USA: Tolerance Isn’t Created Overnight

Twenty years after Rodney King became a symbol of police brutality, relations between blacks and whites have improved. However, despite the election of Obama, differences remain.

On June 17, Rodney King died, more than 21 years after he became a symbol of police brutality in the USA. On March 3rd 1991 he was stopped by Los Angeles police for speeding. After King, who is black, stepped out of his car, he was beaten to the ground and subjected to kicks and electric shocks by several white police officers. Everything was captured on video and broadcast on CNN.

Just over one year later the officers involved were acquitted by an entirely white jury. In the following days, riots broke out in downtown Los Angeles. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble, mostly by young black men. Fifty-three people died and several thousand were injured.

If King became a symbol of police brutality, then the acquittal became a symbol of institutionalized racism and discrimination. The riots in their turn illustrated the deep divide – filled with mistrust and anger – between blacks and whites.

Despite that just over two decades had passed since the civil rights movement had forced through the reforms which gave equal rights regardless of skin color, racism still remained.

In the election year of 2008, I was in the USA. Barack Obama’s victory gave –in solidly liberal Boston anyway – rise to euphoria. On my university campus, there was literally singing and dancing in the streets. Many eagerly awaited the election of Obama because it meant a rejection of Bush, his war and moral conservatism. However, it wasn’t this that drew people to song and dance. Hillary Clinton and the other candidates in the Democratic primaries had the same message.

Obama offered more. His campaign slogan ”hope and change” and the even fluffier ”yes we can” promised something more than just political reform. Something that almost cannot be defined concretely. It was largely about skin color and ethnicity. Until Obama, the American dream was deemed out of reach, or at least only accessible in a limited format for America’s blacks.

The election was seen as a turning point and Obama was the person who – simply by his existence – could reconcile the differences which divided the country. Not least between blacks and whites.

This did not quite materialize. Several of the practical expectations that were connected with Obama have become reality. He isn’t Bush and he is in the process of winding up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He advocates gay rights and has appointed abortion friendly judges.

However the deep chasms that have characterized the country remain. And the election of Obama has not erased the prejudices and conflicts surrounding skin color and ethnicity. This has sometimes been illustrated by how Obama has been treated as president. Conspiracy theories that maintain that he could not have been born in the USA, or that in secret he is a Muslim, have consistently flourished in more or less respected forums. This would probably have been unthinkable for a white president.

And suspicions of prejudice and discrimination are constantly present. When the black 17 year old, Trayvon Martin, was shot under peculiar circumstances earlier in the year and the police reacted in a questionable manner, once again questions of institutionalized racism were raised.

The optimism surrounding interracial relations which characterized the election period has faded away. An opinion poll that was published in Newsweek in early spring showed that the proportion of people who believe that race-relations have become worse now is almost as great as those who think they have improved.

This does not mean that racism is as prevalent today as when Rodney King was assaulted. That everything didn’t suddenly get better late one November night in 2008 doesn’t mean nothing has gotten better since 1992.

Much has happened after all. After the assault of King, a crisis commission was appointed. The result was LAPD was reorganized and started to work actively against discrimination and racism. Elsewhere in the USA, similar transformations were effected. Besides, the 90’s had a long period of economic growth, declining unemployment and greater opportunities regardless of skin color. This, combined with the USA’s public debate surrounding racism have probably contributed to increased tolerance.

It does not mean that the election of Obama, a black man, to president is insignificant. However, large changes take time and do not happen overnight.