Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1256426
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 JUNE 2020 OPINION Raphael Vassallo What's happening in America might be a glimpse of our own future EARLIER this week, the Aditus Foundation released a statement to coincide with the mass-riots that have convulsed the USA since the murder of George Floyd. It is short enough to reproduce in full here: "If you are shocked at the protests in the US and world- wide, take a moment to bring it home. Remember that in 2019, Lassana Cisse was killed in Ħal Far. Remember that two soldiers, duty-bound to protect the nation (all of it), remain charged with his murder. Remember that the best we could do as a nation was or- der an internal inquiry. Remem- ber that in 2020, the inquiry by the AFM about the AFM found no sign of racism in the AFM…" Predictably, the statement at- tracted the usual barrage of criticism that invariably accom- panies articles about race in Mal- ta; but while most of the com- ments could easily be dismissed as mindless Internet trolling… there was a general, recurring line of argument that I find slightly harder to ignore. Loosely translated, it would read something like: 'Don't mix up lettuce with flatulence'. A slightly longer version might include the many, many cul- tural and historical differences between our own country and the United States of America… where the murder of George Floyd was but the latest incident, in a history of violent race-rela- tionships going back around 400 years. Speaking only for myself, I must admit that I can more or less un- derstand that sentiment. My own reaction to Floyd's murder was not exactly to make an instant comparison with the murder of Lassana Cisse in 2019: partly be- cause it just didn't occur to me… but partly also because I, too, see a few differences between those two scenarios. For instance: while there can be no real doubt that the latest wave of race-related violence in the US was triggered by the death of George Floyd… it is by no means limited to that one mur- der alone. Clearly, Floyd's mur- der – and even more poignantly, his last words: 'I can't breathe' – have come to embody some- thing much more pervasive and deep-rooted: a nationwide sense of frustration and exasperation, if you like, at a system of insti- tutionalised racism and violence that just doesn't seem to ever change at all. From this perspective, a better (though perhaps also controver- sial) analogy might be the case of Muhammed Bouazizi: the Tu- nisian street vendor whose des- perate act of self-immolation, in December 2010, ignited a spark that would eventually topple au- tocratic regimes across the Arab world. The underlying issues may have been very different indeed; but citizens of Tunisia – and lat- er Egypt, and then all the other countries caught up in the en- suing conflagration – would no doubt have seen, in Bouazizi's death, a correlative for countless other injustices they may have experienced themselves… and which, in turn, were all indic- ative of a deeper, systemic – as opposed to individual – malaise. Can any of this really be applied to the case of Lassana Cisse? As I already said, my own initial gut reaction was: 'no, it can't'. For even if it is true that the two men charged with his murder are both members of the AFM – an- other institution, alongside the police, that we rely on to protect us from such crimes – the mur- der itself was more in the nature of a drive-by shooting. Naturally, this doesn't lessen the gravity of the implications. (In a sense, it may even aggravate them: for let's face it… Lassana Cisse was murdered at random, just for being black. As such, the bullet that killed him may just as well have been aimed at all peo- ple of colour, everywhere.) But – unlike the Floyd case, which can be slotted into an en- tire history of institutionalised, racially-motivated crime – it re- mains a one-off, isolated case… indicative, perhaps, of a wider systemic problem; but not, in and of itself, an indictment of the entire system. Then again, however… that was just my initial reaction, up- on reading the Aditus statement. Ever since, however, I have been increasingly troubled by a gnaw- ing doubt. Yes, it is true that the comparison may be flawed, in purely superficial terms; but that may also be simply because Malta has yet to go through the full course of America's 400-year history of racism. To put that another way: while George Floyd represented the umpteenth victim of America's troubled history of race-rela- tions… Lassana Cisse may well have been our first; possibly even the first of many. And even if it wasn't a crime directly perpetrated by 'the sys- tem'… shades of the same ma- levolence that motivated it can indeed be seen in various other aspects of our own institution- alised approach to precisely the same race-relations issue. As such, even my own earlier comment – to the effect that the history of Malta and the USA cannot realistically be compared – needs to be qualified. Perhaps it is true that no direct compar- ison can realistically be made… today. But in 10 years' time? Fifty years' time? Into the next centu- ry, and beyond…? With that shift of perspective, another, much more disturbing thought comes to mind. George Floyd's murder marks the cul- mination of a dehumanising process that can trace its earliest origins all the way back to 1691, with the first arrival of African slaves to the Americas. And while the full history of our own race-relations would take us back much further in time… the issues underpinning today's sce- nario (namely, the mass immi- gration of African asylum seek- ers by boat) can only realistically be traced the very late 1990s, at the earliest. This also means that in just 20 years, we went from being a country with hardly any eth- nic variety at all… to a country where 'being black' could (and in at least one case, did) get you shot dead in the street. And much as I hate to have to add this: we have also become a country where 'black lives' de- monstrably 'matter less'… not merely because Lassana Cisse's murder did not arouse as much outrage as it really should have, all things considered; but also be- cause there is a lot more to 'rac- ism' than occasionally murder- ing people on the basis of their skin colour. There is also the question of how we treat those people in all other spheres, too. And looking back over those same two dec- ades… the supposed 'differences' between our own collective ex- perience, and that of the Ameri- can people, start becoming hard- er to spot. This, for instance, is a small snippet from an article entitled 'A Timeline of Black American Milestones' (widely circulated in the wake of Floyd's murder): "As white southerners gradually re-established civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866, they enacted a series of laws known as the black codes, which were designed to restrict freed blacks' activity and ensure their availability as a la- bour force…" The precise circumstances may not tally perfectly – there is, af- ter all, nothing comparable to the 'black codes' actually written into our own legislation – but it While George Floyd represented the umpteenth victim of America's troubled history of race-relations… Lassana Cisse may well have been our first; possibly even the first of many