Printer friendly versionWhose Black? Brazil's Amazing Skin-Shedding Trick
Posted: Tuesday, January 28, 2003
By Zarina Geloo
January 27, 2003 www.ipsnews.net
Being white means not being black right? Not in Brazil. Here you can be white if you are rich, like soccer icon Pele. You can be black if you are white and poor. To be more precise, you can also call yourself a"little bit black or a little bit white", depending on how deep your skin is hued.
The situation has anthropologists frustrated. How can racism in its most virulent form be dealt with if it is hidden behind the semantics of colour, asks anthropologist Valeria Aydos from Sao Paulo.
"We do not talk about racism, but it is a big problem. Officially, we call ourselves of mixed race because historically we have integrated with the indigenous Indian the immigrant white and the black slaves," she told a meeting on racism chaired by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
As a result, Aydos says, there is no policy to tackle the racism that exists in the country.
Afro Brazilians"suffer in silence because we have not admitted that we have a racial problem. It is easier for America or other countries to adress racial tensions because they admit it is there. We have not even began to tackle the issue."
She says Afro Brazilian society itself has only recently began to talk about racism, but it is hard going. There is documented evidence that black people are excluded and discriminated against, have less access to top education and medical facilities and are more likely to be charged with crimes. Racism, she added, is engrained in the psyche of people who have been socialised to think that lighter skin colour is superior.
"The only way black people are going to be respected ... is when they become superstars or have a lot of money."
Gary Leech for NACLA said while the Colombian government had approved one of the most progressive constitutions every written in Latin America which recognises the rights of all its citizens and places premuim on the cultural heritage of those of African descent, the reality is different. He said Afro Colombians suffered economic, political and social marginalisation and victimisation under a political system in which they are excluded. Their life expectancy had dropped to 54 years (the national average is 74). As if that were not enough, Afro Colombians were being forcibly displaced with no compensation, (in the La Guajira area) by US energy giant ExxonMobil, which has bought El Cerrejon the world's largest open-pit coal mine.
"The Colombian government and the multinational mining companies need to be exposed to force them to live up to the contents of the constitution and treat people with dignity and respect."
Reproduced from:
http://www.ipsnews.net/fsm2003/27.01.2003/nota8.shtml
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Male stance/Female narcissism
Posted: Sunday, January 26, 2003
by Bukka Rennie, January 25, 2003
Important issues have been raised by two very keen readers of this column. Both good friends of mine. One male and at present living and working in T&T, the other female, at present living and studying in Ottawa.
In response to my contention that generally in relation to the Graeco-Roman, Western, white-controlled, global military-industrial complex, the black male has a "natural stance" of subversion and revolution, this is what he said, inter alia:
"...I was particularly struck by what you said about the 'natural stance' of the black male. I am not sure what you mean by 'natural' in that sense. If natural is normative, then most males are in fact either unnatural or some might claim to be supernatural. The stance you describe demands engagement and few black males are really 'engaged' with our reality, in my opinion..."
The point is that black or African people were the only human element that found themselves forced into a relationship with the Western world and its military-industrial complex in which they were made to be "property" and "socialised labour" on a hemispheric scale.
It stands to reason therefore that every form of their resistance, passive or active, conscious or subconscious, was meant to transform that relationship and in the process attack and destroy this white-controlled global superstructure.
All the historians that have examined the Caribbean experience, for example, will tell you that the struggles of the Afro-Caribbean people have always been geared to destroy the property and property relations engendered by the system of plantation slavery and to make themselves the "new masters of the islands".
Non-white colonised people around the world have the same experience to one degree or another and in all their struggles of decolonisation, we see similar responses from below.
Embodied in the very being of their "blackness", this, their "natural stance", became over time the very antithesis of the global white status-quo and establishment. With the objective being unconditional "freedom", they could only be about subversion, ie on an individual level, and revolution which is on a collectivised or social level.
There are of course various levels of engagement by black people, both male and female, in this regard. These levels are determined by the levels of self-consciousness and social consciousness that may become generalised from time to time. I chose to describe them as levels of combativity that have their moments of highs and lows.
In modern times it is the black male who in all ways, in demeanour, and almost out of habit, who bears the brunt of this "natural stance" to the hilt.
To the white social leaderships the "black dude" is always a "trouble-maker" or a potential trouble-maker. It is why prison in this Western Hemisphere is comprised consistently of a 75 per cent black male population. To the white leaderships that is where black males are supposed to be and black males do not disappoint them.
The statistics on a hemispheric basis have not been compiled but it is obvious from mere observation. Black males, both politically and culturally, hold pride of place on the front lines as all males per se are nurtured to be.
So today when you have a human complex that is both black or non-white and Muslim, given the 1,000 years of battle between Muslims and the Western Christian world, you in fact have a "double-whammy" as was said before.
That's why we agreed with the contention of WEB Dubois that the problem of the 20th century, and beyond, we may add, is the problem of the colour line. If the Western world does not come to terms with this by reformation, it will eventually be destroyed by implosive force.
My female reader friend from Ottawa took issue with my criticism of what women have brought to the Carnival agenda as a social force. This is what in part she said:
"I have to pick a little bone with you on this article... I agree in principle with your points, but really – feminine = narcissistic? Apart from the etymological twist (narcissus being that exceptionally vain man) I really can't agree with that concept. Of course, it may be that my female role models, friends and relatives are exceptional, but that's for another time...
"The banality of commercialism dictates to the lowest common denominator — this is pretty obvious. But I think that the role of exhibitionism is more to do with economics than otherwise. Having convinced generations of people that looks matter most, then rewarding exhibitionism by having the least-clad females 'selected' over the others, the inevitable progression then becomes the need to exhibit more in order to maintain the status quo.
"You had pointed out in an earlier column that the violence done in society was in part due to competition for sex...
"This is also why (to my way of thinking, anyhow) the proliferation of the 'party tune' has escalated. It's not that it's superior, but it gets the attention quickly, and is rewarded... money talks, ent? So the grousing about the banal, offensive, boring exhibitionism will continue as long as there is money flowing towards it..."
I agree but there is still to be addressed that element of females themselves being overwhelmed by the tremendous power of their own sexuality and the need to utilise this very power to make a positive statement in and through Carnival since women are now the greatest social force in Carnival outside of capital (ie accumulated wealth still controlled by male investors).
The extracts from the poem "Red Hawk" were meant to indicate what black males at the bottom of society did with Carnival when they were the greatest social force in Carnival... they transformed themselves into "Geronimoes". Again, the natural stance, ent?
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Mbeki broadsides Bush with tough anti-war vow
Posted: Friday, January 24, 2003
By John Battersby, www.iol.co.za
President Thabo Mbeki has called on all South Africans to join the world campaign against a United States-led war against Iraq.
His call on Friday came as the transatlantic rift widened over whether to disarm Iraq by force.
Mbeki also sent a clear message to US President George Bush: there are no grounds for war.
"Nothing credible has been said that any such breach has occurred to justify a resort to war," Mbeki said, articulating a view which has a groundswell of support among the industrialised nations and the backing of the entire developing world.
And in a broadside against Washington, Mbeki lambasted those who threatened Iraq with war but did nothing about Israel's nuclear weapons.
"They say nothing whatsoever against Israel's weapons of mass destruction.
"Of course, from their point of view, the matter has nothing to do with principle.
"It turns solely on the question of power... We disagree."
Mbeki's intervention comes on the eve of a critical session of the United Nations security council which will hear the first report of the UN weapons inspectors on their findings after several weeks of inspection in Iraq.
Bush's insistence that the US has sufficient grounds to wage war without a security council vote has pitted Russia, Germany, France, China and Canada against his country and Britain.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - looking increasingly isolated in supporting the United States-led rhetoric for military action to disarm Saddam Hussein - is expected to face probing questions from Mbeki on his attitude to the UN and the consequences of a war with Iraq when they meet for a one-on-one summit next Saturday.
Mbeki, joining the growing international outrage at the prospect of war said in his weekly letter on the African National Congress's Today website:
"The situation demands that once more the masses of our people must act together as a powerful force for peace in the world.
"They have an obligation to stand up and join the struggle for peace," he said.
It is understood that mass action was discussed at the ANC's three-day workshop last weekend and that peace marches, led by the ruling party and supported by trade unions and civil society, are in the planning stage.
In his strongest call yet for Bush to heed the mounting global anti-war protest, Mbeki said that a war against Iraq would threaten international peace and security.
It would also spark a deep economic crisis in Africa as the price of oil soared and poverty deepened, and further delay a resolution of the Middle East conflict.
Mbeki said that Iraq had agreed to comply with the UN security council resolution and had allowed the weapons inspectors to return to pursue their mandate unhindered.
"We have committed ourselves to do everything in our power, limited as this power might be, to persuade Iraq to give herself and the United Nations the necessary space to resolve the matter at issue, peacefully and expeditiously."
He said the effort to disarm Iraq should not be used to justify a declaration of war.
"We are not aware of any information that would suggest that Iraq has been in serious material breach of the security council resolution."
Mbeki said South Africa was committed to the resolution of all disputes by peaceful means and was the "first and only" country in the world to voluntarily implement a comprehensive programme of disarmament and the destruction of its weapons of mass destruction.
