Tell the truth to heal wounds

Minneapolis was this week on a knife-edge as the world followed live court proceedings on ex-police officer Derek Chauvin’s fate – a jury ruling, which could have further polarised the racially-divided America, had Chauvin been found not guilty.

Last year’s chilling footage of Chauvin kneeling for nine minutes on the neck of helpless African-American George Floyd, who died during the shocking incident, should be seen as yet another reminder of the depth of the US spectre of racism – in a country that has prided itself as a torch-bearer of human rights.

A slap on the wrist would have undoubtedly ignited unprecedented unrest and mass protest in America that has not healed from the deep wounds of slavery, lynching of African-Americans and years of racial segregation.

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While there have been celebrations over the verdict, with many describing it as “justice ultimately served” – African-American life in the US continues to be cheap, if the recent death of SA rugby player Lindani Myeni in Hawaii at the hands of the police, is anything to go by.

Unlike in the US, South Africans have gone quiet over the Myeni shooting.

As if demonstrating that US officers had nothing to learn from the Floyd murder, police shot dead teenage girl Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio on the same day the verdict on the Chauvin murder trial verdict was reached.

These may sound like isolated incidents but they evoke past memories of US racial divisions – running too deep to be superficially addressed by speeches and statements.

As seen in SA, addressing apartheid damage is a process and no Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be enough to heal past wounds. Lest we forget, more than 4 400 racial terror lynchings of African-Americans were recorded in US during the period between Reconstruction and World War II.

According to the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents, so rife was the lynching of African-Americans during the period that the heinous phenomenon stretched across 12 southern states.

Most importantly, lynching reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality – still readily apparent in the US criminal justice system today.

According to the EJI, mass incarceration, racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities and police abuse of people of colour “reveal problems in American society that were shaped by the terror era”.

“We cannot heal the deep wounds until we tell the truth about it,” says EJI director Bryan Stevenson.

“The geographic, political, economic and social consequences of decades of terror lynchings can still be seen in many communities today and the damage created by lynching needs to be confronted and discussed.

“Only then can we meaningfully address the problems that are lynching’s legacy.” Like the Holocaust, the US should erect prominent public memorials to commemorate thousands of African-Americans lynched.

For President Joe Biden, the guilty verdict represented a watershed moment: “This systemic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul. The knee on the neck of justice for black Americans; profound fear and trauma, the pain, the exhaustion that black and brown Americans experience every single day.”