No, Mr. President!
Aiding and Abetting the Slow Genocide of Black People Is a Crime Against Humanity

November 4, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Obama, at a major speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago, said he rejects “any narrative that seeks to divide police and communities that they serve.” He added, “I reject a storyline that says when it comes to public safety there’s an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’”

But what Obama rejects as a “narrative,” a “storyline,” is in fact the reality.

Let’s look at the police killing of Walter Scott in North Carolina, the chokehold of Eric Garner in New York, the assassination of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, WA, the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, all caught on video, and the list goes on and on, as any Internet search of “police kill unarmed person” will demonstrate.

Obama did not, in a nearly hour-long address, mention even one murder among the spate of police murders of unarmed people. He completely whitewashed the growing list of those brutalized and killed by the police. Obama instead projected a false “narrative” that it is police whose lives are at risk, rather than those of Black and Latino people in the neighborhoods they occupy and terrorize.

The reality is that the Stolen Lives of those killed by the police concentrate the relations between the police and especially the Black and Latino “communities that they serve,” between “us” and “them.”

Later, Obama chummily talked about his experiences of being stopped by the police and, while under-playing the life-threatening consequences this was potentially fraught with, went on to grudgingly admit “you've got to say that there’s some racial bias in the system.”

This was but a mere whisper in the face of a genocidal tsunami, and his humor a cruel insult to Sandra Bland, Sam DuBose, and so many others whose lives were stolen in similar encounters. Rather than Obama’s race and experiences affording, as some think, special privilege as a source of truths about the genocidal proportions of police terror and brutality, Obama marshals these experiences to confuse, disorient and demobilize people who should be rising up to STOP police terror.

Obama’s claim that the slow genocide of Black people is just a “narrative” or a “storyline” is covering up, aiding and abetting a crime against humanity.

 

 

 

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