Symbolic Racism and the US of KKK A
I d be a millionaire, if I had a dime for every time some white American expressed some variant of the opinion: Slavery ended a long time ago. Blacks have it much better today. They ve achieved equality under the law and many middle class blacks have achieved de facto equality. Why can t they just get over it?
Well, it s one thing to insist that blacks take responsibility for their own lives, even in the face of past and present racism. In fact, a November 2007 Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of America s blacks believe: blacks who don t get ahead are mainly responsible for their own condition. But, it s quite another thing to close one s eyes to the impact of past and present racism.
When discussing the current indifference of whites to the cumulative impact of past racism, perhaps political scientist Roy L. Brooks put it best: Two persons one white and the other black are playing a game of poker. The game has been in progress for some 300 years. One player the white one has been cheating during much of this time, but now announces: from this day forward, there will be a new game with new players and no more cheating. Hopeful, but suspicious, the black player responds, that s great. I ve been waiting to hear you say that for 300 years. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with all those poker chips that you stacked up on your side of the table all these years? Well, said the white player, somewhat bewildered by the question, they are going to stay right here, of course. That s unfair, snaps the black player. The new white player will benefit from your past cheating. Where s the equality in that? But you can t realistically expect me to redistribute the poker chips along racial lines when we are trying to move away from considerations of race and when the future offers no guarantees to anyone, insists the white player. And surely, he continues, redistributing the poker chips would punish individuals for something they did not do. Punish me, not the innocents! Emotionally exhausted, the black player answers, but the innocents will reap a racial windfall.
Commenting on this racial windfall, Paul L. Street concludes, there is something significantly racist about the widespread mainstream white assumption that the broader white majority society owes African Americans nothing in the way of special, ongoing compensation for singular black disadvantages resulting from overt and explicit past racism. Paul L. Street, Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis, p. 23
Americans familiar with the work of sociologist Dalton Conley know that that slavery and Jim Crow sharecropping have been curses that keep on cursing, especially by preventing most African-Americans from accumulating the wealth they should have gathered otherwise. As Professor Conley sees it, wealth accumulation depends heavily on intergenerational support issues such as gifts, informal loans, and inheritances. Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red, p. 6 Wealth is much more stable within families and across generations than is income, occupation, or education. In short, says Conley, we are less likely to have earned it and more likely to have inherited it or received it as a gift. Ibid, p. 14
In 1865, at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans owned 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States However, by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, black Americans owned only a meager 1 percent of total wealth. Ibid, p. 25 According to Professor Conley, In 1994, the median White family held assets worth seven times more than those of the median nonwhite family. Ibid, p. 1 In a word, the deliberate impoverishment of slaves and Jim Crow sharecroppers played a major role in preventing blacks from passing significant wealth to their descendants.
(Much in the spirit of Barack Obama and, perhaps, Hillary Clinton, Professor Conley believes that the racial gap in wealth can be remedied by an aggressive wealth-accrual policy that would benefit both whites and blacks, who are asset-poor. Class, rather than race.)
Moreover, it wasn t merely the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow sharecropping that retarded the creation of wealth by African-Americans. During the 1930s and 1940s, African-Americans suffered yet more discrimination and abuse this time from Crackers in the U.S. Congress who conspired with office-holding and administrative racists in Southern states to assure, to the best of their ability, that only whites benefited from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt s New Deal social welfare programs. It gave an insidious new meaning to the South s insistence on States Rights!
As Ira Katznelson has written in When Affirmative Action Was White: During the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s the southern wing of the Democratic Party was in a position to dictate the contours of Social Security, key labor legislation, the GI Bill, and other landmark laws that helped create a modern white middle class in a manner that also protected what these legislators routinely called the southern way of life. p. 17
Thus, at the very moment when a wide array of public policies was providing most white Americans with valuable tools to advance their social welfare insure their old age, get good jobs, acquire economic security, build assets, and gain middle-class status most black Americans were left behind or left out. p. 23
How could such a thing happen? It happened because a Cracker in the U.S. House of Representatives, John Rankin of Mississippi, led the drafting of a law that left responsibility for implementation mainly to the states and localities, including, of course, those that practiced official racism without compromise. p. 123 According to Katznelson, Rankin keenly grasped that black veterans would attempt to use their new status, based upon service and sacrifice, along with a new body of federal funds, to shift the balance against segregation. p. 126
Take the case of the GI Bill. Between 1944 and 1971, federal spending on former soldiers in this model welfare system totaled over $95 billion. p. 113 As Katznelson notes, with the help of the GI Bill, millions of veterans bought homes, attended college, started business ventures, and found jobs commensurate with their skills. p. 113 Yes, it helped many blacks and should be credited for developing a tiny group of professionals into the large, stable, and growing black bourgeoisie that exists today, composed of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and mid-level civil servants. p. 120
But, on balance, despite the assistance that black soldiers received, there was no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap in postwar America than the GI Bill. p. 121 Soon after the law s enactment, a delegation told the Veterans Administration that discharged Negro soldiers in the South are discouraged from enjoying the benefits of the GI Bill of Rights. p. 122
One consequence of this discrimination wouldn t be seen until 1984, when GI Bill mortgages had largely matured. In 1984, the median white household had a net worth of $39,135; the comparable figure for black households was only $3,397. Most of this difference was accounted for by the absence of homeownership. p. 164
Whites, especially in the South, made a last ditch attempt defend the southern way of life, when they engaged in violence to prevent the integration of schools, as required by the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. As Mark M. Smith has observed, in his book, How Race is Made, In years to come, civil rights activists let such men and women lay bare their visceral fury to the world, their glowering faces, punching fists, and kicking raw feet, frightening testimony to their determination to protect their society. It was a wise strategy. Seeing segregationists spew their hatred with such ferocity on national television shocked many. p. 138
Fury and violence weren t the only tools available to whites, who wanted to keep blacks in their place. Until the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, most southern voting districts employed literacy tests as a condition for entitlement to vote. The tests were employed in an explicitly racially discriminatory manner, with blacks given lower scores than whites regardless of their actual performance on the tests. Lawrence Blum,
The Moral Quandary of Race, p.24
Fortunately, the enactment of Civil Rights legislation greatly diminished the most overt forms of racism. Unfortunately, overt racism has been replaced by what scholars call symbolic racism a coherent set of beliefs including the sense that discrimination is no longer an obstacle for blacks, that their current lack of upward social mobility is caused by their unwillingness to work hard, that they demand too much of government, and that they have received more than they deserve. Hutchings and Valentino, p. 390
Symbolic racism, which is deeper and more widespread in the South than elsewhere in the United States, has become the bedrock upon which the Republican Party bases its Southern strategy. Lee Atwater (who worked with both Bush s) put it this way: You start out in 1954 by saying Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968 you can t say nigger that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff. You re getting so abstract now that you re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites. Bob Herbert, Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant, New York Times, Oct. 6, 2005
Thus, even if we put aside the issue of a final reckoning for past injustices, there s still the matter of the willful blind eye that symbolic racists and other ignorant Americans turn to stark evidence of present-day racism.
