December 11, 2014

The global scourge of police killing Blacks

"The issue of Black people being victims of systemic brutality, oppression and murder at the hands of the police is not limited to the United States. It is a global problem. If we are ever going to stop this barbaric use of authority to trample the civil and human rights of Black people we must open our eyes to what it happening on an international scale."

Pambazuku News   features Dr. Lisa Tomlinson, cultural critic and activist, professor in humanities and community research on the international reality of police brutality.
Posted on Dec. 11, 2014 at http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/93572

"Police violence and racial profiling of young Black men in the United States have been highly publicised for decades. Urban rebellions in the United States are closely tied to or triggered by police violence. The high profiled and widely disseminated beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991 and the sexualised and physical violence against Abner Lumina in 1997 by a New York City police officer. Both cases of police brutality received expansive media coverage and have remained etched into the memories of many North Americans. And now with the prolific use of social media and access to global news channels the problem has been highlighted further.

"Given America’s history with chattel slavery and systemic racism within its police force and judicial system it comes as no surprise. For centuries Black males in the United States have been deemed a threat to the civilised White society and the state, with their physical strength being feared and exploited for free labour and breeding purposes to facilitate the development of industrial capitalism, and the exaggerated fears of the racist, patriarchal and anti-working class system meant they had to be contained at all costs to protect society and to maintain social order.

"Undeniably, the constructed image of the dangerous buck has been imprinted on the imagination of Americans through Hollywood films, newspapers and the portrayal of Black men in sports. The controversial 1912 film The Birth of a Nation further fuelled the depiction of Black men as sexual aggressors, predators and dangers to society in general and White women in particular.

"Arguably, law enforcement systems have relied on these portrayals to justify the over-surveillance and, in some cases, murder of unarmed Black men not only in the US but also in Canada and even in the United Kingdom. Yet in our national and international conversations about police violence and racial profiling we only seem focus on the United States, leaving many ignorant to some of the most vicious forms of police aggression targeted against Black men and women in other parts of the world." ...

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