Dallas R eminder
Editorial in Indian Express, July 12, 2016
Protests in the US underline that the nation has not fully confronted its demons.
(Note: “White House” has been and will continue for many more years, the paradoxical, provocative symbol of America. In one sense it has been the curse of America as Caste system is the thorn in the flesh of all Indians, not just Hindus. When I had to write an assignment in journalism in US, I wrote on: the WASP(white, aglosaxon protesant) proclaiming the enslavement of the blacks by the Whites. The title was: “Caste system in India and Colour Caste in US.” WASP type Americans know of two colours only: White and Black. For them black includes all shades of darkness, brown, gray etc. Anything other than English while is not to be promoted or patronized. It is ingrained in them like Caste prejudice in us Indians. Due to this, divisions between whites and coloured are very sharp even now especially in certain states in the South and certain areas and cities in the North. All looked to and prayed for a black president in the White house as the ultimate remedy. That dream got realized in President Obama. But 
things have not changed much for the colored in US. Recent happenings show that it was always the Blacks who got killed often in any shoot out. Both India and America have to go miles and miles to wipe out caste prejudice in India and colour prejudice in the US. james kottoor, editor.)
When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, it seemed to herald an America triumphing over racial inequality and healing the rift between blacks and whites, which had festered for one and a half centuries since the Civil War. Obama, who has just cut short a visit to Spain when news broke of the shooting of five policemen in Dallas, A rash of protests over police violence against blacks has broken out all over the country and interstate highways are being shut down from Oakland to Memphis, apart from St Paul, where Philandro Castile was shot allegedly without provocation by a traffic policeman.
The black backlash spans a wide spectrum of movements from the liberal Black Lives Matter to extreme organisations like the Black Riders Liberation, the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam. Black separatist organisations have gained ground in recent years and Micah Johnson, who shot five police officers dead in Dallas, is reported to have favoured them. The assertion of black rage which is still in progress in the US is a response to the perception of racial profiling and targeting by the police.
Indeed, Castile’s girlfriend, whose video of his killing lit the fuse, had acted to make public what the black community knew privately all along. The fuse was smouldering anyway — the closing years of the Obama presidency have seen a polarisation, which is visible in the growth in racist organisations, both black and white. The effects of the divisive politics of exclusion chucked into the melting pot by Donald Trump can only make the body politic even more toxic. Add to this charged atmosphere the force multiplier of freely available automatic weapons and assault rifles, and an explosive situation is inevitable.
The US has about 7 million people in its correctional system, only slightly less than the entire population of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A disproportionately large number of prisoners and probationers are black. This could owe to police bias or to well-known social factors predisposing the disadvantaged to crime.
Either way, it suggests that in the US, the annihilation of racism remains a work in progress. Despite the salience of the question of race in American media, public affairs and academics, the magnitude of the problem has neither been acknowledged nor understood.
