This is my America

 

 
 

image: Associated Press

Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky are emergency medical services (EMS) workers from San Francisco. They were attending a conference in New Orleans when hurricane Katrina made landfall. Their experience with American style policing sounds all too familiar to me:

...Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw "mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" attitude was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

I left my middle class corner of the midwestern USA in 1996 for Sydney. My experience growing up in America with American cops, despite all my blonde & blue-eyed whiteness and educated, well-spoken demeanor, has always been that the cops make up their minds about what you are before they deal with you. If you are black, youthful or sport a counterculture type appearance, the cops are not your allies under any circumstances. No matter what kind of trouble you have, you don’t call the police if you’re a member of one of the groups they don’t like the looks of- ever. I’ve had cops level a firearm at me on more than one occasion, for no greater crime than being on a footpath when they didn’t want me to be there.

American cops prejudging the worth of people on sight is the norm. I pretty much accepted that over the years (as if I or anyone else have a choice), to the point where I find it difficult to write about it. Police abuse of authority is so common that you’d probably find more interest in an in-depth discussion of how to butter a slice of bread. However, the mere attitude of the cops takes on a totally new meaning when it’s your survival on the line.

Some of the biggest lies I was told as an American youth in the 1960s and 70s were ‘anyone can grow up to be President’ and ‘anyone can be a financial success if they only work hard enough.’ I grew up in mainly white, middle class areas of the north central USA and had few contacts with black people outside of those kids I knew from school. As a kid and a young adult, I honestly believed that po folk just didn’t work hard enough. After all, I always found it easy to attend uni, get OK-paying jobs and live in decent quality housing. I didn’t think my honkeyness had much to do with it.

I gained a new appreciation for being a blue-eyed white male in situations involving authority in America, but never more so than in my visits to the deep American South, notably Georgia, Nawlins and Foat Wuth. I always tucked my hair up in my helmet (or in my jacket in no-helmet states) when riding my motorcycle through any of the aforementioned areas. If I didn’t, I was sure to be stopped by police. Charlie Daniels‘ "Uneasy Rider" was actually fairly educational in that it was my first clue that you could be white and still be in a whole heap o’ trouble if you didn’t keep your wits about you when in the Sowf.

My best lesson in how important it is to be a white guy in America was when I was doing a temp job in Foat Wuth. In the mid 1980s, I was hired by a very large Fort Worth, Texas based company, along with about 20 other guys from around the USA. Three of these fellas were black. On my first payday, I went to a nearby bank to cash my paycheck. Though I was new in town, living in an apartment rented by the company and had no accounts with that bank, I didn’t have any trouble cashing my paycheck. I reckoned it was because the check was drawn on that bank and that I worked for the biggest company in town; the teller surely knew the check couldn’t possibly bounce.

However, all three of the black guys I worked with, who did the exact same job I was doing, were told they would have to open accounts and maintain a minimum balance of $250 for 60 days before the bank would cash their paychecks. Brash damyankee that I was (am!), I grabbed these guys and we marched back to the bank teller, whom I confronted with the notion that these men were all in the same position I was, yet the bank cashed my paycheck and not theirs. I pointedly asked the teller if the difference in treatment was because these men were black. The teller turned eight shades of purple, but cashed all three of these black guys’ checks on the spot. 

My daddy raised me to be ‘colorblind,’ even in the tumultuous race relations atmosphere of the 1960s. I have thus always been a staunch anti-racist, even in my childhood and young teens. However, the Foat Wuth bank event really was the catalyst for my politicisation and vociferous activism around the issue.

The stories filtering out of Nawlins are depressing confirmations of this king-of-the-world racist mindset that too many American authorities have. This prejudgement of the worth of a human on sight is deadset typical not only of large chunks of American law enforcement but of conservative American politicians. If your survival pivots on the discretion of American cops and wingnut politicians, you’d better become MacGyver in a great big hurry. 

Individual Americans do have a reputation outside of their homeland, not only for their effusive and brash manner, but for their resourcefulness and can-do attitude, as made familiar to non-yanks by the MacGyver character. That resourcefulness comes in no small part from the general life lessons we Americans are given. Since there’s very little in the way of social support programs and no national healthcare in the USA, you are pretty much on your own.

I’ll be very surprised if the US Government makes any exceptions to the 60 month lifetime limit for unemployment benefits even in the case of displaced Katrina survivors. Eleven conservative Republican senators have even voted against the US$51billion aid package to those affected by Katrina.

Gore Vidal reckons that the US will implode, becoming an irrelevant, mediocre world power in the next 20 years.  Katrina makes it obvious it’s already there.

-weez 

Tip-o-the-hat to 12th Harmonic for this item.

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