By Markus Feldenkirchen and Holger Stark
Source: Der Spiegel
Police killings of black youth in Ferguson and Cleveland have
outraged many in the US. The tragic events show how deep the societal
divide remains between blacks and whites. Many have given up hope that
President Obama can change anything.
On the evening after the city burned, a man in a black leather jacket
and white clerical collar is standing on the streets of Ferguson,
Missouri. He shakes his head and looks as though he is fighting back
tears. Once again, young black men and women are standing across from
older, slightly pudgy white policemen in front of the local station.
They look like armies, like they are at war.
"It won't ever stop," says the man, a black pastor named Alvin Herring.
He has been accompanying the protests since the beginning of August,
ever since white police officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed,
18-year-old black man named Michael Brown. "A deep, festering wound has
opened up in the heart of American culture and society," Herring says.
The systematic racism that these young people are confronted with
each day has made them deeply angry, Henning continues. "It is
impossible for them to feel loved, or even respected. They no longer
believe they are needed or that their lives are worth anything."
At exactly this moment, eight police officers rush over to a black
man and pull him out of a group, accusing him of throwing an empty
plastic bottle. They jump on top of him, press his cheek to the asphalt
and handcuff him with zip ties before dragging him into the station.
Ever since the protests began all those months ago, Pastor Alvin
Herring has hoped that Barack Obama, the country's first black
president, would visit Ferguson. Henning says Obama could have sent a
powerful message that he understood the frustrations of young black
people by making the trip.
High Hopes Dashed
On this evening, one which would see this town north of St. Louis
sink into violence yet again, Herring misses Obama particularly acutely.
"The president is much too careful, much too hesitant," he says. "The
president should be here in Ferguson tonight. He should demonstrate more
commitment."
Herring is merely putting into words what many African Americans
think about their president -- and not just since the predominantly
white grand jury that decided against prosecuting the policeman who shot
Michael Brown. And not just since the jury's decision propelled
thousands of black people to take to the streets of 170 US cities in
protest.
The black population of America had high hopes for "their" president.
They had the feeling, when they cast their ballots in 2008 and 2012,
that something momentous was taking place. Never before had so many
blacks voted as in those two elections. When one of ours ends up in the
White House, they seemed to hope, then things will finally improve for
us as well.
In March 2008, when Barack Obama, then a candidate for president,
gave his big speech on racism, he sounded like the one who could unite
the country. But in November of this year, Obama is -- contrary to his
intentions -- the president of a country that is more divided than ever
before. And one of the deepest divisions runs between blacks and whites.
That is the real tragedy of America's first African-American president.
When Obama delivered a statement last Monday evening at the White House
about the grand jury decision, he seemed more helpless than at almost
any other time during his presidency. Even as he called on blacks in
Ferguson to remain calm and peaceful, the first shops were being looted
and set on fire. His comments seemed strangely uninspired and
apprehensive -- as though he had already succumbed to resignation.
Many of the causes of the day-to-day discrimination experienced by
blacks, of course, are far outside of Obama's control. Federalism in
America means that he has little influence over the behavior of local
police or over the judiciaries in individual states. In such areas,
Obama can only resort to appeals -- something that many blacks believe
he has done too little of. From the perspective of the White House,
however, such speeches are often counterproductive.
Less Money, Less Education, Less Influence
"Ferguson marks the end of the Obama era," says Cornel West,
professor emeritus at Princeton University and a leading African
American intellectual. It is "a very sad ending," West says. "We began
with immense hopes and we are ending with deep disappointment." Obama,
he says, did nothing to fix a justice system that denies any form of
fairness to young people with black or brown skin. He adds that the
president shares some of the blame for the "race and class warfare" that
is being waged against black people.
The shots fired in Ferguson have become a danger for societal peace
in a country that once celebrated itself for being a cultural melting
pot -- a mixture which whites in America decreasingly see themselves as
being a part of. Instead, the US is a divided land with a primarily
white elite and an African-American population that tends to have less
money, less education and less influence. In many areas, blacks are also
now being overtaken by the growing Hispanic population.
