Dallas shooting: Terror strikes America but for a different reason
Terrorism for a different reason has hit America. Five police officers were killed and six injured by a sniper during a protest in Dallas against the recent killings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
This act of violence and terror must be denounced, but denunciation alone will not act as a deterrent. What is needed is a thorough analysis of the factors that have led to the birth of this kind of violent political action so that a comprehensive solution can be found.
The killer Micah Johnson, a black Afghan war veteran, was killed with the help of a robotic bomb. Anger at racial injustice and police brutality seems to be the motive for his taking up arms.
It is ironic that he decided to shoot at police officers in Dallas, which is one of the cities where the police department has taken a lot of trouble to build close ties with the minority community. Dallas practices community policing and does not use its police department as a revenue generator.
Just as the angry Muslim men who committed terrorist acts in Texas, California, and Florida or the angry men with psychological problems who were allegedly entrapped by law enforcement agencies, many black men might be considering adopting violent means to fight injustices committed against them. It is only natural as the news of police killing innocent people of colour is appearing at an alarming rate.
Angry black men picking up arms or advocating violence in their struggle for justice and civil rights has happened in the past. Black youth were losing confidence in the non-violent struggle of Martin Luther King even before he was killed.
Under Stokely Carmichael and H Rap Brown, later known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the Students Non-violent Coordination Committee became more militant. Malcolm X, with his emphasis on human rights and internationalisation of the struggle and who was killed three years prior to King, became their ideal.
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| The mass incarceration of minorities must be addressed through rewriting of laws. |
The establishment reacted to these developments by increasing their surveillance and infiltration of black groups (COINTELPRO) and in arbitrary arrests and even assassination of their charismatic leader Fred Hampton.
As the drug epidemic took hold of the inner cities, with the law enforcement agencies at times looking the other way, and with the advent of mass incarceration of black men under the guise of war on drugs under Nixon and then Reagan, black militancy started to die down in the 1980s.
The conversion of blacks into Islam also slowed down in the 1990s, removing another challenge to the white establishment.
The killings of black men by police continued even as millions of black men became the modern day slaves working in the for-profit prison systems. Absence of fathers at home wreaked havoc in black families.
There was no organised nationwide corrective movement, though the Louis Farrakhan-led Million Man March tried to start a spark to bring about a spiritual renewal and instill a sense of personal responsibility. This effort fizzled out too.
Things could not have continued in this fashion. With the spread of mobile phones with cameras and of surveillance cameras mounted on millions of storefront and homes, videos of cold-blooded murders of black men at the hands of the police have now become a common occurrence.
This has led to the inception of the nationwide "Black Lives Matter" movement which the Democratic Party has acknowledged as a genuine protest movement and the Republication Party has demonised.
The rise of black militancy is occurring at a time when a tectonic shift is taking place in the American demographics.
Since 2010, more non-white than white children are being born. The white majority is in a slow and steady decline and the brown population is rising.
Throughout history, such a shift in demographics has led to the rise of intolerance and hatred. No religious, ethnic, or linguistic group has been immune from this as no group likes to relinquish its power or privilege easily, not even in a democracy.
America is not only going through a tectonic demographic shift but its economy is not in great shape. Coupled with these conditions is the rise of xenophobia in the Republican Party.
It is unfortunate that as expected Donald Trump has started to exploit the tragedy. I hope and pray that cooler heads will prevail and demagogues like Trump are not allowed to use Fox News and other right wing media to further divide the nation.
A bipartisan approach with the involvement of faith-based groups must be adopted promptly to nip this trouble in the bud.
The root causes of the incipient black militancy must be addressed. Law enforcement agencies must be purged of racist elements. Intensive courses on racial and religious sensitivity must be taught in police academies.
Police should be trained with more emphasis on disarmament than on shooting to kill. Police training must not involve foreign nations like Israel as their culture of governance and population mix are different than ours.
Instead, clergy and civic leadership from the inner cities must be more involved.
The mass incarceration of minorities must be addressed through rewriting of laws and other reforms in the judicial system, and better education and job opportunities must be provided to disadvantaged minorities.