‘We charge genocide’ Get your knee off our necks
Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
George Alleyne, Nelson King,
Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean L 10 ife, June 12-18, 2020
By Denise J. Roberts &
Gerry Hopkin
On May 25, 2020, people
across America and
the world were stunned as
footage captured George
Floyd pinned beneath
three police officers,
one of whom pressed his
knee onto Floyd’s neck
for almost nine minutes.
Despite calls for help from
Floyd and startled onlookers,
the officer pressed his
knee deeper onto his neck
until he lost consciousness
and died.
Floyd’s death was aptly
described as a heinous
crime by people across the
globe. The Black Lives Matter
movement immediately
mobilized the masses to
protest against injustice
and the systemic oppression
plaguing blacks and
other People of Color. Some
protesters call for accountability
tools to address the
prolonged inequities in the
society, while others petition
the government for
social and racial justice
and police reform.
It is difficult to not
place this atrocity into its
rightful historical context
– systemic oppression
and injustice constructed
and orchestrated by white
supremacy culture. At the
heart of this construct is
the idea that a superior
“white race” exists. This
idea shapes the beliefs, values,
standards, and practices
that benefit whites.
In America, the tyranny of
white supremacy is manifested
in myriad ways,
including hiring, employment,
housing, health care,
education, mortgage lending,
austere anti-immigration
policies, racial profiling,
policy brutality, and
mass incarceration.
Unarmed black men are
seven times more likely to
die from police brutality
than white men. Among
the thousands of blacks
who were killed by white
police officers, few have
been charged. And most
were cleared or acquitted
in the cases that have been
tried. Unarmed Black Lives
Matter protesters have
often been tear-gassed or
assaulted when protesting
the murder of unarmed
black men and women,
while white protesters stroll
into state offices with ARstyle
battlefield rifles, protected
by state law, palpable
privilege, and pure-bred
compatriots. This pattern
of injustice highlights the
corruption in law enforcement,
disguised manifestations
of tyranny, and a
justice system designed to
serve and protect whites;
not People of Color.
Racism and class oppression
are not merely individual
prejudices. They are
manifested and continually
reinforced at the interpersonal,
institutional, and
structural levels as well.
It is often easy to discern
oppression and injustice in
the overt displays of discrimination
that occur
across America. Hence, it
is easy to understand the
reason behind the strident
calls for fairness, justice,
and equality.
Unlike the way it happens
in America, it is not
always easy to discern
oppression in the islands
of the Caribbean. It is not
always easy to recognize
the injustices that occur
within our own systems
of governance. However,
when foreign influence
matters more than
the voices of the locals, it
means that our political
leaders are kneeling on the
necks of our people. When
corrupt back-room deals
leave citizens indebted for
many years, unknowingly;
when economic gains from
arable lands are overlooked
in favor of foreign investments;
when foreign property
owners restrict public
access to the beaches;
when foreign investors are
given preference and concessions
over the natives;
when local banks turn
their backs on local small
businesses in favor of foreign
investors; when deforestation,
land degradation
and other environmental
crimes are allowed to take
place with impunity, and
government fails to fulfill
its obligation to protect
human rights and natural
resources; when a party’s
support base reaps public
benefits and non-supporters
are treated with great
disdain; and when election
fraud, massive vote rigging,
and manipulation disrupts
democracy, it means that
our leaders are pinning our
people beneath the tyranny
of oppression while pushing
their knee deep onto
our necks. We must all cry
out, you are choking us,
and we cannot breathe!
Together, we must stand
up to oppression and injustice
by “letting our voices
be heard.” When they try
to pin us down or push
their knees deep onto our
necks, we must say firmly,
get your knee off our necks
– or else…
By John Burl Smith
“We Charge Genocide: The
Historic Petition to the United
Nations for Relief from a Crime
of Genocide by the United States
Government against the Negro
People” is a petition presented
to UN Secretary-General Trygve
Halvdan Lie in 1951. Although I
was a pre-teen in 1951, and living
in Memphis, I never heard a
word about “We Charge Genocide”
then or during my entire
education in any school I attended
throughout my life. It was
in 1992 when I was writing for
my wife, Dot’s, e-magazine The
DISH (Dot’s Information Service
Hot Line) that I encountered “We
Charge Genocide.” After reading
it, I was amazed that such
a momentous document could
escape my attention so completely,
having been a black power
activist since1967. If one reads
“We Charge Genocide,” they will
understand why.
Not only was the document
amazing, but their efforts to bring
this jaw-dropping account to the
world, are even more amazing. I
detail the account, at length, in
“The 400th” 1619 to 2019): From
Slavery to Hip Hop. I will not
retell that story here. However,
I will address how that amazing
saga bears on today. “
We Charge Genocide” was a
response to the United Nation’s
Genocide Convention adopted by
the General Assembly in December
1948—any intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national,
racial, or religious group is genocide!!!
Paul Robeson (4-9-1898/1-
23-1976) was very well known
artist, athlete, concert singer,
actor and activist along with William
L. Patterson (8-27-1891/3-
5-1980), a well-to-do New York
lawyer, head of the International
Labor Defense (ILD) and a black
outspoken leader in the Communist
Party-USA.
(For those who want to know
the real story of the Communist
Party-USA check out scholar
Mary Helen Washington’s book
“The Other Blacklist: The African
American Literary and Cultural
Left of the 1950s”). Looking
at black American’s penniless
emancipation, the lynching
period inspired by president
Woodrow Wilson that lasted
until 1950, white’s “Red Summer’s
riots against blacks in
1919, share cropping and convict
leasing, Robeson and Patterson
and volunteers compiled a 237-
page petition, detailing America’s
crimes of genocide against its
slavery descendants.
Among other things, “We
Charge Genocide” accused the US
government of committing thousands
of wrongful executions and
lynchings. It documented 10,000
cases of discrimination, disparate
treatment in employment,
education, and public accommodations.
It charged further that
the US had disenfranchised black
people, preventing them from
voting, by using intimidation, poll
taxes, grandfather clauses, and
literacy tests, which such voter
suppression tactics are commonly
used and acknowledged today,
and Republicans continue denying
black voters access to the poll
in 2020. “We Charge Genocide”
cited thousands of police brutality
cases. It cited convict leasing
to show there were no fair courts
in the US, as well as its criminal
justice system was rigged against
black people. Southern states
judicial systems legitimize using
trumped-up charges to imprison
millions of African Americans,
and support police murders.
OP-EDS
Racism and class
oppression are not
merely individual
prejudices. They
are manifested
and continually
reinforced at the
interpersonal,
institutional, and
structural levels as
well.
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