Present-day racism? Yes, in June 2000, American General Life and Accident Insurance Co., one of the nation s largest life insurance companies, agreed to pay $206 million to settle allegations that it had overcharged millions of mostly poor, black customers for burial insurance because of their race. Consider that, in November 2000, Coca-Cola agreed to pay more than $156 million to current and former employees of color alleging racial discrimination. Blum, p. 25
Present-day racism? As professors Maria Kyrsan and Amanda Lewis note, in Racial Discrimination Is Alive and Well Challenge, May-June 2005 , No matter what the employment rate generally is, African Americans are unemployed at twice the rate of whites. p. 38 Fine, but how does racism enter in?
First, from the findings of researchers, who sent out resumes to a wide sample of potential employers. The resumes were identical except for the name at the top. Some had black-sounding names like Tamika or Tyrone. Others had white-sounding names. But the resumes were identical. It turned out in this well-controlled study that the person with the white-sounding name was much more likely to get a call back than the one with the African American name. Ibid, p, 40
Second, Kathryn Neckerman and Joleen Kirschenman did a study where they interviewed employers in-depth. They found widespread evidence of a racial hierarchy and belief in stereotypes. These views were quite readily verbalized by employers, who admitted that they, for example, selectively recruited in some communities. They preferred to hire white ethnics or Hispanics and had negative stereotypes of black inner-city applicants in particular. Ibid, p. 41
Thus, it s perhaps no accident that the huge expansion of the black middle class since the 1960s is due largely to jobs obtained in the government sector.
Present-day racism? In October 2005, Van Jones wrote about the disproportionate rate of arrests and convictions of blacks and cited an analysis conducted by two researchers for Justice Department: Two-thirds of the studies of state and local juvenile justice systems they analyzed found that there was a race effect at some stage of the juvenile justice process that affected minorities for the worse. Van Jones, ARE Blacks A Criminal Race? Surprising Statistics, Huffington Post, Oct. 5, 2005
Using data about drug use and incarcerations from four studies written between 1999 and 2005, Jones concludes: The Monitoring the Future Survey of high school seniors shows that white students annually use cocaine at 4.6 times the rate of African American students, use crack cocaine at 1.5 times the rate of African American students, and use heroin at the same rate of African Americans students sic , and that white youth report annual use of marijuana at a rate 46% higher than African American youth. However, African American youth are arrested for drug offenses at about twice the rate (African American 314 per 100,000, white 175 per 1000,000) times sic that of whites, and African American youth represent nearly half (48%) of all youth incarcerated for drug offense in the juvenile justice system.
Such racism in America s juvenile justice system is but part of a larger pattern of racial discrimination that recently prompted the United Nation s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to urge the United States to rectify the stark racial disparities in criminal justice systems throughout the country. UN Faults US on Racism, Human Rights Watch, March 7, 2008
Present-day racism? With reports that America s schools are experiencing a new wave of re-segregation, it became national news when 16-year-old Kiri Davis recreated the famous 1940s experiment conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark that studied the psychological effects of segregation on black children. What Dolls Can Tell Us About Race in America, ABC News, Oct. 11, 2006
In Clark s test, black children were given a black doll and a white doll, and then asked which one they thought was better.
Overwhelmingly, they chose the white doll.
The results from Clark s experiment led him to conclude that prejudice, discrimination and segregation caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred; a conclusion that influenced the Brown v. Board of Education decision to end segregation in the nation s schools. Ibid
In the test administered by Kiri Davis some sixty years later, Davis asks a little girl, Can you show me the doll that looks bad? The girl immediately chooses the black doll. Why does that look bad, asks Kiri. Because it s black, the girl answers.
In fact, 15 of 21 children (ages 4 and 5) said that the white doll was good and pretty, and that the black doll was bad. Ibid How s that for the impact of present-day racism?
Symbolic racists also would do well to consider the deadly present-day impact of previous racism. For example, when you think about hurricane Katrina s devastating impact on the lives of African-Americans living in New Orleans, think racial segregation. As Richard Thompson Ford writes, in recent book, The Race Card, Racism didn t flood the black neighborhoods of New Orleans, but racism established and enforced the residential patterns that made those neighborhoods black. p. 55
And New Orleans wasn t alone. Many American cities were segregated by force of law until the Supreme Court invalidated racial zoning in 1917. Those cities and many others replaced racial zoning with an almost equally effective private substitute racially restricted real estate covenants until those too were invalidated in 1948. Banks, real estate agents, residents, and in some cases the federal government conspired to enforce segregation informally until Congress prohibited housing discrimination in 1968. Ibid
Yet, although the evidence of present-day racism is overwhelming, such widespread and continuing racial discrimination does not justify the growth of a very troubling, self-destructive black oppositional culture in inner-city ghettos (See Elijah Anderson s Code of the Street.)
