Marlon James, a Jamaican-born novelist currently teaching literature at Macalester College in Minnesota, recently ignited just a "tad" of controversy when he said that the U.S. sponsors "state-santioned violence" against "mostly minorities." Apparently a man of many words, James went on to compare the U.S. police to "death squads" during the "dirty war" run by Argentina's military in the 1970s. According to Yahoo News:
"What people like me find alarming is there is almost state-sanctioned violence in America, particularly with the police."
"America has developed a weird kind of Third World police, which horrifies people like me and my friends from Kenya or Nigeria."
"The whole idea that you are beyond the law you are serving and protecting, and that killing people will not have consequences, is something that we who migrated to America thought we had got away from."
"The way that kind of violence is protected… means it is state-sanctioned violence and that is no different to Argentina during the dirty war."
We guess he has a point. We also often feel like we're living under totalitarian rule led by extreme right-wing military generals hell bent on destroying marxism all while "disappearing" 13,000 socialists, journalists and students. We can't even tell, is the picture below modern day America or 1970's Argentina?
Alas, James warns that most people in America don't even recognize the "death squads" because we're all racists and turn a blind eye to the atrocities.
"I don't think it is something that Americans realise because it is mostly a minority that is victimised by it. We are naive in that we never pay attention to violence until it affects us."
"And that is a problem because when it finally does come to us nobody is going to be protecting us. It will end up endlessly repeating itself unless we stop it at some point."
Ironically, both of James' parents were police officers in his native Jamaica. Sounds like someone has some extreme mommy/daddy issues.
via http://ift.tt/2caHtyd Tyler Durden