3 JUNE

A message from the CEO

Racial inequality has been a central part of the American story since European settlement. From the founding, through debates over the admission of slave or free states to the Union and the Civil War, through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Great Migration, desegregation, the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s and the consequent reorientation of US politics - time and time again the United States is torn by its great, unfinished business: that America’s guarantees of liberty and justice for all be delivered without regard to race or ethnicity.

400 black Americans have been killed by police each year, every year for the last five years. Study after study reveals striking and persistent racial disparities in all forms of contact between Americans and the criminal justice system, ranging from the administration of stop and frisk policies, to arrests, convictions and sentencing. Non-whites account for 52 per cent of the more than 16,000 police-caused deaths in the United States since 2009. About 150 US law enforcement officers die in the line of duty each year.

COVID-19 and its economic devastation is also following contours of racial inequality in America. Black Americans are suffering a virus mortality rate that is 2.4 times higher than white Americans. Less than half of black American adults now hold a job.

This was the powder keg ignited by George Floyd’s death, captured on smart phones, with long summer evenings and mass unemployment helping deliver thousands to the streets in protest. Police shootings in Louisville and heavy-handed responses in New York stoked the outrage. After dark, peaceful protests have given way to property damage and vandalism. Historic St John’s Church in Lafayette Square — in front of the White House — was set on fire on Sunday night.

Monday in the United States saw Trump take a number of dramatic steps: urging state governors to use the National Guard to “dominate” their cities, threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 so as to deploy US armed forces on the American homeland, and — most spectacularly — using a mixture of military police, Federal and local law enforcement agencies to clear Lafayette Square of largely peaceful protesters before posing on the steps of St John’s.

Australian journalists in Lafayette Square for the Sunrise program — Australia’s most watched breakfast television program — were punched and clubbed by police, with the footage replayed all over the world. Both Australian Ambassador Sinodinos in Washington and US Ambassador Culvahouse in Canberra have responded, the event prompting surprising, concerning and appalling many Americans and Australians.

All of this takes place set against the context of the upcoming election. Trump declared himself a “law and order” president on Monday, signalling his embrace of a political narrative that puts distance between his failures as a “ war-time” president in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Echoes of Nixon’s 1968 campaign abound, and not just in Trump’s use of Nixon’s “law and order” slogan. American was beset by multiple crises that year. MLK was assassinated in April of that election year and protests erupted in over a hundred US cities. Robert Kennedy was assassinated on 6 June, the Vietnam War was raging and yet the Apollo program showcased American technological and engineering prowess. That race so powerfully under-girds US politics 52 years later underscores the value of the Centre’s mission, to educate Australians about the the United States, drawing out the implications for Australia and Australia’s national interests.

Professor Simon Jackman
CEO, United States Studies Centre

NEWS WRAP

Caught in the fray

Australian journalists attacked by US police
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for an investigation after two Australian journalists from Channel 7 were attacked by police in the US while reporting on the current protests in Washington DC. READ MORE HERE
Barr orders White House protestors to be removed
Attorney General William Barr has ordered authorities to clear protestors gathered outside of the White House ahead of President Trump’s televised Rose Garden address, according to an official from the Justice Department. R EAD MORE HERE
Social media goes dark protesting US police brutality
As people flood the streets to march against police brutality in the US, social media users have gone dark for a day in solidarity. Users are posting a black tile as part of the online movement #TheShowMustBePaused, started by two black women in the music industry. READ MORE HERE
More turbulence for Trump ahead of 2020 election
Between the COVID-19 pandemic still sweeping the United States, and the wide-scale protests calling for justice for slain African American man George Floyd, President Donald Trump is heading to the November election with an increasingly dissatisfied and divided country. READ MORE HERE

It's the same story, different soil. It's the same thing from Long Bay to the USA [...] Their First Nation to the blacks in my nation, it's all the same.

