Barak Obama is a black man. You may not have realised that. And although he’s from Hawaii originally, he lived his adult life in Chicago. Where they view black people as, kind’a, ‘people’. Chicago is a civilised place. Its up north. Where civilisation appears to begin and end in the United States. Minnesota is up north as well. So far up north that attitudes there have gone a bit southern.

The American civil war happened 150 years ago. But it was never really resolved. It wasn’t just about the industry of ‘slavery’, which that brutal and horrible war sorted out. It was about the kind of attitudes that create and sustain that industry. The view that because people have a different coloured skin that they are in some way, in fact in many ways, inferior. That view couldn’t be removed by the war. And it appears to be live and well in so many parts of that nation.

Some southern states only became ‘integrated’ in the 1960s and 70s. The ones who fought for all they’re worth to keep separate buses for blacks and whites, separate schools, public spaces, toilets. Like white people’s shit don’t stink. The Kennedys were massively responsible for the integration. Which is why that name is still ‘dirt’ in Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama.

Because of this, millions of blacks are socially deprived. Particularly in the South. There are glass ceilings regarding jobs, housing, education (unless you’re really good at football/basketball, obviously, only sport really transcends racism in the South) which sustains an underclass. Who respond as all secondary citizens do, by giving up and turning to violence, crime and drugs. Creating the situation where the police, when stopping a man for a broken tail-light, immediately get very nervous when the driver is black. And young, and dreadlocked. So even though the driver told the policeman that he was legally armed and licensed to carry a weapon, which he was, when he reached for his wallet, the policeman shot him. And he died.

The policeman panicked, was pumped up on adrenaline and expectation, so he did what all Americans seem to do; shoot first.

The killing in Baton Rouge the day before was different. The black driver was hauled out of his car and held down on the floor by 2 policemen and was completely incapacitated. One of the cops then, whilst holding the man down with one hand, drew his gun and simply executed the man on the ground. Who posed no threat, immediate or otherwise, as he lay there held by 2 men.

I dunno what’s going on over there. (Thank Gawd) its not my country. The random shooting of a dozen white police in Dallas doesn’t resolve anything. Just makes it much worse. Elevates it to another level. In a country where over half of its citizens are already armed to the teeth.

America has become two separate countries; the North where there is such equality that even a black man can become President. And the south. Where he would never get a white vote.

Time to act. Good luck with that.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx