The Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is the first other than US President Trump to question the manner in which the Black Lives Matter protests have been hijacked by “left-wing agendas”. In fact, the direction the protests have taken may end up ensuring re-election for Trump, despite his dismal performance in handling the Covid crisis. Ever since he became President, it became the objective of the Democrats to find something for which he could be impeached. A reason was found, but they could not get it passed in the Senate.
Now, the death at the hands of a cop of a person with several convictions, including robbing a pregnant woman’s home at gunpoint, who was reported for trying to use a counterfeit note, has become a racial issue. And, further, the ‘anti-racism’ protest has been directed at President Trump. Does he represent the alleged inherent ‘white racism’ of American society?
Eventually, of course, the US being a democratic and open society, the matter will be resolved through dialogue and subsequent reform. These will, however, not include demands such as ‘defund the police’, or make it incapable of managing law and order. They will, hopefully, include the real issues that plague the black community, such as a high percentage of children being brought up by single mothers, the gangster culture, lack of education, extraordinarily high rates of crime, etc. Merely defeating Trump, because he does not fit into the elitist concept of the kind of person the President should be, will not solve the issue. In fact, the candidate of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, has a record of having backed racist causes in the past such as opposing desegregation in schools.
The sad truth is that the United States was established on the basis of colonialism, the slave trade and near annihilation of the native peoples. If people begin pulling at the roots by bringing down the statue of Christopher Columbus, for instance, they will have to do the same with those of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both owners of slaves. And many others! It is important for all to acknowledge that the US has come a long way since then and it is the present reality that has to be addressed. If the prescriptions of the extreme Left are followed, it will lead, among other things, to the kind of situation in UK’s Rotherham, where the ethnicity of the child rapist gangs made the police wary of investigating and persecuting the culprits for many years. That should be the last kind of ‘reform’ anybody wants.