Hawk Newsome
President of Black Lives Matter, Greater New York
In Sydney speaking to the media at the inquest into David Dungay's death
16 July, 2018

ANALYSIS

In America, the worst of times

Bruce Wolpe
Non-Resident Senior Fellow

Last Friday night, President Trump was quite daunted by what he saw outside the White House. As the Washington Post reported:

“More than 1,000 demonstrators massed along Pennsylvania Avenue, throwing bricks and rocks and dispersing only after 3 a.m., when the Secret Service began to fire chemical agents. No similar scene has unfolded within view of the North Portico of the president’s home in recent memory.”

It was a window on America divided, in the capital of the United States. And that was the prologue to President Trump speaking in the Rose Garden Monday evening, declaring law and order, and setting out to pay his respects at St John’s, the church of the presidents across Lafayette Square from the White House, his path cleared by tear gas and rubber bullets. This is where he held up a Bible at a church entrance shuttered against rioters protesting the killing of an unarmed African American man under the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis.

These are hardly the first days of turmoil in Washington’s streets.

I was born in Washington DC and have seen the capital endure wrenching times. When Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in April 1968, large parts of Washington burned. Troops were stationed in our neighbourhood in the northwest part of the city; days and nights of mourning and fear and hopelessness.

During the Vietnam War, when protesters would target President Nixon, buses would be driven and parked boot-to-bonnet at the White House perimeter, preventing the demonstrators from breaching the White House grounds.

During the first Gulf War, troops with machine guns patrolled the North Lawn of the White House to protect President George H.W. Bush, evoking a mood in the capital last felt in the Second World War.

The country today is deeply riven by forces of a profound stress, more than at any time since the civil rights movement, together with the tragedy of the Vietnam War, divided the country in the 60s and 70s.

This last week has been just terrible.

The death toll of 100,000 lost from COVID-19 was crossed: the number of lives lost on 9/11 repeated every three days over 90 days.

Unemployment has soared with 40 million out of a job in a tanking economy, with no prospects for a quick improvement as America re-opens.

And now violence is erupting from coast to coast.

In times of profound crisis, Americans turn to their president for comfort and direction. Think of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger spacecraft was lost on take-off, Bill Clinton after the bombing of the government building in Oklahoma City, George W. Bush in the rubble of the Twin Towers days after 9/11, Barack Obama after the massacre of school kids in Connecticut, and singing “Amazing Grace” after black parishioners were murdered in a church in South Carolina.

But President Trump does not do empathy. The United States has a president who is unable or unwilling to help bring the country together.

And this is why these are the worst of times right now.

This is an abridged version of an article which originally ran in the Canberra Times.

BY THE NUMBERS

Reduced life expectancy

Black Americans: 3.5 years less than white Americans | Indigenous Australians: 7.9 years less than white Australians

Black Americans suffer disproportionately more from coronavirus, police violence and underlying medical conditions. However, the life expectancy gap between Black and White Americans is less than half the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This discrepancy has proved difficult to shift in both countries.

VIRTUAL EVENT

What will globalisation look like after COVID-19?

Globalisation has suffered at least three major setbacks in just over a decade. First, the global financial crisis reduced cross-border capital flows and then President Trump's trade war caught Australia's exports in the cross-fire. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic has closed borders around the world. As the pace of globalisation has slowed, so has productivity growth. What is the future of globalisation after COVID-19? In the wake of the pandemic, will policymakers prioritise re-establishing global connectivity or retreat into greater self-reliance and economic nationalism? How can public policy help build greater resilience to international shocks?

To discuss these issues, please join us for a webinar event with Professor Douglas Irwin from Dartmouth College and Dr Stephen Kirchner, Program Director Trade and Investment with the United States Studies Centre in conversation with CEO Professor Simon Jackman.

Dr Kirchner will also be releasing his new USSC report Globalisation and Labour Productivity in the OECD: Implications for Post-Pandemic Recovery and Resilience.

WHEN:
Thursday 5 June 2020, 10am AEST

COST:
Free, but registration is essential

REGISTER NOW