Victimism is the worst enemy of Afro-American people
giovedì 30 aprile 2015 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, April 30, 2015It is a shame that the classical model through which we ascribe the anger of black American people to their marginalization does not work anymore. The clashes in Baltimore, which has been governed by a Democratic administration (composed mostly by black people) for 40 years, bring us back to the subliminal and implicit protagonist, president Barack Obama. Who is certainly brooding: “How is that possible, we made such steps forward that we ended up having me as a president, but the police is still killing black people while they destroy and loot the city?”.
The infuriated mother with her blonde-streaked hair slapping his son around to stop him from throwing stones and setting cars on fire was virtually Obama himself, the same generation born under the equality laws, the symbol of the miracle of American democracy. After a series of violent clashes between the police forces and black people in many cities, the US president, as he was commenting the death of Freddy Gray, the 25-year-old who died of severe spinal injuries after the police had taken him in custody, said: “These young people are criminals and thugs”.
It must be difficult for Obama to understand that those kids, instead of thinking “yes we can”, instead of seeing his presidency as an anchor for a positive future, keep on considering themselves as racial victims, with no other hope than smash a shop window to steal mobile phones and expensive shoes. However, Obama did not talk much about the reason why this is happening. He preferred to point out how the police officers “interact in ways that raise troubling questions”. And he is right: American police forces are sometimes aggressive and violent, and in fact their behavior is often subject of judicial investigations.
But the big issue here is about the young black people’s aspiration to be a Black Panther, no matter if they already obtained equality laws. Not to mention their victimism, so quick to turn into arson, vandalism, looting and stone throwing. A national disaster: Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore black mayor, was on the verge of tears in front of the ruins of a mall in the same neighborhood were Freddy Gray lived: “It took us so long to convince the owners to invest in this facility”, she said.
Actually, Baltimore was the sixth American city in 1960 and now it does not even manage to appear among the first 25. The crime rate, a scarce economic growth and the disaster of the educational system are creating a real social catastrophe, but racial hatred has nothing to do with that. It is rather a lost war: 72 percent of high-school students did not achieve pass marks in mathematics, 45 percent in literature, and 64 percent in sciences. They are young people, black for the most part, who spend their time hanging around with gangs that speak obscure slang, consider themselves outside the labor market and do not disdain criminal activities.
They feel the young black man who was killed as one of them because it is true: Afro-American people in the US are just 13 percent, the number of black young people killed is 90 per cent, but most of the times this happens in clashes between rival gangs of black kids. It is sad to say that, for every homicide committed by a white person, there are 7 to 10 homicides happening among black people. In this way, their profiling becomes a reason for alarm. Nevertheless, the skin color has nothing to do with it: 63 per cent of Baltimore’s citizens is black like 40 percent of local police officers. Generally, there is not a racial reason behind the behavior of the police forces, but fear and arrogance.
The fact is that, even with Obama as a president, these young people are unable to open the door of knowledge and hope. Victimism is their worst enemy. Fouad Adjami, the great Lebanese historian, wrote the same thing about the Arab World and added, during the Arab Springs, that they would become failure and violence if they could not manage to defeat it. The same could, and must, be said for the world of Afro-American people.