Racist mentality deeply rooted in US: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Akbar Muhammad, a historian, author and lecturer, to discuss police brutality and racism in the United States.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: You have just seen the footage out of Austin, Texas. Let’s start with that story first. It seems another crime is added – jaywalking while black. How is it that police can get away with this type of reaction for something that is so minor and usually not even considered a crime in most American cities?

Muhammad: Yes, you are right. In most American cities, they have a law about jaywalking. However, that law is very seldom implemented on people crossing the street. They warn them and caution them about it to be careful at the traffic.

What is interesting about what I saw is that it was at night. There was basically no traffic, no pedestrian traffic, and no cars on that street. So it is another form of harassment that we face as the people in America. It is tragic but it is rooted deeply in many of the police departments and you can see it, the man asked, ‘what did I do?’ and it seems it was logical for the police officer so to say that, ‘I am arresting you for jaywalking.’ And the man would have known or even answered but they tackled him to the ground and you see clearly on the video tape him punching the man in his arms and not answering any question.

So we have this problem in America. It is rooted deep in many police departments and I would like to say that we would hope that the leadership in America would demand where do they get their training and if the stories that are floating in America that many police departments send their young officers to Israel to get training, then we need to look into that because evidently this training has not panned out good for our community and we are suffering from it not only from this arrest that you see but the killing of our young men and women in the streets of America.

Press TV: What needs to be done in your perspective? As you said it is not the first time and it is not just from being arrested but we have seen many killings, actually something seen on a daily basis in the United States. What is going to bring this to an end? How do you think it needs to be addressed and by whom?

Muhammad: I think that after the killing in Ferguson of Michael Brown, there was an uproar, first vocal and then people took to the streets and it actually shook the country. It went from Washington, New York, Atlanta, Georgia, San Francisco, it went across the country. But if you notice, you do not see those demonstrations because they, in my terminology, have been dumbed down, taken off the front page but yet and still by what we see in Austin it is still happening. So our people need to come together and lift up their voices once again. Yes, stop traffic and make America pay attention to what is happening in the city with the black people - men, women and children.

Press TV: You have been in Tehran for a conference on American police brutality specifically against black Americans. Why this venue – Tehran – and do you think that it was a positive conference overall that can help in your cause?

Muhammad: It was absolutely positive. And one of the great leaders in America, Malcolm X, he always talked about internationalizing our struggle that people throughout the world from China to Chile, from Russia to South Africa should know about the plight of nearly 45 million black Americans descendant from Africa and after 500 years of being in America and contributing to America with wars, education, technology, we still suffer a racist mentality that is buried deep in the minds of many white Americans and you see it now played out on the streets of America. The world needs to know it.

So my trip here to Iran gave us an opportunity for platform for us from many walks of life to express what is happening in America and make the Iranian people aware of it.

Press TV: You talked about Malcolm X, el-Malik el-Shabazz, and one of the things he talked about was taking the black Americans struggle from a civil right struggle to a human rights struggle. Do you think that the plight of black Americans is something that needs to be more internationalized, that other governments, other entities need to get involved and perhaps put pressure on the United Nations in order to put pressure on the United States?

Muhammad: When our struggle started, it was a civil rights struggle and civil rights struggle mainly kept it local. Martin Luther King was able to – by what was shown on television – to internationalize our struggle by pricking the conscience of the world to say this is what the county that preaches human rights, democracy, freedom in all of these societies, preaching it to them, that this is what they are doing to us inside of America which is absolutely hypocritical.

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