[News] The Body Count Rises in the U.S. War Against Black People

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/20/the-body-count-rises-in-the-u-s-war-against-black-people/ 



  The Body Count Rises in the U.S. War Against Black People

by Ajamu Baraka <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cuxere/> - June 20, 
2017
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Before we can even process the acquittal of the murders of Philado 
Castile 
<http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-castille-charleena-lyles-police-shooting-20170619-story.html>, 
we hear about another murder of a black person by the police occupation 
forces.  This time the victim, Charleena Lyles 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/her-name-was-charleena-lyles_us_5947c4f0e4b06bb7d27479c8>, 
is a black woman who was also five months pregnant.

Again, there is anger, confusion and calls for justice from the black 
community of Seattle, where the latest killing took place. Many might 
remember that it was in Seattle where two members of the local black 
community attempted to call out the racist and hypocritical liberal 
white community during a visit by Bernie Sanders 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-black-lives-matter_us_55c68f14e4b0923c12bd197e>. 
The black activists were subsequently shouted down by a majority of 
Bernie’s supporters.  One of the issues that the activists wanted to 
raise was the repressive, heavy-handed tactics of the Seattle Police 
Department.

Some have argued that this rash of killings of black people caught on 
video or reported by dozens of witnesses is nothing new, that the images 
of police chocking, shooting and beating poor black and working-class 
people is now more visible because of technological innovations that 
make it easier to capture these images. They are partially right.

As an internal colony in what some refer to as a prison house of nations 
that characterizes the U.S. nation state, black communities are 
separated into enclaves of economic exploitation and social degradation 
by visible and often invisible social and economic processes. The police 
have played the role not of protectors of the unrealized human rights of 
black people but as occupation forces. In those occupied zones of 
repression, everyone knows that the police operate from a different 
script than the ones presented in the cop shows that permeate popular 
entertainment culture in the U.S. In those shows, the police are 
presented as heroic forces battling the
forces of evil, which sometimes causes them to see the law and the 
rights of individuals as impediments. For many viewers, brutality and 
other practices is forgiven and even supported because the police are 
supposedly dealing with the evil irrational forces that lurk in the 
bowels of the barrios and ghettos in the imagination of the public.

It was perfectly plausible for far too many white people in the U.S. 
that a wounded Mike Brown, already shot and running away from Darwin 
Wilson the cop who would eventually murdered Michael, would then turn 
around and run back at Wilson, who claim he had no other choice but to 
engulf Michael in a hail of bullets killing this “demon” as Wilson 
described him. And unfortunately, many whites will find a way to 
understand how Charleena, who called the police herself to report a 
burglary, would then find herself dead at the hands of the police she 
called.

But the psychopathology of white supremacy is not the focus here. We 
have commented on that issue on numerous occasions. The concern is with 
some black people who have not grasped the new conditions that we find 
ourselves in—that black people don’t understand that there will never be 
justice as defined by the cessation of these kinds of killings.  Why? 
Because incarceration, police killings, beatings, charging our children 
as adults and locking them away for decades, all of these are inherent 
in the logic of repression that has always characterized the 
relationship between the U.S. racist settler-state and black people.

In other words, if Black people really want this to stop we have to come 
to the difficult conclusion, for some, that the settler-colonial, 
capitalist, white supremacist state and society is the enemy of black 
people and most oppressed people in the world. Difficult for many 
because it means that Black people can no longer deny the fact that we 
are not equal members of this society, that we are seen as the enemy and 
that our lives, concerns, perspectives, history and desires for the 
future are of no concern to the rulers of this state and for vast 
numbers of ordinary whites.

That is why Charleena Lyles joins Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, 
John Crawford and Philando Castile, just a few of the names of our 
people victimized in the prime of their lives by the protectors of white 
power wearing police uniforms.

She will not be the last.

The logic of neoliberal capitalism has transformed our communities and 
peoples into a sector of the U.S. population that is no longer needed 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/until-we-win-black-labor-and-liberation-in-the-disposable-era/>. 
This new reality buttressed by white supremacist ideology that is unable 
to see the equal value of non-European (white) life has created a 
precarious situation for black people, more precarious, than any other 
period in U.S. history.

African (Black) people are a peaceful people and believe in justice. 
  But there can be no peace without justice. For as long as our people 
are under attack, as long as our fundamental collective human rights are 
not recognized, as long as we don’t have the ability to determine our 
own collective fate, we will resist, we will fight, and we will create 
the conditions to make sure that the war being waged against us will not 
continue to be a one- sided conflict.

The essence of the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework is that the 
oppressed have a right to right to resist, the right to 
self-determination, and the right to use whatever means necessary to 
protect and realize their fundamental rights.

Charleena, we will say your name and the names of all who have fallen as 
we deliver the final death-blow against this organized barbarism known 
as the U.S.

/*Ajamu Baraka* is a human rights activist, organizer and geo-political 
analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy 
Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist 
for the Black Agenda Report. He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons: 
An Anthology of American Violence 
<http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/>” (CounterPunch 
Books, 2014). He can be reached at www.AjamuBaraka.com 
<http://www.ajamubaraka.com/>/

-- 
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