By Samsudeen Sarr
The ongoing mass civil disobedience threatening the four-century-old entrenched sociopolitical and economic fabric of the USA in the wake of the public lynching of African-American George Floyd by a white-American police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis is a candid resultant of an unsustainable system of institutionalized racism against colored people firmly embedded in the foundation of all Western capitalist societies since its advent here on July 4, 1776 AD. History teaches us how human society for over 3500 years, beginning from the Code of Hammurabi laws of 1776 BC that had governed the first human society in Babylon and effectively ended in the declaration of American Independence from British-crown rule in 1776 AD was founded and maintained on a monarchical hierarchy that educated and indoctrinated all subjects into the belief of a pecking divine order, originating from the universal Deities/Gods who had classified human value into superiors/nobles, commoners and slaves. Indeed, for three and a half millenniums, human society was strictly administered under such a groundless commandment, reinforced by zealous lawmakers and enforcers under kings and emperors who built and expanded their domains by conquering territories, seizing lands and properties and killing or enslaving the weak and powerless. The best in society was reserved for the “superiors” while commoners took the leftovers and the slaves severely punished for daring to ask for their share.
On July 4, 1776 AD, American colonies loyal to the British crown, reviewed this whole nonsensical order, rebelled against it, declared their independence and created a novel fraternity, still based on a capitalist system of government but on the concept that all human beings were created with equally valuable souls by a single Christian God.
Notwithstanding, bear with me for the purpose of objective comparison and read the Babylonian preamble to their Universal Declaration of People’s and Humans’ divine rankings, codified by king Hammurabi in 1776 BC: The Gods Anu, Enril and Marduk (leading deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon) appointed Hammurabi to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.
Yes, the code asserts that Babylonian Social order was predicated in Universal and eternal principles of justice, dictated by the most important three Gods at the time.
People were therefore naturally ranked into two genders-male and female- but further classified unnaturally but most importantly into three classes: 1. The Superiors, 2. The commoners and 3. The Slaves. Yet a single tooth of a commoner was more valuable before the Gods than the life of a slave woman (try reading the 300 laws and judgments in the Hammurabi constitution).
Now, compare that to the American one declared by Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers in 1776 AD: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
Whereas the American constitution enshrined this divine equality among human beings, our society was however built violating or disrespecting that whole spirit by institutionalizing and reinforcing a hierarchy that blatantly empowered white males, disempowered women for centuries and still diminish the value of black people and indigenous/native Americans. Blacks in particular have since been treated as subhumans currently epitomized worldwide by the emergence and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on us.
It is obvious that the manner in which George Floyd was publicly “executed” on May, 26 2020, was not an exception but had always been the norm all over America and even beyond. What it has however culminated into, is the global awakening of the minds of conscientious people, underpinned by the unwarranted negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic and series of recent brutalities from law enforcers targeting black people, prompting a spontaneous and urgent need to abolish this unsustainable phenomenon and to reinvent a new order that will cease to disproportionately and unjustly favor white people while systematically oppressing and killing black people.
The ideas that triggered the initiative of the founding fathers in 1776 at Philadelphia occasioning the American Revolution against the British monarchial entitlement to govern all their subjects are the similar or same reasons now jolting the minds of all assiduous people, blacks and whites alike to explore a more favorable alternative order better than this so-called God-created-capitalistic system that otherwise may ultimately destroy all black lives and our livelihoods.
Worst things have happened unnoticed to blacks in America and the world over which are now increasingly being exposed in frequency and severity, thanks to the advent of video cameras capturing these evil images every now and then.
The cases of African-American Rodney King (Los Angelis), Eric Garner (New York), Ahmed Aubrey (Georgia), Philando Castile (Minnesota) and even George Floyd (Minnesota) would have gone unnoticed if cameras were not present at the scenes to capture these horrible racially-motivated brutalities.
Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers’ ideal panorama of society founded to freely and fairly safeguard our God-endowed “right and liberty”, irrespective of gender and race has now become a delusional concept that only sanctions the persistent persecution of the black race by caucasians and mongoloids.
In fact, most mongoloid or Asian religions practiced by over 1.5 billion people today do not subscribe to the existence of a God of creation we immortalize in the culture of Western civilization and democratic values. Their denominations instead espouse the constant reincarnation of human souls, supervised and purified by heaven-based-supernatural “Masters” until perfection before they finally cease to be reborn. Hence, the idea of equality among human beings before a God is nonsensical to, particularly, Hindus and Buddhists who worship pantheons that also stratify human values based on the purity of their souls with the best and the worst identified by the color of their skins; the darker the skin tone, the inferior the soul, a flawed abstraction widely validated in the Indian cast system, despite their affirmation of strengthening “genuine democratic principles ”. The Chinese, by extension, with their communist system of government and a population of over 500 million atheists, regard anyone preaching the idea of a creator or God, as a person missing several screws in his or her head.
Nevertheless, all these systems and peoples of believers and non-believers still accord every deserving respect and honor to white people but will always eagerly persecute and prosecute black people on mere bigotry. During this pandemic, we have seen it in all societies; Chinese, Indian, American, Arab and European, all deliberately or inadvertently exhibiting total disregard for the lives of black people. In this America we call home as black people it is now abundantly clear that the rights and privileges provided for the “great white race” in business, education, health care, justice, name it, are deviously restricted to the reach of the “devalued black people” that has to change now.
In short, the global systems whether approved by a creator or not have generally been rigged against our survival. Unfortunately, we have a president in Donald Trump who since the election of President Barack Obama, the first black US president, had created a racially-inspired gang of followers that stoke more hate against minorities and black people with a level of intellectual honesty that has contributed immensely in the decadent system requiring immediate and total overhaul. It is however my strong belief that we now are in that process of a new dawn uniting diligent humans to come up with a new Universal Declaration of human and people rights that will treat everyone fairly and stop the discrimination and slow but sure extermination of the black race in this 21st Century.
The struggle continues.
