THIS week’s decision by the United States grand jury that the white police officer who shot dead a black youth on August 13 this year had no case to answer again highlights the level of white racism in America.
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black teenager was shot dead in cold blood by a white officer called Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.
The decision by a grand jury made up of nine whites and three blacks sparked a number of racially induced riots across America.
This was so because it has become a common occurrence to hear of white police officers killing apparently innocent unarmed blacks. And the usual pattern is that the white culprits usually go scot free.
Elsewhere in this edition we carry a list of blacks who have already been killed by white police officers this year alone.
The list includes a 12-year-old black boy, Tamir Rice, who was shot dead as he played with a toy gun in a playground.
An even longer list includes black people who have died at the hands of American police since 1981.
What is disturbing is that this racial bias is not only limited to white police brutality against blacks, but is reflected in other aspects of American life.
The disparity in wealth sees a wide gap in favour of whites.
Even in the field of health blacks receive much inferior healthcare than their white counterparts.
Although blacks are much fewer than white Americans the number of white prisoners is disproportionately much less.
Yet America calls itself the leading light in advancing the tenets of democracy and human rights.
And our understanding of democracy is that all human beings are equal regardless of colour, creed, nationality or whatever else.
Is there any right greater than the right to life?
The callous slaughter of blacks by police in the US and the subsequent apparent leniency showed to the perpetrators raises eyebrows.
Maybe because of the history of slavery white Americans consider blacks to be mere imitations of human beings.
What else explains why President Barack Obama went viral with rage when a white American journalist was beheaded by ISIS fighters in Syria at the time Brown was gunned down.
The President’s lukewarm reaction to the killing of this black teenager was a disturbing contradiction.
Take also the reaction of President Bush to the 9/11 bomb attacks when hundreds of Americans perished in an Al Qaeda terror campaign.
He declared a worldwide war on terror to avenge the death of white Americans.
The same American President did not have the same feelings when his army used the latest lethal weapons to butcher hundreds of Iraqis for possessing imaginary weapons of ‘mass destruction’.
But then Iraqis are ‘less equal’ than Americans just like blacks no matter where they are.
No wonder a whole American Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton danced in celebration at the news of the death of Muammar Gadaffi, a non-American.
We in Zimbabwe are very aware of American double standards when they talk about democracy and human rights.
Look at their interpretation of ‘democracy’ in the Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) of 2001.
Here is a piece of legislation where Zimbabwe is being punished for bringing democracy in the distribution of their land.
It is blacks in Zimbabwe who are suffering because of the sanctions that go with this Act.
But would you expect the Americans to care when they appear not to be worried by the blood of innocent blacks being regularly spilled on their doorsteps by heartless white policemen.
Something fundamental has to be done to the mindset of American whites to see a sea change towards their perception of blacks, be they in America or any other part of the globe.
But for now American police must stop killing their own people.