June 09, 2020

Extrajudicial Killings and Racism, a Global Pandemic

June 09, 2020/ Sayuni Dharmasena

ISRAEL - Currently, the streets of many American cities are filled with crowds of people armed with signs, protesting the violent death of George Floyd, a black man, who was killed by white, former police officer Derek Chauvin. But the increased public speculation on systemic racism and discrimination is not unique to America; instead, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement is present in nations worldwide, including Israel—the “Holy Land,” known for its claimed acceptance of all people regardless of race or faith.

Ethiopian Protesters Confront Israeli Police Over Death of Unarmed Teenager, Photo Flickr

On June 30, 2019, in the Israeli town of Haifa, 18-year-old Solomon Teka decided to spend some time at a neighborhood park. While there, he got into a small fight with a few other teenagers. A nearby off-duty police officer attempted to break up the fight after identifying himself. According to the officer, this caused the men to turn violent against him, and fearing for his life, and he aimed a warning shot. The bullet hit Solomon Teka, who later died in medical care.

Teka was an Ethiopian Jew, a dark-skinned ethnic minority in a majority white country. The Ethiopian Jews have long endured systemic racism in Israel. Many of them are either migrants or descendants of refugees from the nearby countries of Ethiopia and Sudan, flocking to the Holy Land in search of religious freedom. However, their dreams are soon shattered as they continue to suffer from ingrained racism. Ethiopian Jews have the highest poverty rate in Israel and continue to be searched, tried, and arrested at a much higher frequency than any other community. They are often treated as second class citizens. Solomon Teka’s death was the last straw—thousands of protesters took to the streets, calling for a stop to the excessive use of police force against Ethiopian Jews.

The protests blocked many major Israeli roads, halting commuting traffic from nearby cities. In Tel Aviv, protesters shut down the Ayalon Highway. While the Tel Aviv protests continued to be mostly peaceful, other cities were plagued with violence, as people burned tires, vandalized buildings, and fought with the police.

Both sides of the violent riots suffered greatly—over a hundred protesters were arrested, and a similar number of police officers were injured. The police turned to tear gas and increased force in retaliation to rioters who threw stones and gas bombs at them. Through all of this, the Ethiopian Jews’ message remained clear: they were tired of the institutionalized racism that was ingrained in both the country of Israel and its police forces. These past protests and those of today’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations are eerily similar—presenting the possibility that action against racism has been futile so far.

At one point in the protests, things seemed to take a turn for the better. In an attempt to answer the Ethiopian Jews’ pleas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated a ministerial committee on the integration of Israeli citizens of Ethiopian origin. However, this action was increasingly hard to implement, as the majority of the targeted citizens were low-income citizens and did not have access to the Prime Minister’s committee.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan agreed that action against the country’s deep-rooted racism was necessary. Rivlin issued the following statement:

“This is not a civil war. It is a shared struggle of brothers and sisters for their shared home and their shared future. I ask all of us to act responsibly and with moderation. My home is your home. Let us continue to stand together like a wall against violence, any form of violence, and to fight together for our shared home.”

However, both figures shared the sentiment that violent protests would be met with the requisite police force and whatever means necessary to quell the riots.

Authorities initially arrested the suspected police officer on charges of possible manslaughter. But they soon released him into house arrest, causing protests to rise once more. Charges against him were reduced to involuntary manslaughter, which is used in the case that the accused acts dangerously with clear violent intent, although not with the purpose of killing. The maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter is 12 years, but Israeli courts usually only issue one or two years.

A few days after the charge, legal counsel began entertaining the idea of reducing it to negligent homicide, which has even fewer consequences. The officer was not also fired from the force, despite the call to do so by Tebeka, an organization that defends the rights of Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

In a statement taken by the L.A. Times, Teka’s family lawyer asked for “the truth to be uncovered, and justice served.” He also mentioned that the “police and the State Prosecutor’s Office, in their public statements, show a tendency to attribute reduced responsibility to a police officer who killed our beloved in his prime,” alluding to the racism permeating Israel’s legal forces.