On the other hand, when a white Department of Defense colleague asked me to comment on a speech by Bill Cosby in which Mr. Cosby tore into blacks, especially black parents, for the poor upbringing and resulting social pathologies of so many black children I not only recommended Elijah Anderson s sobering book, but also asked why white Americans weren t equally outraged by the social pathologies of low-class whites a much larger American sub-group, often called white trash by mean-spirited folks. I suggested to my colleague that the double standard, itself, constituted evidence of widespread racism in this country.
But, beyond this racial double standard, symbolic racists do their country a double disservice. Not only do they belittle the existence of present-day racism, thereby turning a deaf ear to potential remedies, they also provide fertile soil for the reemergence of overt racism.
As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright s God Damn America (a sentiment that was shared by Thomas Jefferson, see part one
Sean Hannity and FOX News also has heaped scorn upon Rev. Wright s reference to the US of KKK A. Again, Hannity s racial hypocrisy was astounding!
Simply consider that on November 14, 2007, Hannity s former co-conspirator to fill WABC s airwaves with hate, Hal Turner, went on the Warren Ballentine radio show and asserted: We are going to begin lynching blacks in this country again next year! He followed that assertion with a suggestion that we must return to what worked in the past, a rope. Hate Groups: Mainstreaming the Far Right, The Center for Democratic Renewal, February 2008
Turner made his assertion in the wake of the huge September 2007, Jena 6 rally against racial discrimination and hate in Jena, Louisiana that sparked a flurry of some 50 to 60 noose incidents. The flurry marked a spike in noose-specific offenses that, according to a Justice Department report in 2000, have been increasing in professional environments. In fact, in October 2007, seven black workers employed by an Oklahoma-based drilling company won a $290,000 settlement in a discrimination lawsuit which claimed they felt threatened by the display of a noose on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig. Noose incidents; Foolish pranks or pure hate? CNN.com, Nov. 1, 2007
In fact, the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM) had put out a call: All across the country, white people are spontaneously hanging nooses from trees to say that white people will not be intimidated by nigger mob rule and to show support four our Lynch the Jena 6 campaign.
The NSM appears to have picked up where the KKK left off. As the authors of Hate Groups: Mainstreaming the Far Right have written: The practice of lynching exploded following the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 as the organization used lynching to promote the concept of white supremacy. It has been estimated that between 1880 and 1920 an average of two African Americans per week were lynched in the United States.
Lynchings weren t just murders there were, in many cases, sanctioned murders: casually reported in the newspapers, ignored by law enforcement; celebrated with family picnics; photos of hanging victims turned into postcards, and souvenirs were taken from the scene of the crime. Ibid
Mr. Turner s prediction of more lynchings came just last year, when the number of hate groups operating in America rose to 888. That number represents an increase of 48% increase since 2000. The Year in Hate, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2008 And it came just a year after law enforcement agencies reported that 4,737 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses 66.2 percent were motivated by anti-black bias.
Thus, although it might be a bit of a stretch today (but certainly not during the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century) to refer to the United States of America as the US of KKK A, Rev. Wright s assertion did not merit the outrage it received across white America, especially in light of the noose incidents that have increased since 2000 and spiked in 2007. Are we a nation of amnesiacs?
My closest African American friend, Stanley Brown, gave me his considered opinion about the outrage, which I publish here with his permission: They finally found Barack s swift boat issue. It will probably never stop. Politics is a dirty business and Americans are easily led around like sheep (sheep are dumb). This issue of Rev. Wright allowed race to become the issue, to which white America can assert their sense of superiority making white (thought) right. The media disguises the whiteness as patriotism because most Americans have little knowledge of world events unless provide d by our fair and balanced media. It s as if the sons and daughters of slaves and victims of a Jim Crow society, now James Crow, Esq., should have the same perspective of America. It would actually mean that African Americans were insane, if they did. We are all a sum of our experiences. It s a testament to how far we haven t come and our lack of desire for real intelligence.
Symbolic racism and the US of KKK A. My brief, two-part, introduction to Racism 101 should persuade you that Rev. Jeremiah Wright s utterance about present-day racism is no more outrageous than are the smug, self-serving beliefs of symbolic racists who maintain that discrimination is no longer an obstacle for blacks, that their current lack of upward social mobility is caused by their unwillingness to work hard, that they demand too much of government, and that they have received more than they deserve. And nothing said by FOX s Sean Lee Atwater Hannity will make it so.
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA). He can be reached at: waltuhler@aol.com
This is one of the most comprehensive and informative articles I have read regarding the fact that racism is alive and well in 2008. I am a white person, and I still find it difficult to believe that people are still denying that racism is a thing of the past. Obviously nothing was learned regarding what white people did to the Indian culture either. Such a tragedy, in this day and age, that many folks are still walking around in a fog of denial. What will it take for people to just be human beings, and fess up to the past as well as current racism issues, and bring about a positive change for the sake of humanity.
James
I do not agree with many of your arguments. While you will get no argument from me that the past directly affects the present, the facts do not bear out a lot of the claims that have been made here.
Every year, foreigners arrive from various countries around the world, a very large percentage come from very poor places without good education systems. Many of them enter the country illegally. Yet, recent history has shown that these immigrants, who come from backgrounds in Asia and Latin America where access to the wealth and education that African Americans have available to them is almost nonexistent, are able to prosper and quickly increase their average income and education level over successive generations.
Are African Americans disadvantaged? Almost certainly, but one cannot blame the lack of opportunities available to blacks in this country for their low educational and economic achievements given the fact that immigrants with much, much less opportunities are able to thrive in the United States, so, one cannot, in intellectual honestly, blame slavery and Jim Crow laws for most of the failure of blacks to achieve economic and educational equality today, given that so many immigrants, with much larger obstacles to their success (educational opportunities, xenophobia, language barriers, legal status, et cetera) have managed to thrive.
rosemarie jackowski said on April 4th, 2008 at 10:34 am #
James, your comments actual prove how alive and well racism against blacks is in the United States. To equate the experiences of willing immigrants and those who were brought here in chains, and treated as sub-humans for hundreds of years, is just ignorant. Immigrants do face hurtles, but they are no way comparable to what blacks face - an historical, deeply entrenched preception of inferiority and discrimination going back generations. As the author argues, despite the latent, covert form this rascism now takes, blacks have never really been able to overcome the stimga that was placed on them from the very beginning of the country. Did you read the article and all the evidence the author convincingly presents of real, exisitng prejudice against blacks that continues to this day?
