Is a Life Equal to a Life?

A life should be equal to a life, but it is not. Historically speaking, it never has been. In every society, especially those that we remember as great civilizations, there were sharp economic and social distinctions between those who ruled and those who provided the manual labor necessary for the state to function. The disadvantages of the lower socio-economic groups were always a calculated part of any state's system. While slavery in ancient societies was understood as a necessary evil, racial discrimination is a byproduct of modern day colonialism. 19th century racism not only undermined the cultures, traditions, and belief systems of colonized peoples by labeling them barbaric or "uncivilized", but also by introducing the white Western perceptions as the norm. Even though currently whites are clearly the minority with only about 16% of the total world population, beauty ideals, fashion designs, and white Western modes of thoughts still dominate global understandings today. Even in the decolonized world racism is still exists and is a big market for enterprise as e.g. skin whitening creams still are profitable products and in some rural peripheral regions a whiter skin color is still the sign of higher social status.

Here in the U.S. racial discrimination is illegal, yet it occurs on a daily basis. Not only are there still white supremacist movements plotting against African-Americans in various parts of the nation, but the recent unfortunate incidences in Baltimore and Ferguson (and elsewhere) have revealed that there is a much broader segment of society that not only believes in segregation, but even active attacks on African-Americans. A recent study has pointed out that it is much harder for African-American college graduates to find an appropriate job than for Caucasians. Their unemployment rate was twice as high as that of other college graduates. A different experiment investigated racism that job applicants faced with Hispanic and African-American sounding names. In both cases the call backs for an interview were significantly lower than for typical "Caucasian-sounding" names. The experiment clearly showed that candidates with Hispanic or African-American names do not have the same chances at getting a job interview as Caucasians. In fact African-Americans have 50% less of a chance at a call back than Caucasians. Research has shown that they get hit twice by discrimination, because it is not only harder for them to find a job, but also to improve their employability.

Countless other occasions of discrimination have surfaced in the social media since the death of Freddie Gray, on you-tube, twitter or Facebook. Here is this one example of an African-American father who walks into a mall to pick up his children from daycare. While walking around the mall, this man is being approached by a police officer asking to identify himself. The man knows his rights and replies that he has not done anything suspicious and he should not have to identify himself. He is repeatedly asked to show his ID, which he refuses insisting on his legal right. Suddenly more officers appear and the man is handcuffed as his two children watch. He is recording the entire incident and it is heartbreaking to see that even though he has done nothing wrong, he gets arrested. This highlights the well-known fact that racial bias is part of current police practices. Just imagine that it would have been a white man in his thirties who did not display any kind of suspicious behavior. Would police officers have asked to see his ID? Most likely not. Now imagine that it was a woman walking around in the mall (white, African-American or Hispanic). Would she have been suspicious? Would the police have arrested her for no reason? Probably not. Fact is that African-Americans and other non-white (e.g. Indian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic) looking men get stopped more by the police and asked for identification, even if they have done nothing wrong. Many more incidences of this kind of injustice have surfaced recently that illustrate a reality that is far off from equal to all citizens. What makes it worse is that the officials in uniforms who are supposed to uphold the laws of the nation and protect the rights of all citizens seem to be the ones who disregard the same laws and endanger African-American lives. Why has this developed into a string of incidences and why have the highest levels not been able to put a stop to this process? Considering that the first (half) African-American President is in power whose election campaign motto was "change", the development is more than sobering. Innocent, unarmed, non-suspicious people should not be attacked by the police, let alone arrested or killed. Period. And if it happens, there should be major consequences for the police officers involved. To prevent such injustices in the future, severe retraining and education of the police force should be a priority.

While these horrific developments are ongoing, there is still a weird taboo associated with talking about issues of race. It is an underlying, unspoken maze that stretches through all walks of life, but at the same time, it should not be mentioned. It seems that those who discuss it, get stigmatized as they destroy the generally accepted illusion that racism doesn't exist in this democracy. Maybe it is because discrimination and racism are illegally, that we feel it could be perceived as unpatriotic if we point out such blatant flaws in the system, but of course the opposite is true: In a democratic nation we have to assure that practices of discrimination and racism decrease and talk about them until they do. However, the media plays its part in promoting the status quo from which it benefits. If we keep pretending that everyone has the same opportunities and that success is just about working hard, we forget that the starting point for different social, economic, ethnic and other groups varies significantly. If we look at the well cited statistics for this issue, we have to admit that it cannot be a coincidence that the numbers of incarcerations, school drop outs, teenage pregnancies, single parentage as well as areas of severe gang activities all point to African-Americans in a highly disproportionate fashion. African-Americans only make up 13% of the total U.S. populations, yet they account for 37% of all the people currently imprisoned. For the age bracket of 27-34 year-old men this means that every 9th African American man is currently in jail. Taking out the men of this age groups robs the African-American community of the group with the most potential of social mobility, but also denies them to provide for their families adequately. It leads to disadvantaged future generations who have to grow up without a father present and without having sufficient male role models. Conservatives may argue that this trend indicates behavior patterns that feed into the vicious cycle and thus prevent any change to the status quo, but they clearly forget that the chances from the beginning were not equal and there is a major historic debt that needs to be paid up before equality can truly exist. In other nations, when there has been a history of unequal treatment of certain segment of society, politicians put quotas in place to guarantee that this specific group gains access to the same opportunities and slowly catches up with the rest of the society, like the women quota in many European nations or the quota for college admissions for students from India's lower castes.

Growing up as a German white girl in South Africa during Apartheid has confronted me with historic guilt on many levels and made me especially aware of discrimination and racism. As a child, I remember seeing unequal, unjust treatment of Blacks everywhere, but at the same time nobody was talking about it. It was an accepted reality that made no sense to me who was taught that all human beings were equal. What Germany's bad history of the Holocaust has taught us is that civic duty and responsibility in a democracy is a force that has to be applied and should not be underestimated or ignored. Citizens' critical thinking about the nation's reality and procedures are necessary to double-check the political path that the nation is taking. If citizens believe that minority rights are violated, people are mistreated, or specific racial profiling has become a standard procedure, people have to stand up and demand justice. If lives are lost, we cannot stand by and let it happen. If it happens repeatedly, then something needs to be fixed within the system to prevent further violations. We have to remember that in a democracy, the state apparatus is the instrument that enables the rule of the majority and whose role it is to protect the well-being of all its citizens, including the minority.