While the Teka family continues to fight for an appeal following the officer’s reduced charges, the Black Lives Matter movement in Israel has flared up once again due to the death of George Floyd in America. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, holding signs emblazoned with the words “Black Lives Matter,” “George Floyd,” and “Solomon Teka.” Because every name that is added to the list of racism-related deaths is a reminder that we, as a global community, are still far from equality for all.

*A Note of Importance: As a South Asian-American, I acknowledge that I can never truly understand the day-to-day struggles that people of African descent endure. However, as a human being, I fully support and stand by the BLM Movement; furthermore, as a writer, it is my responsibility to use the given platform to objectively detail the following situation as I see fit, allowing readers to interpret my work as they wish. ~ Sayuni Dharmasena

Nigeria: George Floyd’s Death and Systemic Racism in the U.S. (allafrica.com)
An off-duty police officer shot dead an unarmed black teen, sparking riots. But it didn’t happen where you think (cnn.com)
After a Police Shooting, Ethiopian Israelis Seek a ‘Black Lives Matter’ Reckoning (nytimes.com)
Four Months After Police Shooting, Ethiopian Israeli Protests Still Going Strong (haaretx.com)
An Israeli cop shot an unarmed Ethiopian teen. Here’s why American Jews should care. (jta.org)
Israeli Ethiopian Shot Dead by Off-Duty Israeli Police Officer (youtube.com/i24news)
Violent protests erupt in Israel over police shooting of unarmed Ethiopian teen (vox.com)
Out of pandemic anti-Blackness, a case for pan-Africanism (aljazeera.com)
'Model Minority' Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians and Blacks (npr.org)

June 01, 2020

Myth of Reparations | 40 Acres Minus Mule

June 01, 2020/ Ayanna S. Nahmias

UNITED STATES, Washington, DC - As the grand-daughter of an early civil rights activist, Attorney Julius Winfield Robertson, who was a dedicated advocate for human rights, and worked closely with U.S. Congressman Senator Estes Kefauver and Attorney James Nabritt, Jr. on historical civil rights cases, it saddens me to witness the protests of the killing of George Floyd reigniting the discussions about the issue of reparation.

Justice Americas Broken Promise, George Floyd Murder Protester, May 2020

The civil rights movement was governed by action versus committee. Activists were veritable “Davids vs. Goliaths” bravely challenging the legislative system which codified racism. When Robertson’s firm, along with a junior partner, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, filed a segregation complaint in 1953 on behalf of a Women's Army Corps (WAC) private named Sarah Louise Keys, it would portend the Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycotts.

Most descendants of slaves, at least those with voices in the public square, are vociferously demanding that the issue of reparations become a cornerstone of the Democrat’s electoral platform. However, as a person of color who does not agree with the premise, I understand that my position is in the minority. To be clear, I do not disagree with the fact that structural changes need to be implemented to increase parity in the economic fortunes of those whose ancestors were enslaved and those whose ancestors owned them.

However, doling out what amounts to a one-time cash settlement is short-sighted and will not address past issues of institutionalized inequality. Thus, a Commission to study what any African-American in this country can attest to, unfair and unjustified mistreatment, results in little more than a menagerie of wish lists, often to meet immediate needs. A cash settlement will never eradicate increased incidents of extra-judicial killings, that latest of which is the murder of George Floyd who was murdered by former Officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 mins 46 seconds even after he became unresponsive presumed dead.

It will not assuage the pain felt by the family and community of Breonna Taylor an essential healthcare worker who was caring for COVID-19 patients at a local hospital, and who was murdered by police who stormed her home and shot her 8 times without cause. Then, there is Ahmaud Arbery who was hunted down by 3 men who decided that he should not be jogging in their neighborhood and therefore deserved to be shot and killed.

Six years after the 2014 article titled “Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014,” which was written “after the announcement that NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo would not be indicted for killing Eric Garner, the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Twitter posted a series of tweets naming 76 men and women who were killed in police custody since the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo in New York,” have yet to progress. As heinous is the string of extrajudicial killings are, they are not new, they are just being caught on camera. And as much as our heart aches from these murders, the system is inherently racist and it is the little things, the death by a thousand cuts that debilitates brown and black people in America.

