The BBC reports on the global media response to the Ferguson protests and their cause.
There has been enormous headline reaction in the world’s media to the Ferguson protests, and many commentators have taken the opportunity to question America’s credentials as a human rights champion.
European papers highlight inequalities in American society, and a South African commentator sees echoes of his country’s own grim racial history.
Well yes. Of course they do, of course they have – because it’s true. As I’ve pointed out before, the US is an outlier among developed democracies in a whole shocking slew of ways. We suck on universal provision of health care, we imprison a shamefully huge fraction of our population, we have a huge racial disparity in prosecutions and convictions, we allow capital punishment, we’re up to our knees in guns, we have a sky-high murder rate, we have high maternal and infant mortality rates, we have grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality, we saddle college students with crippling debt, we do almost nothing to ensure that even poor people can have decent housing – and on and on. This country is just a bad place in a great many ways.
The death of Michael Brown, whose killing sparked the unrest, is “a stark reminder for Uncle Sam that there are a lot of human rights violations on its own soil,” says China’s official news agency Xinhua.
“It should first fix its own problems before criticizing other countries.”
Xinhua adds that few other countries are “as self-righteous and complacent as the United States when it comes to human rights issues, but the Ferguson tragedy is apparently a slap in the face”.
True. On the other hand China has little to brag of. Uighurs, anyone?
Iran’s State TV said the grand jury decision “indicates the existence of racial discrimination in the USA”.
The protests in Ferguson are also one of the top stories in the Iranian press.
The conservative newspaper Kayhan carried a collage of pictures from Ferguson, including a US flag being set on fire. Its headline said: “A rebellion in 90 American cities as a result of the non-indictment of the murderer policeman.”
They’re not wrong.
Ferguson is also a front-page story in the German press.
Uwe Schmitt, the former Washington correspondent for Germany’s centre-right daily Die Welt, writes it is a “predictable explosion” given the juxtaposition of a “grotesquely over-armed police force” with a black community “untouched by economic recovery”.
He accuses many Americans of “self-delusion” when they ask how such violence can recur again and again, while abroad “people shake their heads unsurprised, either in mourning or glee”.
One more thing – it’s also the juxtaposition of a “grotesquely over-armed police force” with a grotesquely over-armed population. The police might not be so over-armed if the population were not so over-armed. Thanks a lot, NRA.
An editorial in France’s Liberation newspaper says: “Ferguson is a long way from being the post-racial America dreamed of by Barack Obama.”
In Spain, Pere Vilanova writes in El Periodico that “perhaps the symbolic value of the election of a black man as president in 2008 has been overestimated and inter-communal wounds will never be healed”.
In Italy, La Stampa‘s New York correspondent Paolo Mastrolilli says the discussion has become one about the race problem “connected to inequality and economic disparity”. He notes that some of the white demonstrators in New York and Los Angeles wanted to broaden the debate in that direction.
Indeed. The debate should be about all of it.
Why are we debating Ferguson when so many Muslim women are being forced to wear the burqa in the Middle East?
(1) “perhaps the symbolic value of the election of a black man as president in 2008 has been overestimated ”
Probably, both India and Pakistan, lethally misogynistic societies, had women as Prime
Ministers.
(2) ” it’s also the juxtaposition of a “grotesquely over-armed police force” with a grotesquely over-armed population.”
Of course, who could blame US police forces for being over-armed by Western standards, at any time they could confront an offender armed with a semi-automatic weapon.
(3) “True. On the other hand China has little to brag of. Uighurs, anyone?”
Agreed, the fact that the Uighurs are Muslim has clouded the issue, the probability that some of the tensions are the result of Han Chinese racism has been conveniently forgotten.
That said, the US is still an inviting target for criticism, I can’t think of any other country that has so easily assumed the moral high ground and lectured the rest of the world on human rights issues. So it’s not surprising that people outside the US will take the opportunity to hypocritically ‘cast stones’.
(4) “the US is an outlier among developed democracies in a whole shocking slew of ways.”
Consequently America also has relatively low social mobility compared with other liberal democracies.
GASP!!! I am shocked! You either did not hear, or simply choose to ignore, the words of President Obama!* The US is The Greatest Nation On Earth!
* (and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Ronald Reagan, Ted Cruz, Bill Clinton….)
Something Obama said during his victory speech following the 2012 election is worth recalling:
“What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth – the belief that our destiny is shared.”
Let that sink in for a moment. The blissful / willful ignorance. Not just in hindsight after yet another police officer is exonerated from the murder of a black person, but that Obama could possibly have said and genuinely believed that in 2012 – Kendric McDade, Ervin Jefferson, Wendell Allen, and Ramarley Graham were all unarmed and not engaged in any unlawful behaviour when shot down by police officers in that year. Investigations or law suits followed, and no one was prosecuted. There were over 25 similar cases in the previous decade.
As if those murders even rate as outliers in a long history of “bonds that hold together”. I really do not see where any belief in a shared destiny would come from.
Why do you all hate America?
/sarcasm
As I said on a previous post, the EU and an International Human Rights Commission needs to issue travel warnings to its citizens when travelling to the States.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, 7 police officers are arrested for beating a protester:
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Hong-Kong-police-clear-1-site-arrest-leaders-5918693.php
When China is pulling ahead of you in the civil rights department, you have a serious problem.
(Meanwhile, Texas is about to put to death a prisoner with severe mental illness)
True. But then, I don’t actually see them doing a lot of (or indeed, any) bragging on this point, and I certainly don’t see them waging multiple wars on that basis.
Racism in the US seems to have gotten much more commonplace (at least in the public forums I frequent) since (or sadly) because of the election of a black President.
Semi-OT but former-Ftb’er, Crommunist has a great post up about violence/rioting/racism/Ferguson. My favorite part is the tweet that he wrote that inspired it:
European papers highlight inequalities in American society, and a South African commentator sees echoes of his country’s own grim racial history.
Oh please. Europe is home to the Holocaust and South Africa is the murder capital of the world.