Most powerful nation has bloody, ugly past

DOES anyone know Derek Chauvin? I bet you don’t. He’s the white police officer from Minneapolis caught dramatically on camera, kneeling on the neck of a black man, squeezing the life out of him. But everyone knows George Floyd. He’s become a martyr for black America.

America portrays itself to the world as a peace loving, deeply religious and virtuous nation. But it’s a big American lie. It’s a degenerate nation with a bloody, ugly past.

It massacred the buffalo, decimated the “Red Indians” and enslaved thousands of Africans to work on its plantations. As the most powerful nation on Earth, it flexes its military muscle around the globe to promote and safeguard American interests.

Americans love guns and violence and continue with their Wild West tradition of blazing guns and mass killings, so often glamourised in their violent movies.

Down the years there have been many incidents of racism and police brutality on black Americans. They went largely unnoticed. But not this time. The callous Minneapolis killing opened the eyes of the world. It ignited black passion and sparked violent demonstrations across the nation and around the globe.

Angry protesters with pent-up energy after the long, frustrating lockdown went on the rampage, looting, burning and attacking law enforcement officers. Any statue symbolising the colonial era got beheaded and came tumbling down.

Significantly, George Floyd’s murder brought black and white protesters together as they joined hands in the fight against racism and police brutality. Even the American band Lady Antebellum changed its slave-linked name in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement

But the irony is that Derek Chauvin, who plunged America into its worst racial crisis, will not be ever remembered. It is his victim, George Floyd, who will go down in history as a martyr for the black people.

His anguished cry, “I can’t breathe”, will haunt America for a long time.

THYAGARAJ MARKANDAN | Kloof