The
entire white Democratic power structure is trying to figure
out how to marginalize Rev. Al Sharpton and, thereby, remove
from political discussion the concerns of the party's most
important and loyal constituency, African Americans. Although
inept in fashioning alternatives to George Bush, party regulars
study alchemy into the wee hours in search of a formula to
make Sharpton disappear from the primaries.
Victoria,
from Grand Rapids, Michigan, thinks the Democrats are getting
all worked up about a game that will be cancelled.
While
the Dems are getting all revved up for the 2004 election,
it's about time someone pointed out that there probably won't
be an election! This thoroughly rotten administration will
throw together a bogus national emergency, declare martial
law and lock the polling places. Wait and see.
How
Lady Liberty looks from Chicago
Economists
use the term "discouraged workers" to denote people
who have given up looking for employment and, consequently,
do not show up in the monthly jobless figures. This permanently
jobless cohort has long been a fixture of African American society,
and grows steadily, even as the official unemployment rolls
lengthen. To that number should also be added prison inmates,
comprising on any given day 12 percent of Black males in their
twenties and early thirties.
In
his May 1 Cover Story, "How
You Gonna Export Something You Ain't Even Got At Home?"
Chicago Urban League Vice President Paul Street confronted the
impact of what he calls "deep racism" in America,
realities hidden by "artificial suppression of the true
black male unemployment rate, which stood at 39 percent in the
mid-1990s when prisoners were factored in."
In
some cases, the pervasive effects of "deep racism"
overwhelm indices of Black progress. For example, "there
were more black males in the state's correctional facilities
just on drug charges than the total number of black males enrolled
in undergraduate degree programs in Illinois state universities,"
wrote Street.
In
seeking to expose that persistent deep racism, it is crucial
to realize that it continues to operate against African-Americans
who have overcome or avoided some of the society's broader
racially disparate structural forces by attaining the skills
and credentials required to access modern labor market opportunities
.... We need, however, to go yet deeper, behind the smoking
gun of pure discrimination to see that spatial, skill, and
criminal record "mismatches" are themselves deeply
colored by and expressive of a covert racism that involves
special white fear and loathing toward males within the African-American
population.
David
Comdico finds "deep racism" lurking in the Bush men's
media message.
Paul
Street's recent cover story is a timely reminder of just how
vital the issue of racism is to these sad times, when mainstream
America would prefer to believe otherwise. It is precisely
because America blithely proclaims itself a post-affirmative
action, "color-blind society" that racism has been
running unchecked. In these topsy-turvy times no one seems
to notice that a country run by Whites is butchering a country
of Brown people, and using the worst sort of racial stereotyping
to dehumanize them. (Well, Norman Mailer has just recently
in a recent
opinion piece).
Witness
the latest photo-op aboard, gasp, the aircraft carrier Abraham
Lincoln (what a vicious sense of humor the neo-conmen have):
witness a sea of white faces. At the onset of hostilities,
Bush was careful to stage a multi-ethnic backdrop, to communicate
some notion of international solidarity where none existed.
But the victory, as subtly communicated in these recent images,
was clearly for White America.
William
Bowles writes from Britain, the place that former United Nations
Ambassador Andrew Young said "practically invented racism"
- a statement that may have cost Young his job. Mr. Bowles sees
racism deep in the societal marrow on both sides of the Atlantic.
"How,"
Tony asked me, "you gonna export something you ain't
even got at home?"
And
of course, Tony's experience is not a new one. Black Americans
during WWII denied the right to carry arms, segregated even
as 'we' fought to defeat Fascism.
But
the ruling class having learnt its lessons, now recruits from
the poor Black and Latino communities with promises of an
education denied to them in their communities. And the lack
of understanding shows in the behavior of these 'cannon fodder'
in Iraq which I think contrasts sharply with the Black and
Latino generation who fought in Vietnam (although mostly conscripts).
