Opinion
The Rise of the “African American Police State”
Sensational American journalism, spared the public no detail no matter how horrible, and in 1899 the Springfield Weekly described a lynching by chronicling how,
“the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on – before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits – the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver – small pieces of bones went for 25 cents”.
Such graphic accounts were the norm in the South, and photos, were regularly taken of the lynched bodies on display and made into postcards that were sent all over the country.
Nowadays, the broader American public participates in modern day lynchings by sharing videos that go viral of police officers slaying black men, women and children. By opting not to censor the graphic content of police killing blacks, today’s videos in the media serve the same purpose as the detailed written accounts of yesteryear by adding to the psychological suffering of the African American. Such viral graphic accounts also desensitize the white community to such an extent that empowers white policemen to do more.
A hallmark of twentieth century fascist police states, such as Italy under Mussolini or Franco’s Spain, is the lack of police accountability for their crimes. In spite of extremely egregious circumstances surrounding all lynchings and many police killings, police are rarely held liable.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) recently issued a report on human rights abuses in the United States which roundly condemned the epidemic of police brutality. It stated: “The Committee is concerned about the still high number of fatal shootings by police which has a disparate impact on African Americans”.
In modern America, the African American police state assassinates the black victim twice. Once by way of lynching and again to assassinate the victim’s character so as to justify the public execution. All too often a black victim’s school record, employment status and social media presence are dragged by the media into the court of public opinion, as if any of it has any baring on whether an agent of the state has the right to lynch a black U.S. citizen.
Arbitrary arrest and mass incarceration have been quintessential elements of police states from East Germany to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile.
The United States right now incarcerates more African Americans as a percentage than South Africa did at the height of the racist apartheid period.
A Senate hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that the American prison population hovered around 25,000 throughout the 1900s, until the 1980′s when America suddenly experienced a massive increase in the inmate population to over a quarter million. The cause was Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” which intentionally, and disproportionately targeted blacks. The War on Drugs is now the African America police state’s main propaganda justification for police brutality and judicial discrimination against blacks.
