Racial war in the United States

The present racial war in the United States reminded me of my first visit in the United States. There was really, fear of blacks as a race. Blacks were afraid. The fear was palpable. I arrived in the United States and was taken to the house of a faculty member. The professor was on sabbatical and had given the keys to his beautiful house to the Dean for me to stay until I found my own accommodation. The house was full of security gadgets and alarms everywhere. The security systems were tied up and hooked up to the local police station.

One day, I was in the kitchen trying to wash plates and I didn’t know that there was an alarm rigged up to the sink in the kitchen. I mistakenly triggered the alarm off. Before I knew it, some six policemen had surrounded the house. Here was this nigger from Nigeria who knew nobody and his first contact with the dreaded police of Philadelphia. I knew no one in Philadelphia yet I was living in this beautiful big house. There was a loud knock at the door. Meanwhile, the alarm gadget that was triggered was like a small phone, but it was making so much noise, I unplugged it and threw it into the freezer. The police were trying to get into the house, knock the door very loudly. I opened the door. The police was pointing a gun at me; two others were doing the same “put your hands up” “Don’t move” I looked at them and said “why” “Put your hands up” “don’t move,” they repeated. I said “why should I put my hands up. Who called you, why are you shouting at me? I live in this house.” I think my accent would or may have thrown them. I had also, in any case, put my hands up. One police walked up to me, frisked me down; asked for my name. When I told him, he asked where Prof. McClellan was – the owner of the house, who was white. I told him the professor was on sabbatical leave, and had allowed me to stay in his house.

Meanwhile, the other Policemen rushed passed me to search the rest of the house. On their return, after finding no one else, they now started to interrogate me. They thought I was a burglar who had broken into the house with my gang, looking for valuables, in the house. But they were still suspicious of me. How come a black man was teaching at an IVY LEAGUE University? This was in 1970!! Luckily, I had the letter of Prof. McClelland allowing me to stay in the house and my letter of appointment is in the study. On seeing these, the Police departed. It was after they left, that I was now consumed by fear and how narrow my escape had been. I was shaking for hours. The more I thought of it, the more scared I was. I had left King’s College, Cambridge, on a leave of absence. Forty-eight hours after the incident I was back in Cambridge. The dean at the University of Pennsylvania was on the phone; so was Prof. McClelland: the courses I was to teach had been announced and many students’ has signed up for the courses; students never believed that the university had any intention to give courses in Africa history and politics as part of a Black Studies Programme. The Provost of king’s College also intervened. I went back to Philadelphia.

I went through the usual discrimination when looking for an apartment. I would phone up in answer to advertisements. When I got there and they saw I was dark, the apartment, the estate agent would tell me it had just been let. In the end, a white colleague, in the name of the university, was able to get me an apartment in Centre City, just off Rittenhouse Square, the plushest, high brow area in town: and one of the best squares in the whole of United States; the home of many Philadelphia “aristocrats”, old money and long history. Every evening on my way back from the university after studying, coming home about 10 p.m.-12 midnight, I would be stopped almost inevitably by the police. I had no car, so I was walking home.

The police would stop me. The two policemen would come out of the car, one would be standing right behind me and the other would ask any form of identification? I said yes. “What’s your name, where are you from, what are you doing here. Show me some ID please.” I would show them my identity card of the University of Pennsylvania. The first time I showed the ID of the University of Pennsylvania, the two policemen started to laugh: “hahaha we have this nigger who is telling us that he is a professor at the Pennsylvania University.” They would radio their dispatch officer who would check with the University of Pennsylvania Police, asking for confirmation. While all this was going on, the officer behind me had his hand on his gun. When confirmation came, I was handed back my ID and told that they had a report of a burglar around and I fitted the description: No apologies: they would enter their patrol car and drive off: This happened to me two or three times every week and nearly at the same spot.

The general population of the United States comprises the following – 62 per cent white, 13 per cent black, 17 per cent Hispanic (although in some classifications the Hispanics are classified as white: if so, then the population is 79 per cent black). Yet in the prison population these races are disproportionately represented: 64 per cent of prisoners are black and Hispanic of a total prison population of 1.6 million. Blacks have a 1 in 3 chance of being in prison; 1 in 9 black children have one parent in jail. 1 in 13 blacks cannot vote because they have a criminal record. In 2015 the police killed 258 black people. This year as at June, they had killed 135 blacks.

The black response to this to-day is that many blacks see the United States as a vast prison in which they are likely to die from police bullets or imprisoned because of a racially biased criminal justice system.

To be continued