BLACK ACTIVISTS ARE SHAKING BIGOTRY AT ITS FOUNDATION
George Floyd’s brutal execution summons us to seek and build lasting solutions against the racist toxins embedded in the foundations of this nation. Systemic American racism is a domestic and foreign affliction. Policing at home and abroad is an armored house, not easily shaken or infiltrated. The Derek Chauvin verdicts begin to condition us for change to continue the eradication of racism wherever it exists. Black activists have asked us to connect the dots that unite us to shake bigotry at its foundations.
Like most Arab Americans, I cannot help but connect racism to our foreign policy. Is America slavishly addicted to violence based on race, whether domestic or foreign? Is there a direct correlation between the increased militarization of our police and America’s policing of our endless wars? Americans, many of them Black and Brown, tragically fight our wars against other Brown and Black people. Many Brown, Black and White middle class, and poor Americans have faced declines in education, housing, life expectancy and nutrition in the last 40 years, often forced into the military because of slim options. Upon their return, they are physically, mentally and economically broken and some end up on the streets. If they are people of color, especially Black, the police disproportionately target them. Are Black and Brown people, domestic and foreign, part of an American readiness experiment to be in several conflicts at once — two abroad and one at home? Who decides and who profits? In all fairness, why not conduct these experiments in White and Western countries, too? Are peace treaties reserved for White and Western nations only?
Arab Americans suffer most under the weight of erasure from liberal institutions such as museums, higher education and the press. Arab Americans are not usually shot down by police, but we are incarcerated for ill-defined acts of terror, especially Palestinian Americans, subjected to long jail sentences in secret courts for creating charitable foundations that send medical supplies to war torn regions. Arab American College students speak out and are punished and we are absent from press coverage. When we look at our Arab countries of origins, the knee to neck chokehold is routinely used. When George Floyd died, Arab Americans gasped with recognition. We can’t help but connect the dots regarding conflict in our American urban centers and those abroad. These domestic and foreign realms of perpetual racism are national and international battlefields whose realities are built on abuse propped up by lies.
We initially “aid” our worst enemies with weapons to fund brutal anti-democratic agendas. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Panama’s Manuel Noriega were on the CIA payroll. Hamas was funded by Israel for a decade with American tax dollars. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were convenient friends to weaponize and strengthen, because they fought the Soviet Union. The list includes Latin America,
Pacific nations and others. More questions: Would America prop up anti-Democratic forces in Europe and then bomb them so quickly if they did not comply? Are Brown, Black and Muslim countries less deserving of democracy, and of justice? Would we ever invite Brown and Black nations into coalition killing fests against White and Western countries? We do this routinely with our “Western allies.”
America’s addiction to war overseas arguably began with nuclear weapon tests on Pacific Islanders in the Bikini Islands.
The Japanese suffered nuclear devastation in the urban cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima — deliberately untouched during the war for “before and after” clinical comparison. Then we threw Japanese Americans into concentration camps for five years. Why didn’t we put German or Italian Americans in concentration camps? Were we trying to impress the Soviets? Why not drop bombs on the Soviet Union then? Asian Americans continue to suffer today. Could this history of racism and shameful lies have contributed? Wars in the Middle East have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
The symbolically potent Chauvin trial showed Black Americans in a light that countered stereotypes such as Black anger. Like other human beings, Black American witnesses showed complex human emotions connected painfully to generationally held fears most Americans cannot fathom. Is it a turning point? Will the mirror America looks into always reflect how policing at home and abroad are connected? Let’s hope not. With eyes wide open, let’s gather our undivided and collective courage to end racist cycles of violence at home and abroad.
When George Floyd died, Arab Americans gasped with recognition. We can’t help but connect the dots regarding conflict in our American urban centers and those abroad.