By Zhang Xiaojun
“I can’t breathe!”
These were the desperate words uttered by Eric Garner with his last breaths in July 2014, and they were repeated by George Floyd in May 2020 before he died.
The recurrence of the scene six years later filled American people with outrage, panic, and despair. When white policemen could impose minutes-long “chokehold” on black people and turn a deaf ear to their dying pleas, Americans have every reason to worry that they themselves may be the next.
The US that has been trumpeting about human rights has actually had the worst human rights records. It has been almost 60 years since Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but what arrives today is the continued strangulation of the dream of equality and freedom.
A UN special report pointed out that the number of African Americans killed or abused in the hand of American law enforcement remains appalling, but barely anyone has ever been held accountable. A study by the American Journal of Public Health showed that African males are three times more likely to die from police enforcement than white males. Ibram Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, described the US as being in a crisis of white supremacy.
Systemic racism exists not only in law enforcement. It has become a chronic disease in American society. The consequences of racism are just brought to the fore more tragically by the raging COVID-19, which hit African Americans disproportionately hard. The nationwide statistics released by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that by May 13, 22.4% of COVID-19 deaths in the US were African Americans, much higher than their proportion of 12.5% in the population .
It’s true that “human right” is a high-profile value in the US, but it’s exclusive to the white, the elites, and the capitalist interest groups. Britain’s The Guardian wrote an article on its website saying that “On the Titanic, it was women and children. With COVID-19, it's wealthy and powerful”. When confronted why ordinary people couldn’t get a chance to be tested, the US president replied with the famous answer “perhaps that's been the story of life...”
“Lives are negligible, but wealthy people’s pocket isn’t.” More than 2 million infections and 110,000 deaths - the self-claimed beacon of human rights experienced such an immeasurable human rights tragedy because those powerful and wealthy interest groups insist on putting their political and economic interests over people’s lives, thus missing the best window to curb the transmission of the virus. Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas, said he would rather die than see public health measures damage the US economy, and he believed “lots of grandparents” across the US would sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy. That’s how the pandemic has exposed America’s “cruel capitalism” to the fullest, which has put vulnerable groups like elders, children, ethnic minorities, and the homeless in sheer misery.
A country that would squash its own people’s human rights with capital power would never advocate such rights in the world in good faith. For many years, the US has been using “human rights” as a weapon to attack other countries and imposing its so-called “universal values” worldwide. In reality, these actions are nothing but hegemonic infringements on others’ sovereignty, leaving nothing but war, tears, and blood. Trump tweeted on June 7 that “Didn’t Powell say that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction?’ They didn’t, but off we went to WAR!”
The spat within the Republicans was reminiscent of a series of “chokeholds” around the world - countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria are lying on the ground, barely breathing, and on their neck is the US, the self-claimed “world beacon”.
This is the real America, a country that is “free” on the mouth but selfish at heart, a hegemony cloaked in “human rights”, and a God believer in name but devil incarnation.