What If the Victim Had Been White?

188

December 8, 2014

Published in Salzburger Nachrichten
(Austria) on 7 December 2014
by Gudrun Doringer (link to original link to original)

Translated from by Holly Bickerton. Edited by Nicholas Eckart.

A white American won't take his hands out of his pockets. The black police officer who asks him to do so suspects that he has a weapon in there. He shoots. In the pockets of the dead man are painkillers. — This is the latest case of police violence in the U.S., but under different conditions. It was a white police officer who shot a black man on Wednesday in Arizona. Would the consequences be the same? Does the color of the victim’s skin play a role in deciding whether the act is punished?

Yes. And the outcry which can therefore be heard from New York to Seattle cannot be loud enough. The color theory of the U.S. police force and the U.S. justice system says that black is suspicious. In the case of Eric Garner too, a 43-year-old father who died in mid-July in the stranglehold of an official, a jury decided on Wednesday not to bring charges against the police officer who suspected Garner of selling illegal cigarettes.

The illusion of a post-racist American society is disintegrating. What comes to light is something that was thought to belong to the past: the grimace of a society characterized by mistrust. The danger in the four most recent cases was not posed by the victims. It is the police who have become the enemy against which there is no protection.

Was, wenn das Opfer weiß wäre?

Ein weißer US-Amerikaner will seine Hand nicht aus der Hosentasche nehmen. Der schwarze Polizist, der ihn dazu auffordert, vermutet darin eine Waffe. Er schießt. In der Hosentasche des Toten findet man Schmerztabletten. - Das ist der jüngste Fall von Polizeigewalt in den USA, nur unter anderen Vorzeichen. Es war ein weißer Polizist, der am Mittwoch in Arizona einen Schwarzen erschoss. Wären die Folgen dieselben? Spielt es eine Rolle, welcher Hautfarbe das Opfer ist, um zu entscheiden, ob die Tat geahndet wird?

Ja. Und der Aufschrei, der deswegen von New York bis Seattle hallt, kann nicht laut genug sein. Die Farbenlehre der US-Polizei und auch jene der US-Justiz besagt, dass Schwarz verdächtig macht. Auch im Fall von Eric Garner, einem 43-jährigen Familienvater, der Mitte Juli im Würgegriff eines Beamten starb, entschied am Mittwoch eine Jury, keine Anklage gegen den Polizisten zu erheben. Dieser hatte Garner verdächtigt, illegal Zigaretten zu verkaufen.

Das Trugbild einer postrassistischen amerikanischen Gesellschaft zerfällt. Zum Vorschein kommt, was man für vergangen hielt: die Fratze einer Gesellschaft, die von Misstrauen geprägt ist. Die Gefahr ging in den jüngsten vier Fällen nicht von den Opfern aus. Es ist die Polizei, die zum Feind geworden ist, vor dem niemand schützt.

This post appeared on the front page as a direct link to the original article with the above link .

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