You seem to imply the lack of upward mobility among blacks is proof of their inherent inferiority. Wouldn t the more reasonable conclusion be that this is evidence of a strong latent strain of rascism against blacks in American culture?
Colby said on April 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm #
That may be so Mr Uhler, but not in my case, and not for most of my white friends, either. So please let s make an effort to eliminate the sweeping generalizations. It is YOU who views everything through the prism of race. It is YOU who divides everything into black and white, so to speak. And by doing so, it is YOU who so willfully ignores other factors, like the fact that only 10% of Southern whites in the antebellum South were slaveowners. Like the fact that the abomination of slavery disenfranchised poor white folk by undercutting their wages from sharecropping, etc etc.
So of course I question the validity of an article, however well-intentioned, which ignores facts like these to protect an idea. My people were dirt-poor Pennsylvania coal-miners, Mr Uhler. I venture to say that most white people in this country descend from similar socio-economic stock - that is, from the poor, rather than the rich. So blow it out your ass, won t you?
rosemarie jackowski said on April 4th, 2008 at 4:24 pm #
My people were dirt-poor coal miners in Pennsylvania also. My world view is very different from yours, Colby. I remember seeing crosses burned on the hill near the strip mines.
Now, when I visit Pennsylvania I am saddened that so many there are STILL very prejudiced.
Racism is alive and thriving in the US. Ignoring that fact of American life is like ignoring the elephant in the living room. Shame on us. Shame on the US. Bravo Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Hue Longer said on April 4th, 2008 at 5:13 pm #
Colby? Hanity Hanity Hanity Hanity .Why so threatened? Sorry slavery hurt your poor family so much, but you should aim your rocks a little higher.
The best part about reading these articles is watching the irony play out in the message boards from benighted fuckwits who are unable to comprehend what they just read
Malcolm Martin said on April 4th, 2008 at 6:37 pm #
Mr. Uhler s analysis is an airtight case that racism is endemic in the damned United States of America. But he never goes directly to why this is so. Namely, the capitalist economy of the US and the bourgeoisie democracy at its political service.
Capitalism s nature is at the root of the racist attacks on the Obama candidacy. One should have no illusions about Barak Obama. He is auditioning with the ruling class in this campaign for president. He is desperately trying to convince them an Obama Administration would be business as usual, his empty rhetoric about change notwithstanding.
But this goes beyond Obama the Black man and candidate for president. Something the ruling class can never permit must happen before Obama can be elected. In all future primaries and in the general election, if the process gets that far, Obama will win 90-plus% of the Black vote and his people will turn out in record numbers. But he will win the nomination and then the presidency only with a substantial number of white working class votes. Oh, the unity!
Such unity would shake this county
The reason that chattel slavery came into existence in the semi-feudal agrarian US economy of the time was that it was very profitable for the masters of that economy.
The reason that racism is so pervasive in the United States today with its developed industrial capitalist economy is that it is very profitable for the masters of that economy.
It took the bloodiest war in US history and hundreds of thousands of white workers willing to fight to the death to end chattel slavery. No election and no candidate for office will end racism in this country. As long as capitalism exists elections will only produce racist results.
In the end Barak Obama will not be stopped for fear of his empty promise of change. The ruling class chuckles over such nonsense. What they are stricken over is the possibility that working-class whites might make their first halting steps toward an effective political relationship with their brothers and sisters of color. They know their history. They know that was the dynamic that brought down the slave economy. They know that would be the beginning of the end for them.
Raven said on April 4th, 2008 at 8:12 pm #
Long-time reader, first-time comment.
I just wanted to comment on this and other articles about racism in America. Why is it that Latinos rarely ever get mentioned? And, if they are, they are mentioned only in passing as to not forget about them. As much discrimination that occurs to Blacks, it happens much more frequently with Latinos, and a lot more shamelessly. While I don t take away from the fact that Blacks are discriminated against, the fact remains that there is much more attention paid to them. Latinos are paid meager wages, manipulated and lied to, and mercilessly persecuted in this country, and have less avenues in which to defend themselves. The moment they step up to do so, they receive threats of INS coming down and doing sweeps on innocent families trying to earn an honest living.
Latinos take the jobs that no one else wants to work. Honestly, how many people from other races do you see working the fields, or becoming janitors, or working in sweatshop factories? Hardly any, because companies know that immigrant labor is cheap, and because no one wants to be paid minimum wage and work for 18 hours a day. Halting illegal immigration isn t going to do much to stop this, because corporations will just take their factories to Latin America and other third-world countries, and take advantage of the poor anyway.
Blacks may have less opportunities than the affluent Whites, but Blacks don t have to cross language barriers, or fight the fear that Mom and Dad might not come back from work today because Homeland Security did a sweep of the sweatshop they were working in and deported them back to their home country.
I have no faith in any of the presidential candidates, because they give no voice to the Latinos that serve ALL OF YOU on a daily basis. We clean your bathrooms, we pick your fruits and vegetables, we re the people you cuss out at the drive-thru because you can t understand our broken English. We kill your genetically-altered livestock so you can eat your tasty burgers and steaks. We provide more money to corrupt educational systems by allowing shady school board administrators (not teachers) to consider children that don t speak English as mentally handicapped so they can suck the little grant money that is provided for education for their lavish offices, swanky dinner meetings and luxurious summer vacations. We cut your grass, we bag your groceries, we care for your children, we clean and remodel your houses- and yet, we can t even get so much as a driver s license, or proper medical care for our children.
Slavery didn t end, people. It just shifted it s sights on a more vulnerable prey.
