Transcripts For BBCNEWS Our World 20170129

With a full use of all that full round up of all the news. In the final week of the Obama Presidency, a Louisiana High School Marching Band Rehearses for the big day. We do not see colour, race, gender or ethnicity. We see potential. They are one of ten School Bands Chosen to play at the inauguration. There has been a lot of talk of how we need healing and sometimes. You just have to do it. But as it marks the transition from obama to trump, america is having two very different conversations about race. This is the life that black people live. We live so it is not a conversation about race, it is just a conversation. And with tensions over the issues of Police Killings White Supremacists feel emboldened. Hailtrump hail our people hail victory and for some, talk of a return to The Good Old Days signifies nothing good at all. I look at is as master has reclaimed his house. And even though master allowed the slaves to look after the house while he was on vacation, we are still in the same fight that we have been in. Barack obama called slavery americas original sin. His presidency once held promise of redemption. That has not happened. As this country enters the trump era, the divisions between black and White America are felt, perhaps, more starkly than they have been in a generation. Cheering if there is anyone out there who still doubts that america is a place where all things are possible, tonight is your answer. formation by Beyonce Plays that was the era of yes, we can. When black america seemed poised to claim a confidence, a power, a parity long denied it. Yall haters corny with that illuminati mess. Paparazzi, catch my fly and my cocky fresh. Im so reckless when i rock my givenchy dress. Im so possessive so i rock his roc necklaces. My daddy alabama, momma louisiana. But america was not ready. To me it is a race war. You have black against white, white against black. Earned all this money but they never take the country out me. I got a hot sauce in my bag, swag. From the swamps of washington to the baoyou of the south. Beneath the surface of the post racial society, fear. Anger. And the deep roots of a history still unresolved. The final week of the Obama Presidency began with the annual commemoration for a man who gave his life for the civil rights struggle. America has come a long way since then. In new orleans they mark dr kings memory with a show of sartorial pride. Our self esteem has grown from us knowing about each other. Black men can see each other in a greater image that have been portrayed in media, music the negative image we are always told about. In this respect, the obamas scandal free tenure at the white house has had huge symbolic value. So you think about a boy like. How old are you . Seven. You know who the president is . Um, barack obama. Do you know who the president was before him . See . All he has ever known was obama. His life, like this, it is normal. It is normal for him to see a black man at the head of a free nation. A symbol is a powerful thing. The very fact of obamas unlikely presidency has expanded the concept of what is possible for millions of americans, black and white. But when it comes to cold hard statistics, the truth is that if you are Black In America The Odds are still stacked against you. In 2013, the median net worth of a White American household was over 140,000. For black households, that figure was 11,000. Thats 13 times less. Under obama, the wealth gap has widened. Travel up the mississippi from new orleans and you come to baton rouge, one of the most divided cities in the united states. For some children at inner city high schools, the education they got schools, the education they get on the streets can seem more important than what is on offer in the classroom. You can go out there tomorrow, have your pistol, shoot somebody, then you end up in prison for the rest of your life. Arthur silky slim reed is a former gang leader turned activist Whose Mission now is to stop young black men following his footsteps. Its 2017 and you are still Walking Around looking and acting exactly like slaves. And the world is looking at you as animals. Why . Because you live that lifestyle. Barack obama often told Black Americans they had to take responsibility for the problems in their own community. Silky agrees, up to a point. I am trying to bring a message to black people that have black lives do not matter to black people than it should not matter to anybody else. Thats my message. So black lives have to matter to black people first before it matters to the rest of the world. Black lives matter focus on Police Killing but i need to look at what we are doing to ourselves and try to resurrect us from the spiritual depths that we are in before i can really worry about the 200 or 300 killings taking place by law enforcement. We are dying by the thousands by our own hands so i am focusing on that and then i stay on that. Poverty. I have grown up in poverty and i became a gang leader because i was starving. If im in this house and i dont have anything to eat i beg before i steal, but i steal before i starve. So i take what i need because Self Preservation is a law of nature. So when i am finding out that i do not have the necessities of life, i will go out and get those necessities, regardless of what the world says. I need to survive, just like anybody else. But there are also inequalities that are systemic and ingrained. If you are black you are more likely to be arrested, get a longerjail sentence and more likely to be shot dead by police. 0bama only engaged with this issue late in his presidency and then with limited results. Black quarterbacks on the team of White Supremacy hasnt helped us. A blackjudge cant help us if the law is the law. The judge have to abide by the law. Same for the black president. As far as black folks on the whole, politically we didnt gain anything. When you do the research and you look at the numbers, then if you and i wanted to get married, we could get married. The gays accomplished something, you see what i am saying . I cant always just pressure it because at the end of the day we didnt ask for anything. We did not want to put that burden on the black man in the white house. We did not want to give him that burden. If you do not ask for anything you get nothing so you cannot be disappointed. So you say that the black community gave barack obama a free pass . Definitely. He is one of us. It is over 60 years since the Supreme Court ruled segregation in Public Education to be unconstitutional. Ten years later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race. But today in cities across america it is all too obvious that De Facto Segregation is still very much in effect. If you look at a Demographic Map of baton rouge you will see that this road here, florida street, is a stark dividing line. Everything to the north is overwhelmingly black, everything to the south is mostly white. Now, ive spent time in divided cities. Places like baghdad in beirut, places where they have recently had a war. There has not been a war here since the 1860s when the north fought the confederacy over the issue of slavery. But last summer it felt like war was not far away. The killing of Alton Sterling, the latest in a string of Fatal Police Shootings caught on camera. They are shooting right now and there is an officer down. Two days later at a black lives matter protest in dallas, A Black Guhman opened fire on Police Killing five. Not long after that, more officers were shot dead in baton rouge. To me this is a race war. You have black against white, white against black. There would not be so many black people against white people, i think, if it wasnt for the Police Brutality. That was pushing that situation with some of the people. Nefertiti is part of a growing movement of radical black activists. During the black lives matter protests she says she too found herself on the Receiving End of some heavy handed treatment from the police. Going to a protest downtown to city hall and Police Officers approached me, theyd dislocated my shoulder and fractured my left finger. More recently and im recovering from that, but all was basically because i am part of a new black Panther Party and they assumed that the chapter out there protesting at the time, that i was a part of that chapter, but i was not. It is perhaps ironic that relations between the police and the black community reached their lowest point in a generation during the final years of the Obama Presidency. The killings by police and a lack of prosecutions of officers involved has entrenched a sense here of a force that does not serve and protect, but one that operates with impunity. Everybodys on edge, 0k . Were waiting on a decision from the department ofjustice. So people wantjustice and they want transparency. So that is the main thing that folks want. Transparency and justice. Recently weve had a shooting with Alton Sterling about two blocks down the street. We had Police Killings on the highway and we had a flood. So our community is broken. We are trying to get back together. The Baton Rouge Police department is acutely aware of the need to rebuild trust. To that end, Sergeant Riley harbour is dispatched of a weekend to do a spot of gardening at an inner city schooljust round the corner from where he grew up. This is what passes for community outreach. The citizens here have a right to be upset with all the Different Things that have happened, both from the civilian side and from law enforcement. Weve had losses on both, tragic all the way round, but we still have to be able to come together because weve still got to live. Baton rouge is braced for more trouble as it awaits the outcome of a federal investigation into the shooting of Alton Sterling. Nefertiti says the tensions between the black community and the police have brought an old enemy out into the open. Last year, about seven months ago, the klansmen, the ku klux klan aryan nation put flyers out Recruiting Members and this was particularly right after Alton Sterling was killed, they had it on the news that they were putting notes on peoples doors, going through the neighbourhood. Nefertiti and silky slim rang the number on the leaflet, it went through to a pre recorded message which had clearly been updated in the past few days. Hailtrump hail our people hail our victory not long after the election, a group of white nationalists gathered to discuss the new political landscape. The final speaker was richard spencer, who coined the term alt right, a movement associated