The last few years have seen a great many issues arise and fall concerning
"race relations". A new series of ideas and thoughts have appeared on the
social and political landscape, especially among conservatives and republicans.
One of the first "shots-across-the-bow" in this area was the publishing
of Dinesh D'souza's "The End of Racism". In it conservative author D'souza
touts what he claims would be the method to "End" Racism forever.
But does he offer a path to an "End", or simply and brand new beginning?
"in 1830 there were over 3500 black slave owners in America who collectively owned more than 10,000 slaves" pg. 79.
He goes on to say that many of these black slavers where half-white, or "mulatto". That they typically were even more harsh and cruel on their slaves than whites.
"he (a former Negro slave, planter and cotton gin maker named William Ellison) treated his slaves severely, and some complained of brutality...he permitted not a single slave to duplicate his own experience (of achieving eventual freedom)" pg. 78,
They competed with whites to increase their own social status by owning more slaves. Since they were black and participated in slavery, slavery could not have been motivated of justified by racism, right?
WRONG.
Dinesh goes through this entire chapter without realizing the social reasons for this behavior by people like Ellison. As a mulatto living the south during the 19th century, there would be pressure on these people to "prove which part of their blood was stronger.." if not to try and "pass" for white where possible. By owning slaves themselves, they proved that they held no "special" feelings for Negroes and that they had in fact "risen above" such things and were "more white, than black"..in fact.."more white - than whites". Their excessive cruelty is consistent with trying to "prove something" and thereby gain increased social standing, by OVER-conforming to the standards of the time and place. In order for the rewards of social acceptability to be gained, they had to exceed expectations to ensure that their was no doubt that they were "as good as whites" at what they did, if not better. And if that meant being even more inhumane than even white slavers...then so be it.
D'souza failed to understand the motive for these black slavers actions. He claims that because they too are black...their actions could not have been motivated by racism, when that may in fact be exactly what motivated their actions, since in all likelyhood they were "Identifying with the Enemy" and doing their best to "act white". They were most likely acting on the basis of a hatred for blacks, and consequently, themselves. The thinking here goes: "Blacks are no-good, but I'm only half-black and I'll prove I'm nothing like and better than full-blooded blacks". Yes...it's true, contrary to the belief by some, black people can be and act racist. Not only against whites, but even against other blacks.
This was Racism, pure and simple.
Later in the book he continues to fail to see the connection between this behavior and the almost pathological fear that black culture STILL has toward other blacks who would follow in the footsteps of these particular men. (Chapter #12) These men were the original "Uncle Tom's" and are one of the prime sources of the vehement reaction to other blacks who appear to be behaving similarly today. Fairly or unfairly - there remains a great level of suspicion for those blacks who abandon black culture and join the majority/white/anglo culture in a social and cultural attack on black people, purely in order to ingratiate themselves with the majority culture. At the very least, D'Souza's unawareness of this, is cultural bias on his part.
But what American Slavery eventually developed into was somewhat unique in several respects. Slavery in other parts of the world had typically involved prisoners of war, and was considered a humane alternative to being put to death. Rarely were the children of those prisoners also placed into slavery. America had not waged a war with Ireland, nor had it waged a war with Africa, or with China. And although it had waged several wars with the Native Americans, they found that Natives made poor slaves and frequently escaped. America was...after all, their homeland...their turf. They knew the land far better than these European upstarts. Many of the Irish came to America voluntarily to escape the horrid economy and famines of their homeland. They choose to be here.
African Slaves were brought to America against their choice and they were kept enslaved against their choice. Even after emancipation, where many of them at that time chose to become a part of "America"...they were then denied the choice to exercise the full access and full rights within America aforded to non-African's.
Ultimately it is the lack of a choice...that makes the American Slavery of blacks so unique when compared to most other forms of historical slavery. America was one of the first nations to declare that the rights of the individual were paramount, that "all men were created equal", that a man's freedom to choose was one of his most sacred freedoms, and yet - these concepts contrasted radically with the idea that a man could be taken from his home, away from his family, forced to work against his will, and force to breed more people of his kind to be subjected to the same fate for their entire life.
It is one thing to be a slave, in a land where few even understand what "Freedom" truly is, such as the Sudan (which continues to have slaves even in modern times). But it is a completely different matter to be a slave, in the supposed "Land of the Free".