And, in a statement after a three-day cabinet workshop, chief government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said the cabinet had reiterated South Africa's request to the UN that the arms inspectors' report should be considered in an open session in the presence of United Nations members who were not on the security council.
"South Africa supports the efforts of the international community to deal with this matter strictly in accordance with the resolutions of the UN security council," the cabinet statement said.
"It also welcomes the growing peace movement, in particular its objective of ensuring that actions pursued in the Gulf region are determined the interest of humanity as a whole."
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=ct20030124214059225P430688&set_id=1
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Tsvangirai addresses diplomats, threatens bloodbath
Posted: Friday, January 24, 2003
Herald Reporter
STUNG by the failure of Wednesday’s stayaway, visits by Nigerian and South African foreign ministers as well as the softening of attitudes by some European countries towards the Zimbabwean Government, MDC leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened a bloodbath in the country.
Addressing diplomats, mostly from European countries at a hastily arranged meeting in Harare yesterday, Mr Tsvangirai said: "I want to say once again, that we have reached a stage whereby we can no longer counsel patience on such a dangerously restive population.
"There is clearly a red light flashing for the Mugabe regime to stop. There is a gathering storm of the people’s anger. We have no power to stop it and we refuse to take responsibility for whatever transpires," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai’s comments were also prompted by a scathing attack by some white members of his party who reportedly felt that he was not doing enough to bring about a change of government. MORE
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Britain and South Africa in Mugabe retirement plot
Posted: Wednesday, January 22, 2003
By Chris Talbot, 22 January 2003
An article in a Zimbabwe newspaper reveals a move amongst top leaders to remove President Robert Mugabe in exchange for obtaining economic support from the West.
According to the Zimbabwe Sunday Mirror, a paper that supports the ruling Zanu-PF party, a plan is under discussion in which Mugabe is made to retire and replaced by the current Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa, who would hold power for a two-year "transition" period, after which elections would be held. During the two-years, an interim government would be installed with constitutional changes "that would allow Mugabe a dignified exit and would not force elections during the transitional period," the Mirror reports.
The newspaper also states that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has accepted the proposal. The British government is also said to be backing the plan, with South Africa acting as intermediary. Britain would pay out £500 million to help "jump start" the collapsed economy, and financial support from the West would be restored.
Both Zanu-PF and South Africa have denied the plan exists, but in an interview with the BBC Tsvangirai admitted that he had been approached in December by a representative of Mnangagwa and the commander of the Zimbabwe armed forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe. Tsvangirai says he was willing to consider immunity from prosecution for Mugabe in exchange for a return to "normal political activity" that would later lead to "free and fair" elections. According to the Mirror however, Tsvangirai only initially agreed to the plan but later backtracked after "a tiny, aggressive white minority" in the MDC objected to immunity for Mugabe. Factions within Zanu-PF are also said to be opposed to the plan partly because Mnangagwa, a ruthless functionary who is said to be Mugabe's chosen successor, is widely disliked.
Reports in Africa Confidential, a magazine close to British intelligence and African business interests, verify the Mirror's accounts. Even before the latter had published its account, which was then taken up by the British press, Africa Confidential had already commented on a new South African initiative on Zimbabwe. Explaining that Mnangagwa and his business allies attended the recent conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and were warmly greeted by President Mbeki, it commented "the bargain would be that President Mugabe agrees to retire within the year, in exchange for Britain lifting sanctions, compensating displaced white farmers and financing agricultural development."
Whether the plan fails or—more likely—goes ahead in some modified form, the Mirror's revelations expose something of the machinations of the British government in relation to Zimbabwe. Ever since Britain and the West's preferred option of Tsvangirai winning the presidential elections failed last March, Britain has been attempting to get Mugabe removed. One approach has been through South Africa and other African countries, with US pressure.
At first South Africa and Nigeria arranged for talks between the Zanu-PF regime and the MDC to discuss some form of power sharing, but the government's intensified persecution of MDC members led to Tsvangirai pulling out. Later last year, according to the Mirror, South Africa's President Mbeki had discussions with Simba Makoni on forming a Zanu-PF alternative to Mugabe. Makoni, a pro-free market economist, was removed from his post as Finance Minister by Mugabe last summer.
The possibility of a more direct intervention, possibly using "covert operations," cannot be ruled out, although Zimbabwe has a British-trained army and a small airforce that so far have remained loyal to Mugabe. Last November, Mark Bellamy, deputy assistant of state for African affairs, was reported as saying, "We may have to be prepared to take some very intrusive, interventionist measures to ensure aid delivery to Zimbabwe."
Now it seems that the intense economic pressure on Zimbabwe, led by Britain, and allowing much of the population to face famine and starvation, has paid off, forcing the top Zanu-PF old guard to consider another South African-brokered deal.
The choice of Mnangagwa in the latest plot to remove Mugabe is not accidental. For all the sermonising about Mugabe's suppression of the MDC opposition, Britain is clearly prepared to accept transitional rule by a man who as a former Minister of Security is particularly associated with massacres carried out by the notorious Fifth Brigade in Matebeland in the 1980s. There is no doubt that he would be even more brutal than Mugabe in suppressing opposition amongst workers and peasants. The Mirror quotes a source close to the Zanu-PF tops defending Mnangagwa as a replacement for Mugabe as "a strong ruthless person who is not easily manipulated," who is "going to be unpopular because he has to put right a lot of wrong things."
Both Mnangagwa and Zvinavashe have extensive business interests and have been at the centre of the looting of timber, diamonds and other minerals from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. In exchange for their military support of the Kinshasa government in the Congo war, Zimbabwe made arrangements for their military top brass to set up a range of lucrative operations.
A transitional regime under Mnangagwa will have to clamp down on the Zanu-PF members and supporters who thought they could benefit from Mugabe's land seizure programme. It is now widely known that far from representing a new agricultural revival heralded by Mugabe, as much as 90 percent of the land taken from the wealthy white farmers is lying fallow. Because of the drastic decline in Zimbabwe's economy the inputs and infrastructure needed by the new small farmers has not been forthcoming. The Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) representing the small farmers predicts a yield this season that will only be 30 percent of the previous season, itself depressed by the effects of drought and the farm invasions.
Repressive measures will also have to be stepped up to police the urban population. To begin implementing the kind of economic policies necessary for Zimbabwe to mend its relations with the International Monetary Fund and secure Western finance and aid, tens of thousands of public sector jobs will have to be slashed. With unemployment already very high, this would produce widespread opposition. Britain is clearly prepared for Mnangagwa to continue strong arm measures as long as it is behind a veneer of democracy and the MDC leaders are incorporated into the transitional regime.
Zimbabwe's economy, once relatively affluent compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, is falling apart, with GDP contracting by 25 percent over the last three years, inflation at 175 percent, and fuel supplies running out. Even General Zvinavashe, whilst denying the reports that Mugabe was to be retired, was forced to accept in a recent interview that "we must admit there is a crisis." Such a statement by a Zanu-PF leader would previously have been regarded as impermissible.
At present half the population, 6.7 million people, are facing food shortages due to famine. Zanu-PF officials have no doubt attempted to divert food aid to their own members, but the food shortages and the effects of inflation are widespread and are causing discontent among ZANU-PF supporters.
The Mirror article admits that the crisis in Zanu-PF ranks and the willingness to mend fences with Britain and the West arise from a fear of mass opposition: "the economic hardships ravaging the weary population threaten to spill over to the political level, thus spelling grim consequences for the government and the country as a whole." On top of this, "Zimbabwe's political elite, who fly to Europe literally on a daily basis in pursuance of their vast business interests, have been terribly hurt by the travel sanctions imposed by Britain."
Beyond brief reports that a deal to remove Mugabe has been discussed, the British government has managed to keep out of the media the details of the bribe it is prepared to pay out for Mugabe to go quietly, as well as the track record of his possible replacement.
All attention for the last month has been focused on the Blair government's pressure on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to pull out of the Cricket World Cup that is to be held in Zimbabwe.
It has been known for four years that World Cup fixtures were to be played in Zimbabwe and the English cricket team played a full tour in Zimbabwe in 2001. The British government raised no objections. Last July the ECB asked for a meeting with the British Foreign Office over playing cricket in Zimbabwe and were told there was no problem.
Within the last weeks, however, the Blair government suddenly began actively intervening in cricket affairs. It whipped up a campaign to demand the England team do not play in Zimbabwe, with ministers vying with one another to attack the ECB for its "immorality" in choosing to go ahead with the game. A clearly nervous ECB has argued that it has no choice but to play because pulling out at such a late stage would cost it millions of pounds. Labour's new-found concern for cricketing morals can only be explained as a cynical diversion from its own rapprochement with the Zanu-PF elite.
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'Oldest star chart' found
Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Tuesday, 21 January, 2003, By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2679675.stm
The oldest image of a star pattern, that of the famous constellation of Orion, has been recognised on an ivory tablet some 32,500 years old.
The tiny sliver of mammoth tusk contains a carving of a man-like figure with arms and legs outstretched in the same pose as the stars of Orion.
