The emotive racial debate has once again raised its ugly head in America after a teacher in Mississippi posted a message on Facebook on Monday last week asking blacks who are not happy with the way things are in America to “go back to Africa”.
Cammi Rone, a second-grade teacher at Batesville Intermediate School, tried to claim that her Facebook account had been hacked, but she was immediately fired by the South Panola School District after a brief investigation into the matter.
“If blacks in this country are so offended, no one is forcing them to stay here. Why don’t they pack up and move back to Africa where they have to work for a living. I am sure our government will pay for it! We pay for everything else,” the post, which has since been deleted, read, according to the New York Post.
Some parents at the school now say they are not comfortable with Rone teaching their kids after the social media outburst.
Racial Storm
Although some people would want to make it look like racism is over in America, the painful truth is that racial prejudices in the so-called beacon of democracy and freedom are still widespread.
Every so often, the world is treated to ugly scenes of fighting between the American police and sections of Americans, especially African-Americans, over racial killings of black men by white police officers.
Exactly two months before Rone’s divisive Facebook rant, a long-shot mayoral candidate for St. Petersburg, Florida, Paul Congemi lashed out at some members of Uhuru Solidarity Movement, majority of whom are black, telling them to “go back to Africa”.
Congemi, who was speaking at a forum in Tampa, Florida, was angry at the group because they were supporting his opponent, who is also the founder of the movement.
A few weeks after that, the world witnessed one of the most chilling racial violence between white supremacists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A woman was killed and many others injured in the violence that revealed how racially divided the American society is. Of greater concern was the fact that the President of the United States Donald Trump refused to refer to the protesters as white supremacists.
Firsthand reports indicated that some of the protesters were chanting Mr. Trump’s campaign slogans and policies. Last year, in the run up to the presidential elections, Trump was accused of running a campaign that was largely anchored on racial and religious hate.
He promised to build a wall on the Mexico-United States border, kick all illegal migrants out of America, and bar Muslims from entering the U.S. Trump’s ideas seem to reverberate with white supremacists who have been calling on him to “make America white again”.
It is quite unfortunate that this is happening in a country that considers itself the epitome of democracy and free will.
