforcement agencies. Myeni was not killed by bullets. He was killed by centuries-long institutional racism.