When America denies the collective human rights of 50 million Black people, what’s next? By Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall.
Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and now the murder of another Black male, 18-year-old Michael Brown by a St. Louis police officer in Missouri, slain like an animal in the streets, just days before this Black child was to start his first year of college. When will the police terror and killing season of Black males inside our communities end? Sadly to say, it won’t end until Black people make it end. So what’s next?
When institutional racism exists in federal, state, and local governmental agencies like HUD, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Justice Department that implements racial discriminary [sic] policies and practices against Black people in the form of seemingly race neutral language, which denies the collective human rights of 50 million Black people in America, then what’s next? When U.S. historical practice treat Black people in a manner which often corresponds to constituent elements of imperialism and colonialism; that is domination, exploitation, and inequality, thus permitting a system of domestic colonialism of Black people within the urban and rural center of America with no end in sight, then, what’s next?
When the U.S. political system does not allow the Black majority issues to be heard or addressed, even with the first Black U.S. president leading America, then what’s next? When the U.S. identify Black people as American citizens, but treat them as second class citizens through systemic racial discriminatory policy and practices interwoven into the fabric of national institutions, and treat Black people as the other, the enemy fifth column within America, then what’s next? When the U.S. militarized police forces have occupied, terrorized, waged low intensity warfare against and mass incarcerated Black communities, and when following the old 1960s Civil Rights Movement tactic of non-violence will get you killed in 2014, then what’s next? When America has failed Black people, whom are an ethnic nation of people within the U.S., and all our domestic remedies to racial injustice have been exhausted, then what’s next? Petitioning the United Nations under the international human rights laws for political recognition, pursuant to Article 27 of the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that is what’s next. I am Shakaboona speaking from SCI Rockview Prison, in Bellefonte PA, and thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