Brian Koontz
This article is missing a larger and much more crucial point - the American Empire, of which both blacks and whites have taken part, have expropriated the wealth of the people of other countries. It s THAT blood money that is being talked about being redistributed from whites to blacks in America. What we really need to do if there is any talk of actual justice in this article is to redistribute the money not *just* to American blacks, but to people all over the world, in EVERY American colony, in every country that the American government has exploited, coerced, dominated, stolen from, and otherwise terrorized.
The internal colony of blacks within America is just one colony of many within the American Empire. Redistributing wealth to this colony without addressing the other colonies only brings blacks more fully into the criminal conspiracy and power domination of the American monster.
Blacks don t want blood money, they don t want money stolen from children in American colonies who then die of malnutrition and preventable diseases. They want justice, and wealth within that justice.
hp said on April 4th, 2008 at 8:49 pm #
Yes, Racism is alive and well, when i cant wear my Irish Pride shirt because it offends some people. Remember when the Irish arrived during the Civil War, were given a gun and a bowl of soup and told to go fight for their country! Furthermore, My grandmother was told no Irish need apply! Yes, Racism is alive and well, its called Affirmative Action. Ask our friend Borax Obama s Pastor, RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL.
hp said on April 5th, 2008 at 8:48 am #
Racism is alive and well. I am a white women who lives in the South.
About 2 years ago I was once in a car with my white husband, two black men and an Asian woman. We were headed to our favorite BBQ joint in a small town in southern Arkansas. When I got out of the back seat with my friend (a black man), the looks of disgust I recieved from restaurant patrons was staggering. It literally took my breath away. The people there were disgusted for one and only one reason, there were blacks and whites and (oh my!) Asians all together in one car. It didn t matter that one of the black men was Stanford educated and his Asian wife was a nurse, it didn t matter that the other black man was a well respected news reporter in my city or that all of us had just come from an event in Memphis that left us in a spiritual high. Skin color was all that mattered.
I reiterate, RACISM IS ALIVE AND WELL!
Max Shields said on April 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm #
Stefan
I don t think it helps to state the obvious: racism exists. I don t think racism began with the North American slave trade. Nor is is unique to African Americans. Racism exists, for example when Americans (of all colors) don t think the life of an Iraqi child is worth the life of an American Soldier. That s just one of thousands of examples of racism. We see the same with Israelis racism against Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims at large. Or Western imperial empires throughout the world and before.
No, it is far too simplistic to think that racism began with white Europeans who came to America. Certainly it is a deep scare that seems to find no remedy, neither by racist nor those who wish to rid the world (and specifically Americans) of racism.
In a word, we have yet to come to terms with our sense of justice across the board. We live in a deeply colonized world - locally and globally. There you will find oppression and by any other definition racism.
It is curious that both the so-called left and right rally around Martin Luther King - one of the most radical American thinkers of the 20th Century as if he was just Rodney King. MLK saw the big picture and most of those who have followed are lost in the ant hill of dispair.
There are real racist issues in America. The statistics are blantly clear, but they don t speak to solutions. That s the tough part and one we bat around as if saying we re a racist nation will magically correct things (I know you re not).
Slavery happened. Now what? I think answers can be found when we work toward social and economic justice and don t think that some kind of national soul search and dialog is going to heal this wound. Therapy has very mixed results on a one on one basis and it s hard to imagine that it would translate better results on a national stage.
We ALL need to be part of the solution and find ways to accomplish that. Again, I think we have a major turning point given the cliff we re all heady on - as MLK said we may have come on separate boats, but we re ll in the same boat NOW!
John Wilkinson said on April 5th, 2008 at 1:04 pm #
And by doing so, it is YOU who so willfully ignores other factors, like the fact that only 10% of Southern whites in the antebellum South were slaveowners.
But the other 90% or so (there were honorable exceptions), directly or indirectly, actively or passively, supported the system. Enjoyed its fruits. Dropped the dime on escaped slaves. Arrested the same to be whipped or hanged. Took part in lynchings then and later on. Supported the back of the bus and segregation policies. Rioted in front of the Little Rock high school in the 50s. Rioted against the black and white equal rights protesters in the 60s. Passed and enforced laws on crack cocaine as opposed to those on powder cocaine. Etc., etc.
Let s be fair. We ve done a lot of bad things. You claim to know that those have had no ill effect, that the others have no reason to be pissed at us? How would you have felt if the tables had been turned?
Max Shields said on April 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm #
Brian Koontz, I had not read your post before writing mine. I think we re saying much the same. I would differ somewhat on the extent to which most American blacks have gained from a largely white driven empire. Still, on the whole there is great complicity regarding racism. Experiments by Milgram on authoritarianism in the 1960s showed just how universal some of our worst traits. It just takes the right conditions for us to be willing to hate and kill.
Colonialization, as you rightly note, is not something that happens exclusively to external lands, but also within the borders of nations, in this case the USA. There are issues with nation-states which we cannot readily dismiss. A nation the size with the population of the US is nearly impossible to construct without imposing the very same neo-liberal and imperial approaches to its cities and various poor rural areas as it does tries to do in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (and to some degree in Southeast Asia).
This is very fundamental to the issue of racism in America, but there is no denying that the citizens of this nation are complicit, regardless of color, in the racist, imperialistic empire we perpetrate on many areas of the world where we have military outposts and settlements.
Poor Americans may have some benefits from that set up, but there is a major issue of proportionality. Still, the deep seated willingness to look the other way on the part of most Americans - regardless of color - as we perpetrate racist hegemony cannot be denied, anymore than our at home statistics against minorities and poor.
Nevertheless, I think we are all capable of changing our world, through local transformation. This can and should be done in solidarity with our diverse cultures, ethnicities and races. Or, we can just keep calling one another racists. Choice is ours.
John Wilkinson said on April 5th, 2008 at 1:10 pm #
Let s bury our heads in the sand and pretend it never happened. Let s do that for other things as well the Holocaust, the Iraq war, the Indian genocide, colonialism, etc., etc. Let s just erase history and happily repeat it ever after.
No it may not heal this wound, but it helps to know the wound exists.
John Wilkinson said on April 5th, 2008 at 1:17 pm #
Why so threatened? Sorry slavery hurt your poor family so much, but you should aim your rocks a little higher.
