[Just prior to publishing this issue of BC, we received notice from the Jewish Voice for Peace with the following: "We have just learned that the president of the University of St. Thomas acknowledged he made the wrong decision and invited Archbishop Tutu to campus!"] -ed

We have all heard the one about the person who kept smacking his or her head against the pole - because it felt so good when they stopped. Well, when and if the United States of America ever comes to the realization that its brand of so-called democracy is an open sham and actually stops (or is made to stop) trying to force it on the rest of the world, perhaps the planet will breathe a collective sigh of relief.

It is both interesting and illuminating how St. Thomas University in St. Paul, (Twin Cities) Minnesota, has brazenly banned South African Bishop Desmond Tutu from speaking at its campus, for having the audacity to have equated correctly the actions of the Israeli Zionists with the white racist purveyors of apartheid. (Read more on the Tutu speech cancellation in Bill Fletcher, Jr's The African World column in this weeks issue of BC.) It reminds me of when the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, in 1991, simply declined to prosecute white St. Paul Police officers in a matter investigated, and wherein probable cause had been found by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, in which a Black male political activist had the back of his head bashed open by white racist baseball bat-wielding vigilantes with whom said police officers were shown to have been complicitous and discriminatory. The actions against Bishop Tutu in St. Paul, are indicative of the fact that Zionism and white racism are indeed inseparable twins, and are alive, well, and active not only in the state of Minnesota, but throughout the entire United States of America. It is late in 2007, and nothing has changed. Democracy, justice, and fair play for Black and other people of color remains a sham and an illusion. St. Thomas University in Minnesota is presenting Bishop Desmond Tutu with a small dose of the enormous reality of 21st century apartheid - American style.

Perhaps, just perhaps, after a bit more exposure, the white liberals and their surrogates might have a little protest or two over the Tutu matter, but they will never indict themselves for their own complicity in allowing this to have ever occurred in the first place. For this is the nature of white liberals. They will chirp and cajole one another about how wonderful it is that finally, in the 21st century, they have elected a Black person from Minnesota to the US Congress, knowing full well that their white racism and color privilege are not in the least bit threatened by this and other such benign and meaningless acts.

The fact of the matter is that all of America, from Jena, Louisiana to St. Paul, Minnesota, to New York, to California is all the same: racist, racist, and racist. What was that we keep hearing about democracy? What democracy? Whose democracy? Where is this alleged justice and democracy? As Langston Hughes so eloquently put it in his poem titled, Let America Be America Again, "America never was America to me."

We must consistently ask ourselves how it is possible or in any way logical to conclude that white America could even be capable of exporting democracy and justice to Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, the African continent, or the Caribbean, when it is steadfastly unwilling and incapable of exercising justice and democracy toward Black, Red, and Brown peoples within its own borders. The answer is obvious. It is dangerously self-deluding and ridiculous to conclude that America can or will ever get over its hypocrisy and racism without, at the very least, a total and complete, structural, systemic change.

White America, and its negroidian surrogates such as Condoleezza "wannabe white" Rice, in conjunction with other sell outs "of color," continues to control and dominate us Black, Red, and Brown peoples because we have not pruned our own trees of what I refer to as the disease of colonized minds - ready at the drop of a hat to do white America's bidding. White America cannot control and dominate us and the rest of the world without our complicity, without our acquiescence. We must not be compliant. It's time, indeed past time, to hold the house Negroes, and those with whom they conspire, accountable. White America cannot control and dominate without the ongoing and insidious activities of those Black, Brown, and Red people who conspire against their own. It's time, and indeed past time, to inform our Black, Brown, and Red brothers and sisters that the time for emulating white America is over. Time to stop being caricatures of white Americans in their television, radio, or Internet advertisements. Time to build our own. Time to know who we are and be proud of our own. Our very cultural, economic, political, and ultimately physical survival is what is at stake in this matter.

While white liberals and the majority of the rest of white America, be they conservative or so-called progressives, prattle on about the terrible degradations of peoples in nations outside of America, we must hold them accountable for the ongoing and sustained social, economic, and political degradation of Black, Red, and Brown peoples right here in the United States of America. Indeed, the terrible degradations of peoples throughout the world are, in fact, based upon the color and class privilege of white America, which is something white liberals seek to minimize or ignore. We however, can neither minimize or ignore these realities.

We must carry on in this serious struggle, maintaining our efforts to attain the precious and sweet fruits of liberation, as we continually strive to keep it real.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

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