with Donald Trumps former campaign ceo steve bannon, who wasnt present but who is now one of the most powerful men in the white house. America was until this past generation a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. This then is the context in which donald trump has taken office. Americas new president has disavowed support from overt racists but still, in baton rouge the tranquil surroundings of University Lake near the College Campus belies a sense of unease. Tina lang and meet Lewis Maurice are here for a photo shoot. Theyre expecting their first child in march. They want to remember this special time. But they fear their unborn daughters future may not necessarily be brighter than their own. We dont know how it will be for African Americans now to four years down the line, six years down the line. We dont know what will happen. Even when obama was in office you seen officers were killing young black males and really werent getting penalised for it. Now that its trump, you never know. Itll be hard for us to get those opportunities and have that freedom to get the best education and to get the bestjobs, you know what im saying, just because of our race and the perspective that others have on us. So that is what im afraid of for my child. Here in the south the shadow of the plantations, the memory ofjim crow, of americas original sin still loom large. It takes more than eight years to dismantle a social system thats been in place before the country was even established, before the country talked about creating some people equal and allowing some to have the pursuit of life and liberty and happiness, they had individuals that were even considered human, they were treated as chattel. The situation youre talking about is normative for america so to see something other than that is to see something radically different from actually what america is and how it came into being, which is deeply, deeply antiblack. Barack 0bamas legacy is a subject of fierce disagreement but radically different is not an assessment often applied to his record in office. For some the election of donald trump looks less like a sudden change of direction than a resumption of the status quo. I look at it like master has reclaimed his house. I know masters place, you see what im saying, i know my place, im in the field, i dont try to get up to the house, know what im saying . Youre talking about slavery here. Of course. Thats the dynamic youre talking about. Its the oppression. Youre saying it never really went away . No, even though master allowed one of the slaves to look after the house when he was on vacation we are still in the same fight that weve been in for the last 2115 years. In all seriousness, there is a huge legacy of slavery but you cant say things havent changed since the 1860s, since the 1960s . Definitely. Theres no forced free labour here with the slaves, right . And what america has been successful in doing is creating these slums and ghettos, putting you in these areas and then making the police still oversee you like were still on the plantation. So what goes on in the White Community dont happen in the black community, so when the police come here they say, get up against the car. Ive got rights, shut the hell up. Its a different treatment. Its still like the overseers overseeing the plantation, we just dont have to go to work. Announcer next up, from louisiana, its the West Monroe High School inauguration. After the speech and the oath of office theres a moment in the spotlight for the High School Marching band louisiana. Then the parade moves on. And so america begins a new chapter in its long book on race, weaving in the history of slavery, of segregation with that of Martin Luther king and of the obama era. From my experience, i think the American Dream is still alive for anyone who wants to reach for it. There are African Americans in all areas of life that are quite, quite successful. I think that the road may be a little narrower and a little more stoney at times, but i think the American Dream is still achievable for everyone if you work hard and live right and play by the rules then success happens. Jaylen, 11 years old, has known no other president but obama. For her and her friends, President Trump was at first a frightening prospect. We was all thinking about, like, what if he actually sends us back to africa . That was your first thought, that you might not be allowed to be an american any more . Yes, sir. That sounds like a scary thought . Yeah. At first we were all, like, at first we were saying its going to happen, but we talked about it one day at school and we was, like, it can happen unless everybody says yes to it. Jaylen is ambitious. After Harvard Law School she wants to become americas first black female present, but. I think he is going to try and make everything harder for blacks to get in, everything harder for hispanics to get in, everything harder for anybody of colour to try to do or try and be something. Jaylen has one of those teachers you remember for the rest of your life, someone who helps you make sense of a bewildering world. I think that people were sick of talking about race. White people or black people or everyone . I would say from my experience mostly white people. Its overwhelming, i can understand