(Also read Racism in Modern America)
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
Essentially this section says that for purposes of representation (Congress) and taxes - all non-free persons (Slaves) shall only be counted at three/fifths their actual number. This apportionment increased the clout of slave holders who, as voters, were provided a greater number of representative seats in the House according to the number of slaves they possessed - while the slaves themselves, could not vote. Simultaneously this "three-fifths" legitimatized the idea that slaves, were not "full" men and were not deserving of the treatment that men deserved. Further, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshal included in his opinion on Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) (USSC+)
"The implicit protection of slavery embodied in the Declaration of Independence was made explicit in the Constitution, which treated a slave as being equivalent to three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning representatives and taxes among the States. Art. I, § 2. The Constitution also contained a clause ensuring that the "Migration or Importation" of slaves into the existing States would be legal until at least 1808, Art. I, § 9, and a fugitive slave clause requiring that, when a slave escaped to another State, he must be returned on the claim of the master, Art. IV, § 2. In their declaration of the principles that were to provide the cornerstone of the new Nation, therefore, the Framers made it plain that "we the people," for whose protection the Constitution was designed, did not include those whose skins were the wrong color. As Professor John Hope Franklin has observed, Americans proudly accepted the challenge and responsibility of their new political freedom by establishing the machinery and safeguards that insured the continued enslavement of blacks."
The Fugitive Slave Clause, in particular was problematic, it made it necessary for non-slave states to abide by and enforce slave laws. This they did reluctantly if at all. This was a particularly large bone of contention between the states. Anti-fugitive laws designed to protect the safety of free blacks in the north by requiring that those hunting escaped slaves provide "proof" of their previous state...were struck down as unconstitutional due to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution. Because of this, any free black person in America could be kidnapped and sold as a slave without legal recourse - and some were. The failure of non-slave states to honor the Fugitive Slave Clause, by hunting down and returning (allegedly) escaped slaves eventually forced Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Law, which placed the responsibility for slave recovery under the jurisdiction of U.S. Marshals. Even this did not satisfy the Southern states, who seceded when President Lincoln was elected. In their declarations for the cause of secession, several southern states noted the lack of obedience to the Fugitive Slave Clause - (the failure of non-slave states to enforce slavery and constitutional racism) - as a chief reason for their opinion that Contract of the Constitution had been violated, breached, and was therefore - null and void.
"It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is property in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man."
What is this, if not Racism...by the Supreme Court no less?
It has been argued that this decision reflected the growing backlash, which had begun in 1863 when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified - Officially abolishing slavery in the private sector, establishing the equal protection of the law for all citizens regardless or ethnicity, and eliminating the racial barrier on voting, respectively. These were seen as "giving black's rights" or "special rights"...instead of recognizing that they had always possessed the same rights as everyone else, and these Amendments corrected this deliberate omission.
When the post-Civil War reconstruction floundered (largely due to the fact that it was primarily used as a tool to take revenge on the southern states for their insurrection) blacks took the brunt of the blame and the fall out. They became the target of the south's economic and social pain. A black man (or woman) exercising their rights was a clear and present threat to the maintenance of the Status Quo of white/male dominance, even in the North. (Malcolm X, the self proclaimed "angriest black man in America"...was born in raised in the Northern States such as Illinois and Massachusetts - not the South) Over the decades the resentment grew, and in 1896 Plessy was the outcome.
Dinesh's own dogma reflects a similar sentiment. He speaks and displays a growing resentment toward the "special rights" afforded by 1963's Civil Rights act...and similarly his propaganda leads us to the potential for injustices similar to Plessy .
Considering California's Prop
187 and 209, this may have already occurred as the Supreme Court
has so far refused to give these cases a hearing.
"Most whites have no economic stake in the ghetto. They have almost nothing to gain from oppressing poor blacks. Indeed the only concern that whites seem to have about the underclass is its potential for crime and it's reliance on the public purse. p 554.
Yet, he fails to realize that there is indeed a vested interest for whites to ensure that the ghetto remains crime riddled and jobless. It takes money to pursue, prosecute and house criminals. LOTS of money. In fact, it's Big Business. Most prison are located in rural areas, which to date remain predominantly white, if those prison were to close down because crime had actually been decreased by the application of some kind of genuinely successful crime fighting strategy - the lion's share of people on the resultant unemployment line would be white. If this country were not trapped in a grip of paralyzing fear about crime, burglar alarm companies, iron gate and bar companies, and THE CLUB, would not be necessary. (Not that any of them really work against determined criminals anyway...) It cost literally billions to maintain the criminal industrial complex, and many peoples livelihoods depend on its existence and maintenance.
