The death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, a young American of 17, for racial reasons, is troubling the United States. The police did not intervene as they should have, Barack Obama confessed being deeply upset. The death of this young man is symptomatic of an everyday racism still very much present across the Atlantic, according to Anne-Sophie Faivre Lecadre, student.
America too is racked with doubt after a racially motivated murder. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” said President Obama, reacting to the tragedy.
The United States of America do not accept half measures. In a country where everything is divided by rigid religious duality, without a middle-ground to balance the excesses of one side or the other, the worse is constantly feared. And it was on Feb. 26 that it happened, in the form of the murder of a young 17-year-old man, killed because he was black. America, flung into the shock of self-doubt and sadness, is becoming more radical.
A Symptom of Everyday Racism
Racism has always been a component, suffered or accepted, of American social and political life. Slavery was succeeded by segregation, deprivation of civil rights and Ku Klux Klan murders. Rare cases of affirmative action, especially those relating to college admissions, are now being questioned.
Obama’s election awoke, in a small minority of voters, a racism more or less repressed until recently. Attacks against the policies of the 44th President have become more radical: It is neither the decrees nor the laws that they are trying to shoot down, but the “nigger” himself. The night he took office, three white men set fire to a church under construction, and “hate crimes have been increasing ever since,” notes Mark Potok, from the organization Southern Poverty Law Center that defends civil rights. Forgotten in theory, racism is, in the United States, a lurking monster. And if a black president has finally gained access to power, this cannot make us forget how widespread the fear of the other is in American culture.
The Ku Klux Klan is Not Dead
As strange as it may seem, the Ku Klux Klan is still around. They even have an official website, where the nostalgic netizen can buy any of the dozens of T-shirts on sale, picturing sinister flaming crosses and hooded men. Not only is it still around, but the number of its supporters and sympathizers seems to have increased over the last few years. The day of the execution of Troy Davis, another resident of death row was living his final hours: Lawrence Brewer, 44, Ku Klux Klan member, was executed that Wednesday in Texas for the racist murder of a black man, James Byrd Jr.
It is impossible to quantify the number of followers the Ku Klux Klan organization enjoys today. But the number of victims of KKK attacks since 1865 is high: 10,000 according to historian Robert L. Zangrando in his work “The Reader’s Companion to American History,” published in 1991. The economic crisis, the 9/11 attacks, the end of the bipolar conflict between U.S. and the former Soviet Union: of all the reasons cited by the media to justify the heavy resurgence of extremism and racism, none seem valid in the face of these telling numbers.
The Emergence of Neo-Nazis
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Cherished above all others by the American people, it forbids law enforcement authorities from preventing meetings of neo-Nazis groups. So it is in complete serenity that they can demonstrate in the street, wearing the sinister red armbands of times past. In December 2008, an incident made the headlines: a New Jersey couple lost custody of their children for naming them Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. Registering the names at the town hall had been done without a hitch, and it was only when a supermarket refused to ice a cake with the name of one of the children that the incident was brought to the attention of the media and of justice.
Blacks versus whites. Republicans versus Democrats. Pro-choice versus pro-life. Defenders of the right to bear arms versus its opponents. Political life in the United States seems to be made of a series of divisions. Will the murder of Trayvon Martin present an opportunity for an evolution of mindsets, towards the pursuit of peaceful coexistence?
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