To be sure, the US has plenty of black pop stars, black sports icons
and, since 2009, even a black president. Nevertheless, most people with
dark skin are far away from enjoying true equality. Fifty years after
the widespread reforms pushed through by President Lyndon B. Johnson,
which established formal equality for blacks, the social gap remains
glaring.
Institutional Racism
Making matters worse is the discrimination practiced by state
institutions such as law enforcement. The chances that a young black man
will be shot dead by the police, for example, is 21 times greater than
it is for young white males. The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown is
far from abnormal. Just 10 days ago, a 12-year-old boy was shot and
killed by a police officer in Cleveland because he was playing with a
toy pistol at a playground.
The country-wide protests of the African-American minority
demonstrate just how deep the distrust between blacks and whites remains
despite the 51 years that have passed since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I
Have a Dream" speech. Many white police officers see young black men
primarily as a danger to public safety that must be stopped, with a
firearm if necessary. In the eyes of many blacks, by contrast, white
police officers like Darren Wilson are nothing more than racist
murderers.
When the grand jury last Monday decided not to press charges against
the 28-year-old Wilson, many African-Americans saw it as proof that they
could not expect justice from the state and its judiciary. The case was
led by a white public prosecutor who has a reputation for defending
police at all costs. Instead of being professionally cross-examined,
Wilson was allowed to spend four hours telling his version of the story.
If the goal was to definitively destroy the last vestiges of faith
blacks may have had in the justice system, the grand jury in the Brown
case did excellent work.
On the evening after the grand jury decision was announced, more than
a dozen shops in Ferguson were set on fire, with over 1,000 blacks
engaging in street battles with the police. The scenes were repeated on
subsequent evenings. Last Tuesday, South Florrissant Road was the
dividing line, symbolic of a line -- sometimes clearly visible, other
times hidden -- that runs through all of America.
On the one side of the street, both in front of and behind a fence
surrounding the police station, are police and National Guard troops,
almost all of them white.
They are outfitted with riot shields, batons
and all manner of firearms, looking not unlike an army preparing to
defend Ferguson from the Taliban. The governor of Missouri has ordered
2,100 National Guard troops to St. Louis for the evening.
On the other side of South Florrissant Road are the young blacks of
Ferguson. They hold signs up reading "Black Lives Matter" and "No
Justice, No Peace." Few of them are over 30 years of age.
Their expressions reveal hate and the word "fuck" is everywhere, in
combination with words such as police, system, judiciary, government and
power. In August, such faces looked different: distraught but also full
of hope that something good might come out of Michael Brown's death.
There was hope that change might be on the way.
'If We Don't Destroy ... They Won't Pay Attention'
One of the demonstrators on this Tuesday evening is wearing a scarf
pulled up over his nose with his cap pulled down low. He is stomping on
the asphalt and yelling, "They order us around and kill us like we were
dogs!" The 25-year-old asks to be quoted as "Mike Monster," saying he
wants to remain anonymous because he has decided this evening to turn
his back on the system of rules and laws that he no longer identifies
with. In August, he says, he demonstrated peacefully. But now he is
ready for violence. "If we don't tear anything down, if we don't destroy
anything, if we don't set fire to anything, they won't even pay
attention," he yells. "We need a revolution!"
"You can't stop the revolution," the crowd around him replies.
A quote from Thomas Jefferson is scratched into the asphalt in front
of the South Florrissant police station: "When injustice becomes law,
resistance becomes duty." It is a slogan that many in Ferguson have
taken to heart.
Marley's Bar & Grill, the only restaurant in the area that has
remained open despite the protests, is just 500 meters away from the
police station, but it is a totally different world. All 15 people
sitting at the counter are white. Three of the televisions inside are
showing ice hockey, while just one is tuned to CNN. Suddenly, "Breaking
News" begins flashing on the screen: "Police car attacked in Ferguson."