The best part about reading these articles is watching the irony play out in the message boards from benighted fuckwits who are unable to comprehend what they just read
Mr. Longer:
I would characterize your comment as hate mail, and as such this is the extent of my response.
rosemarie jackowski said on April 4th, 2008 at 4:24 pm #
My people were dirt-poor coal miners in Pennsylvania also. My world view is very different from yours, Colby. I remember seeing crosses burned on the hill near the strip mines. Now, when I visit Pennsylvania I am saddened that so many there are STILL very prejudiced. Racism is alive and thriving in the US. Ignoring that fact of American life is like ignoring the elephant in the living room. Shame on us. Shame on the US. Bravo Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Ms. Jackowski:
I agree, racism is alive and thriving in the US. But talk is cheap, rosemarie. All the philosophy in the history of the world never changed a thing, as Marx wrote. And amends must be made.
OK then, let s start with your wealth. I demand, for the sake of American race relations and the future of our country, that the redistribution begins with your bank account. Therefore you must tithe 50% of your monthly salary to the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, or a historically black college of your choice. Secondly, since wealth is more often passed down through generations, rather than individually accrued, it s also time you demand the same amends of your thieving, slaving Cracker parents.
Please don t deign to assume you have a clear grasp of my world view. It s a tad more complex than a single post on a single blog could begin to represent. And I promise to extend you the same courtesy.
My child is of mixed heritage. And she can certainly do without the self-pity self-flagellators like yourself would teach her, and I could certainly do without my daughter being taught to hate her father, and two of her grandparents
John Wilkinson:
Let
I would differ somewhat on the extent to which most American blacks have gained from a largely white driven empire.
I think it s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion people in the world living (barely and often not for long) on $2 a day or less. Don t kid yourself - American blacks have benefited tremendously from the American criminal machine. And they know it - which is why they ask the monster for reparations just for them (and maybe also for the 400,000 remaining indigenous Americans) instead of demanding that the monster give out true reparations to all it s victims. American blacks don t want justice - they want wealth. They want to move to a higher rung on the criminal ladder. Check out Michael Eric Dyson as he drools over the possibility of one of his own , Barack Obama, possibly gaining the high seat of the American throne.
The voice for the voiceless? It s not American blacks who have no voice - it s the blacks and the blacks of the third world who have no voice. American blacks don t give a shit about them.
Martin Luther King made a critical error when his vision was one of integration. One cannot change the beast from within - it can only be killed from without. It s the global population - a global democratic movement that will destroy all forms of oppression including the American empire. And you d better believe that most American blacks will side with the empire instead of with the global democratic movement. The empire has the wealth that American blacks covet. They just want a piece of the pie that was made with blood, sweat, and so many tears.
Still, on the whole there is great complicity regarding racism. Experiments by Milgram on authoritarianism in the 1960s showed just how universal some of our worst traits. It just takes the right conditions for us to be willing to hate and kill.
Emotions are derived from social relationships (both real and pursued). That is to say, if you plan to steal and subjugate someone you hate him in order to make the theft, subjugation, and possible murder all the easier (both instrumentally easier and easier on your psyche). This truth is utterly universal.
Colonialization, as you rightly note, is not something that happens exclusively to external lands, but also within the borders of nations, in this case the USA. There are issues with nation-states which we cannot readily dismiss. A nation the size with the population of the US is nearly impossible to construct without imposing the very same neo-liberal and imperial approaches to its cities and various poor rural areas as it does tries to do in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (and to some degree in Southeast Asia).
This is very fundamental to the issue of racism in America, but there is no denying that the citizens of this nation are complicit, regardless of color, in the racist, imperialistic empire we perpetrate on many areas of the world where we have military outposts and settlements.
Right - it s about who gets the money - and American blacks are in a completely different position from third world blacks. While most of the wealth transfer goes from third world peoples to the American elite, American non-elite, white, black, and otherwise, share in the criminal gains.
Poor Americans may have some benefits from that set up, but there is a major issue of proportionality.
If one man steals $10 Million and another steals $1,000, both are criminals. For the latter to say well, proportionally I m not nearly as bad is a weak argument. And, proportionally, blacks Americans have 10% of the wealth of white Americans (per capita). What percent of the wealth of white Americans do black third-worlders have? And more importantly, how many Americans care? And more importantly yet, how many Americans are willing to do something about it?
Still, the deep seated willingness to look the other way on the part of most Americans - regardless of color - as we perpetrate racist hegemony cannot be denied, anymore than our at home statistics against minorities and poor.
Yep - and it has nothing to do with racism - since black Americans hardly care more about black third-worlders than white Americans do. It has to do with looking out for #1 , the capitalist ethos of utter greed. The most common excuse is I m taking care of my family . A mafia boss uses the same argument.
Nevertheless, I think we are all capable of changing our world, through local transformation. This can and should be done in solidarity with our diverse cultures, ethnicities and races. Or, we can just keep calling one another racists. Choice is ours.
We re not racists - racism is created and maintained solely by the elites who benefit from divisions within the exploited class (per divide and conquer). However, we need to wake the hell up to our own moral failings and recognize the power that we have to improve the world. The world can be changed - but only if we have real solutions and aren t just lesser versions of the monsters we claim to despise.
Hue Longer said on April 5th, 2008 at 6:29 pm #
Oh great. little Hue s back. And somewhere a toilet is missing a very large chunk of turd.
I find it hypocritical that in previous blogs you have decried ad hominem attacks , then deign to label me a benighted fuck wit .
Yet the best part about reading these articles is watching the irony play out in the message boards, eh li l Hue? (from benighted fuckwits such as yourself, li l Hue:)
Decidedly, my words have had considerable impact on you to provoke such a vitriolic, ad hominem attack.
Colby said on April 5th, 2008 at 7:51 pm #
North American slave trade .
Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 CE to 1900 CE, or more than the 9.4 to 14 million Africans brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade .
