These trigger-happy White American police

The Fire This time - Again!
By Tazoacha Asonganyi, Maryland, USA
Those who guess that the title of this essay is inspired by James Baldwin’s book, The Fire Next Time, have guessed correctly. The Fire Next Time is a book of two essays, one of which treats the race issues that Baldwin and other African Americans face(d) in the USA, and the second discusses the flight of African Americans from the problems they face in American society into religion, where they see answers to their problems through an abstract, metaphysical and idealistic lens, and use the Bible or the Koran to explain their fate and assuage their feelings and sorrows.
    I got to buy and read the book in 1976 when I joined the community group that was running a common initiative group called “Head Start Books & Crafts” at West Green Road, North London (UK). It had a Books and Crafts shop that sold mainly books on the struggles of African peoples all over the world (The continent, The USA, The Caribbean, Brazil, etc), and African crafts. They also had a community centre where they had educational talks and classes for African children and adults. The place was run by very militant “African Nationalists” that gave “alternative” education to “African” children as a sign of withdrawal from what they called “the Whiteman’s” education that should be avoided because they considered it to be a trap for Africans whom they said are trained to want what they do not need, and at the end, are not sure that everything they push around as theirs, is theirs.

    I did not share the view completely, but I went along with it because it was said to be a well thought out policy of the group. I agreed with the view of James Baldwin who told his little nephew James in The Fire Next Time that “you were born where you were born…Know whence you came […and] there is really no limit to where you can go.” In a way, he was telling James that it is important to know one’s history, but it is equally important to know how to use it. James (Baldwin’s nephew) may have been born into a society that imposes negative traits on him, but he can only progress if he refuses to accept an imposed image of himself. It was obviously the effort to improve the self-image that “Africans” had of themselves in Britain that we were attempting to offer “alternative” education. My opinion was that the children were British children that would grow up and live in Britain, for better or for worse, so our best option would have been to cause them to understand the mainstream education system well and exploit it to the best of their abilities, with all “alternative” additions aiming to enhance their ability to use the mainstream system to their advantage.
     Our group in “Head Start” had as partners, The Institute of Positive Education (IPE) led by Haki Madhubuti in Chicago. This means that IPE shared the same views on “alternative education.” After all, Baldwin had told his little nephew in The Fire Next Time that “The American society blocked many avenues to the black man; many blacks in America believe(d) the negative traits that the dominant culture imposed on them….The self-image that blacks had of themselves had to improve if they were ever going to progress in America.” “Alternative” education was therefore aimed at improving their self-image.
    Baldwin published The Fire Next Time in 1964 after participating in 1957 in the Civil Rights Movement alongside Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The book was essentially a history of black protest which predicted an explosion of violence if the condition of African Americans did not improve. Today in 2014, their condition has not improved because African Americans are still a huge majority of the bottom 10% of Americans – poorest educated, highest unemployed, lowest income bracket, highest prison population, and so on. And so there have been cycles upon cycles of explosion of violent protests – many of Baldwin’s “Next Times.”
    One of such “Next Time” was in 2013 when I was visiting the USA. By the time of my visit “The Fire” had abetted but the visit coincided with the opening of the case against George Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch Coordinator, who had fatally shot 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida.
    Here I am again visiting the USA and there is “The Fire” this time again, sparked by the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year old African American Michael Brown by Police Officer Daren Wilson on August 9 in Ferguson, St. Louis County, Missouri.  The violent protests by African Americans lasted for over a week.
    As a visitor to the USA, one is daily bombarded by news of fatal police shootings across the country. One is also told frightening tales about the police: you can be fatally shot while your frozen hands fidget with keys to your own house during winter at your own door, or when you make the wrong hand movements in their presence. It is said that there are some 300 million guns circulating freely among citizens in the society. Some people justify the trigger-happy police behavior by claiming that this free circulation of guns makes them nervous about suspicious actions. But the fact that most of the shootings are of African American teenagers by white police officers creates doubt about this explanation.
    In a way, James Baldwin’s prediction that there would be an explosion of violence if the condition of African Americans did not improve has been tested during the last fifty years and found to be true. America has to deal with the African American situation which has remained virtually unchanged since James Baldwin penned his little book on the history of African American protest. Otherwise, the end of “The Fire” is not in sight.