The claim is made by Dr Michael Rappenglueck, formerly of the University of Munich, who is already renowned for his pioneering work locating star charts painted on the walls of prehistoric caves.
The tablet also contains mysterious notches, carved on its sides and on its back. These could be a primitive "pregnancy calendar", designed to estimate when a pregnant woman will give birth.
Man-like figure
It was found in 1979 in a cave in the Ach Valley in the Alb-Danube region of Germany. Carbon dating of bone ash deposits found next to the tablet suggest it is between 32,500 and 38,000 years old, making it one of the oldest representations of a man ever found.
It was left behind by the mysterious Aurignacian people about whom we know next to nothing save that they moved into Europe from the east supplanting the indigenous Neanderthals.
The ivory tablet is small, measuring only 38 x 14 x 4 millimetres, but from the notches carved into its edges archaeologists believe that it was made that size and is not a fragment of something bigger.
On one side of the tablet is the man-like being with his legs apart and arms raised. Between his legs hangs what could be a sword and his waist is narrow. His left leg is shorter than his right one.
From what is speculated about the myths of these ancient peoples before the dawn of history, archaeologists have suggested that the man-like figure could be praying or dancing, or be a half-man, half-cat, or a divine being.
But Michael Rappenglueck thinks it is a drawing of the constellation of Orion that is nowadays, and was perhaps also 32,000 years ago, called the hunter.
The proportions of the man correspond to the pattern of stars that comprise Orion, especially its slim waist - which corresponds to its famous belt of three stars and the left "leg" of the constellation being shorter.
The "sword" on the ivory tablet also corresponds to a famous and well-know feature that can be seen in Orion.
There are also other indications that Dr Rappenglueck may be correct.
The stars were in slightly different positions 32,000 years ago because they are moving across the sky at different speeds and in different directions, a phenomenon called "proper motion".
Dr Rappenglueck allowed for this effect by using a computer program to wind back the sky and found evidence for a particular star in Orion that was in a different place all those years ago.
Human gestation period
The tablet may also be a pregnancy calendar.
There are 86 notches on the tablet, a number that has two special meanings.
First, it is the number of days that must be subtracted from a year to equal the average number of days of a human gestation. This is no coincidence, says Dr Rappenglueck.
It is also the number of days that one of Orion's two prominent stars, Betelguese, is visible. To ancient man, this might have linked human fertility with the gods in the sky.
Orion is one of the most striking constellations. The Ancient Egyptians identified it with their god Osiris and it has a special significance for many cultures throughout history throughout the world.
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Pharaonic statues found in north Sudan
Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Published 2003-01-21 Middle East Online
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=4068
Artefacts represent kings Taharqa, Tanutamon, last of black pharaohs as well as two monarchs who all lived about 600 years BC.
KHARTOUM - Granite statues and stelas of pharaohs who ruled from northern Sudan some 2,600 years ago, including the last "black pharaohs," have been found by a team of French and Swiss archeologists, a statement said Sunday.
The artefacts represented kings Taharqa and Tanutamon, the last of the "black pharaohs," as well as monarchs Senkamanisken and Aspelta, who all lived about 600 years BC, the French embassy here said in the statement.
These discoveries "represent a significant contribution to the history of ancient Sudan and without a doubt count among the masterpieces of sculpture worldwide," the team said in the statement.
The artefacts were found in a grave in Kerma, south of the Third Cataract of the Nile, by a team from the University of Geneva headed by Charles Bonnet, and including French archeologist Dominique Valbelle.
Like the Egyptian kings, the kings of Kush were also buried in pyramids.
Taharqa (690-664 BC) inherited a dynasty that ruled Egypt until the Assyrian conquest began and his reign was pushed back to between the third and fourth cataracts.
Lies From The Western Media re: African Ourstory
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Israel, Zionism, and the Misuse of M.L.K.
Posted: Monday, January 20, 2003
By Tim Wise
Rarely am I considered insufficiently cynical. As someone who does anti-racism work for a living, and thus hears all manner of excuse-making by those who wish desperately to avoid being considered racist, not much surprises me. I expect people to lie about race; to tell me how many black friends they have; to swear they haven't a racist bone in their bodies. And every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor's words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported. As such, I long ago resigned myself to the annual gaggle of fools who deign to use King's "content of their character" line from the 1963 March on Washington so as to attack affirmative action, ostensibly because King preferred simple "color-blindness." That King actually supported the efforts that we now call affirmative action--and even billions in reparations for slavery and segregation--as I've documented in a previous column, matters not to these folks. They've never read King's work, and they've only paid attention to one news clip from one speech, so what more can we expect from such precious simpletons as these? And yet, even with my cynic's credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King's steadfast support for Zionism. Indeed, it does more than that.
In the item, entitled "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," King proclaims that criticism of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and likens those who criticize Jewish nationalism as manifested in Israel, to those who would seek to trample the rights of blacks. Heady stuff indeed, and 100% bullshit, as any amateur fact checker could ascertain were they so inclined. But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir's infamous quip), can't be expected to place a very high premium on truth. I learned this the hard way recently, when the Des Moines Jewish Federation succeeded in getting me yanked from the city's MLK day events: two speeches I had been scheduled to give on behalf of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCCJ).
Because of my criticisms of Israel--and because I as a Jew am on record opposing Zionism philosophically--the Des Moines shtetl decided I was unfit to speak at an MLK event. After sending the supposed King quote around, and threatening to pull out all monies from the Jewish community for future NCCJ events, I was dropped. The attack of course was based on a distortion of my own beliefs as well. Federation principal Mark Finkelstein claimed I had shown a disregard for the well-being of Jews, despite the fact that my argument has long been that Zionism in practice has made world Jewry less safe than ever. But it was his duplicity on King's views that was most disturbing. Though Finkelstein only recited one line from King's supposed "letter" on Zionism, he lifted it from the larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier, who quotes from it in his 1999 book, "Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community." Therein, one finds such over-the-top rhetoric as this:
"I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth." The letter also was filled with grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King's work should have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: "Anti-Zionist is inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so." The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King's work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn't. The book doesn't exist. As for Saturday Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. No King letter anywhere.
Yet its lack of authenticity hasn't prevented it from having a long shelf-life. Not only does it pop up in the Schneier book, but sections of it were read by the Anti-Defamation League's Michael Salberg in testimony before a House Subcommittee in July of 2001, and all manner of pro-Israel groups (from traditional Zionists to right-wing Likudites, to Christians who support ingathering Jews to Israel so as to prompt Jesus' return), have used the piece on their websites.
In truth, King appears never to have made any public comment about Zionism per se; and the only known statement he ever made on the topic, made privately to a handful of people, is a far cry from what he is purported to have said in the so-called "Letter to an Anti-Zionist friend." In 1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, King was in Boston and attended a dinner in Cambridge along with Lipset himself and a number of black students. After the dinner, a young man apparently made a fairly harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded: "Don't talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking Anti-Semitism." Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that was evidenced in the phony letter.
After all, to respond to a harsh statement about individuals who are Zionists with the warning that such language is usually a cover for anti-Jewish bias is understandable. More than that, the comment was no doubt true for most, especially in 1968. It is a statement of opinion as to what people are thinking when they say a certain thing. It is not a statement as to the inherent validity or perfidy of a worldview or its effects.
Likewise, consider the following analogous dualism: first, that "opposition to welfare programs is forever racism," and secondly, that "when people criticize welfare recipients, they mean blacks. This is racism."
Whereas the latter statement may be true--and studies would tend to suggest that it is--the former is a matter of ideological conviction, largely untestable, and thus more tendentious than its counterpart. In any event, as with the King quotes--both fabricated and genuine--the truth of the latter says nothing about the truth or falsity of the former.
So yes, King was quick to admonish one person who expressed hostility to Zionists as people. But he did not claim that opposition to Zionism was inherently anti-Semitic. And for those who criticize Zionism today and who like me are Jewish, to believe that we mean to attack Jews, as Jews, when we speak out against Israel and Zionism is absurd.
As for King's public position on Israel, it was quite limited and hardly formed a cornerstone of his worldview. In a meeting with Jewish leaders a few weeks before his death, King noted that peace for Israelis and Arabs were both important concerns. According to King, "peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity."
But such a statement says nothing about how Israel should be constituted, nor addresses the Palestinians at all, whose lives and challenges were hardly on the world's radar screen in 1968.
At the time, Israel's concern was hostility from Egypt; and of course all would agree that any nation has the right not to be attacked by a neighbor. The U.S. had a right not to be attacked by the Soviet Union too--as King would have no doubt agreed, thereby affirming the United States' right to exist. But would anyone claim that such a sentiment would have implied the right of the U.S. to exist as it did, say in 1957 or 1961, under segregation? Of course not.
So too Israel. Its right to exist in the sense of not being violently destroyed by hostile forces does not mean the right to exist as a Jewish state per se, as opposed to the state of all its citizens. It does not mean the right to laws granting special privileges to Jews from around the world, over indigenous Arabs.
It should also be noted that in the same paragraph where King reiterated his support for Israel's right to exist, he also proclaimed the importance of massive public assistance to Middle Eastern Arabs, in the form of a Marshall Plan, so as to counter the poverty and desperation that often leads to hostility and violence towards Israeli Jews.
