The US state sanctions racist violence against the African American people and the White House has not made any effort to curtail it, a civil rights activist and journalist in Detroit says.
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday, commenting on the outbreak of unrest in the US state of Missouri over the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black teenager by a police officer.
“I believe very strongly that the protests and rebellions surrounding the police killing of young 18-year-old Michael Brown is a reflection of the growing anger against state-sanctioned racist violence inside the United States,” Azikiwe said.
“The president, Barack Obama, said yesterday that the death of Michael Brown was heartbreaking. But he never mentioned any effort on part of the administration to curtail this type of violence being carried out against African Americans by law enforcement agencies across the United States,” he added.
“Also we just had the case of Ted Wafer, the white man from Dearborn Heights, a suburb outside of Detroit, who killed young 19-year-old Renisha McBride, who was a college student, in Detroit,” Azikiwe stated.
“She entered his porch and knocked on the door, asking for assistance, after she had been involved in an automobile accident. She was shot dead, and the jury did not believe his story, which changed. Initially, he said that he shot her by mistake and later on… he said that he was fighting because he thought she was there to break into his home,” he further stated.
On Thursday, Detroit’s Wayne County Circuit Court found Theodore Wafer guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of McBride, according to the Associated Press.
Wafer, 55, was on trial for killing McBride on his porch in November. McBride appeared at Wafer’s house at around 4:30 a.m. on November 2, 2013. She crashed her car nearby earlier that night. She knocked on Wafer’s door, unarmed and looking for help. Wafer came to the door with a loaded shotgun and shot her in the face.
“So the verdict in the Renisha McBride case indicates that there is a growing awareness in regard to the violence that’s being perpetuated against African Americans and other oppressed nations here in the United States,” Azikiwe said.
“This is something that must be directed to the US Congress, which has failed as well to speak directly to the pain and the hurt of the African American community, and also to the White House, which has not focused at all on the ongoing racism and racist violence being perpetuated against the African American people,” he noted.
“So, hopefully, these outbreaks in Ferguson, Missouri, and other developments around the United States will in fact focus more attention on the need to eliminate racist violence in the United States,” he concluded.
In an interview with Press TV on April 16, 2012, Malcolm X’s grandson, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, said that blacks are murdered with impunity in the US because the system is unjust.
“There are hundreds of black Americans who are being murdered in the United States every year with impunity. And police officers serve no time. They always get off,” Shabazz stated.
He said this occurs because there is institutionalized racism in the US.
Shabazz was beaten to death in Mexico City on May 9, 2013. An autopsy found that the 28-year-old died of deadly blows to the head, face and torso.