- BBC News
Also, to clarify, I have no problem with Jeremiah Wright voicing his opinion, I have a problem with where he voiced his opinion, as part of an organization that enjoys the benefits of a religion-based tax break. Whether it s Mr Wright in Chicago or John Hagee doing the same from the other side of the pulpit - so to speak - down in San Antonio, if politics enters a church, the church should be audited and de-listed.
Colby said on April 5th, 2008 at 7:53 pm #
There is systemic racism which sustains the oppression. It does not stop at our borders. The change that happens will not come through the system that perpetruates this oppression. It appears that the only reasonable chance for this change will come in the form of a grass-roots solidarity movement around our common sense of survival and a true just quality of life. We are not victims. The mindset of VICTIM is part of the problem and is worthless to such a critical movement.
However I do believe that those who have suffered against the odds of systemic racism can and need to be central to the transformation. Movements are strongest when we discover new unassuming leaders. These are people who never thought they could have a voice, shyed away from the spotlight and felt voiceless. But with some coaching, they re out there ready to take the lead and with a depth of commitment we can only imagine. But the issue of solidarity between those - regardless of color - who want deep transformative progressive change is the equally deep waters that seem to keep us separate. Bridges must be consciuously and arduiously built from all sides.
What makes our liberal conversation about racism a non-starter is that it supports institutionalized racism. It stops with the legacy of slavery in America and takes leaves us there.
Max Shields said on April 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am #
American blacks are in a completely different position from third world blacks. While most of the wealth transfer goes from third world peoples to the American elite, American non-elite, white, black, and otherwise, share in the criminal gains.
Here s where I think you move the argument too far. Yes, there is a complicity across the board with exceptions (from people of all color), but it does us no good to simply say that the machine that imposes empire is rooted in the colonies of America. New Orleans is such a colony, one of many. I cannot in all good conscience say that New Orleaners are the recipients of empire, anymore than the 700 miliary based colonies throughout the world that receive US remittances are in fact part of the oppressive machine. There is an important difference
I do not think that New Orleaners perpetuate empire. As an American colony they are kept in receipt of remittances that reach but a few and are siphoned off by corporate elites. It is simply not fair to call a colonists racist or part of the heart of empire. They are peripherial at best.
My point is that racism is essential to imperial empirism and it is true whether that colony resides within our outside the major empire - USA. But the oppressive machine is not restricted to people of color. Most urban centers have lost their voices, the local paper and the local land owners run the show - and if you are a middle income citizen of such a city - regardless of color - you are oppressed by this colonizing machine. This is true in just about every city in America.
All that said, racism in terms of the sanctity of life and the quality of life is what is very worrisome. When Americans, regardless of color, cannot empathize with the pain of Iraqi families who are suffering do to empire we have to acknowledge the universiality of this wretched condition.
To your issue of where change comes from, Brian, local change is the only meaningful change. It roots the change on a human scale that absolutely cannot be achieved from the top down (globally or nationally). To see such change across the globe or even just within the US landscape is a major challenge, but I think that the notion that we can have some kind of national or global transformationis nearly outside the realm of the possible. I can imagine a cataclysmic situation where human species is subverted across the planet. Within that context all bets are off.
Brian Koontz
I think you move the argument too far. Yes, there is a complicity across the board with exceptions (from people of all color), but it does us no good to simply say that the machine that imposes empire is rooted in the colonies of America. New Orleans is such a colony, one of many. I cannot in all good conscience say that New Orleaners are the recipients of empire, anymore than the 700 miliary based colonies throughout the world that receive US remittances are in fact part of the oppressive machine. There is an important difference
If there were no serfs there would be no king. We live in a neofeudal age, the age of corporatism. If there is no slave there is no master, because the slave acts as enabler for the master. The internal colonies of America are given special treatment due to actual democratic advances within a nation-state system. But with the rise of a single superpower, that superpower determined that it no longer needed to act democratically in order to woo international opinion it s way. So the weak democratic elements that led to favoring internal American colonies over external colonies began to erode.
It s the serfs as well as the king who keep the system going. If the serfs decide that the king will no longer receive the serfs bounty, he won t. Many serfs will die of course in the aftermath of such a choice, but the king will also die and sooner than all the serfs will, since the emergence of a new king with more moderate policies will then occur in order to spare the lives of the remaining serfs (in order for the land as a whole to have more power than if the killing of serfs continue).
It s completely true that black slaves played a large role in building the United States of America. But hardly anyone acknowledges the actual implications of that - which is that black slaves played a large role in building an empire of tyranny, terror, and mass murder. And now they want to reap the gains of such a criminal construct, instead of meting out justice.
As serfs they certainly didn t choose for their masters to be imperialists, but they sure did keep giving the imperialist master bounties, didn t they? And their leaders kept up the mantra of integration, of the desire to work their way up the criminal ladder, of the desire for wealth and to stand side-by-side with the mass murdering king himself. That s what equality means within the American monster. The equal right to extort, coerce, and dominate the rest of the world.
It takes a brave serf to defy a king, and the history of black slaves in America is not a history of bravery (by and large). If it was the world would be a very different place today. Blacks mourn the death of Martin Luther King not so much because of his great leadership but because of the utter dearth of black leadership today. The serfs have lost their spine.
Serfs define kings, and black slaves (through chattel, wage, and neofeudal) have shared in the defining of the American monster.
I do not think that New Orleaners perpetuate empire. As an American colony they are kept in receipt of remittances that reach but a few and are siphoned off by corporate elites. It is simply not fair to call a colonists racist or part of the heart of empire. They are peripherial at best.
That s like saying workers are peripheral at best within capitalist systems. It s nonsense. Serfs are the heart and soul of every kingdom, and American serfs are no different. Even for those black Americans who have problems gaining a place as a wage slave, they serve a crucial role insofar as they hold a lower rung on the social ladder, and show those on a higher rung the suffering that waits for them if they get out of line. American progressives think they are sophisticated when they talk about poverty, never knowing or caring that it s the different shades of poverty, minor differences in the social structure, that make all the difference. Divide and conquer is, sadly, understood far better by the masters than by those who claim to be helping the serfs.
