Revisiting the Charleston Massacre and Race Relations in America

KEMBUJE — The rate of atrocities against African Americans and level of perpetrators have reached proportions that constitute crimes against humanity and therefore should urgently attract the attention of the Security Council of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

In August 2014 following the murder of Mike Brown by a European American police officer Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, I wrote a two-part article entitled, ‘The Imbecility of America’. The basic argument of these articles is that the State and society of the United States of America is founded and nurtured by and with injustice. Here is part three of the series to further buttress this point.

USA: Shame onto Itself

The dominant perpetrator of injustice in the US is the European-American culture and population against mainly the African population. The very laws, policies, institutions and resources of the US overwhelmingly and unfairly favour the European population of the US at the almost total neglect of the rights and needs of the African section of the population. Consequently, there prevails a glaring inequality between the European and African populations in all aspects of human life.

Since independence the State and society of the US have failed to address the issue of these two populations. On the one hand, the European section lives in denial and refusal to accept and practice the concept and spirit of unity that the country needs. On the other hand, the African population has failed to take the necessary bold steps to holistically confront the injustice in a concerted and sustained manner.

The African population has always remained divided on the way forward as can be noticed since the days of Marcus Garvey and WEB Du Bois and then later between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. While Marcus and Malcolm noticed that the only solution is separation since justice and equality could not be achieved, Du Bois and King on the other hand could see the possibility of integration with justice and equality.

In the final analysis, the US has come 239 years by 4 July 2015 and yet one can witness the incessant assaults against the African community by European citizens and their officers and officials of the US Government. The situation remains unabated as the Government of the US itself remains incapable and unwilling to address the matter.

Dishonesty and Illogicality

I have listened to many leaders, analysts, journalists and common citizens of the US, both African and European including the son of the Hon. Martin Luther King Jr., claiming that there is need for better race relations and reconciliation. More dishonest European citizens brush aside these incidents by either blaming the African community itself or by exonerating the European perpetrators as lone wolf, mentally deranged or merely hateful.

Everyone seems to ignore or deny that the fundamental reason for all these crimes against the African community is merely rooted in the unjust construction of this political entity called the United States of America. Because of this faulty creation, the African population has become dispensable at the whims and caprices of the European population. The numbers of murders and rate of atrocity against the African community of the US by their fellow European citizens now constitute crimes against humanity that require the full attention of the United Nations Security Council and the ICC for urgent intervention.

It is utterly dishonest and painfully ignorant for anyone to suggest that there is need for better understanding among these populations. As I argued in the previous two articles, how could we even faintly suggest such imbecility when these two communities have lived together for the past 500 years as slaves and masters, and then as supposed equal citizens of the so-called most advanced, civilized and free society in the modern world! If they could not still understand each other after such a very long time, then it further lends credence to the fact that at the core of the misunderstanding is sheer racism and injustice.

To better understand this imbecility; just imagine the facts unfolding after the shooting in the Emanuel AME Church by this racist pig Dylan Roof. He may have been the guy who pulled the trigger, but the ideas and messages he acquired and released are common ideas in South Carolina and in many other parts of the US. The driver for his actions is the same driver behind the police brutality being witnessed and the same discrimination in the other institutions of America against Africans. They all hold that the lives and rights of Africans are dispensable, and that Europeans own the United States of America exclusively. This is the fundamental believe of the average European-American citizen. Otherwise, how do you explain the presence of the Confederate Flag in the headquarters of South Carolina? The history of this flag and what it represents is clear to anyone.

Thus to position this flag in Columbia, SC is an insult and a blatant protection of the racist and unjust system in that State and the US as a whole. Why didn’t the State government remove it? Why didn’t the US Congress vote to remove it?

This flag was in fact brought to that location to be hoisted eternally following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, sex or others. In protest of this law, the racist state and officials of South Carolina lifted up this abominable flag for decades.

How do you really explain this when this Confederacy was in fact racist rebels who wanted to maintain the US as a racist state fed by inequality and injustice? Even when they were defeated in the US Civil War, how could you therefore still maintain the flag of shame?

Imagine the people of Biafra in Nigeria deciding to hoist the Biafran Flag in Enugu or Benin City after they attempted to secede from Nigeria and were defeated. Otherwise imagine someone seeking to hoist the Apartheid flag on top of Pretoria. This is how shameful and insulting the hoisting of the Confederate Flag over Columbia is! It makes no sense.

But to add insult to injury, one will also find in front of the government house in Columbia, the statue of Strum Thurmond, probably the most racist public official in the US. Here is a guy who stood against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to records, he stood against a bill in the Senate for the longest time ever: twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes. But now this guy’s ugly statue stands tall in honour in front of the government house. It must be smashed into pieces, asap.

The Context

It is important to understand South Carolina in order to put this incident in its proper context. South Carolina is the first republic in America after adopting the South Carolina constitution on 26 March 1776, marking a significant attempt to secede from British colonialism and the subsequent formation of the United States. Consequently on 5 February 1778, the state became the first state to sign the Articles of Confederation, the initial founding documents of the United States when they seceded from British rule since the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776.

But then almost one hundred years later, South Carolina also become the first state to declare its secession from the Union when it realized in 1860 that Abraham Lincoln would become the next US president, known for his so-called opposition to slavery. Consequently the state waged war against the Union leading to the start of the US Civil War in 1861. Though defeated in the war, South Carolina never accepted equality of the races and maintained racist laws and institutions in place to perpetuate this injustice. In fact it is the last state to adopt adult suffrage in the elections of state officials which was then done by the state legislature.

Restructure the Legal, Institutional and Political Structure of the US

Thus if anyone is interested in addressing the race relations of the US, it will not be accomplished successfully via prayer vigils, highly hypocrital political statements, photo ops, concerts, open rhetoric, and marches. The only solution of the race disharmony in the US is the total review and restructuring of the legal, institutional and political structure of the United States. The current structure since 1776 is faulty and this structure shall only produce many more atrocities against the minority African population in favour of the majority European population.

The incident in Charleston must be recognised in its significance because this is the place where the US Civil War erupted. It is also the place where one of the oldest African American empowerment churches exists, the very place where this heinous massacre occurred.

What is symbolic here is that this incident in Charleston should be the beginning of the new bloodless civil war in which the very foundations of the US are exposed and put into question for the purpose of creating a New United States. The current US is faulty and must be demolished. This is in the interest of both communities and the world. A more just, civilized and equal US serves the world better.

I wish African communities and just-loving European communities would take advantage of this incident to finally demand a review and reconstruction of the United States for good.