OVER the last few months, news from America has been dominated by a string of incidents where unarmed young blacks have been killed by white policemen in different cities. For many outsiders, these killings are unusual events. However, as Gary Younge, the Guardian feature writer and columnist based in the United States, explains in a searing article, these incidents are the norm, and have only made the headlines because many were recorded by passers-by on their cellphones.

Younge has been a brilliant observer of the American scene, shedding a clear light on the country’s social and political shifts in a turbulent decade. In a long article last week, he reflects on 12 years spent in a country still gripped by a racism that remains as deeply entrenched as ever. In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, many across the world — this columnist included — made the mistake of thinking that the advent of a black American in the White House heralded the beginning of a post-racist era.

But as Younge explains in ‘Farewell to America’ (Guardian: July 1, 2015), it was unrealistic to assume that racism — an attitude so deeply interwoven into the fabric of American society — could be exorcised by the election of a single American president who was hemmed in by many institutional constraints. While we think of the US president as the most powerful man on earth, we forget that there are strict limits to his powers imposed by a constitution designed by a group of men who feared the encroachment of executive authority over a free people. In addition, elected officials — and none more so than the US president — are dependent on corporate largesse for their campaigns.

Although Younge is British, he is also black, and this detail gives him a sharper insight into the plight of African-Americans in a way denied to most foreign correspondents who live in their own bubble, observing, but not living life in America as it is experienced by the underclass. I had always assumed that well-off blacks, at least, could buy their way out of the indignities their skin colour imposes on them. Not so, says Younge. At best, money can buy you some distance, but never immunity.

Younge describes the experience of bringing up his two children, and asks how to teach them to be self-confident and proud of who they are, but nevertheless be careful of how they speak and where they walk due to the colour of their skin. This is a dilemma most of us never have to face, but in America, this is information that can be crucial for survival. Younge cites an article from The New York Times: “… a black male who drops out of high school is 60 times more likely to find himself in prison than one with a bachelor’s degree.”

And while overt racist slurs are illegal and politically incorrect, there remains a strong undercurrent of suspicion and fear among white Americans when they come across black fellow citizens. For an example, we need look no further that the bizarre opposition Obama ran into from Republicans who insisted that their newly elected president was in fact born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to occupy the White House. To quell this controversy, Obama was forced to produce his birth certificate that proved that he had been born in Hawaii. Other opponents insist to this day that Obama is a closet Muslim. And the brutal criticism he has attracted from day one as the American president from the right-wing media is another sign of the racism that continues to blight American society.

In 1963, James Baldwin, the black essayist and novelist, published The Fire Next Time. A stark indictment of racism in America, the book was a bestseller among liberal circles. His other books included Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’sRoom. The latter was a dark novel about being gay in Paris. Writers like Baldwin brought the black experience into the literary mainstream, and forced white Americans to re-examine their complacent attitude towards race-relations.

I recall my father telling me about an incident that opened his eyes to the situation. He was in the United States on a lecture tour in the early Fifties, and when he arrived in Charleston — scene of the recent slaughter of nine blacks in a church by a white supremacist — he had an appointment with a professor from a local university. My father had been waiting for a while in his hotel lobby when he was informed by a waiter that the professor was outside, and asking to see him. When he went to the door to ask his guest in, he was told that no blacks were allowed in the hotel. My father remembered his sense of shock and outrage about this state of affairs.

But if we are honest, the United States does not have a monopoly over racism: most societies look down on people who look different. The Chinese are among the most xenophobic people on earth, and the Chinese word for ‘foreigner’ is ‘barbarian’. The Japanese persecute the Koreans and their descendants who settled in Japan decades ago. Arabs are notorious for their vile treatment of Asian workers. And we in the subcontinent are in awe of fair skin.

The difference, however, is that in the United States racism is often given a lethal dimension, given the American love affair with guns. Barely a day goes by without news of some fatal shooting or the other. Every year, some 33,000 Americans are killed in gun-related incidents, and all too often, the victims are black.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2015

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