US human rights crisis exposed to world: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ajamu Baraka, a human rights activist in Cali, Colombia, to discuss police brutality against African Americans in the United States. 

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: When it comes to the situation as far as racial profiling in the United States goes, it was hopes that after images coming out of Ferguson particularly and the Department of Justice report, things would be better. Why have they not changed though?

Baraka: Because the issues in the US are systemic. They are not connected to any issue of so-called bad apples, but they are in fact endemic to the US system.

Part of the problem with what happened with Ferguson was not just the report that was done that condemned the Ferguson police forces, but the failure on the part of the federal government to hold accountable the killer cop that was involved in the shooting. In this situation in Ferguson and the failure of the federal government to be proactive in terms of real accountability, is something that has been in place across the country. It is part of the history of the US.

The US has an ongoing human rights crisis that it can no longer shield from the international community, and that is really the main concern of the authorities that the human rights hypocrisy of the US has been finally and formally exposed to the international community.

Press TV: The US still continues to claim that it is a post-racial society, specifically when you see that the country has elected an African American to the office of the presidency? 

Baraka: That is mythology. Basically, it really does not matter the pigmentation, the race of the individual who occupies an office. It is connected to what objective interests does that individual uphold, and we know that that particular structure, that position, upholds the interest of concentrated white power in the US and globally.

So Barack Obama, his Attorney General Eric Holder, they have been very effective in upholding the oppressive power of the European dominant class in the US.

So post-racialism is a mythology, especially when you look at the fact that he was elected three years after Katrina, a situation where basically it was absolutely clear that the value of black life was not the same as the value of white life.

Press TV: There are some who do claim that the reason that we are seeing such high numbers of African Americans incarcerated or even killed and becoming victims of police brutality is because of the high crime rates within the black community. How would you respond to that?

Baraka: The basic objective is that the crime rates are going down in the black community, but we have had an intensification of police in those communities. Why? Because the objective here again is to create a situation where the anticipated uprising from these communities have been marginalized politically and economically to be able to intensify the control and containment measures of these communities.

So this is part of the internal contradictions we have in the US, that basically you have crime rates going down but yet you have an intensification of police in those same communities.

It is a contradiction that again has been finally exposed to the international community.

AHK/HSN

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