Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

 

The worst seems to be over in Ferguson, Missouri for now. But the rampage resulting from the cold-blooded shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a policeman is a warning to the United States that for all the progress it has made, racism remains a painful reality of daily life for millions of African-Americans. So do economic disparity and grinding poverty.



Millions of Americans, primarily blacks but also others, subsist in despair. The country, despite the semblance of normal life, erupts like a volcano periodically under the pressure of racism, social injustice, economic needs and a political system that grants powerful lobbies huge powers but reduces common people to helplessness.



Despite the election of a black president two times, the plight of African-Americans is becoming worse. Maclean’s magazine quotes Elizabeth Kneebone, an economist with Brookings Institution of Washington, as saying that the neighborhoods where more than one in five residents live below the poverty line doubled between 2008 and 2012.



Professor Darnell Hunt of the University of California at Los Angeles says that since the civil rights era, life has become worse for African-Americans. In the last seven years, the US Defense Department has given more than $4 billion of military equipment to police forces to enable them to combat drug gangs, terrorism and citizens protesting against unjust policies, corruption or police repression.



Canada is of course a gentler country. But blacks in the Maritime provinces and in Toronto protest against police harassment and heavy-handedness. The plight of Canada’s Aboriginal people is far worse than that of blacks. No immediate relief is in sight for them. Right now the country is indignant over the continuing murders of Aboriginal women. Between 1980 and 2012, 1,017 Aboriginal women were killed.



As Macleans wrote recently: “An Aboriginal girl born in Canada today will die up to 10 years earlier than the national average. She is more likely to live in a crowded home without access to clean running water. She is more likely to be sexually or physically abused, and stands a far greater chance of becoming addicted to tobacco, alcohol and drugs. She is more prone to a host of life-threatening ailments like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Worse yet, as a recent RCMP report showed, she is five times more likely than her non-Aboriginal counterpart to meet a violent end.”



Aboriginal men suffer too. Canada’s 617 First Nations communities live on reserves or in cities. The remote reserves do not provide them adequate housing, education, health care, jobs and an acceptable standard of living. Reserves with huge natural or mineral resources flourish. But on most reserves, life is desperate leading to crime, violence, alcoholism and drugs.



Living in cities provides opportunities. But Aboriginals are often not educated enough to become productive and constructive. They also run into racism and trouble with the law. While Aboriginals constitute some four percent of the population, they constitute more than 20 percent of federal prison inmates.



Federal and provincial governments do provide financial assistance to Aboriginal communities. But the Indian Act that governs them, irresponsible Aboriginal leaders and the governments’ inability and unwillingness to treat the problem as urgent keeps the wound festering. Aboriginal groups have  demonstrated, blockaded highways and pleaded for urgent action but without major results.



Increasing numbers of Canadians are becoming alarmed by the direction the country is taking: disappearing jobs, disparity (the richest one percent of Canadians get a third of the country’s wealth), poverty, overcrowded prisons, capitalism gone berserk (in one afternoon some managers earn more than what average Canadians make in a year), quality of water, pollution, education standards, corruption, a baffling foreign policy and the politicians’ disregard for the people.



Peoples’ Forums have been held in several cities, such as Edmonton and London, or are planned to produce networks across the country to confront the dangers. The one in Ottawa brought more than 5,000 individuals and organizations together to exchange views and plan joint action.  Thousands of others participated in peaceful demonstrations. With politicians such as the Liberals’ Justin Trudeau and the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair becoming more attentive to the people, perhaps Canada will become a more just society.



The US faces a greater danger. Most blacks live in poverty. The country’s political system rests on corruption with the rich or powerful lobbies, such as the gun control group, dictating the country’s agenda. Diehard right-wing conservatives block social justice, as evidenced by their enmity toward President Barack Obama and his efforts to provide medical care to the millions of Americans who cannot not afford it. The US Census Bureau recently reported  that poverty levels declined slightly in 2013. But one out of six Americans still lacks enough food and some 14.5 percent of Americans remain poor.



The Justice Department reported a 15 percent increase in crime last year with 26 persons out of 1,000 suffering violence.



The US has to pay much greater attention to removing poverty, social injustices and other root causes of crime if it is to make life better and safer for all Americans.

 

— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge.