I'm proud to be a black American, but I'm wary of going home

Many movie buffs think of the 2004 film Crash mainly as the wretched train wreck that stole the Best Picture Oscar from Brokeback Mountain. But this movie buff remembers it for a different reason: the scene where an off-duty LA cop played by Ryan Phillippe shoots a black hitchhiker he's picked up because he mistakenly assumes his passenger is reaching in his pocket for a gun.

Would he have made the same fatal judgment error if a white guy had been riding shotgun?

Although I'm now living in Sydney, half a world away from my American homeland, Crash still haunts me. Its view of racism in the US, though largely dismissed by critics as heavy-handed, in some ways seems almost prescient today. That fateful fatal shooting scene replays on a continuous loop in my head every time I read another story about a young black man gunned down by a white police officer in the US. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are just two recent highly publicised victims – but this particularly deadly, virulent racism has been festering for years.

When I left the US in 2006 to move to Argentina (and later Thailand, South Africa and Australia), racism was a peripheral reason why I wanted out. Most of all, I needed a change. But now that I'm settled into my Sydney life, racism is precisely why I'm wary of going back. It's amazing to think I've spent nearly all of my country's first black presidency on the outside looking in. I expected race relations to improve with someone of colour in charge, but things have gotten worse.

Some people assume having a black president means racism is dead. But remember: South Africa elected Nelson Mandela right after apartheid ended. And having spent a year living in Cape Town before moving to Sydney in 2014, I can attest to ongoing racial strife in South Africa. In the US, if anything, the presidency of Barack Obama has underscored the scourge of racism.  

I believe the increased police brutality, in addition to the shocking support for presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (something that would have been unthinkable when I left the US), are a reaction to having a black commander-in-chief. It's brought out a brazen brand of bigotry that had largely been dormant since the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s. It's like a regressive revolution where, if you can't overthrow the leader by force, you squash those with similar qualities.

Growing up in Kissimmee, Florida, in the 1980s, I dealt with racism that was more verbal than physical. New York City, where I moved after graduating from college, was far more diverse than central Florida, but I still occasionally felt the brunt of racism, whether it was an off look from a white stranger, the sound of the N word ringing in my ear, or a security guard at The Gap detaining me because of a shoplifting suspect whose description fit mine. In other words, he was black.

But I didn't fear for my life every time I walked down the street, or saw a white cop approaching. Back then, when you read breaking news about Rodney King and Abner Louima, both of whom were brutalized by US cops in separate incidents in the '90s, if you were black, your first reaction was shock and horror, then rage. Today, such attacks are so commonplace that you still feel horror and rage (frequently compounded by video evidence that was rarely present in the '90s), but the shock has been replaced by here-we-go-again resignation.

Meanwhile, the world is watching. I wonder if Americans realise just how poorly they're viewed around the world. Here in Sydney, where I've lived for nearly two years, the US seems to be associated with three main things: celebrities, guns and racism. And the presence of those firearms makes the racism more deadly than in other places.

Do I feel safer in Australia than I would in the US? That's a complicated question, because I don't want to give the impression that I'm unaware of the racism that exists here…or suggest I haven't been touched by it.

Early one Saturday morning, about six months after moving to Sydney, I was walking home from Oxford Street when a policeman stopped me and asked for my identification. I was a bit drunk and got defensive. I raised my voice defiantly and perhaps overplayed the diva bit, stopping just short of "Do you know who I am?" I did, however, ask him why, of all the wasted people stumbling about at 3am, did he single me out? Was it because I'm black? My drunken honesty and refusal to meekly play ball was rewarded with a $500 fine for "offensive behaviour".

I challenged the fine by email, explaining that recent events in my home country had made me overly sensitive when it came to the police. A few weeks later, I received a letter saying I wouldn't have to pay up. I was relieved. I wouldn't be out $500.

Today, I'm relieved for an entirely different reason. Had I been in the wrong US state and reacted the way I had with the cop that night, I might not have lived to tell the story. Why would I want to go home to that?

Jeremy Helligar is editor of nine.com.au's 9TheFIX and author of Is It True What They Say About Black Men?: Tales of Love, Lust and Language Barriers on the Other Side of the World.