HOME	Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus

By Anwaar Hussain

August 6, 2005

Original Article (English)

In a small red-tiled home at the end of a rutted road in the Brazilian town of Gonzaga, Jean Charles de Menezes' parents cry silently each night over the tragic demise of their murdered son. During this ritual, the mother holds a recent photo of her smiling son, her tears cascading over her weather-beaten face onto the framed photograph. The mango and orange trees of the nearby farms have borne silent witness to her mourning since Friday, July 22, when the life of their innocent son was snuffed out by the London Police.

A Mother's Grief

A routine commute for Jean Charles ended in the never-never land, courtesy of Her Majesty’s armed police who, in the wake of the recent bombing-attacks in London, were given shoot-to-kill orders for all Asian-looking suspects. With five shots to the back of Menezes’s pinned down head at point blank range, an innocent man was deprived of his youth and his dreams.

Is it a one-off incident, or is it indicative of a resurgence in the once-thriving attitude toward people of color? This was an illness when the white man ruled supreme over a large swath of planet earth. And it is a disease that was never really cured: call it the Menezes Syndrome.

Perhaps it isn't possible for the white man to get past those bygone days when the British Empire rose to its pinnacle, showered in the blood of people of color. That the imperialistic genes are surging again in the white man’s veins is amply demonstrated by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to grab on to the coattails of the latest empire-seeker, the U.S.A., and the decision of Blair’s people to reelect him and give his imperialistic ventures their seal of approval.

As the British lead their American cousins into the vacuum that their own empire left behind, the world must come to grips with the white man's method to better understand the new imperial master.

With open-season having been declared on men of color and the world cringing at each new atrocity that these international cousins commit against any non-Europeans still sitting on the leftovers of the planet’s resources, it would be worth our while to have a brief look at the white man’s imperial past.

Bad Attitude?

The British, who now chaperon the Americans, did not massacre their subjects because decades later they wanted to make the world safe for democracy. These crimes happened, as all imperial massacres do, in a frenzy of absolute power. It occurred because of the sick conviction that all colonial masters have toward their subjects - that they have the god-given right to decide the course of history while gorging themselves on the loot from those very same subjects.

Perhaps more urgent is the fact that the British Empire is the most commonly cited model for the United States, the current overarching world power. America was an offspring of the Empire’s in the colonial era and is its heir today. Because in 2005 the United States formally controls a far smaller share of the world than the United Kingdom did in 1905, it will leave no stone unturned in extending its writ to a larger slice of the earth as large or larger than its former master. The British Empire came to greatness by killing millions of defenseless people. In this respect, the new Empire will not be found wanting.

For centuries, the European white man has plundered and terrorized the non-European world, treating with contempt people with different skin color, culture, philosophy, religion, languages and way of life. Conquered nations were expected to give up their own cultures, religions, even languages and to convert to the set of beliefs and values defined as “civilized.” In the process, Europeans brooked no opposition. Any kind of expressed opposition was brutally suppressed. Today’s terrorist groups are like a bunch of kindergarten kids when compared to Europe's colonial armies. Using their armies, the white man killed people of color, terrorized the survivors, and with a reckless abandon justified it all by calling those they murdered pagans, heathens, savages, cannibals, etc.

The treatment of Aboriginal people at the turn of the 19th century is just one harrowing illustration of this attitude. The near extermination of Aboriginal people started in 1804 with an incident near Hobart, Tasmania, when British soldiers fired on a party of Aboriginal men, women, and children. Some of the 50 or so killed that day were reported to have been salted down and sent to Sydney as anthropological curiosities.

Perhaps the worst example of white man’s contempt for people of color is the greatest such human tragedy: the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Tens of millions of Africans were exported to the Americas by Europeans, many perished before reaching their destinations. The Atlantic slave trade was a barbarity of stunning proportions.

In ''Bury the Chains,'' Adam Hochschild says: ''So rapidly were slaves worked to death, above all on the brutal sugar plantations of the Caribbean, that between 1660 and 1807, ships brought well over three times as many Africans across the ocean to British colonies as they did Europeans. … the Atlantic was a vast conveyor belt to early death in the fields of an immense swath of plantations that stretched from Baltimore to Rio de Janeiro and beyond.'' Ironically, when a movement to set them free began in Britain, "the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe in'' was a phrase coined by detractors to thwart such efforts.

'Guess I'll Keep 'Em', Leslie's Weekly, 1901

All European empires built their fortunes by looting the colonies. From gold and silver to spices and precious stones and human beings, no resource of these lands was left unplundered. The magnificent European palaces, the museums and theatres, the cathedrals and municipal buildings - all are built at the expense of the rest of the planet. All are founded on slavery, and nourished with the blood of slaves. The smiling, well fed facade of Europe has been built with the sweat and on the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races. Jean Charles de Menezes was just the latest brick in the façade.

As the new Robinson Crusoes continue to pulverize nations and create fiefdoms for themselves in distant lands populated with “lesser” people of a darker hue, let the fact be known that every aspect of colonial rule, including the superficial yet earnest efforts of the Empire builders to study and understand native cultures, is ultimately designed to maximize the looting and plundering of the subject peoples’ resources. Towering ambition and greed are twin evils joined at the hip. Empire and Empire building, therefore, can never be philanthropic.

U.S. General Frederick Funston, Broke Philippine Insurrection

As the United States imposes its Fallujahs on the world in its passion for Empire building with Britain acting as its gundog, the words of one of its past generals ring truer by the day. Retaliating against a Filipino raid on an American encampment, General Jake Smith told his men to turn the island into a “howling wilderness” so that “even birds could not live there.” “Kill and burn! The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,'' he ordered. Asked to clarify who the troops' targets were among the population, the general replied: “Everything over 10.”

Ironically, the white man continues to be called “cultured” and the rest “hadjis’” “brutes,” and “ragheads.” This incongruity cannot be clearer than in the answer of an Indian to a European settler that was taunting him. The Indian said, “White man, you have wiped us out, you stole our land, you destroyed our homes, you raped our women and brought deadly diseases to our people. You have done every unthinkable crime imaginable. It no longer hurts me. What truly hurts me and my people is that despite all of the crimes you have committed against my people, we are still considered savages and you "civilized" people. That truly hurts me the most!"

To people of color, the British are the embodiment of the white man and are therefore the symbolic flag carriers of what is best and worst in the white man. The tendency shown in the casual killing of Menezes is a dark omen marking the resurgence of an attitude of superiority in the white man toward people of color. It seems that the white man has not been able to immunize himself from this unfortunate, contemptible and skewed mind-set toward people of color - a curse of the white man’s imperial legacy.

The killing of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes of Gonzaga [Brazil] is not an isolated incident. A chain of incidents, including the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are more than sufficient proof that the Menezes Syndrome is back - and back in full force. It shows beyond doubt that the white man continues to remain convinced that his actions are above reproach, his cause the only just one, his religion the only right religion and his God the only true God.

"I'm begging God for justice," wails Menezes’s mother in a floods of tears. That the God seems to be white too - she has forgotten in her grief.