THE United States is in turmoil. Apart from being the country with the most cases of Covid-19 infections and deaths, the world is witnessing social unrest across the US sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Floyd's death, not unlike the demise of many African American youth due to police brutality, is a clear testimony that all is not well in a social experiment that is called America.
The routine killing of unarmed civilians, mostly African American youth, demonstrates that racism and socioeconomic inequality are alive and kicking in the land of the free.
While this may come as a surprise to many, observers of social and political development in America are all too familiar with how white America treats their minorities.
Ever since the Puritans landed in the "new world", injustices against the "other" beginning with ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans and then lynching of the African American community in the south have now evolved into police brutality against helpless African American youth.
In a mirror image of what is happening today in the US, Rodney King, an African American youth, was brutally beaten by white policemen in 1991 and a major outbreak of violence, looting and arson took place in Los Angeles in April 29, 1992, in response to the acquittal of four white policemen on all but one charge (on which the jury was deadlocked) connected with the severe beating of King, a motorist, in March 1991.
After several days of rioting, more than 50 people were killed, more than 2,300 were injured and thousands arrested. About 1,100 buildings were damaged, total damage was US$1 billion, making it one of the most devastating civil disruptions in American history.
The discrimination against minorities in America and racial stereotyping continue to flare up routinely with the African American community, Muslims, Hispanics and, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Asian American community experiencing the wrath of racism. The plain truth about racism in America is without doubt tied to the notion of white supremacy.
Against the backdrop of white supremacy, "identity politics" in America has always privileged the white community, their knowledge, traditions, spiritualities and cosmologies, while deeming as inferior and subaltern the non-whites and non-Western beauty, knowledge, traditions, spiritualities and cosmologies.
However, this process of identitarian affirmation has its limits if it leads to fundamentalist proposals that invert the binary terms of the hegemonic "White" Males Eurocentric racist and sexist philosophical tradition of thought. For example, if it is assumed that subaltern non-Western ethnic/racial groups are superior and that the dominant white racial/ethnic groups are inferior, they are merely inverting the terms of hegemonic white racism without overcoming its fundamental problem, that is, the racism that renders some human beings inferior and the elevation of others to the category of superior on cultural or biological grounds.
Another example is that of accepting — the hegemonic Eurocentric fundamentalist discourses that the European tradition is the only one that is naturally and inherently democratic, whereas the non-European "others" are presumed to be naturally and inherently authoritarian, denying democratic discourses and forms of institutional democracy to the non-Western world (which are, of course, distinct from Western liberal democracy), and as a result, supporting political authoritarianism.
This is what all Third World fundamentalists do when they accept the Eurocentric fundamentalist false premise that the only democratic tradition is the Western one, and, therefore, assume that democracy does not apply to their "culture" and their "societies". This merely reproduces an inverted form of Eurocentric essentialism.
The idea that "democracy" is inherently "Western" and that "non-democratic" forms are inherently "non-Western" is shared both by Eurocentric fundamentalist discourses and its varieties, such as "Third Worldist" fundamentalisms. These division of "white" and "others" in America is not only causing unrest domestically, but at the international level as well.
When power holders in Washington, D.C., and the state capitols in the US operate on the assumption that only white lives matter, we will continue to see human rights abuse against minorities in America and the "other" globally.
The writer is associate professor and director, Centre for Policy Research and International Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times