This part of King's position is typically ignored by the organized Jewish community, of course, even though it was just as important to King as Israel's territorial integrity.
As for what King would say today about Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinian struggle, one can only speculate.
After all, he died before the full tragedy of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would be able to unfold.
He died before the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; before the invasion of Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla; before the 1980's intifada; before Israel decided to serve as a proxy for U.S. foreign policy--funneling weapons to fascist governments in South Africa, Argentina and Guatemala, or helping to arm terrorist thugs in Mozambique and the contras in Nicaragua.
He died before the proliferation of illegal settlements throughout the territories; before the rash of suicide/homicide bombings; before the polls showing that nearly half of Israeli Jews support removing Palestinians via "transfer" to neighboring countries.
But one thing is for sure. While King would no doubt roundly condemn Palestinian violence against innocent civilians, he would also condemn the state violence of Israel.
He would condemn launching missile attacks against entire neighborhoods in order to flush out a handful of wanted terrorists.
He would oppose the handing out of machine guns to religious fanatics from Brooklyn who move to the territories and proclaim their God-given right to the land, and the right to run Arabs out of their neighborhoods, or fence them off, or discriminate against them in a multitude of ways.
He would oppose the unequal rationing of water resources between Jews and Arabs that is Israeli policy.
He would oppose the degrading checkpoints through which Palestinian workers must pass to get to their jobs, or back to their homes after a long day of work.
He would oppose the policy which allows IDF officers to shoot children throwing rocks, as young as age twelve.
In other words, he would likely criticize the working out of Zionism on the ground, as it has actually developed in the real world, as opposed to the world of theory and speculation.
These things seem imminently clear from any honest reading of his work or examination of his life. He would be a broker for peace. And it is a tragedy that instead of King himself, we are burdened with charlatans like those at the ADL, or the Des Moines Jewish Federation, or Rabbis like Marc Schneier who think nothing of speaking for the genuine article, in a voice not his own.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and lecturer. He can be reached at (and footnotes procured from) timjwise@msn.com
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BBC scam exposed
Posted: Saturday, January 18, 2003
Herald Reporter
THE British Broadcasting Corporation is allegedly buying air tickets for opposition MDC activists in Zimbabwe to fly to the United Kingdom where they are later used on its programmes to demonise President Mugabe’s Government.
The BBC has taken these same people to other European countries and the United States where they have been given platforms to attack their country while at the same time garnering for British support to overthrow President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF Government.
The Herald has established that Adellah Chiminya nee Mutero, divorcee of the late MDC campaign manager-cum-driver for Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, was flown out of the country by the BBC.
She appeared on the BBC programme Hard Talk last Thursday where she insulted African Heads of State for what she called "sympathising" with Preside-nt Mugabe.
Adellah said the BBC had also bought tickets for her two children Faith and Blessing who are now resident in the UK.
The BBC Press Office yesterday said it was highly unlikely that the BBC paid Adellah’s airfares for its programmes and to take part in a court case in the US.
"We do however, pay for certain people to come to our studios for interviews on our programmes,’’ said a spokesperson for the BBC who identified herself as Helen Martin.
Earlier, another official of the BBC who identified himself as Douglas Spitz said his organisation could fly, from any part of the world, guests coming to any of its shows.
Asked if it was the norm for the station to fly sources and their dependants into the United Kingdom where they are eventually granted asylum, Spitz said: "I wouldn’t know really, maybe the Foreign Office would know."
However, Adellah said: "As we speak, (Mr) Elliot Pfebve and his family arrived here last week and I am sure they got their tickets from the BBC."
Mr Pfebve (MDC) lost the Bindura by-election held after the death of the former Minister of Gender, Youth and Employment Creation, Cde Border Gezi.
Adellah, it was learnt, parted ways with Mr Chiminya long before he died and she took advantage of his death to thrust herself into the limelight as a grieved widow of an MDC activist.
She told the BBC that she last saw her husband in September, which was in 1999 and the husband died eight months later in April 2000.
Investigations by The Herald established that at the time of his death, Mr Chiminya lived-in with someone in Highfield while Adellah lived by herself in Hatfield.
Adellah, who repeatedly asked the Herald reporter not to write what the two were discussing, also opened up her heart saying she was in the UK for her survival although she believed some people were using her for their political goals.
"If you write this, I will sue you. Are you aware that I am taping the whole conversation we are having . . . siyana nazvo iwe (leave it alone) that’s my wish," she said.
She said ever since she went to the US with Ms Maria Stevens, Ms Evelyn Masaiti and Mr Pfebve, to sue the President, she had not benefited anything.
But on the BBC TV programme Hard Talk, Adellah, who repeatedly called South African President Thabo Mbeki a liar, said she was living in a house that Amani Trust, a folded Zimbabwean Non-Governmental Organisation that is heavily involved in politics, had bought her.
"But of course we have travelled to many European countries and we have been to Switzerland, you can name any country," she said.
It is understood that in those European countries, Adellah and her Zimbabwean "exiled" colleagues were used to address people on television as the British tried to garner for international support to overthrow President Mugabe.
Adellah said after the BBC TV Hard Talk programme, scores of whites from the US, Europe and South Africa had phoned her to congratulate her.
"I received calls from all over the world. They said I had done well. Many whites phoned me," she said without saying how they got her number.
Asked whether she was not ashamed to capitalise on the death of a man, with whom her marriage had broken down, Adellah who comes from Nerupiri, Gutu, said she had to survive.
She also agreed that she had become a fully-fledged member of the opposition MDC but would not shed light on the alleged affair she was reported to have had with a top official before she left the country.
She was known to have told some of her close relations that a top MDC official was dating her and she was getting fed up of his insensitivity.
According to some well-placed sources and relatives of the late Mr Chiminya, Adellah fled their matrimonial home to settle alone following endless problems which dogged their marriage.
And when the former husband died, she immediately saw and seized her opportunity to get sympathy and deceived the world that everything had been going on well and she was still married to him.
"Those two were not living together as husband and wife, Mr Chiminya lived with another woman and his children Blessing and Faith in Highfield. Adellah had left," said a relative.
Adellah was employed as a secretary at a school in Harare and was seeing a banker then before flying to the UK.
She had all intentions of returning but did not when she learnt her salary had been frozen while she was in the UK.
"She left in October 2001 and when she heard that her salary had been frozen because she was away without leave, she resigned and sought political asylum," said the relative.
After that she advised the BBC to facilitate her children’s flight.
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Mugabe: 'I am not retiring yet'
Posted: Wednesday, January 15, 2003
By Innocent Gore who was in Lusaka, Zambia
President Mugabe yesterday said it would be foolhardy, counter-revolutionary and disrespectful of the people who re-elected him last March if he were to step down before the expiry of his term.
He said this in the wake of British media reports that some Zanu-PF and MDC officials were working out a plan for him to step down before the expiry of his term, to pave the way for a government of national unity.
Cde Mugabe told reporters on arrival at Lusaka International Airport in Zambia that he would never surrender to British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair.
"Well, I am not used to answering questions about nightmares that are dreamt in Britain at Number 10 Downing Street and I only heard about that in the papers. There is no truth in it at all," he said in response to a question by a Zambian journalist who had asked him to comment on the issue.
"Only a few months ago, the people elected me to serve them and it will be foolhardy and absolutely counter-revolutionary. In fact, it is disrespectful of the support that the people gave, the loyalty the people reposed in me if today I am seen to be surrendering to Mr Blair. Never ever, never!"
The President was in Zambia to witness the conferment of the Honour of the Eagle of Zambia to that country’s founding president Dr Kenneth Kaunda in recognition of his service to Zambia and the liberation of Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. MORE...
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There Is No Sanity Left In British Journalism
Posted: Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Dr. David Nyekorach - Matsanga in London
What a travesty of journalism! And what has become of this world of the Queen? Is the end of the world nearing? Where will it begin? Are there any more intelligent journalists left in Britain? Democracy, good governance, public accountability, redounds positively on good journalism. But when all papers turn yellow like the editors who allow these stories to appear in Britain then we know these are the signs of a desperate nation and their devilish shoe polisher son called Satan Tsvangirai. Whatever the merits and demerits of the faked story there is a looming danger in the MDC who have been begging and pleading for more money from Britain to oust Mugabe.
A senior official in the British foreign office told us that the MDC has been told to step up the propaganda in order to receive more funding from British organisations like WFD and ZDT. Last month saw many opposition MDC MPS coming to Britain in search for money for disruption and other activities in Zimbabwe. A very reliable source at the foreign office in London was quoted as saying that "yes Baroness Amos has had a series of meetings with those MDC members of Parliament who visited London in December 2002 and January 2003". Then this explains the plethora of information that the British system has waged on Zimbabwe of late. The British divide and rule tactic is now at the centre of the so-called foreign policy. The doctored story that appeared on BBC and in several British newspapers about President Mugabe being removed by Hon. E D Mnangagwa and the Army chief General Vitalis Zvinanashe of his own party is clear example of politics of zygotes and half dead journalism whose spirit has been rejected by God and wondering free in the Queens territory. I am beginning to see the bad side of politics since embarked on this voluntary job of defending Zimbabwe abroad.