What do you think the American Dream is, this thing that so many serfs care about and who are lamenting the death of? It s about the gaining of wealth, of milk and honey. America is the Land of Opportunity - that is to say the opportunity for wealth. So it s not surprising that those at or near the bottom of the American ladder would put their energies into climbing up that ladder instead of dismantling the system itself. In order to climb up a ladder there not only needs to be a ladder (the American Dream of upward mobility) but there also needs to be someplace to climb to, so that after all that climbing the person isn t stranded at the destination. That someplace to climb to is filled with blood money extracted from American colonies.
My point is that racism is essential to imperial empirism and it is true whether that colony resides within our outside the major empire - USA.
No, it s not true. Do you think the serfs of Europe were a difference race from the king? Do you really think if there was only one race on the planet there would be no imperialism? Imperialism and empire is about greed, about desire for power, not about racism. Racism is just a convenience, an easy way for divide and conquer to be maintained. End racism and all that happens is that American blacks move up that ladder.
Emotions are outcomes of social relationships, not causes of them. That is to say, if one plans to steal from and subjugate a bunch of people, it s convenient for those people to be able to be identified by race. It s extremely convenient - it s a kind of skin-based uniform, so that soldiers immediately know who to shoot, for example. So that people know who to hate just by looking at them.
All that said, racism in terms of the sanctity of life and the quality of life is what is very worrisome. When Americans, regardless of color, cannot empathize with the pain of Iraqi families who are suffering do to empire we have to acknowledge the universiality of this wretched condition.
If the Iraqis were white there would be no increase in compassion among American whites. When a school bully extorts money he only cares about race if race plays a larger role in the school society - he really just wants the money and he seeks to get it in the easiest and cheapest way possible.
It may sound trite to say that the global division of race is based on convenience, but it s true. White imperialists aren t the way they are because they hate non-whites, they hate non-whites because they want a perpetual stream of wealth from them, and if this convenience wasn t available they would extort even more from members of their own race.
Look at this another way - do you really think a capitalist machine stops and starts based on the race of the victim that sits on the assembly line in front of it? The machine just wants victims, and convenient victims makes for more efficient extraction, that s all.
To your issue of where change comes from, Brian, local change is the only meaningful change. It roots the change on a human scale that absolutely cannot be achieved from the top down (globally or nationally). To see such change across the globe or even just within the US landscape is a major challenge, but I think that the notion that we can have some kind of national or global transformationis nearly outside the realm of the possible. I can imagine a cataclysmic situation where human species is subverted across the planet. Within that context all bets are off.
I don t think we disagree here. The global democratic movement will link together many local movements. It will have to link them together otherwise it will fail. In order for people to support each other across the globe they have to be in communication, regardless of whether that communication is mediated or otherwise controlled in a top down or bottom up fashion.
dan e said on April 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am #
Well, Max ol buddy, guess I owe you an apology:) Most of your comments on this phread are IMHO really pretty intelligent, especially in comparison to those by individuals trying to defend their racist attitudes.
But you DO have to get past the notion that the problems besetting our species (as well as those we customarily victimize) can be substantially ameliorated by focussing primarily on activity in local arenas. Actually many of your comments above contradict that thesis, as you have presented it so often in previous comments .
I m fascinated by the comment from Raven, which exposes some really important problems which work to create/maintain disunity and discord between the two biggest oppressed ethnic minorities here in the belly of the beast .
As an individual who is usually classed as wyt on the basis of appearance, but one who has non-white descendents as well as close relatives some of which are Latino and others Black, I find it easy to sympathize with feelings on both sides of the questions Raven raises.
To me its important never to forget how white racism has in the past and continues to impact Latinos, Native Hawaiians, Inuit, Native Americans as well as US Blacks. However I myself find Raven s presentation a little onesided?
For instance, talking about taking jobs no one else will take ? In the mid-seventies there was a disco hit about workin at the Carwash . In those days, the Carwash was as much a part of Black American culture as the Brotherhood of Railway Porters was earlier. But now if you go to a carwash see a Black face, it belongs to a customer. All carwash employees, other than the girls behind the cash register, are now recently-arrived Mexicanos. Whom nobody can blame for trying to survive NAFTA go somewhere they can find some paying work.
But advocates for Migrante rights need to recognize that this most recent wave of mass immigration has had some negative effects on some who have been enduring Poverty In America for some time.
Another fact relevant to Raven s arguments is that while Blacks and Native Americans continue to be targets of an ongoing campaign of deliberate Genocide, the Latino and Asian portions of the US population are rapidly expanding as fractions of the whole.
One of the factors rendering US working class Blacks to the status of so much Surplus Labor Power is the abundance of cheap labor-power so easily imported across the US southern border . (which artificial line on the map should be abolished ASAP, IMHO).
From the information available I d say there are a number of social groups in various parts of Latin America, including much of Mexico, who are confronted by Crisis conditions, by desparate social economic Emergencies. But within the US, I believe only the Blacks and the Native Americans are facing a deliberate attempt to eliminate them as a significant presence in US society, by reducing their numbers overall and by incarcerating the bulk of those able to survive.
For this and other reasons which have arisen out of our peculiar collective history, IMO, US Blacks need to play a key role in any collective attempt to improve things, to confront power with a capital P (as Cynthia puts it), or that attempt won t get very far.
Which is one of the reasons I find it crucial that all persons of goodwill and intelligence join the McKinney for President 2008 effort and push it hard as you possibly can. You can do it as a Green, a member of MAPA, of CA Peace Freedom, as a supporter of the New Orleans-based Reconstruction Party or simply as an Independent. The important thing is to get this parade moving, give it all the momentum we can during this election cycle , and be in position to take max advantage when if becomes obvious to everybody that Obama has been a swindle all along.
Well I can t put everything into one comment so let me just conclude by observing that there is no such thing as a progressive Democrat:)
Max Shields said on April 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm #
Brian Koontz
I sense we ve started to talk a bit passed one another. When I say racism - a term which has been controversial in its definition - I think of oppression. Those who are singled out and opp
