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December 11, 2014<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/11/racism-and-war-in-america-and-beyond/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/11/racism-and-war-in-america-and-beyond/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>‘I Can’t Breath’</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Racism and War in America and Beyond</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by RAMZY BAROUD</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>America’s ruling elites are blatant in their intentions of
maintaining “white privilege” at home and economic dominance
by military means abroad.</p>
<p>Their “democracy” in both of these regions is a ruse, and it
is yet to deliver any degree of social justice and equality to
the millions of disadvantaged Americans which are comprised
mostly of black and Latino communities. The unequal
distribution of wealth in the United States is simply
staggering. In fact, 75.4% of all wealth in the US is owned by
the richest 10 percent, according to the <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/us-is-now-the-most-unequa_b_4408647.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.huffingtonpost.com']);">authoritative
Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook</a> (2013).</p>
<p>This influx of wealth comes at the heels of a major economic
recession, of which rich bankers were mostly to blame, but
were never held accountable. Instead, millions of lower-middle
class and poor Americans became even poorer. And since
America’s political and economic classes largely overlap and
feed upon the privileges of one another, millions of American
lost their homes and savings, while <a
href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?_r=0"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com']);">the
rich got richer</a>.</p>
<p>Good branding aside, the “land of opportunity” has always
been overrated, as has American democracy, which has been
rigged for generations to produce more or less similar
results. The media – with overt and covert racial supremacy
displayed by the likes of Fox News – is there to ensure that <a
href="http://www.chomsky.info/talks/19890315.htm"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.chomsky.info']);">consent
is manufactured</a> in such a clever way, so that ordinary
Americans constantly feel trapped between a ruling class of
two strands, Republicans and Democrats, all vying for votes
with the ultimate goal of maintaining their privilege.</p>
<p>Considering <a
href="http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/presidential_approval.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu']);">low
presidential ratings</a>, and the <a
href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/175676/congress-approval-sits-two-months-elections.aspx"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.gallup.com']);">ever
decreasing credibility of Congress</a>, most Americans are
not impressed by the ongoing political charade. However, as
most Americans are held in bondage to debt, constantly
striving to pay bills, incessantly working to remain
financially afloat, many feel disempowered – thus politically
disorganized.</p>
<p>After the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001, the
government grew even bolder in manufacturing, perhaps
coercing, political consent by playing on real or imagined
fears. Under George W. Bush the “global war on terrorism”
became a tool in which Americans found themselves losing
fundamental rights, herded, shoes in hand, in line to strip
naked at airport scanning rooms. All in the name of “national
security”.</p>
<p>The “see something say something” mentality, empowered by <a
href="http://rense.com/general94/patr.htm"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://rense.com']);">unconstitutional</a>
and divisive <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/patriot-act-violate-privacy"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.theguardian.com']);">PATRIOT
act laws</a>, has turned communities against one another.
Whatever tolerance that existed prior to <span
data-term="goog_1584485519">Sep 11</span> has vanished
thanks to the constant stream of hateful media propaganda,
phony experts on Islam, or brown people in general.</p>
<p>Thus, it was no surprise that a month after the attacks, an
ABC poll indicated that 47 percent of Americans had a
favorable view of Islam. 13 years after the deadly events, and
despite the killing and maiming of millions of Muslims so that
Bush could tap into greater oil wealth in the name of fighting
terrorism, <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/11/13-years-after-9-11-anti-muslim-bigotry-is-worse-than-ever.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.thedailybeast.com']);">only
27 percent of Americans carry the same view today</a>. And
why should anyone be surprised when around-the-clock news
networks continue to dish out the ever selective news of
Islamic terrorism from Nigeria’s Boko Haram to the Middle
East’s ISIS, and so on.</p>
<p>But this matter hardly concerns the media and the ruling
class alone. The American sense of “manifest destiny”,
accompanied by the “white man’s burden”, never truly faded
into mere historical references. They are real notions that
continue to exist and define “white privilege” at home, and
military crusades outside.</p>
<p>Indeed, “democracy”, coupled by the upholding of “human
rights” have been injected time and again to justify all sorts
of undemocratic measures and <a
href="http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://academic.evergreen.edu']);">numerous