There are those surrogates of imperialism in Zimbabwe and Britain, who is too anxious to find sermons in stones, books in the running books and has unleashed terror-using journalism as weapon to kill President Mugabe and Zimbabwe. The whole UK woke up on Monday 13th January 2003 to find headlines about President Mugabe leaving power. WHAT A HOAX OF THE NEW YEAR! These reports have not only caused a mockery of the so-called British liberal press underpinned with the so called good governance but only shines with ignorance that is embedded in the minds of most British journalists. It is not only Zimbabwe that has suffered the torrent of silly accusations and silly praises.
While they are killing pluralism in Zimbabwe they are busy praising Uganda as model of Africa by the same Newspapers like The Times. Uganda has not even given the people parties like President Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe but the same GAY journalists like Robert Thomson who travel to Uganda to infect our people with HIV/AIDS are busy praising the country. What a shame to such smelly and polluted journalism coming from the brains of men who have defied the Bible creed of WOMAN marrying MAN. They go to Africa to buy sex from men who have no principles like those well-known GAYS in MDC. I have been humble in my articles in defence of Mugabe but to my readers please spare me this time I have changed my approach towards a Labour government, which has a bunch of gays whose scandals will cause mayhem to the world. How can men who defy the Bible be able to make correct judgment?
I have never witnessed such a goofed hoax and propaganda being peddled by journalists who call themselves white yet they don't know the colour of their skins. Britain has become a milling station of rumours and confusion. Indeed the poison of yellow journalism in Britain is worse than the Ricin powder that the Algerians had started manufacturing in the North of the City of London. Most of the men writing stories in British newspapers have narrow and shallow brains intellectually and these were former office messengers who were promoted to become editors of the current yellow newspapers. This explains the current onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe with stories that lack substance and are unbalanced.
The exposure of the "double standards" of Britain last week by the Herald Newspaper of Zimbabwe has forced the opposition MDC and the British MI6 to change their tactics on Zimbabwe. The source at the (I I S S) International Institute of Strategic Studies has told us that the comments on BBC by Prof. George Shire on 7th January 2003 and Africa Strategy's letter dated 6th January 2003 to the so called African affairs Minister Baroness Amos have sparked a series of a co-ordinated propaganda similar to that which was used in Yugoslavia before the fall of Melosvic from power. The enemies of Zimbabwe are attacking from two fronts. There is the official attack using the acrobatic style of British High Commission officials in Harare and organizations like ZDT and WFD, which have poured millions of British pounds to the opposition. This front is loaded with lethal weapons of propaganda machinery and a cocktail of doses of smelly substance called white man's arms twisting and creation of imaginary fever of panic in Zimbabwe. "THIS COCKTAIL IS CALLED "DIVIDE AND RULE" of the black ignorant masses.
The second flank is manned by the so-called "night dancers" who sneak into Zimbabwe under the pretext of playing golf and supported by the dirty malcontents of MDC. This so called visitors who fake their way into Zimbabwe visit the homes of the opposition supporters and interview those they claim are dying of hunger. Then these stories are beamed worldwide for the ignorant masses in Britain who believe everything their BBC or Channel 4 telecasts. The most worrying factor is that most of these so called undercover journalists are gays who hate President Mugabe. We have received evidence and information that those who appear on these so called documentary are paid huge amounts of money to appear on programmes like the ones that appeared on Channel 4 on Sunday night. It has also been revealed that most of the Opposition members are being sexually abused by these high flying undercover journalists like John Osborne who are paying up to £ 500 per night for sexual therapy that they cant have in Britain. Africa Strategy would like to join a long queue of those who will condemn the most recent reports on Zimbabwe.
These are some of the so-called distorted and imagined stories that have appeared Between December 26th 2002 and January 2003:
On Thursday 26th December 2002 a gay journalist by name Peta Thornycroft filed a story in The Daily Telegraph " Mugabe's wife selects her farm and orders the owners to leave" which was untrue.
On the same day another lesbian journalist called Alice Thomson filed a story entitled " Murderous Mugabe should be treated like bin Laden" also published by The Daily Telegraph.
On Thursday January 9th January 2003 another yellow gay journalist by name Peter Oborne files a story in the Daily Mirror the so called paper of the year 2002 "Africa's Nazis" it formed a basis of the documentary on Sunday.
Then comes the documentary that defied all intellectual rules on mass media and mass communication on Sunday 12th January 2003 by Channel 4 news that bought it for £100.000and beamed it across the European Continent. The Zimbabwean people who take part in this media sexual bonanza should know that their lives are being used as monetary conduits by the so called gay and lesbian journalists who flock Zimbabwe under Golf rituals in the best fields in the world.
On Monday 13th January 2003 the BBC reported as Breaking News "Mugabe's Party wants him to go" and this story was flashed on the front pages of the British newspapers. Those who like Zimbabwe condemn the faked story by the gay gangsters about the most loyal men in ZANU-PF and founders of the struggle against imperialism allegedly being against the founder father of the nation of Zimbabwe.
Many people who have telephoned Africa Strategy in London have wondered why only the known British gay journalists and lesbians have launched a campaign on Zimbabwe. There are concerns that President Mugabe's Public Relations PR machinery abroad has not done enough especially in Britain to change and reshape the image of the President and it appears that there is a "wait and see scenario" and a dirty syndrome of avoiding head on target with the foreign press that has not been hit so hard by the government abroad. The President's name has been damaged in Britain and yet his High Commission in London, which is near the media houses, like the BBC CNN, SKY NEWS, keeps a low profile and does not even issue or answer any of the accusations labelled on the same hand that feeds it. There is also the question of those turncoats who are feeding the yellow journalists in the Independent press of Zimbabwe to write stories about those who defend Mugabe in Europe and fill the gap. These are the most dangerous political toxins the President should get rid of quickly. There are worse than the MDC sellouts and could destroy the government of the SON of Africa.
Those whose culture is to use the media to kill the same plate that feeds them are conducting the political strangulation of the government of Zimbabwe in a coherent manner. A source very close to Africa Strategy's research team in London has revealed that the High Commission in London does not deny some of the stories appearing in the press. This goes to show how besieged the High Commission in London is or how confused the staff are or worse still one wonders whose side these sons and daughters of soil belong? One independent white PR officer in London who helped to return Libyan leader Gadaffi to the world order told Africa Strategy that it seems the staff are MDC followers because "he has never seen such an act of treachery and betrayal" he said. There are illegal demonstrators around the High Commission's premises near a British police Station and no charges or protest note has been sent out to the government of Britain about the behaviour of these narrow-minded zygotes of ZDT and MDC who want to sell their country to gay and lesbians. Our researchers went to the police near the premises to ask why they have allowed the illegal protests to take place every day near the building and to see whether those members of ZDT and MDC who gather near Zimbabwe House every evening in London have a permit to do so. Guess the answer: NO COMPLAINT LODGED by the time we went to press.
We discovered that not a single permit had been issued and the police told us that there was no complaint from the High Commission as regards that issue. How will President Mugabe defend himself when he can't travel to London to do so? Even those given the responsibility have no idea on what to do in UK? Many Observers on the Zimbabwe politics have expressed their surprise on the silence of the officials in London who are supposed to defend their President in this country of the Queen. The whole year has ended without Zimbabwe's officials in London openly defending their President in Britain like what other officials from African countries do in Britain.
Africa Strategy has decided to bring this matter to public because it seems we are entering a crucial stage of our defence of President Mugabe as such we shall be very intellectually brutal and factual in our attack on those who want to fail the President of Zimbabwe who has spearheaded an African dream. Let those who have hidden ambitions come out openly and fight some of us supporters of Mugabe in London morally or intellectually instead of strangulating the government of Zimbabwe and President Mugabe. Many people have feared to say this to the world and to the government but let Africa Strategy go on record for alerting the President and ZANU-PF that there is dubious silence in London. Africa Strategy is prepared for such a war to defend President Mugabe with the contribution of people like Mr.Mararaike, Prof George Shire and others who have filled the gap of the game of the "lost sheep". Africa Strategy has refused calls by Baroness Amos for a meeting and we are no interested in any future meetings until Zimbabwe is left alone. This the bottom line in politics and those who are armatures must quit. But in defence of President Mugabe against the bunch of gay gangsters in Britain we shall not surrender.