Yet
how does one overcome a system which as a matter of course,
rewrites and obliterates history and as a result, each generation
has to relearn the experiences of the past, rather than inherit
and learn from them? A system which moreover, murders those
leaders as a matter of course (ML King, Malcolm X, George
Jackson et al) who are able to articulate and express the
desires of the oppressed. And where it can't eliminate, co-opt.
And
not only do we have to learn the difference between overt
and covert racism, critically we have to understand that racism
is an ideology, at least three centuries old, and utterly
institutionalized into virtually every aspect of 'our' culture,
whether it be science, history, the arts, economics, sociology
or politics.
Here
in the UK, a spokeswoman for the police on community relations
when tackled over the institutional nature of racism in the
police, which four years after the Lawrence Report (on the
death of a young Black man, and the third commission convened
after the failure of the first two to even name it!) admitted
that she thought that "that institutional racism in the
police was impossible to remove".
Now
there's very little I can do about what a person thinks about
me (hopefully, they'll keep it to themselves) but for sure
I can tackle the institutions no matter how small my contribution
is. And above all, I can pass on as I remember those who taught
me.
The
unwelcome mat
Our
readers are usually quite kind to us, even in noting our shortcomings.
So it is with Leila Mouammar, who points out our dearth of coverage
of the escalating war against immigrants and refugees.
I
thoroughly appreciated your cogent analysis of contemporary
players and events. It's refreshing to see ideas in print
that are expressed from an empowered and dignified position
that nonetheless exposes the power game politics being played.
Growing up as a Palestinian-Canadian has
allowed me an "othered" perspective on the world
so that much of what you wrote in "Conspiracy Theories"
resonated with my own experiences. People in the US who are
from a growing list of countries like Yemen, Sudan, Algeria,
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, North Korea, (and others) are disappearing into detention
after going to register at INS installations, which are now
under the control of the Office of Homeland Security. Thousands
of primarily Arabs and Muslims (but also Haitians, and other
immigrant and refugee groups) are being held in undisclosed
locations, without legal counsel, with either no charge or
very spurious, unelaborated charges.
It would be great if you could do an article
about the war at home, the war against immigrants and refugees
displaced by these illegal wars the US is waging abroad. The
whole INS registration process is very disturbing. People
have waited all morning, outside in freezing temperatures,
only to be turned away at noon and told to come back the next
day. Once inside the INS buildings, there is nowhere to get
any food or eat, and no instructions are given: you just wait
to hear your name called and they never pronounce the Arab,
Muslim, or any kind of "ethnic" name correctly so
people sometimes miss hearing their name. But they are afraid
to ask and disturb the process, so they just wait all day,
only to find out at the end that they were called earlier
and perhaps will have to return tomorrow.
It's really crazy.
Anyway, this is the first time I have seen
your site (so if you've already done an article on the subject
above, forgive my ignorance). I just wanted to say that from
what I've seen, you're doing a great job and to keep writing
because you inspire people like me to keep going when you
write to the truth and to the heart of the matter at hand.
Ms.
Mouammar is substantially correct - we have not given the subject
sufficient coverage. Racism against immigrants unleashes forces
identical to those that threaten African American citizens and
the rule of law, itself.
Conspiracies
and glitches
Two
unrelated events affected the content of this week's EmailBox
column. First, a computer glitch erased a big chunk of the opened
and unopened mail. Our regrets to the affected writers, whom
we hope to hear from, again. In addition, an unusual number
of letters arrived from outside the U.S., some of which survived
the glitch.
Canadian
Eric Walberg responded to our April 24 Cover Story, "Conspiracy
Theories 2: The Great Unraveling of U.S. Global Power."
maintains that the Pirates have unintentionally accelerated
a global withdrawal from entanglements with a grasping United
States.
The
international community - in which the U.S. is no longer a
true member but, rather, a dangerous presence - struggles
to work around the Americans as new structures of trade and
cooperation are created ....
The
real bomb ticks under America's porch, and will devastate
the dollar in a spasm of millions of individual and institutional
decisions to run in the other direction.
Mr.
Walberg says the world is fed up with playing a rigged game
using U.S. monopoly money.
Brilliant
journalism, more an extended prose poem.
