We can and must be better - lessons from America
On Saturday evening I was watching a video recording of a speaker at a rally in America, following the horrific killing of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis.
The young African-American man was shaking violently as he was trying to contain his pain and anger.
“I’m not ok today!” he said. “I want to give the black community the right to say: ‘I’m not ok today’. I woke up this morning with ‘WTF’. I… AM… TIRED!”
He had to pause for a moment to catch his breathe.
“I have yet to watch the video of Ahmaud Arbery – it is too much. I have not watched the video of George Floyd. It is too much.”
At this point his voice broke in anguish.
“Black people have to go to work the next day and pretend they are all right. Black women, in particular, cannot say anything or else they will be labelled as angry black women. So not only do people get to piss on the community, the community can’t even say they are pissed on.”
Referring to Amy Cooper, the New Yorker who threatened to call the police on Christian Cooper in Central Park, he said: “That woman was so comfortable in her privilege even though she was recorded she was certain that nothing would happen to her. I’m not ok today. We are trying to deal with tens of thousands of people dying from COVID, disproportionally so much more in the black and brown communities. There is no bigger fish to fry than the institutionalized racism and bigotry that is pervasive in every institution across this city, state, and country. Period. So for the NYPD to stand there and say they don’t have discriminatory institutions or practices that they deal with, that nothing about them has to do with discrimination or racism, to say, ‘We have bigger fish to fry’… HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU???”
Overwhelmed by emotion, he could not speak anymore and walked away from the microphone.
I was in tears, knowing how this must reverberate with every black person around the world.
At that moment my phone pinged. Someone had sent me a video clip of a white South African who was having a rant to the camera about the cigarette ban. He was making fun of African accents and how Africans share “ZIMBA (!) chips – even a small Zimba - 5 guys all hands to a packet”.
Underneath it, the sender texted: “(This video) summarises our politics very well - ANC has lost its path again”.
Over the last few weeks, these racist videos and memes seem to have multiplied at the speed of light – to the point where the ANC started naming the people responsible for depicting Dlamini-Zuma as a chimpanzee.
On Saturday night, as I watched the South African video in disbelief, the words of the speaker in America that I had watched a few seconds earlier came back to me…