This brings us to the next phase of our struggle for the nation of Zimbabwe. The lesbian and Gay journalists have opened a Pandora box of death and skeletons, which we shall from now onwards, attack on the question of MORALITY and we have decided that until they stop meddling in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe we shall not rest. The whole strategy is to scare monger the cricket team from going to Zimbabwe next month as was used in Yugoslavia in the overthrow of President Melosvic. The so-called imaginary house coup in Zimbabwe is a design of the British MI6 that ZANU-PF should not listen to. BUT the party must find out those who are spreading these false reports to the Zimbabwe's so called yellow journalism? This reminds me of one Kenyan politician who kept on switching sides while President Moi was being strangled. This hand of death in Zimbabwe politics that goes on peddling malice and hatred against Hon. E D Mnangagwa and General Vitalis Zvinavashe has to be exposed soon to avoid costly remedies in future and for us who love our African Martin Luther King we are not going to hesitate to do so if the hand does not stop the Strangulation of the President of Zimbabwe. The direction of the onslaught on President Mugabe's enemies abroad must be decided now. We stand to lose an African statesman who has stopped madness in Congo, has given his people the pride by giving them back their land which the same criminals stole 200 years ago Where will you find a Castro of Africa like the one we have in Zimbabwe? The story of accusing the most honest and loyal men in ZANU-PF for plotting to remove their leader is not absurd but very idiotic in terms of those who imagine and produce such gutter journalism. Soon the people of Zimbabwe will see the true colours of the agents of British imperialism in Zimbabwe. The recent donation of £46.000 by Annabelle Hughes to the MDC boss and the payment made by Mr. Peter Oborne to the MDC officials for the fake story must be investigated by the government of Zimbabwe. Highly placed Sources have told us that ZDT official Annabele Hughes through an undercover journalist called Peter Oborne sent money to disrupt the cricket matches of next month from Account 42182002 0f Lloyds Bank of London. This is a clear testimony to the world that ZDT wants to fight the people of Zimbabwe and cause political infighting in ZANU-PF and create an imaginary power struggle.
President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean nation we thank you for your tenacity and steadfastness and assure you that the road to Jerusalem is full of temptations and trials but this is the time of UNITY of purpose for those who cherish peace. Africa Strategy will continue with its fight and we shall deal with these gangs of gays and lesbian idiots who have defied GOD'S Commandments and have brought the subject of JOURNALISM to disrepute.
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White Privilege Shapes The U.S.
Posted: Thursday, January 9, 2003
by Robert Jensen
Here's what white privilege sounds like:
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.
White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.
I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.
I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.
But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.
There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.
Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.
At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.
I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.
White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.
Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.
Jensen is a professor in the Department of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert William Jensen 1998
first appeared in the Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1998
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Big Oil and James Baker Target the Western Sahara
Posted: Thursday, January 9, 2003
By WAYNE MADSEN, January 8, 2003
In the midst of America's international campaign against terrorism, the Bush administration is permitting Big Oil to legitimize the illegal occupation of an invaded country--Western Sahara. Formerly known as Spanish Sahara and invaded by Morocco in 1975 (the same year Henry Kissinger acquiesced to Indonesia's invasion and annexation of East Timor and India's annexation of the Himalayan Kigdom of Sikkim)), Western Sahara's occupation by Morocco has neither been recognized by the United Nations nor the Organization of African Unity. The latter actually recognizes the independence of Western Sahara's exiled Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is headquartered in remote and squalid desert refugee camps on the Algerian side of the Western Sahara-Algeria border.
In the New World Order of the Bush family, the Western Saharans have little future. That is because the lifeblood of what it means to be a Bush--oil--has been discovered off the coast of Western Sahara. Although Morocco is the illegal occupier of Western Sahara, that did not stop the Oklahoma City-based Kerr McGee Corporation (the company infamously portrayed in the movie "Silkwood") from signing an off-shore exploration deal with Morocco on September 25, 2001, just days after the terrorist attacks on the United States. The timing for Kerr McGee could not have been better.
The group fighting for Western Sahara independence, POLISARIO, once waged a bitter guerrilla war against Morocco. In 1991, POLISARIO signed a cease fire with Morocco but Moroccan troops remained in the disputed territory.
Meanwhile, Morocco continued to pour thousands of native Moroccans into the territory. The 1991 cease fire agreement with Morocco was to have resulted in a referendum on the territory's future. However, Morocco kept delaying the vote until it could salt the territory with enough of its own emigres until they constituted a majority, thus ensuring a final vote would result in voter approval for merger with Morocco.
In 1997, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who, ironically, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, named former Secretary of State James Baker as his personal envoy to settle the Western Sahara problem. Baker, who would later serve as George W. Bush's fix-it man in Florida's disputed presidential election, began considering rather novel ideas to settle the Western Sahara problem.
Unfortunately, for the Sahrawis, Baker's ideas were all stamped with the imprimatur of Morocco.
Baker, who is as connected to the Houston oil big wigs as J.R. Ewing was to the oil czars in the TV show "Dallas," has his own close ties to Kerr McGee.
His James Baker Institute at Rice University funded a study Called "Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century." The author of that report is Matt Simmons, President of Simmons and Company Investment Bankers and member of the Board of Directors of Kerr McGee.
It also helps the cause of Kerr McGee that Baker's former spokesperson at the Departments of State and Treasury and close personal friend, Margaret Tutwiler, serves as the U.S. ambassador to Morocco. One former associate of Tutwiler confided that it was no coincidence that landed Tutwiler in Morocco, "She was obviously placed there by Baker and his oil buddies to help cut oil deals." Tutwiler is not only in a commanding position to influence U.S. policy on Western Sahara but she can count upon one of her best friends, former White House Communications Director and close Bush confidant Karen Hughes, to ensure that Morocco's case receives the personal attention of President Bush.
The plan that Baker drew up for Western Sahara (while he was ensconced with his friends at his Jackson Hole, Wyoming ranch) will undoubtedly result in the territory's eventual merger with Morocco. Approved by the UN Security Council, with the strong support of France, whose TotalFinaElf conglomerate also just signed an offshore oil exploration, the plan calls for a five-year delay for a final referendum. In the meantime, Western Sahara will have a weak territorial assembly that will be packed with loyalists of Morocco's King Mohammed, a close U.S. ally. When the referendum is finally held, sometime around 2006 or 2007, all the Moroccan squatters and occupying troops will be allowed to vote.
On January 7, 2003, the UN announced that Baker would be visiting Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, and Western Sahara to revive his peace plan. But it now seems that with impending war with Iraq and the paralyzing Venezuelan oil strike, Baker is under pressure from his friends in the Bush administration to bring about the commencement of oil drilling off of Western Sahara. Thus the sudden new interest by Baker in a Western Sahara "peace" deal.
U.S. oil companies are chomping at the bit. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Kerr McGee continues to list Western Sahara's Boujdour block (where it has been given permission to drill by Morocco) as being within Moroccan territory, a claim neither supported by the United Nations nor officially recognized by the United States.
Although Baker was to have been an honest broker, even he had to admit to the U.N. Security Council in 2001 that the plan had been heavily influenced by Morocco. Since Bush has enlisted the support of Algeria's President Abdelaziz Boutefllika in the worldwide war against terrorism, it is clear that he was pressured to limit Algeria's historic support for POLISARIO and the Sahrawis. Bouteflika even endorsed Baker's plan. French President Jacques Chirac has referred to Western Sahara as Morocco's "southern provinces," a clear indication of where the West sees the future of the territory.
For its part, the Western Saharans are claiming the deals between Morocco and TotalFinaElf and Kerr McGee are in violation of international law and previous UN resolutions. The Sahrawi President, Mohammed Abdelaziz, condemned the oil deals as an illegal "provocation." The Sahrawi cause is supported by a number of NGOs, former French First Lady Danielle Mitterand, and East Timor's leadership, which knows all too well about being held hostage by oil interests and brutal occupying dictatorships allied with the West. But the oil companies and the Baker-Bush team still holds the trump card. If the Sahrawis, out of desperation, break the cease fire and go to war with Morocco, the anti-terrorism measures undertaken by the United States may seal their fate.
All the State Department has to do is simply declare POLISARIO and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic terrorist organizations. Their international assets would be frozen, their leaders would be arrested and could be tried by secret U.S. military tribunals and executed, and Big Oil and Morocco would rule the day in Western Sahara. Even groups that support their cause could be targeted and their assets seized. Furthermore, the American public, conditioned to be suspicious of all things Arab, would have little sympathy for nomadic Arabs fighting against a U.S. "ally." It is a scenario that could be replayed in every part of the world where local secessionist groups are pitted against brutal regimes and greedy multinational corporations--the Aceh region of northern Sumatra, West Papua, and Nigeria's Delta Region, to name but a few.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Reproduced from counterpunch with permission from Wayne Madsen
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The Cricket Saga and A Colonial Legacy
Posted: Tuesday, January 7, 2003
OPEN LETTER ON ZIMBABWE
6th January 2003
Baroness Amos
Minister for African and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
King Charles Street
London SWIA 2AH
Telephone: 0207-270-2893.
Facsimile:0207-270-2946.
Dear Baroness Amos,
REF: THE CRICKET SAGA AND A COLONIAL LEGACY
THAT HAUNTSBRITAIN AFTER 22 YEARS INDEPENDENCE.
Will the British Labour government compensate most of the British nationals and other people worldwide who have already bought air tickets and booked their accommodation using their credit cards for the Zimbabwe trip if the cancellation and change of venue of the cricket in March 2003 is effected by your pressure on ECB and ICC? If so can you give the nation the guidelines on how one can start a claim since the legal system in Britain takes five years for such a dispute to be resolved and payment is got?
Africa Strategy has read your contribution of 206 pages in the House of Lords on Zimbabwe starting from 2001 -2002 and as Lobby group on African affairs in UK we felt it was high time we replied you on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe whom you have demonised for the last two years. More so the recent comments on the cricket saga has forced us to stand up and be counted on behalf of the masses of Zimbabwe and Africa at large. The double standard strategy in your foreign policy on Uganda with a one party state and the hate campaign you have waged on President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has left us with no option but to pump some sense in your political career and neutralise your dirty toxins that you issue against Zimbabwe. We have therefore delivered this letter by hand to your office today 7th January 2003.
