The reality is that the fate of all
working class and middle class African Americans is no better than before:
there is no proof of any advancement in mentalities and institutions of a less
racist society. Although racism knows no rational frontiers, it does prevail –
at its utmost violence – in the lower fringes of society, in which people have no social power, nor political representation. This is what recent events have
shown.
This statement can actually extend
to the whole of the working class, regardless of race. Indeed some say that the
black community “makes” these events racial because they’re “just looking for a
reason to riot and loot” – and fair enough, statistics are not very revealing, the factors and variables taken into account varying from
one source to the other.
But to go further, we can also well say that stop-and-search practices, more
targeting minorities, inevitably show them more in records, since they are
therefore numerically higher from the start in the variables – a long-known
problem making statistics to be treated with great care.
Here is a sad truth that statistics could
not explain more intelligently, as told to me by Nick, a young ex-NY policeman
who preferred not to divulge his last name: “I decided to leave my job with the
NYPD because the department’s command was going in a direction that I really
didn't agree with. The New York Police Department has 40,000 officers… it's
huge… and I was just a number in their system.”
“I felt like a lot of what they are
doing violates the rights of the people and I no longer felt like I was
"protecting and serving" the people of New York. I felt like a storm
trooper from Star Wars: we were doing nothing but abusing the citizens. I was
told to stop people at random and pat them down for weapons or drugs, especially
minorities, even if they did nothing wrong.”
“I spoke to my Captain and my
superiors about how it didn't feel right and I was just told "do your job,
or someone else will". It felt terrible leaving, but my integrity as a
person is more important than any job I will ever do. I used to feel like I was
doing something good and noble… America is changing, and it isn't good.”
We should not have had to go as far
as having murders to see that the American police forces have a problem of
dealing with the population. It is by looking away for too long that such
tragic events have been able to occur in our democracy – and by ignoring
History. For racism is a social construct, and as all social inventions and
practices, it can change through time. Remember that black lynchings were
happening not so long ago.
There was also a time where the
Greeks of America were prey to racism and harassment for their “Oriental”
features and ways of living: back in the 1910s, at the time of the large wave
of immigration from Southeastern Europe on the one hand, and from the rural
slave American states on the other, Greeks and blacks had more in common than
one would think today.
Greeks
back in the days were not considered white, but swarthy if not black. The
frustration borne out of the bigotry they endured led some Greek-Americans to
found the AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association,
which could be considered the equivalent of the black NAACP, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The AHEPA, created in 1922,
fought stereotypes and abuse of Greek immigrants and Americans of Hellenic
descent, and helped them assimilate into the American society.
Greeks were notably politically and economically harassed by the Ku Klux Klan which, as is too easily forgotten
today, was extensively powerful throughout Northern America at that time. In
1990, the AHEPA and the NAACP even worked hand in hand in Georgia for a law
banning the wearing of masks by KKK members, in order “to protect the
public from intimidation and violence and to aid law enforcement officials in
apprehending criminals”.
Greeks
have now become white and, although having their little cultural eccentricities
(for those who like to exhibit them), they are accepted and considered as well-assimilated
in the American society. Race, as a concept, is social, and race evolves. Race
as applied to African Americans has also evolved through time: there is no more
slavery; laws for more proportionality have been enforced in schools and universities,
and there is no more institutionalized segregation as in the time of the Jim
Crow laws.
This
does not mean that we are in a “post-racial” society though – otherwise such reforms
would be useless. Blacks (and women) are still under-paid, and black children
do not have the same opportunities from the beginning of their life as white
children, starting from school districts. Of course the same divide is true for
working classes and higher classes regardless of race – a concept not addressed
enough in our country, where indeed sometimes we tend to blame racism too much and
not enough social disparities.
In any case, merely saying that our
society is “post-racial” does not make it so – the very fact that we feel the
need to say it proves that it is still a concern. This is an illusion reinforced
by the fact that the American president is black, but does that mean that the
African American community is better off than before? Politics remain politics,
Congress remains Congress, interests remain interests, and a President remains
a President, with all its power and constraints at the same time. Whoever our
President, whatever his color, America remains a deeply divided society, both
socially and racially. Let us just hope that no more murders will have to occur
before we address these issues wisely.
