March 12, 2021
Distrust
56 years ago, on February 21, 1965, civil rights icon Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan. Through decades, questions have swirled.
Netflix ran a six-part mini-series in 2020 “Who Killed Malcolm X?” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr, has initiated a preliminary ongoing review of the assassination. His father, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance under President Carter, resigned in 1980 in protest over what turned out to be a disastrous secret operation to extricate American hostages from Tehran.
Marking the February Black History Month and the anniversary of Malcolm’s slaying, CBS “This Morning,” on February 25, telecast an extensive story by correspondent Michelle Miller, on a February 21 press conference that revealed fresh evidence implicating NYPD and federal law enforcement in Malcolm’s killing. The story featured an interview by CBS Anchor Gayle King of Ilyasah, daughter of Malcolm X and civil liberties lawyer, Ben Crump. The articulate Ilyasah Shabazz, author of a new book, “The Awakening of Malcolm X,” spoke with poise. She noted that “young people were politicized” after the death of George Floyd, with many now turning to Malcolm X.
Manufactured misperceptions are melting. Writing on Malcolm X in the Melbourne Age of February 26, Professor Shane White at the University of Sydney, stated: “Although Malcolm X died 56 years ago, his short life and what he stood for remain just as relevant to race relations in the United States today.”
There remains entrenched a pervasive degree of distrust among the Black community of officialdom. The pandemic has served to highlight it. Vaccine skepticism hovers. One basis is a history of medical experimentation on blacks. Juxtaposed against that is a lack of confidence in the criminal justice system and policing.
On February 17, police in San Clemente, California, released a video of a black man, Kurt Reinhold, shot dead last year by two sheriff’s deputies after being stopped for jaywalking, displaying a casual disregard for life.
Officer Harry Dunn of the US Capitol Police Department was on duty during the January 6 rampage and ransacking of the US Capitol. In a “Nightline” interview, broadcast by ABC-TV on February 23, he said with regard to the attackers, that “they were terrorists” and “they were trying to assassinate the Vice President in the Capitol,” that some used the “N-word” and that he was scared and kept wondering “Is this America?”
Another category now in the firing line are Asian Americans, particularly those with Oriental features. They have been the victims of xenophobic fury, as documented by the front-page Washington Post story of February 26. Their cause was not helped by former President Trump who put the label “China virus” on Covid-19, calling it also “Kung Flu,” a parody of the Chinese martial art of Kung Fu.
Would the Biden administration have in it the wherewithal to turn a new leaf? Barely a month after assuming office, it ordered a bombing attack in Syria, sparking suggestions of hypocrisy within the US Congress, vide news analysis by Aaron Blake in the Washington Post of February 26, that the Biden administration is doing exactly what it was criticizing the Trump administration of doing.
My late great friend, Dr Sulayman Nyang, from Gambia, who was Chairman of the African Studies Department at Howard University, Washington, DC, took the long view. He told me once that whenever there is US military action in the Mideast, it is American Muslims who inevitably bear the brunt of bigotry, in that they are held hostage to the vagaries of US-Mideast escalating tensions. The Muslim community, in effect, is a co-author of its own predicament by its incapacity to develop a support system to make its voice meaningful.
At an October 1985 reunion of World War II pilots, in Arlington, Virginia, I heard a black pilot, Lucky Lester, mention that when his daughter was in a university classroom, she was asked what her father did during the war. When she said he was a fighter pilot, the professor refused to believe her, being shockingly unaware of the Tuskegee Airmen – a decorated band of WWII black pilots.
The misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan often were punctuated with quixotic talk of reconfiguring the Mideast and of nation-building. Nation-building, however, has to begin at home. And it starts with the low-tech healing power of building trust.
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