My fellow party member of the Labour Party we have just come back from Zimbabwe on 25th December 2002 having led a private delegation of business investors and cricket lovers to that country. We have seen for our selves the democracy that has been demonised by the BBC, CNN, and some section of Prime Minister Tony Blair's besieged government. The facts that we saw for ourselves on ground, the prevailing peace and the tranquillity witnessed during our three weeks in Zimbabwe made us conclude that your government has a hidden agenda on this nation. We have come to a conclusion that compared to the type of media reports about Zimbabwe there is a big difference between the BBC, your government's version and our experience on Zimbabwe. The equivalent in terms of distance to the truth is like the journey between Mars and the Earth.
This has prompted Africa Strategy as lobby group that privately and voluntarily led this delegation to write to you and to the whole world about the dangers of relying on reports of an immature opposition that collaborates with racists who worked with Ian Smith to murder many millions of whites and blacks in the 1960s and 1970s. The same struggle some of you in the present Labour government helped to succeed. The prolonged agony and anguish the people of Zimbabwe have gone through as a result of the short sighted and myopic policies of the Labour Government has brought a calamity to once a peaceful country united under the good leadership of President Mugabe. Despite the brutality of Ian Smith on the local blacks in 1960s and 1970s, President Mugabe has shown the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation in Zimbabwe compared to other countries like Uganda where the war has been the order of the day due to the lack of good leadership and the word "reconciliation".
Allow us therefore, to write to you at this hour of need before your meeting with ECB to warn you on the dangers of fabricating lies and trumping up charges about President Mugabe and Zimbabwe so us to stop the cricket being played in that nation. Africa Strategy will also take this opportunity to alert the whole international community about the political malaise the Labour government has caused to the people of Zimbabwe in the last two years. Africa Strategy Independently observed and monitored the elections of Zimbabwe of March 2002.Our report, which was published worldwide, speaks volumes. We have also been following all your political manoeuvres of trying to destroy Zimbabwe. The world and the African people have watched with keen interest the way you have handled the situation in Zimbabwe. But before we go further, we would like through you to thank the Honourable Prime Minister for the reply on Zimbabwe and Uganda dated 4th April 2002, which speaks volumes.
Despite the bad reception given to most of us Independent Organizations that have spoken the truth about Zimbabwe and exposed the Uganda political saga, we shall not be shy to point out the shortcomings of your " double standard" and warped foreign policy that has caused political hardships in Zimbabwe and encouraged a one party state else where in Uganda under President Museveni. We are drawing examples of these two African Commonwealth countries as a test case of bad politics and decayed foreign policy that only breeds violence and anarchy in many parts of the world. When I read the poet laureate works of John Donne who wrote and extolled us " not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." I did discover and I now know what it means. I see Zimbabwe demonised and Uganda given the red carpet treatment even when it has a one party state status.
This is not the occasion to address you on the problems of Uganda but to let you know that soon the wind of change will blow over Uganda like what has happened in Kenya and some of us will be in power in that nation then it will be difficult for the brain washed conduits of imperialism like you to use your double standards on any African nation. One factor in Zimbabwean politics, which you Ministers of Tony Blair's cabinet should note is that the opposition in Zimbabwe, is immature, immoral, prudish, comic, melodramatic and ignorant on many historical issues that unite the people of Zimbabwe That is why most Zimbabweans have refused to be used by MDC to cause political chaos on their soil.
The same racists who used nerve gas to maim millions of the people of Zimbabwe during the struggle for political independence are the same ones using school drop outs in Zimbabwe to try to disrupt the peace and harmony President Mugabe has brought to this nation. Our research in Zimbabwe has revealed that most of the opposition MDC members in Parliament have never had experience of running a government leave alone debating in Parliament. They actually act like lost sheep without a Shepard. This is a nation with the highest number of intelligent and educated people than else where in Africa. This has made the opposition in Zimbabwe bankrupt and not able to survive on its own. Without the "hidden hands" of the likes of you Baroness Amos and the likes of Hon. Peter Haines, Zimbabwe's MDC would have been history like other opposition parties in Africa. This explains why the MDC as party is now moribund with no new ideas, no new policies and lacks political direction.
EMBARGOS AND SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE.
It is deplorable and shocking to hear that the same members of the cabinet of Tony Blair including yourself are asking the cricketers to reflect on the same basis of moral, humanitarian and political crisis that the Labour government has caused on Zimbabwe not go to play cricket in this nation that still has over 1000, 000 British linked nationals. The break down in moral behaviour in the Labour government has culminated into a political nightmare. Most of the whites and blacks in Zimbabwe we interviewed told us that "the cricket series will bring a hub of economic activities to Zimbabwe and will boost the economy" It would also help to expose the nation to more balanced world opinion than your "kitchen opinion" in the House of Lords.
It will help to show to the world that despite the bad publicity on Zimbabwe and Mugabe there are still over 100.000 British linked families living there peacefully. "May be this is the worry of the Labour government and that is why you want to stop the truth from being known"? Said one white farmer we met in Mazowe some 40 miles away from the capital Harare. The worst case of humanity is ignorance and being less informed or being fed on concocted lies by a childish and impulsive opposition like the MDC of Zimbabwe. The government of Britain allowed Zimbabwe Commonwealth team to come to UK. The officials and the team members were and are still under the same President and Ministers the British government has targeted with smart sanctions. Why didn't the British Government bar the team from coming to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester? Is this not a case of double standard?
There are over British 400 Companies that have business dealings with the British government and notably the British Airways whose staff we interviewed in Sheraton Hotel in Harare and whose response we have recorded for the government of Britain to listen to when it comes to exposure of the Tony Blair's double standards. Why doesn't the British Government stop flights to Harare if it feels that there is insecurity and lawlessness in Zimbabwe? We were able to collect all the data in the Hotels in Zimbabwe's main cities of Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, which indicate that 70% of the occupants in the last 4 weeks of December 2002 were British nationals. This number was confirmed with empirical data from the Visa section at the Zimbabwe High Commission near 10 Downing Street in London. This is not fiction. Ministers of Tony Blair are able to check these facts. Why do we want to change the venue of the cricket to South Africa yet on some of the streets of the South African cities it is impossible to use a Nokia 7650 and come back with all your limbs?
Baroness Amos, our survey indicates that almost 80% of the Fresh Produce that we buy in the big Super Markets is from Zimbabwe. We have interviewed the owners of the companies that export the vegetables who are white Zimbabwean businessmen and they told us "despite all the bad talk about Zimbabwe our business of fresh produce has not been affected". It therefore shows that if Zimbabwe government diversified their markets to the East Asia, as the case might be in the near future the Tesco, Sainsbury's and other stores will run dry. That is why we have always stated that sanctions and embargos work or affect a nation, which is divided and has no general consensus on political matters. The land in Zimbabwe acts as cushion to all your sanctions and both the government and opposition accept that it had to be redistributed.
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY IN ZIMBABWE.
Most of your colleagues like Clare Short who have been misled on Zimbabwe and on the other hand have allowed Uganda to grow a British sponsored one party state have no shame to openly come out and condemn the democracy in Zimbabwe. In one of the letters that we obtained from the government of Zimbabwe written by Clare Short in 2001 when the land crisis was looming states "I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not the colonisers" (emphasis added) Such strange ultra-nationalistic views have caused a mockery on the phrase of good governance in Zimbabwe and else where in the world. Out bursts like this one only add to a state of despondence in Zimbabwe and shows the naivety of the Labour government that is supposed to deal with the Zimbabwe issue in an impartial manner.
This letter is to let the world know how the British system has brought a catastrophe and political tragedy on Zimbabwe. The imaginary insecurity which the British Labour government is mentioning on BBC and in their so-called dossier on Zimbabwe is completely fake and if you visit Zimbabwe on a monthly basis like some of us have done you are left with no alternative but to call the actions of some of the Labour Party Ministers as racially biased and shameful to intellectual world.
During our last three weeks stay in Zimbabwe in December 2002 we managed to research on the so- called insecurity and we did not find any trace of the British version even when there were temporary shortages of fuel in the city of Harare. Zimbabweans could queue peacefully for fuel without any fight or any violence. Where do you ministers get your facts? We went out with the British Airways Crew to sample the so-called insecurity in several social places like nightclubs, sports clubs, shopping centres, markets, Bus stations around Harare and several other towns and we were very surprised that people danced with patriotism, drank and ate with joy in all their hearts and there was no cause for alarm or insecurity. Is there any other way of testing the peace of Zimbabwe apart from three black men walking back at 2.am to Hotel Sheraton with a group of nine British nationals? The South African scenario is even more complicated because even the police there tell you not to use a mobile phone on the streets, as it is dangerous.