that from the perspective where youve never had to deal with it, you dont understand why we keep bringing it up over and over again. And i think that especially with the heightened sense of awareness of Police Shootings and Police Brutality and the injustices being so blatantly put in your face because of social media, white people started to have a backlash and they started to think that no one is representing me, everyone is talking about black people and not talking about me, so how can i make it somewhat about me . And so the age of trump began as all presidencies usually do with a promise of inconcinnity. To rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. But Donald Trumps opponents fear quite the opposite. There are those who fear that the new president is a man with a vindictive streak who may use the power of his office to lash out at those who opposed him. Id like to punch him in the face, i tell you. Many liberals, especially white liberals, see trump as an existential threat to the founding principles of america. But from the black perspective things can look a little different. It doesnt scare me, i dont have an issue with trump or whatever he do because everyone gets in there and does the same thing. When black america contemplates the prospect of a hostile perhaps even oppressive state it shrugs and asks, what else is new . Thank you for chaining in. It is going to be a pretty busy week on the Weather Front. A lack of u nsettled the Weather Front. A lack of unsettled weather heading our way, spells of rain and wind and potentially becoming very windy toward the end of the week but the mild airwill toward the end of the week but the mild air will reach Northern Areas of the uk where today it has been cold. This is a very busy weather map. A lot is happening. The main message is big areas of low pressure will be developing across the atla ntic will be developing across the atlantic over the next few days and they will be heading in our direction. At the very least they will bring windy weather. In the short term, we say goodbye to the 599y short term, we say goodbye to the soggy weather that we had across the south, a legacy of cloud and dampness will remain. Cold and frosty in scotland this night host of 10 in the glens. This is what it looks like around monday rush hour. Rain sweeping into south western england. For most it is a cloudy, gloomy, drizzly start. Notice where the fog starts. From cumbria, the far north of england and very frosty there across the glens of scotland. We have some snow across the hills. In the afternoon, it will take a while for it to clear up in the north. There will be some sunshine. Elsewhere we have cloud and rain heading our way. The east of the country heading our way. The east of the cou ntry stays heading our way. The east of the country stays dry. Still on the chilly side. 12 or 13 or 1a in south Western Parts of england. This cloudy, drizzly weather continues through the course of monday into monday night and tuesday. Lets have a look at tuesday. A Weather Front aligned from north to south across the uk, with that comes a southerly wind. That means the mild air we have across the south west of the uk right now will, by tuesday, be pushed north into scotland. With that, the crowd and the rain. This is what it looks like on tuesday. Temperatures near double figures. 10 degrees to yorkshire. 11 or 12 in the south. 0utbreaks degrees to yorkshire. 11 or 12 in the south. Outbreaks of rain almost anywhere. Brighter in Northern Ireland later in the day. Tuesday we are between systems. Tuesday, i think early rain across eastern areas, maybe some rain in the north west. The bulk of the country should have a bright, even sunny day. Temperatures widely into double figures. Thursday, big area of low pressure knocking on the door. Stronger wind. There will be gales albert c. We will see how windy it gets. It is too early to say. Suffice it to say, it is looking u nsettled suffice it to say, it is looking unsettled with rain. The mother air being pushed to the north. Ten in glasgow, ten in newcastle for thursday. A gain, a big area of low pressure on friday. A smaller, nasty area of low pressure moving to the east, maybe moving toward the north. That could bring severe gales. Too early to talk about details, but the point is, the weekend, this coming weekend and beyond, it will stay u nsettled, weekend and beyond, it will stay unsettled, potentially very windy. Lets summarise, mild, turning mud in the south, spells of rain most days and becoming very windy. That is it from me, thank you for watching. President trumps travel ban sparks legal challenges and a second day of protests. As anger grows on the streets, 16 State Attorney generals say the restrictions are unconstitutional. Travellers from seven named countries are now being denied entry, including this family of christians from syria. President trump says the us needs extreme vetting policy, but theres been confusion about the impact on british dual nationals. Well be analysing the reaction and the call for President Trumps state visit here to be put on hold. Also tonight parents rights to take their children on holiday in term time face a new legal test this time in the Supreme Court. And Roger Federer is back winning an 18th Grand Slam title