From rhetoric to praxis: a call to global action to end injustice against African Americans

The death of George Floyd is a tragic event that shocked people aware of all racial and political divisions. This scar on the conscience of humanity can only be removed with the sound of a death sentence against injustice and discrimination against African Americans and all disadvantaged racial minorities throughout the world.

The Black Lives Matter movement has made its presence felt in the United States of America and is to be commended. But just as the ANC failed to stop apartheid with global support, African Americans need the strength and support of governments, private institutions, individuals, and multilateral giants like the African Union to effect meaningful change in the way that the United States United States treats its citizens of African origin. .

If the knee-jerk response of Colin Kaepernick and his allies is not to be in vain, then the strangling of George Floyd at the knees of American law enforcement must bring the rest of the world to its knees and out of prayers and supplications. to collective action that would bring the oppressive American beast back to its senses.

A nation that could not be moved to completely stop its cycles of injustice more than seventy years after Abraham Lincoln sounded the clarion call in his Gettysburg Address will hear no speech in the cold, empty halls of the United Nations in the short term. A country that would not heed the echoes of Lincoln’s voice in Martin Luther King’s sermons would certainly need a rude awakening from a global coalition of determined voices committed to inspired ACTION. Here are MLK’s words spoken at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on July 4, 1965. Certainly these are not mere deadly musings, there is something otherworldly about his psalmistic cadence:

“But now more than ever before, America is challenged to realize its dream, because the shape of the world today does not allow our nation the luxury of an anemic democracy. And the price America must pay for continued oppression of blacks and other minority groups is the price of their own destruction. (Yes, it is) Because the hour is late. And the clock of destiny is ticking. We must act now before it is too late.”

The injustice that killed George Floyd has deep roots that need to be thoroughly examined and destroyed. America must restart its own romantic narrative by telling its children that the history of the land of the free did not begin with the revolution that sent their British cousins ​​sailing home across the Atlantic. The United States must accept its bloody past against the Indians who were massacred on their own land and forced to remain on the sidelines of the country that welcomes its visitors with the charm of the Statue of Liberty.

The United States of America must admit and acknowledge the fact that while Thomas Jefferson gave them their sacred birth certificate that rooted life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that same wise old man possessed and abused innocent Africans who gave light to their own offspring. The United States must confess its sins of slavery and move forward with genuine and sincere affirmative action, devoid of the condescending pretenses of symbolism like the Obama presidency, which may have left America a better country overall, but did nothing to significantly improve the lot of African Americans. population.

To encourage a more rapid evolution of the above proposal, the world must unite in calling to order the global policeman and universal enforcer of the rights and dignity of all people, the United States. A mixture of targeted sanctions, global warnings, and mass protests in cities around the world, as well as the promotion of concerted action on social media, would surely take its toll on the white supremacist universe of a country as unfortunate as the one with a narcissistic fanatic. like donald trump. your president

The founding fathers knew that America was not perfect, but the more optimistic souls among them relied on the potential of their legacy to continually correct itself toward a “more perfect Union.” America in the age of Trump cannot do this alone, a global movement and prime mover is needed to drive this process forward.

We must not miss the opportunity presented by the tragedy of George Floyd. The United States must pay the accumulated karmic debt of occupation, slavery, and racial discrimination. The time for that is NOW.