Guess
who's financing the Iraq invasion? Not the US government.
WE (the rest-of-the-world) ARE! What a clever international
financial system the US has going for it. It has no intention
of ever paying back its monster foreign trade debt.
It simply prints its dollars, and we the gullible rest-of-the-world
take them in exchange for our goods, directly financing
even their most criminal actions.
How
breath-taking, and how bald the lie.
A
Swiss reader named Moritz, who describes himself as a "student
of Afro-American culture," writes of dramatic changes in
European views of the U.S.
This
essay on 'Conspiracy Theories' is a real masterpiece, everything
in there, strong analysis and incredible writing, bravissimo!
I didn't know about your site and got linked there through
whatreallyhappened.com for the first time.
You
won't believe how public opinion, as reflected by the media,
has changed against the US within the last two months. Sometimes
I sat in front of the TV and couldn't believe how this historical
transition period was taking place, right here in front of
my eyes. Let there be no doubt about it: the rupture between
Germany (actually German speaking countries, including Austria
and Switzerland, too) and Amerikkka is irreversible. To me
as a longtime-observer this gives me a lot of hope. I'm convinced
that if we as Europeans stick together we can help the world
bring these pirates down faster than anyone.
Mr.
Moritz seemed to almost slip into a minor Anschluss, for a second,
assembling a Greater Germany from his outpost in Switzerland.
But, perhaps we are too sensitive to these things.
To
paraphrase Andrew Young, Europeans practically invented piracy.
We shall see how they respond to the U.S. offensive-against-all.
Australian
Christopher Skinner shares an observation he's made of his countrymen,
regarding race.
I
greatly appreciate your cogent columns in Black Commentator,
which I have just discovered. Here in Australia we observe
terrible levels of ill health, unemployment, and incarceration
amongst the indigenous population. Interestingly, the white
majority here seems to display little overt racism against
Black American visitors. A black face on TV is more likely
to be from the Caribbean or USA than from the Central Desert
or Arnhnem Land. Those places do provide most of the art that
Australia exports.
Offensive
language
Finally,
we got a letter from Harvard University, concerning language
employed by Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. In a campaign
message published in last
week's ,
Kucinich said:
I
don't agree with other Democrats that we can continue to increase
military spending, and still deliver on our domestic agenda
for middle class and working Americans. We can't. That's voodoo
budgeting.
Susan
Klimczak took offense and, in the process, drew our attention
to an interesting story about Haiti.
Can
you tell me why you didn't point out that the use of the phrase
"voodoo budgeting" in the long quote by Dennis Kucinich
in The Issues: "Supremacy
forever" was an unfortunate choice of words used
in making an exemplary point?
You
are usually so precise in being both strongly critical and
critically sensitive in your language, so I think perhaps
there might be something I don't understand.
Here's
what I understand now:
One
of my spiritual sisters practices Vodou and every time I hear
"voodoo" used as a putdown, usually meaning "misleading"
or "not real" my heart hurts for and with her heart.
Considering the historical role that Vodou played in the liberation
of the Haitian people, I believe that when discourse puts
down Vodou, an important historical and present-day tool used
in working for liberation of all peoples is put down.
(I
also think it could have been a wonderful opportunity to point
out that this month Jean-Bertrand Aristide, president of Haiti
issued an executive decree declaring Vodou to be an officially
sanctioned religion in Haiti. This is a great moment of acknowledgement
and respect for a very powerful spiritual tradition.
Click
here for one link about the news from Haiti.
Again, I really respect you at
and think it's entirely possible that there exists some position
around the use of the word that I don't yet understand, a
position that defends its use. And I would sincerely like
to understand more than the little I do now.
Thank
you. I continue to look forward to your journal each week!
Having
no defense, we offered none.
Keep
writing.
gratefully acknowledges the following organizations
for sending visitors our way during the past week:
Black
Planet.com
Black
Electorate
WhatReallyHappened.com
Information
Clearinghouse.com
Democratic
Underground.com
Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting
BuzzFlash.com
Smirking
Chimp.com
Cursor.com