Until systemic racism is eradicated and until people accept their culpability in maintaining this status quo, we will never begin the process of dismantling an inherently biased governance. Without this change, it will never stop a sales clerk from following blacks around the store who are legitimately shopping. It will never prevent a group of police from terrorizing a family, brutalizing their father. Then, threatening to kill their pregnant mom trying to protect her children, one of whom purportedly took a .99 cent doll from the Dollar Store. What started as a meme is truly the norm because we can never “breathe while black,” “jog while black,” “bird watch while black,” “drive while black,” think of any pedestrian activity and add “while black,” and that is the reality of most brown and black America.

It was a nice gesture that on Juneteenth, which commemorates the June 19th date of the end of slavery in the United States, that H.R. 40 a bill sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), was televised in well-attended and animated House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties’ hearings. But this bill is not an opening salvo for change; it is just another futile exercise in pushing a Sisyphean boulder up the proverbial hill. The bill’s title spells out its intent, which is not one of action, but bureaucracy since H.R.40 has been advanced to create a “Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African-Americans.”

Anyone who has spent significant time in the workforce, private or public, understands the efficacy of commissions and panels, and most if honest would say they are “a waste of time,” and resources. In this respect, it is another bite at the apple of assuaging “white guilt,” through some means of pay-off. It is the latest version of 40-Acres and a Mule. That the politicians jumped on this bandwagon smacks of pandering. It is as if they believe at best that “Reparations” is the magic catchphrase that will guarantee to deliver black votes to them in 2020.

Alternatively, and more cynically, they are selling reparations as a panacea to the reemergence of Jim Crow-era tactics that currently beset the nation, particularly in the South. From a legislative perspective, reparations do not address the urgent actions being implemented around the country to dismantle the protections from disenfranchisement, such as gerrymandering, efforts to overturn the Voting Rights Act, law enforcement killings of black men, women, and children, as well as mass incarceration.

It indeed is as they say in the South, it is “broke and needs fixin’;” but equally true is the sentiment openly expressed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and privately felt by many others:

I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, bypassing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president. (Source: MSN.com)

Thus, 150 years later it seems as if those who were against giving slaves 40 acres on which to rebuild their lives, are of the same ilk as those who felt that providing slaves their “freedom’ was payment enough.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explained how "Union General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, issued on Jan. 16, 1865, prescribed the 40 acres policy, but not the mule. That “would come later. But what many accounts leave out is that this idea for massive land redistribution was the result of a discussion that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton held four days before Sherman issued the Order, with 20 leaders of the black community in Savannah, Ga., Where Sherman was headquartered following his famous March to the Sea. The meeting was unprecedented in American history.

This policy was actionable and substantial and would have radically changed the nature of this country. IT WOULD have been an actual reparation for the country’s “original sin,” because of the power inherent in the permanence of land, and self-governance.

Gates continues to explain that “Section two of the order specifies that these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves … on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves … By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such. With this Order, 400,000 acres of land — a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast,” as Barton Myers reports — would be redistributed to the newly freed slaves. The extent of this Order and its larger implications are mind-boggling, actually.” (Source: PBS)

The crux of the matter and any discussions about reparations that do not institutionally compensate the descendants of slaves is a moot point. And even, then, it cannot and will not fix the view by some that people of color in this country are inferior and undeserving of equal treatment under the law de facto or de jure, especially in employment and equitable pay, which is the real currency of freedom in today’s world. It also will never prevent the institutional inequities which exist, not just for African-Americans, but all people who were not blessed by the lottery of birth to be born into extreme wealth.

In this era of globalism, when foreign investors hold nearly “30 million acres of U.S. farmland, and the remainder held by corporations and farmers, the possibility of achieving this ‘commensurate’ reparation equal to the pain, suffering, torture, and horrors of 400-years of slavery, as initially ordered, will never be delivered. In lieu of this, we cannot let this election slogan become the ultimate manifestation of our desires for justice and equity. It is not up to others to make right what is wrong in our society, and with our lives. It is up to us to push, to demand, to protest, and to legislate, otherwise “Black Lives [will not] Matter,” nor will the lives of all the great Civil Rights martyrs from emancipation until today.