YEAR 2014 ended on a rather sad note for many of us in America, as it became more and more apparent that law enforcement agents are unrepentant and will continue to gun down black men, young and old, on the streets while the justice system lets them get away with it.
What does this mean for people of colour in 2015?
With a presidential election coming up soon, just how important is the black vote and will it have an effect on how the candidates will address the issue?
In a December 2014 article in the USA Today, Arienne Thompson, writes that most white folk have no idea how exhausting it is to be black in America.
White folk have no idea how it feels like to be followed in a store, not because the attendants want to help you, but because they believe you will try and steal something.
White people have no idea how it feels to be mistaken for the ‘help’ just because you are black you must be a waiter, the coat check, the porter, the list goes on and on.
White folk have no idea what it feels like to be petted like a dog because your natural hair looks ‘interesting’.
Rich or poor, famous, anonymous, educated, uneducated, these are the experiences of blacks in America.
Day in and day out we face humiliation, are profiled, our men, sons, brothers, uncles, grandfathers are emasculated and shot on a daily basis.
One of our young celebrated young authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose novel, Americanah, was celebrated by the New York Times, talked about her experience of coming to identify as ‘black’ in America.
Adichie emigrated from Nigeria to the US, and discovered that her skin colour “came with baggage and with all those assumptions”.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute in Washington DC, Adichie says, “I became black in America and I really hadn’t thought of myself as black in Nigeria.
“I think that identity in Nigeria was ethnic, religious, but race just wasn’t present.
“I like to say I’m happily black. So I don’t have a problem at all, sort of having skin the colour of chocolate.
“But in this country I came to realise that meant something that it came with baggage and with all of these assumptions.
“Whereas for me in Nigeria, it wasn’t. It was not. And I think that’s when I started to internalise what it meant and that’s when I started to push back.
“So for a long time I didn’t want to identify as black. When you are an immigrant and you come to this country, it’s very easy to internalise the mainstream ideas.
“It’s easy, for example to think, ‘Oh, the ghettos are full of black people because they are just lazy and they like to live in the ghettos’ because that’s the sort of what mainstream thinking is.
“And then when you read about American housing policies for the past 100 years it starts to make sense. And then it forces you to let go of these simple stereotypes. It was a conscious effort and it was an interesting journey, but still a journey.”
Chris Rock, famous as he is, a man who needs no introduction to American audiences says he is tired and he is speaking out.
He says he is tired of having to justify black excellence vis-a-vis white approval. Rock says that blacks deserve to be players socially, politically and culturally in America because like it or not, for a greater part, America was built and continues to flourish on the sweat of black people.
In an interview with the magazine, New York, Chris Rock says, “to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be President.
“That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be President for hundreds of years.
“The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful polite children.
“There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years.
“The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced.
“Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”
It is these nice white people who have for decades been mangling young black people.
One man writes to the Thompson, saying that as a young child he used to play sports in the front yard with neighbourhood children and white men would drive by and yell at him (the only African American in the group) “go back to Africa, you are a monkey,” or just scream “nigger!”
A child, now a man, still carries the baggage of racism, and it goes without doubt that the offspring of those racist white drivers have not fallen far from the racist trees.
Some years back I had an interesting conversation with a fellow African student about what it felt like to be an African in America.
This young South African gentleman was proud that South Africa was going to have a different experience in terms of governance and experiences from other countries, especially Zimbabwe; this was at the height of the Land Reform Programme mind you.
A while ago, our paths crossed and I reminded him about our conversation.
He admitted that America just like South Africa has institutionalised racism, the whites only and coloureds signs might have been removed from the doors and entrances, but they still remain in the hearts and minds of most white folks.
The future remains a bleak and gloomy place for people of colour, we will continue to see law enforcement agents spill the blood of our young men on the streets, those who do not die on the streets will no doubt find themselves incarcerated sooner than later.
Meanwhile it is the black woman who is left to work three jobs just to get food on the table, she has no time to spend with her children, supervise their school work and these children will be raised by a school system headed by white men who have no real reason to want the black child to lift him or herself out of the ghetto.
So the cycle continues, year in and year out.