October 11, 2007
- Issue 248 |
||
America:
What Was That About Justice And Democracy? Keeping It Real By Larry Pinkney BC Columnist |
||
|
||
[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. |
||