In the United States the talk these days is about race and Syria, as I discovered on a recent visit. Americans have celebrated the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech that stirred the country. Highlighting the plight of Afro-Americans was the Trayvon Martin case that shook the country. The 17-year-old Florida high school student was walking unarmed at night in February, 2012, when George Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighborhood watch coordinator, confronted him and, in the ensuing altercation, shot him dead. Police questioned and released Zimmerman, saying he acted in self-defense in accordance with Florida law. Following countrywide protests Zimmerman was charged with murder. However, a mostly white jury acquitted him. President Obama said blacks experience harassment every day and that he had that experience too before becoming a senator. However, he cautioned blacks to be patient and follow the law. On an average 32 Americans, mostly black, are killed every day. While black Americans constitute 13 percent of the population, 47 percent of homicide victims between 1980 and 2008 were black. Of the 2.3 million Americans who are in jail one million are black. The New York City police frisked, in 2011 alone, close to 700,000 people, most of them innocent non-white people. New York City is 44 percent white, but 90 percent of those stopped are non-white. Black households earn $33,000 annually compared to $55,000 for whites. Unemployment among blacks is 15 percent, more than twice that of whites. This remains the reality even as Americans recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the march to Washington D.C. against racism and Dr. Martin Luther King's moving speech in which he said in part: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Dr. King didn't blame white people and indeed the struggle by blacks for equality and dignity has largely been peaceful. He told blacks: “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” He appealed to white people's sense of justice in asking them to help build a more just country. The march and Dr. King's speech led to a series of laws that improved the lives of black people. The National Urban League reports that the number of blacks in college has tripled and home ownership among blacks has increased 14 percent. While 29 percent of blacks dropped out of school in 1967, today only seven percent do so. These and other figures show both sides of the coin - how far blacks have to go to achieve equality and how far they have come. Consider that blacks were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America as slaves to toil till they dropped dead. Remember also that the southern states fought a war to secede from the United States rather than free the slaves. Note also that, even after the abolition of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks and they remained without rights for a long time. I applaud the progress the US has made in improving the situation of blacks, especially given the racism, bigotry and discrimination against sects, minorities, women and the poor in some Muslim countries. American blacks remain second-class citizens but are progressing. The American people elected a black president with a Muslim middle name two times. Syria, where more than 100,000 people have been brutally killed and more than two million have fled from their homes, is also dividing Americans. President Obama is pushing for military action. But a poll shows that only 29 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of Republicans support him with 48 and 40 percent against. Another poll suggests that 66 percent of swing voters oppose military action. International law bans chemical weapons. But the US itself used Agent Orange in Vietnam to defoliate forests and kill Viet Minh soldiers in the Ho Chi Minh trail. It also backed Saddam Hussein when he used poison gas in the 1980-1988 war with Iran. It also gives napalm bombs and cluster bombs to Israel, which kill innocent people as painfully as do chemical weapons and which Israel has used freely against civilians. Americans know that both Bashar Assad and the rebels are violating human rights and are fighting a savage war. Americans distrust the rebels also. So they remain confused and divided about what to do.
— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge.