Voices become raised at the counter. "They are crazy. They need to
finally learn how to behave," one woman shrieks. "Like animals," her
partner adds.
In the history of America, violence has occasionally paved the way
for political improvements for the country's black population. When the
escaped slave Shadrach Minkins was captured in Boston in 1851 under the
Fugitive Slave Act, for example, slavery opponents stormed the
courthouse, assaulted the court marshals and freed Minkins. The incident
marked the beginning of a shift in attitudes toward slavery.
Yet peaceful movements, and the courts, have also played a role. Rosa
Parks' refusal to move to the back of a public bus on Dec. 1, 1955 --
which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transport
was unconstitutional -- is just one example. But it was the civil
rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. that achieved perhaps the
greatest victory for racial equality in the form of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, using peaceful protests and civil disobedience. Even so, there
was a threat of violence in the background, in the form of Malcolm X
and his followers.
Little Change under Obama
At the beginning of his term, Barack Obama likely never imagined that
a new wave of violence would take place during his presidency. But it
is not an accident. After all, he himself raised hopes that progress
would be made. Yet after six years in office, little has changed for
blacks in the US.
Obama held the speech that raised the hopes of black Americans on
March 18, 2008 as a candidate in Philadelphia. It was a reaction to
comments made by his Chicago pastor and friend Jeremiah Wright, who had
accused the US government of crimes against blacks. "God damn America
... for killing innocent people," he intoned from the pulpit in a sermon
that threatened to derail Obama's candidacy.
"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he
spoke about racism in our society," Obama said in his speech. "It's that
he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made;
as if this country … is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."
Obama was referring to a time when blacks were forced to serve whites
as slaves; a time when they weren't even second-class citizens, instead
being treated as commodities to be raised and sold at market. But he
also was referring to the decades leading up to the 1960s when blacks
were not allowed to use the same park benches as whites and were forced
to sit at the back of the bus.
In that speech, Obama promised to create "a more perfect union," in
reference to the preamble of the US Constitution. He sought to finally
fulfill the promise made 50 years earlier by fellow Democrat Lyndon B.
Johnson. In remarks at the signing of the Civil Rights Bill on July 2,
1964, Johnson said he hoped to "eliminate the last vestiges of injustice
in our beloved country" and to "close the springs of racial poison."
Many observers believe that Obama's speech was a decisive factor in his
becoming the first black president in American history half a year
later. It is still widely considered to be one of his best.
But the final push to realize Johnson's dream has still not taken
place. The situation today gives the impression that African-Americans
are adequately represented "without giving them the possibility to
really take advantage" of that representation, says Kareem Crayton, a
law professor at the University of North Carolina. Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva, sociology professor at Duke University, agrees. "Having a
black president doesn't mean much in our day-to-day lives."
Part 2:
King's 'Island of Poverty' Still Exists Today
ix years after Obama's race speech, more than a quarter of blacks in
American live below the poverty line. Among whites, that figure is 12.8
percent. According to the Pew Research Center, the median annual income
of a white household was about $27,000 higher than that of a black
household in 2011, with the difference having grown over the course of
the last several decades. The black "island of poverty in the midst of a
vast ocean of material prosperity," which Martin Luther King complained
about 50 years ago, still exists in 2014. Every third African-American
child born between 1985 and 2000 grew up in a neighborhood marked by
extreme poverty.
"Today, racial segregation can be seen in social mobility," argues
Richard Reeves from the Washington think tank Brookings Institution.
Last year, the US Education Department released a study that analyzed
data from 97,000 schools across the country. According to its results,
black students were suspended and expelled at three times the rate of
their white peers. Every fourth school with a high proportion of blacks
and Latinos did not offer advanced courses in mathematics.
"It's the age of Obama, and yet civil rights have gone backwards. What went wrong? asked the
New Republic on
its cover in August. The issue, which appeared after Michael Brown's
death in Ferguson, spoke of a "new racism." Indeed, the kinds of deadly
events that took place in Ferguson and Cleveland have now convinced many
blacks that it wasn't Obama who was right back in the spring of 2008.
Rather, it was his angry pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
On the Saturday before last, 12-year-old Tamir Rice wandered into
Cudell Park at 3:12 p.m. The park is in a section of western Cleveland
that is poor and primarily black. Paint flakes off the homes in the
area, empty lots are overgrown and shops are secured with heavy
padlocks. Tamir was black, and he was carrying a toy pistol. The
combination was akin to a death sentence.
Tamir lived across the street in a grim brick building, his mother,
the single parent of four children, unable to afford a better apartment.
In the park, a bored Tamir wandered back and forth, throwing snow. He
was carrying the plastic pistol in his right hand when a passerby saw
him and called 911.
'Is He Black or Is He White?'
"There's a guy here with a pistol … and he's like pointing it at
everybody," the caller says. He's "probably a juvenile," the caller
continues, adding that the pistol is "probably fake," a suspicion the
caller later repeats. The officer taking the call wants to know what the
person with the pistol looks like, asking "Is he black or white." She
repeats the question three times.
The dispatcher alerted Timothy Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46,
who were in a patrol car in the area, notifying them of a black male
with a firearm. The officers were not told of the possibility that the
firearm was a toy.
At 3:30 p.m., the police car flew across the grass at high speed
toward where the boy was playing. Tamir comes toward the car as it
screeches to a halt, as though he is curious. The surveillance video of
the shooting shows that he had stuffed the pistol under his jacket.
Loehmann jumps out of the passenger door and, according to the two
officers, yelled "hands up!" three times. It isn't clear from the
surveillance video of a nearby youth center how, exactly, Tamir
responded. The police say he didn't put his hands up, grabbing instead
toward his belt.
One shot hit Tamir in the breast and he collapsed. Between the
arrival of the patrol car and the firing of the deadly shots, only
seconds had elapsed.
The police officers could have carefully approached the boy, or they
could have asked social workers at the youth club, who knew Tamir, to
speak with him. But instead, they simply opened fire. Tamir Rice, who
dreamed of one day becoming a professional basketball player, died in
the hospital.
The American problem has many different facets, but it is accurate to
say that it is mostly white men who shoot young African-Americans in
the service of the state. The actor Morgan Freeman recently told German
newsmagazine
Stern that the color of the law is white.
Almost half of all murder victims and about 40 percent of the US
prison population are black, even though the African-American share of
the population is just 12.6 percent. And in many states, those with a
criminal record forfeit many rights, such as access to welfare, for
example. In 10 states, those who have been convicted of a criminal
offense lose their right to vote for life.
'You Kill Our Children'
Since that deadly Saturday in Cudell Park, Cleveland Police Chief
Calvin Williams has tried several times to explain why the officers
opened fire on Tamir Rice. Williams, who is black himself, is standing
in the gymnasium of the Cudell Park recreation center, a radio dangling
from his lapel and a firearm affixed to his belt. Williams has come to
answer questions -- and to try and calm local nerves. Three hundred
people have crammed into the hall to hear him speak.
Williams says that the city's officers are trained to stop anyone
carrying a weapon. Just shooting someone in the arm or the leg to stop
them may happen in the movies, he argues, but not in real life. In a
society with as many firearms as citizens, it seems the police feel like
they're in a constant state of war. Police deal every day with people
potentially carrying firearms, and that's how they approach every call.
Calista Cottingham, 37, is also at the Cudell Park Recreation Center,
and she wants to share her story. She has six children, including four
sons. One day, she says, she drove one of her sons to football practice.
Cottingham says she took him to the playing field and left the other
children in a parked car, an act that is illegal in some US states. She
was then confronted by two police officers who ordered her to put her
hands on the steering wheel and not move. When Cottingham told the
officers she hadn't done anything wrong -- given that her oldest son had
been sitting in the car -- she claims the police threatened her with a
Taser. When she got out of the car, she says one of the policeman hit
her so hard she had to be taken to the hospital.
