by
Les May
THE
proximate factor in
the murder of George
Floyd is that the
USA
has militarised police forces;
the notion of
‘policing by
consent’ is
absent. Trump does
not want any international legal oversight of the actions of the the
US military with regard to possible ‘war
crimes’; should
we be surprised that strong
legal oversight of US
police officers is resisted?
As
of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of
whom were
black. In 2018, there
were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to
1,004. For comparison
the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black
31, hispanic,
23, white
13, other
4.
These
figures speak for themselves. By
comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per
year in
England
and Wales
in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in
a population of about 60,000,000, that is about
0.05
per million.
Faced
with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times
higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving
lives, black,
brown
and
white,
by demilitarising
US police forces, would be
central to any
widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it
isn’t.
Instead
of
attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police
training and making officers accountable every time they use a
firearm, the emphasis is on ‘racism’,
something for which there is no objective measure and having all the
explanatory power of
asking ‘how long
is a piece of string?’
It’s a popular badge
to display
because it allows the
wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling
out’ racists. If
by chance the murder of
George Floyd causes anyone
to remember
their humanity and
dare to say they think
all
lives matter, you can call that racist
too!
And
if you have any time left over from combating racism you can always
spend it ‘dismantling
cisgender privilege and uplifting
Black trans folk’ or
‘disrupting
the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure’
or
you could ‘dismantle
patriarchal practice’
or
even ‘foster
a queer‐affirming network’.
You
will find the quotes by scrolling down the page at:
But
if all this is too much for you then why not buy the tee-shirt for a
mere $25* and get back to denouncing someone on Twitter?
Things
are not much better in the UK. Check out the website at
https://www.blacklivesmatter.uk/
and you will find the disclaimer, ‘We are not affiliated
with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black
Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be
affiliated with BLM USA.’
In
the UK the response to the murder of George Floyd has been to
facilitate the rise of groups of ‘activists’
who
think that symbolic gestures like tearing down statues actually
achieves something which will improve the lives of real people, and
the energising of self
promoting academics.
The
media are for now superficially supportive, but this is all too
reminiscent of the #MeToo
movement. Dr David
Starkey has
unwittingly managed to contribute a couple of ways of keeping BLM in
the news, but eventually the media will move on to another story.
Unfortunately it won’t
be the one about inequality in the UK and the US. Getting a few
black faces in the boardroom won’t solve that.
*$25
would pay for one sixth of an operation to correct cleft palate,
or all of an operation to correct ingrowing eyelashes plus 40 doses
of antibiotic to treat an eye infection of children and adults in
Africa.
https://smiletrain.org.uk/sightsavers
uksmile train
https://www.sightsavers.org/
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTE:
AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTE:
In
the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We
are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the
political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who
are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’
If
you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund
which appears to be the
group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a
commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy,
patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm
black people’
and ‘we lift
up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities,
including but not limited to working class queer, trans,
undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+
people.’
You’ll
also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors.
At the risk of being
tedious I will mention
that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in
Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of
ridicule and social isolation, or pay
for nearly 75,000
ingrowing eye lash
operations or
nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and
prevent this many black people going blind.
Clearly
all those donors have different priorities to mine.
*******************
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1 comment:
In the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’
If you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund which appears to be the group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people’ and ‘we lift up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities, including but not limited to working class queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+ people.’
You’ll also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors. At the risk of being tedious I will mention that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation, or pay for nearly 75,000 ingrowing eye lash operations or nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and prevent this many black people going blind.
Clearly all those donors have different priorities to mine.
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