wars and military interventions</a>, which have mostly
victimized – let’s face it – brown nations across the globe.</p>
<p>These are not random thoughts compelled by the ongoing
turmoil in the Middle East -resulting from American
interventionism and its complete failure to take
responsibility for its own actions. Yes, they are partly due
to that, but they are also on account of the Grand Jury
verdict not to indict a New York police officer who choked to
death an economically disadvantaged black man named <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/10-ways-racism-killed-michael-brown-and-eric-garner"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.alternet.org']);">Eric
Garner</a>. This only days succeeding the refusal to indict
the officer who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, and after 12-year-old <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/video-shows-cleveland-officer-shot-tamir-rice-2-seconds-after-pulling-up-next-to-him.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">Tamir
Rice</a> faced the same fate by a police officer in
Cleveland, Ohio. Both also happened to be of African descent.</p>
<p>And in case you are wondering, yes, there is a clear link
between racism at home and war abroad.</p>
<p>US media insists on reducing the highly involved issue to
simple terminology and sound bites, barely scratching the
surface of a deep and long existing racial divide. Fox News is
finally taking some intermittent breaks from demonizing
Muslims, to demonizing blacks, as if they have not been
victims of <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">systematic
and historic discrimination</a> that extends centuries into
the past.</p>
<p>Some liberals and progressives – who enjoy basking in the
glory of appearing liberal and progressive – are quick to
protest the moral outrage of their country’s historically
rigged social and economic system, of which many of them
benefited, at the expense of others. They are outraged as if
the news of Garner’s and Brown’s fate are anomalies in an
otherwise harmonious system.</p>
<p>Yet, the system has always been <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/25/michael-brown-witness_n_6216366.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.huffingtonpost.com']);">rigged</a>,
and none of it was ever a secret. It was designed that way so
that the privileged remain wealthy and protected by laws that
were enshrined for that specific purpose: <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/story/152284/4_ways_government_policy_favors_the_rich_and_keeps_the_rest_of_us_poor"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.alternet.org']);">protecting
wealth</a>.</p>
<p>As for police violence targeting black communities, a report
in 2012 indicated that a <a
href="http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/1-black-man-killed-every-28-hours-police-or-vigilantes-america-perpetually-war-its"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.alternet.org']);">black
person is killed every 28 hours</a> in the United States.
Rarely do such killings call for mobilization or any kind of
collective soul searching on the part of the white majority.</p>
<p>While the killing of three Americans by ISIS was enough to
take the nation to another useless war that has already killed
thousands, the routine killing of unarmed black men and
children fails to yield even proper trials, needless to say
indictments. The moral inconsistency is not difficult to spot.</p>
<p>One recalls Bush’s insistence that American soldiers, no
matter how hideous their crimes were aboard, were never to
face a <a
href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/08/the-us-should-not-join-the-international-criminal-court"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.heritage.org']);">trial
before an international criminal court</a>.</p>
<p>The message was simple: those who serve power will not be
disowned. This remains the case whether the victim is an
unarmed black American child, an Iraqi man or an Afghani
woman.</p>
<p>The Washington elite refuse to take responsibility. The onus,
instead, is always on the victim to do some soul searching to
improve their chances for living better lives; blacks simply
need to behave themselves, and Iraqis need to appreciate the
perks bestowed on them by “American values” and democracy. The
US, however, is free to carry out the very violent policies
that yield terrorism in the first place.</p>
<p>But how does one quit being the color of their own skin?
Black people didn’t choose to be slaves; didn’t devise the Jim
Crow laws; didn’t construct the insurmountable system of
social and economic inequality and apartheid that has been set
in place for too many generations to count; they didn’t design
the unfair tax system that keeps the poor poor forever; or the
prison system that disproportionately incarcerates black men.</p>
<p>All of this has been the work of a well-devised system that
has access to wealth and a monopoly on power that is protected
by willing goons who don’t hesitate to choke an ill black man
to death because he was “caught” selling cigarettes to feed
his now fatherless 6 children.</p>
<p>“I cannot breath,” were Eric Garner’s last words.</p>
<p>He died, but many millions from New York to Missouri, to
Kabul and elsewhere are still gasping for air.</p>
<p><em><strong>Ramzy Baroud</strong> is an
internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an
author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest
book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story
(Pluto Press, London).</em></p>
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