ICHEOKU says it always follows the same pattern. One incident is captured on video, it goes viral and fearing a riot, public relations experts and image makers start their pitiful pretentious show of empathy, which evaporates so soon after the tension dies down. Thereafter everything quietens down and the cycle of maltreatment starts again until the next episode. It is systematic and it is part of the body polity of life in the United States of America, leaving some people wondering what exactly is united in the United States of America which treats its disparate peoples differently, depending on the color of their skin. Why is the story always about white police officer killing black people all the time and in a country where blacks are less than 14% of the population. What is behind this or are black people the only ones who disobey police commands or involved in some law breaking?
But to date, no police officer has been charged nor convicted for murder for the many deaths resulting from their excessive use of force on black people. To date, no police officer has even been sentenced to a long term prison for unlawfully killing a black person in America. As always, it is the usual slap on the wrist, easily explained away as the police were doing their job and the black man was resisting arrest and you wonder why is it always with black people that such death-result occurs and the police man was found to be doing his job. It happens with such frequency that people have resigned their fate to when will the next one happen. Most people have given in to the inevitability as so many of them have happened without any serious consequences being meted out to the offensive police officer.
What happened in Minneapolis is just a symptom of a disease which is deeply eating the American society hollow and which is practically in every aspect of the American society. It will not be the last time as it is not the first time where a black person's life was snuffed out by policemen through choking and we are not counting those killed with bullets. A black single-cigarette hustler was choked to death in New York in 2014; another black man was shot and killed in Louisiana in 2016 for simply selling music cds and another black man was just choked to death in Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis murder, one is forced to ask what other continuing threat was a man on the ground in handcuffs still posed to warrant a police officer kneeling with his full body weight on his neck.
Why the neck and not other parts of his body including his back or legs or even sitting down on his already handcuffed hands. But no, the police man desired a certain outcome and he achieved it, and triumphantly posed with his trophy hunt and for over seven long minutes had his knee on his broken neck, that even when the EMS arrived, he was still kneeling on his dead body. The police do what they do because there is usually no consequences for their actions. They watch their counterparts in other places get away with their own killings, so they conclude it is okay for them to kill. Even when the police shoot you in the back while handcuffed and facing the ground, like they did to Oscar Grant in Oakland, they still get away with just one year behind bars sentence. So, the reckless disregard of black lives will continue until the authorities decide to end it by throwing the books at such offensive police officers.
But it is just not only the police that visits such ruthlessness on black people, the entire society do. From employers who hire them last and fire them first; then landlords who will not rent apartments to them; creditors who prey on them with exorbitant interest rates on loans when they give them any credit at all; shop clerks who follow them around whenever they enter a store and using such words like "can I help you find something"; the list goes on. You look at television programming, it is the same thing and when black people are allowed a role, it is always s subservient role which further amplifiers the narrative to white Americans that they are not equal to us. Take for example when they discuss unemployment in America, they always divide it to African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans; but they never mention white Americans, thus leaving the impression that only white Americans are the real Americans, otherwise why not just say Americans or include white Americans in the narrative.
All the stereotyping empowers white Americans to increase their feeling of superiority and it leads to unintended consequences such as the killing in Georgia of a black man by a father and son vigilante; the woman in Central Park New York with her dog who told a black man that she will tell the police that she is being terrorized by a black man. The only reason she said that was because she knows it always yields a punitive response, otherwise she wouldn't have said that nor dialed 911 with such a false allegation. The woman too is a victim of a society that sowed the seed of black people are bad and white people are good and she tried to cash in on it. In fact she would have gotten away with it if not for the video of the victim which captured everything; otherwise it would have been an automatic finding of guilt with detrimental consequences because a white woman said it happened and so, it happened. In the past, so many black people were lynched just on the words of some bimbos that claimed that they were raped even after a consensual sexual encounter.
In the same New York at the peak of the COVID 19, policemen were seen giving white people who were not wearing face masks protective face masks, but the same policemen were roughing up black people who did not have face masks. So, why would a non racist police have two treatments for two different people due to the color of their skins. But instead of also giving black people face masks as they did to white people, they were forcefully throwing black people to the ground, roughing them up as they handcuffed them for not wearing face masks. Yet it is the same one American society that we are talking about, the Almighty United States of America. Possibly, their thinking was that they don't want black people infecting their white people with coronavirus, but it is somewhat okay for their white people to infect others including black people with coronavirus.
So, the occasional fake outrage which occurs each time such an underhandedness is captured on video is not the right approach towards solving the underlying problem of racism in America. Much more is desired and needed. Americans know that a heavy disparity in treatments of black people exist and so they should also desire to do something about it to level the playing field. The better solution therefore is to address this underlying problem instead of acting surprised each time one of such mistreatments bubbles to the surface, as when captured on video. As a people, it is either we truly unite now as unity demands and as one people or we forever remain disunited, the fake united in the United States of America which does not translate into unity in the real sense of that word, notwithstanding.
ICHEOKU says is afraid that the undercurrent of disunity in America is such that should China one day decide to invade America, they might exploit this vulnerability to their advantage. It is for the same reason, feeling of not belonging nor wanted, that Islam is making a steady inroad into America black society, who feel they are not fully accepted in the American society and are always looking for succor in other things and places. Look at the third world styled poverty in many black America communities and the resultant short life expectancy and other quality of life issues inherent in them. This makes it easy for the analysts to tell us that Coronavirus killed more black Americans than other races but they won't also tell us the underlying reasons for that, such as the preexisting poverty induced health issues such as diabetes and heart health that are prevalent within those communities.
Anyway, ICHEOKU is not writing this to wish away the problem of disparity in America, just that the intermittent fake outrage seen whenever one of such incidents bubbles up to the surface, must end. It is a pity party which does not in any way solve the underlying problem of racism in America which induces them. Let nobody pretend that they are not aware of its existence and therefore should spare people of their occasional pretended indignation. It is a situation which black people in America have somewhat adjusted themselves and become accustomed to. They are used to living with it by now and could do without the occasional noisy outbursts of what the hell just happened, a fakery. So until such time that America is ready for a holistic resolution of the problem, let all the fake outrage rest. May the soul of the latest police choked to death black man now rest.
ICHEOKU says the irony of the whole thing is that nobody knows when it will end, if ever; as the bell usually tolls for the next black guy. It could be yours, your relative's, your friend's, your neighbor's or just the fella next door. It is a continuing sad commentary of the existential danger facing a black person in America and it is ever present, always hovering over them like a thick dark fog. 
