
Farewell to America - kareemm
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/gary-younge-farewell-to-america?CMP=edit_2221
======
nkurz
The specific criticisms that 'paulhauggis' makes may be true, but I disagree
with his assertion that "These sorts of articles do nothing to help the
situation and further contribute to the violence against the police and a
racial divide in this country." Instead, this is the sort of article we need
more of.

Despite the criticisms, this is still one of the least polemic, most accurate,
heartfelt, unbiased, personal, and effective articles on race in America that
I've ever read. I disagreed with some of the article's specific conclusions,
but these are dwarfed by the impact of the article as a whole. Read this
article.

It's a poignant, personal account of a English black reporter who has spent a
decade of reporting on race in America pondering whether as a responsible
parent he has a duty to return to England now that he has a school age son.
He's not claiming it's the reason he's leaving, but explaining why one might
feel that way:

    
    
      But while the events of the last few years did not prompt 
      the decision to come back, they do make me relieved that 
      the decision had already been made. It is why I have not 
      once had second thoughts. If I had to pick a summer to 
      leave, this would be the one. Another season of black 
      parents grieving, police chiefs explaining and clueless 
      anchors opining. Another season when America has to be 
      reminded that black lives matter because black deaths at 
      the hands of the state have been accepted as routine for so 
      long. A summer ripe for rage.
    

This is someone who has thought long about the issues from an outside
perspective, but has moved from analyzing race as a reporter to someone
concerned about how the realities of race in America will affect his child's
future.

    
    
      While I have been in America, I have not been shot at, 
      arrested, imprisoned or otherwise seriously inconvenienced 
      by the state. I do not live in the hollowed out, jobless 
      zones of urban economic despair to which many African 
      Americans have been abandoned. I have been shouted at in a 
      park, taken different routes to school, and occasionally 
      dealt with bigoted officials. (While driving through 
      Mississippi to cover Katrina I approached a roadblock that 
      all the other journalists had easily passed through, only 
      to have a policeman pat the gun in his holster and turn me 
      around). These experiences are aggravating. They are not 
      life-threatening.
    

Like 'paulhauggis', you should feel free to disagree with it, and to debate
the author's logic, but first you should read it.

    
    
      The altercations in the park, the rerouted walks to school, 
      the aggravations of daily life are the lower end of a 
      continuum – a dull drumbeat that occasionally crescendos 
      into violent confrontation and even social conflagration. 
      As spring turns to summer the volume keeps ratcheting up.
    
    
      “Terror,” the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai writes in his 
      book Fear of Small Numbers, “is first of all the terror of 
      the next attack.” The terrorism resides not just in the 
      fact that it happens, but that one is braced for the 
      possibility that it could happen to you at any moment. 
      Seven children and teenagers are shot on an average day in 
      the US. I have just finished writing a book in which I take 
      a random day and interview the families and friends of 
      those who perished. Ten young people died the day I chose. 
      Eight were black. All of the black parents said they had 
      assumed this could happen to their son.
    
      As one bereaved dad told me: “You wouldn’t be doing your 
      job as a father if you didn’t.
    

Read it.

------
paulhauggis
These sorts of articles do nothing to help the situation and further
contribute to the violence against the police and a racial divide in this
country.

"When the authorities fail to heed community outrage, or substantively
investigate, let alone discipline, the police, the situation can become
explosive"

Sorry, but mob rule is not the answer. I also don't know how the police aren't
disciplined. So many are being fired, even for just doing their job, that the
crime rates are skyrocketing in major cities as we speak because the police
are now afraid of losing their job and criminals are getting away with murder
(literally).

"Trayvon Martin was walking through a gated community when George Zimmerman
pegged him for a thug and shot him dead."

So why not mention the other side of the story? That Martin beat the hell out
of George Zimmerman and almost killed him. Is this not relevant to the story?

"Clementa Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator, was in one of Charleston’s
most impressive churches when Dylann Roof murdered him and eight others."

This isn't the same as the other. Dylan Roof was a sick racist that murdered
innocent people in a church.

"I have not only never met an African American who thought they could buy
themselves the advantages of a white American"

African Americans have plenty of advantages in the US: free points on SAT/ACT,
bank loans that cater to minorities, etc, quotas in many different industries
(Police and Fireman to name a few).

"All you can do is limit the odds. And when one in three black boys born in
2001 is destined for the prison system, those odds are pretty bad. Having a
black man in the White House has not changed that."

Let's get to the root of the problem: Why are black boys born in 2001 destined
for prison? I believe it has to do with a culture of broken families where
70%+ of black families have only one parent, making it that much more
difficult to survive.

[http://newsone.com/1195075/children-single-parents-u-s-
ameri...](http://newsone.com/1195075/children-single-parents-u-s-american/)

"When George Zimmerman saw Trayvon Martin, he didn’t see a 17-year-old boy
walking home from the store. He saw someone “real suspicious”, “up to no
good”, whom he assumed bore some responsibility for recent burglaries."

Just because he thought Martin was 'suspicious' or 'up to no good', doesn't
mean it was because he was black.

"Even after Wilson shot Brown he continued to depict him as both physically
superhuman and emotionally subhuman"

Brown was a criminal that before attacking Wilson, robbed a convenient store.
"Hands up, don't shoot" never happened. Forensic evidence proved it. Why do we
need to continue to defend criminals,criminal behavior, and re-write history?

"Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their
actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that
children are essentially innocent."

The children involved in many of the mass shootings in the past few years
weren't treated as innocent children..and most were white. As soon as a
'child' decides to attack, kill, and hurt someone, they are responsible for
their actions.

"white adults felt entitled to shout at black children – be it in the street,
or on school trips"

It's not racial. I think many (including me) are sick of parents not
disciplining their kids. It takes a village, right?

"Eric Garner was just a man trying to sell cigarettes in the street before he
was choked to death in Staten Island"

He was arrested 30 times before this point and was not complying with police.
You left this part out. They used what normally is non-lethal force, but
because of his size and health conditions, he died. I'm not sure what you
would like the police to do.

If a person is resisting arrest (which is a crime btw), the police need to be
able to use some sort of force to arrest them.

"Tamir Rice was just a boisterous kid acting out in a park before a policeman
leaped out of his squad car and shot him within seconds"

My god this article is biased. The police had many other reports of kids with
guns in the area. When they arrived, he refused to put the gun down and also
ripped the orange tip off the end of the gun, making it look like it was real.
A tragic situation, but not as much of an example of racism as this article
would like you to believe.

“Nigger, I can find something to lock you up on,” the officer told him.

You can't just say this as fact without actual proof of the encounter.