It's JOBS. MONEY and SELF-INTEREST.
This may sound like an outlandish
argument, but its NO MORE outlandish than the argument that D'souza himself
makes on the very same page that...
"it is the civil rights industry
which now has a vested interest in the persistence of the ghetto, because
the miseries of poor blacks are the best advertisement for continuing programs
of racial preference and set-asides"
(i.e.. JOBS, MONEY and SELF-INTEREST).
This is partisan bias on his part against "Liberals" - (and admittedly the underlying reason for his having written his book in the first place), and their attempts
to solve these problems.
No. Not everything has worked as Liberals had planned - but neither has it been a total failure, nor are these policies solely to blame for the seemingly hopeless situations in America's urban centers.
It's an old adage, but a true one....If you want to know who the bad guys really are...follow the money.
If it is possible that "Liberals" and the Civil Rights "Industry" benefits from the maintenance of a poor, undereducated and crime filled ghetto...then it is also possible that "Conservatives" and the Criminal "Industry"...benefits from it as well. If you were to look at the amount of money involved and benefiting either group...the Criminal Industry gains the most from this situation...clocking in at $94 Billion per year in the public sector (for some perspective, that is nearly as much as Federal Medicaid Spending in 1997, $96 Billion) ...and according to GAO estimates nearly $300 Billion a year is spent in the private sector on crime and crime prevention.
By comparison the FY1999 Budget for the United States allocates just $13 Billion for the Administration for Children and Families which supports such "Liberal" programs as Temporary Assistance and AFDC.
So...where's the money going and just who is really dependent on the Ghetto?
D'souza's claims of so-called "Racial Preference and Set-Asides" were equally spurious and unsubstantiated as he failed to produce in his over 500 pages any credible examples of any laws supporting such obviously illegal and unconstitutional "programs".
Certainly there are abuses. People break the law, they ignore the constitution for their own self-interest. These people are criminals, trying to paint and color the expectations concerning any large group of people (Liberals? Civil Rights Workers? Blacks?), based on the behavior of the worst among them isn't exactly my idea of a way to end racism.
Yes. It happens.
No. It's not widespread or common.
Of the thousands of cases of discrimination which go though the EEOC, less than a dozen or so each year are cases of anti-white so-called "reverse discrimination". And only a handful of those are usually found to have any merit worth proceeding on.
The section that really took the cake for me was his attempts to discuss
Ice-T. On page #512 he frames a debate about violent rap lyrics around
the song by hard rock act Body
Count . A group that includes Ice-T, who is predominantly known as
a rapper and actor. Body
Count is a hard rock band, as such their fan based is 95% white. (In
General - Black's don't listen to Hard Rock - see how Rock
was "White-Washed") The music they perform has nothing to do with Rap,
and much more to do with Rock and Punk. Body Count contributed a track
to the Hendrix tribute album "Stone Free", where they performed a fairly
credible version of Jimi's first American hit song "Hey Joe" without rapping
at all. D'souza effectively stereotyped Ice-T as a rapper -"he's
black and he's got a microphone so he MUST BE RAPPING..." (as many people
did during the "Cop
Killer" controversy) rather than do the proper research like reading
the preface to that song.."Out
in the Parking Lot"), and understanding the context that "Cop
Killer" was presented in. (See footnote #1).
Such an obvious and pathetic flub (and there were many more) constantly undermined the accuracy of much of D'souza's other research IMO. How much more did he get as wrong as this?
On page #506 he lambastes Ice for comments made in his book "The Ice Opinion" concerning the L.A. Riots, but in the preface to the Paperback addition of "Racism" he suddenly notices a so-called "change of heart" by Ice as he notes the following comments by Ice from the very same book that he had previously criticized (!?!)
"The mind-set of black folks has to change...the first thing is you have to admit that you've been messing up....One of the best comments I've heard was 'the best weapon against racism is excellence".
This was not a "change of heart" by Ice-T. He has always said these things, nearly all of his work is designed to highlight this and deflate the false glamorous images of ganger-ism (see footnote #2). He became a rapper to escape a dead-end gangster lifestyle and has always encouraged other (black, Brown, Red and White) people to do the same, but not just to become rappers - to do whatever they feel like and be excellent at it. This is why he tries to lead by example by doing more than just rap, (i.e.. acting, writing and singing in a rock band...)