Robin Andrews has also shown up at the recreation center this
evening. She happens to be Tamir's aunt. "You guys are trained not to
trust us," she says, with her comments directed at the police chief.
"You kill our children and your behavior makes us sick." Andrews later
explains that her own son wants to go on to study medicine, but each day
she fears for his life. "The man who murdered my nephew needs to go to
prison," Andrews says. "No justice, no peace." The sentence has become
the slogan of these protests, one that can be heard in this recreation
center in Cleveland, in Ferguson and on the streets of Washington, DC
and New York.
Barack Obama has heard the rallying cry, which protestors have also
been chanting during the past week in front of the White House. But the
president is in a Catch 22 situation. On the one side he knows
African-Americans have great expectations for him. On the other, he's
prone to attacks every time he speaks out on the issue of race-linked
incidents.
White Conservatives View Obama as Threat
Since Obama became president, opinions have become sharply divided
within the American population when it comes to events with potentially
racist backgrounds. More than two-thirds of Democrats disapproved of the
acquittal of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who shot
Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, in Florida in February 2012. But
only 20 percent of people identifying as Republicans had a problem with
the verdict. And whereas more than half of Democrats surveyed said they
thought the anti-slavery film "12 Years a Slave" was worthy of an Oscar,
only 15 percent of Republicans thought it deserving of the award.
During Obama's time in office, Republicans have increasingly become a
party of the white elite and rural regions. The party's most radical
supporters viewed Obama's speeches and proposed legislation as nothing
more than a black man's attempt to exact revenge against the country's
white majority. Even if they don't always say so, Obama's opponents have
always felt that his actions represent a threat to white people,
whether he launched a federal investment programs aimed at economic
stimulus or proposed making the healthcare system a little fairer.
Some white conservatives actually still believe today that they are
discriminated against due to the color of their skin because
African-Americans, on average, profit more from Obama's healthcare
reforms. The extreme resistance to "Obamacare" wasn't motivated by
economic concerns alone.
Some of his detractors even believe that Obama is seeking not only to
redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, but also from whites to
blacks. That helps to explain some of the vehemence behind their
attacks.
Obama actually has sought to help the bottom third of American
society with his social and economic reforms. "The plain fact is there
are some Americans who, in the aggregate, are consistently doing worse
in our society," he said in February as he announced a $200 million
program to improve education for African-American and Hispanic boys.
"And by almost every measure, the group that is facing some of the most
severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young
men of color," he said.
Backlash against Obama
His fight to establish a higher minimum wage is likewise one of the
projects that the Republicans have fought with the same kind of fervor
evident in their battle against healthcare reform. Obama signed an
executive order to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 for
people working on new federal service contracts, but he failed to get an
increase in the national minimum wage through the Republicans in
Congress, who view themselves as the defenders of the white middle and
upper classes.
At the same time, it is also true that Obama has never really
presented himself as an advocate of African-Americans during his time in
office. He learned during a very early stage of his presidency the kind
of fury he might unleash if he commented on conflicts with a racial
element.
When the president said police "acted stupidly" when they arrested
black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in 2009, he faced fierce
criticism from his white opponents. Police had accused the professor of
trying to break into his own home because his key had gotten stuck in
the lock. Obama felt compelled in the end to convene a reconciliatory
"beer summit" at the White House to which he invited both Gates and the
police officers who arrested him.
Equal opportunity was the subject of Obama's State of the Union address
in January and, in it, he cited two examples. The first was Misty
DeMars, a white woman from a Chicago suburb who counts among the
long-term unemployed. The second was Estiven Rodriguez, a 17-year-old
student from New York who immigrated to the US as a nine-year-old from
the Dominican Republican without speaking a word of English.
DeMars was meant to represent the difficulty women face in advancing
their careers. And Rodriguez served as an example of how immigrants can
succeed when given the chance.
He didn't mention a single black person in his speech.
