WELL it has been a very interesting week here in New York, as #ThisFlag and the December 12 Movement have been holding simultaneous demonstrations in front of Zimbabwe’s Embassy.
#ThisFlag group has one corner of the Embassy, while December 12 Movement occupies the major portion of the pavement outside the Embassy.
On several times the New York police have had to separate the two groups as they traded barbs.
Shouting ‘Black Power!’, ‘Mugabe is Right!’, ‘Green Card traitors!’, ‘Fight on Zimbabwe!’, December 12 Movement has had an upper hand in its campaign.
There have been mixed reactions to events taking place at the Embassy with some saying that Dec 12 Movement is not helping the situation as they are campaigning based on a false sense of brotherhood with the ZANU PF Government, coming out of the pan-African discourse.
I took particular interest in what one of the Dec 12 Movement members said to a Voice of America (VOA) correspondent on September 17 2016 concerning why they are supporting President Robert Mugabe.
According to the gentleman, the same people supporting #ThisFlag movement were repressing black folk in America.
This debate on the treatment of blacks by the American establishment is not new.
Racism in America is a reality that most black families face on a daily basis as their children cross the street to go to school, play outside, as they walk into a shop, as they try to get loans to buy homes or start businesses.
In 1946, liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger published an article in Time magazine claiming the Communist Party was ‘sinking tentacles’ into the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), which led to a frenzy of activity aimed at distancing the organisation from the Left.
If there was a thing that was worse than being black in America, it was being labelled a communist.
The Cold War provided various challenges for America on various fronts.
In the 1960s, there was concern that with the end of colonisation, African States would be swayed by USSR and take up communism which would see America disadvantaged in the Cold War.
The Bonnie Brae Diner on Route 40, just outside of Edgewood, Maryland, was an unlikely spot for a crisis of American foreign relations.
On June 26 1961, Adam Malick Sow, the newly-appointed Ambassador of Chad to the US, left New York for Washington DC where he planned to present his diplomatic credentials to President John F. Kennedy.
Just after crossing the Maryland border, Sow stopped at a service station and headed for the nearby Bonnie Brae, hoping to cure a headache with a cup of coffee.
Upon entering the diner, however, he was informed the restaurant did not serve people of his skin colour.
“That’s the way it is here,” said the proprietress.
Sow – using an interpreter – told her that he was a diplomat and explained to her that such discrimination would not benefit her country’s relations with Africa, only to be rebuffed a second time.
Specifically, he was told to get his ‘ass’ out.
Half a world away, news of the incident spread; on July 12, the New China News Agency reported on this event across all of Asia.
It reproduced the exact text from an article in the previous day’s New York Times concerning the event.
Before the year’s end, dozens of officials from Sierra Leone, Niger, Cameroon, Togo and numerous other African nations would receive similar introductions to American racism.
America was in a catch-22 – it could either lose diplomatic ties with African states due to racism and segregation in its borders, or reform by heeding the calls by the civil rights movement and maintain cordial relations with Africa. On the other hand, it could in-turn deny African-Americans their rights and lose Africa to the Soviet Union.
One could interpret the move by the American establishment to have given the Civil Rights Movement an inch, was not based on the sudden realisation that segregation and racism were vile, but more on the need to win Africans from the Soviets.
In truth, there has been very little progress in terms of race relations in America since then.
The rebirth of a black consciousness movement, through #BlacksLivesMatter, stands as testimony that whites are still legally provided for with instruments to discriminate against and kill African-Americans.