Dinesh's complete mis-understanding in this section was clear and obvious. Most of his book was well researched, however researching a subject and understanding it in context are two different things. This section displayed that Dinesh was extremely ignorant of black culture, and certainly did not comprehend it. Other sections where he attempted to describe black vernacular speech (aka Ebonics) were equally laughable and pathetic. He didn't not understand it, and therefore dismissed it because of his failure to comprehend.
His research into the background of many of the issues surrounding racism was excellent, but it was all done to support a pre-supposing premise, that the Civil Rights movement had betrayed itself, and as such his conclusions based on that research were often far less than adequate, if not deliberately self-serving. Many of his ideas, based on his faulty reasoning, have caught on and have become often repeated in the political lexicon...a true case of the blind leading the ignorant over a cliff..
Dinesh would essentially have us make discrimination legal in order to cure racism. It's not the racist or discriminators fault...it's those pesky laws against discrimination and racism.
Yeah, Right.
Just where was that Zen mantra of the modern Conservative - "Personal Responsibility" - hiding when he thought of this?
This is his idea of the "End of Racism", to cripple government and law enforcement from any realistic preventative or even punitive measures, and to allow any and all types of discrimination by private industry as if market forces alone will be able to succeed when nearly 400 years of prior experience with those same forces show us just how likely that is.
It is dogma of this type that has given rise to the kind of thinking which has led to Prop 209, duping people into believing that Affirmative Action is somehow a "hand-out" to the unqualified and incompetent - instead of the opening of a door to people that are capable, yet shut out by social and cultural perception. (Read Is Affirmative Action Legal and Constitutional? ) He argues that the people who are on the front lines of the battle for Human and Civil Rights are the "bad" guys? When it comes to an actual account of abuses of power by the "Civil Rights Establishment"...Dinesh falls woefully short of real life examples or detail - relying entirely on a few anecdotes, which belies all of the good and legitimate efforts of the EEOC, OFCCP and Department of Justice, to curb discrimination.
Exactly what is the most likely result when all those who attempt to fight for justice are discredited - and laws designed to protect people from abuse are repealed? Dinesh proffers that his book is an attempt to point the way to a place where we can put race "behind" us...and therefore move together forward in peace and harmony.
If that is truly what he attempted...he has failed rather miserably, and worse given rise to a whole new set of arguments which can now be used to build a whole new form of racism which claims "color-blindness" as it's goal while it socially and culturally subjugates all those of have the audacity to flaunt their "freedom" and not conform to Dinesh's proclaimed fascistic definition of "social norms".
Fin.
Either way she was dead wrong, and Chuck told her so.
Public Enemy is not a "Gansta-Rap" group. Public Enemy has always tried to help blacks to help the themselves in non-violent ways. Through knowledge, understanding and achievement. In fact Chuck essentially agreed with nearly all of Deloris's assessment of gangsta-rap. That it was predominantly "Market-Driven". That the industry was manipulating young artists into emulating whatever the popular "style" was at the time in order to maximize their profits. (This is the same "Free Market" the D'souza believes can solve racism? Only if can make money doing so - which isn't likely.)
On the rap track "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous", Ice-T demonstrates that the mostly likely result of the gang a way of life is an early grave. He also condemns the idolization of Prison (on the rap track "The Gun Tower" from the CD 'O.G. Original Gangsta', and the Body Count song "Bowels of the Devil" -
"You don't wanna die there - they call it going out the back door..."
The whole point of the first Body Count record was ANTI-racism. There's a track on it about the evil of black racism called "Mama's gotta die tonight"
"I brought my girlfriend home, and she (momma) slapped me. It was a white girl. I found out my momma didn't like a lot of people, white people, mexican people, puerto rican people")
The main character of the song then goes on to inflict very bloody revenge on "momma" for infecting him with her racism.
"She taught me hate for whites - that's why I hate you, there's only one way I can make it right - Momma's gotta die tonight"
But then, all people knew or talked about at the time, was "Cop killer" without paying attention to the context of the album or Ice's body of work. "Cop killer" was an accurate reading of the mood of the L.A. community, they were fed-up with abusive racist police and the lack of action to correct the problem, it was a wake-up call and a warning that violence was on the horizon, which turned out to be true two years later when the L.A. Riots occurred.
It was a warning. A message. And America did it's best to Kill the Messenger and keep it's head in the sand.
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