What then is democracy to you people? Is it to allow every body to walk naked in the streets of London or is democracy not the freedom of press, media courts, and the freedom to allow people to associate, assemble and organise, which President Mugabe has done? President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has guaranteed all these tenets of freedom and they do appear in the polity of Zimbabwe. Why cant you Baroness Amos as black person ask the government of President Museveni to do the same way President Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe by allowing parties to compete? Why do you as a black person whose African roots are very strong in your blood fail to see the truth about African values in politics and advise the British government to "constructively engage" the Zimbabwean government to resolve matters that are very minor and considered by mature school of politics as family matters not of international material.
Democracy in Zimbabwe is in plenty BUT there is no constructive and intelligent opposition. There is an opposition full of violent men who stab their wives eight times in the hearts and kill them, an opposition which is full of sleaze and infighting, an opposition in Zimbabwe which is bordered on criminality and impulsive in nature. Whether you take it or leave it the story of Idi Amin in Uganda will repeat itself in Zimbabwe once Mugabe is forcefully removed as you are advocating for such a forceful change. We believe that the malcontents of the MDC will be worse than Amin's rule, which the British supported in 1970s. So watch out for your actions as they might backfire on Zimbabwe.
CRICKET SAGA.
The cricket saga that has again exposed your ignorance on what you call good governance is a straightforward issue that does not need to waste taxpayer's money in Britain to compensate to the ECB or to the ICC in case the British team does not go to Zimbabwe. This open letter will be published widely in the world and you will see how many people in Africa will support Zimbabwe. You can only confuse those in Europe who have not travelled to Zimbabwe but those who have spoken with your British Airways crew will want you or Clare Short to resign for misleading the whole nation on Zimbabwe. The comments of the Welsh Secretary Peter Haines on BBC Breakfast with David Frost on 5th January 2003 are an insult to those who have tried to moderate the actions against Zimbabwe. These are comments of a Minister with a dangerous "political hangover" which, if not treated quickly could degenerate into a terrible disaster for the Labour government. This same friend of yours was the same minister who caused the standoff between Zimbabwe and HM government and I think he will continue to cause political mayhem in the Labour Party until we lose majority in Parliament. Every department Hon. Peter Haines has worked in has been left in political doldrums. How long shall we as Labour Party voters in this country wait to see those entrusted with power erode the principles of humanity?
The findings of the security committee set up by the ICC are very clear and well written on the walls of 10 Downing Street. One does not an extra pair of glasses to read them. The security in Zimbabwe is the best compared to those other African countries where the other matches are going to be played. The worst shooting incident in Birmingham last week has reminded most of us who live in Britain that it better to live in Zimbabwe or Uganda than this part of the world where trans-Atlantic crime is being imported here by terrible off-springs of crime that have led to cold blooded murderous acts in UK cities. Would you compare that with a Zimbabwe where all guns are in the hands of those with a licence? No shooting like this can happen in the City of Harare and go uncontrolled as it is happening to most cities of UK. Is this not insecurity in the so-called older democracy? Who has told tourists not to come to UK because of the gang wars similar to those in Jamaica? Who is calling for sanctions or boycott of Britain as result of the two murdered black teenagers in Birmingham? I think all answers to these questions will deliver a good verdict on Zimbabwe when you meet the ECB and ICC this week to discuss this issue.
Many of your fellow cabinet Ministers have hidden themselves in a veil of the word "moral" which is being used to persuade the cricket team not go to Zimbabwe. One wonders where morality was when 80% of arable land was in the hands of only 2500 white commercial farmers? And where was morality when Ian Smith used nerve gas to kill Zimbabweans during the struggle for Independence in Zimbabwe? The ECB has asked one cardinal question which must be answered by you Baroness Amos. Why target the soft cricket sport when there are many companies still doing business with Zimbabwe? This is the question that you people must answer in clear terms to avoid the whole of Africa from boycotting the cricket.
We believe that with this independent facts which we have also sent copies to ECB and ICC whose report on the security of Zimbabwe was received by your office three weeks ago will form a basis of proper judgment. We have also sent a copy to the Sports and Heritage Secretary who will be in this meeting. There are more British nationals and other cricket lovers who have volunteered to go to Zimbabwe in the next few weeks to find out the truth. The cost of such a cancellation will be enormous to us taxpayers and to those cricket lovers who have bought their air tickets to Zimbabwe.
Hoping that this letter will give an insight and alert you that in this country there are people who see President Mugabe's approach on land redistribution as the only right solution that he was left with. By the way even if your so called MDC forcefully gained power in Zimbabwe they will not reverse the land programme which is now concluded without the help of the British government. In short the Labour government lost chance to engage peacefully the Zimbabwe authorities and there are no slim chances that you will ever win that diplomatic front. The Labour government lost the moral ground and failed to assist in the process.
Thanks
Dr. David Nyekarach-Matsanga.
africastrategy@hotmail.com.
00-44-7930-901-252
For and on behalf of Africa Strategy.
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A Whole Lott Missing
Posted: Thursday, January 2, 2003
Rituals Of Purification And Racism Denial
by Paul Street, www.cul-chicago.org
The most disturbing aspect of the recent national melodrama over Senate Majority Leaders Trent Lott's offensive declaration of retrospective support for the race-segregationist 1948 Presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond is not the content of Lott's remarks. The really depressing thing is what the entire episode says about the superficial level at which racism is discussed in the United States. A related downer is how it is working to stick America's head yet further in the sand on the question of race.
The Deeper Racism
The main problem here is a failure to distinguish between two different levels of racism – overt and covert. The first variety has a long and sordid history in the US. It includes the burning of black homes and churches, the open public use of racial slurs and epithets, occupational bans, lynching, disenfranchisement, denial of prominent public roles to black individuals, restrictive real estate covenants, rock-throwing and "nigger"- screaming mobs, and open legal segregation of public facilities. Concentrated especially though but not exclusively in the South, level-one's racism's archived images and sound bites serve as background for ritual mainstream expressions of support for the ideals of the civil rights movement like the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Consistent with his long record of racist comments and affiliations, Lott's popularity among southern whites and his latest segregationist slip are certainly proof that there is still some life in this old racist dog, especially down in Dixie.
Still, this type or level of racism is largely defeated in the US. In post-Civil Rights America, the Republican Party makes sure to pack their convention stage with an abundance of black speakers and nearly every corporate and college brochure is loaded with images of racial "diversity." No aspirant to public office dares question the nation's official commitment to racial equality and equal opportunity. Prominent public media business and political figures play with fire when they are perceived as embracing the explicit racial bigotry and legal segregation of the past. Witness the case of Lott, held up for massive public ridicule because he indirectly embraced segregation in terms that are mild compared to the public rhetoric common among southern white politicians twenty years after Thurmond's Dixiecrat campaign. Nowadays even David Duke has to claim that he is not anti-black and George W. Bush's White House contains two blacks in prominent foreign policymaking positions – something that would never have occurred in pre-Civil Rights America.
The second level of racism is deeper and more intractable – as King and the Civil Rights Movement learned when they came north in 1966. It involves societal, structural and institutional forces and processes in ways that "just happen" to produce and perpetuate deep black disadvantage in multiple related areas of American life. It includes widespread persistent de facto residential and school segregation by race, rampant racial discrimination in hiring and promotion, the systematic under-funding and under-equipping of black schools, disproportionate surveillance, arrest and incarceration of blacks and much more. It is enabled, encouraged and even conducted by institutional and political actors, including some African-Americans, who would never publicly utter racially prejudiced comments and who not uncommonly declare allegiance to the ideals of the civil rights movement.
This second variety of racism has more than simply survived or outlasted the explicit, public racism of the past. It is ironically and perversely deepened by civil rights victories and the discrediting of open bigotry insofar as these elementary triumphs encourage the illusion of racism's disappearance and the related notion that the only barriers left to African-American success and equality are internal to the black community.
New Age Racism: "We Made the Corrections, Now Get On With It"
Why are African-Americans twice as likely to be unemployed as whites? Why is the poverty rate for blacks more than twice the rate for whites? Why do nearly one out of every two blacks earn less than $25,000 while only one in three whites makes that little? Why is median black household income ($27,000) less than two thirds of median white household income ($42,000)? Why is Black families' median household net worth is less than 10 percent that of white? Why are blacks much less likely to own their own homes than whites? Why do African-Americans make up roughly half of the United States' massive population of prisoners (2 million) and why are one in three young black male adults in prison or on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the American criminal justice system? Why do African-Americans continue in severe geographic separation from mainstream society, still largely cordoned off into the nation's most disadvantaged communities thirty years after the passage of civil rights fair housing legislation? Why do blacks suffer disproportionately from irregularities in the American electoral process, from problems with voter registration to the functioning of voting machinery? Why does black America effectively constitute a Third World enclave of sub-citizens within the world's richest and most powerful state?
Convinced that racism is no longer a significant barrier for blacks because there are African-Americans in high policy positions and serving as anchors on the Six O-Clock News, most whites find answers to these questions inside the African-American community itself. If serious racial disparities persist, if black continue to live both separately and unequally, white America and even some privileged blacks (e.g. John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute) think, its because of their own choices and because too many blacks engage in "self-sabotaging" and related "separatist" behaviors. "As white America sees it, " note Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown in their excellent study By The Color of Their Skin: the Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race, (2000), "every effort has been to welcome blacks into the American mainstream and now they're on their own."
Predominant white attitudes at the turn of the millennium are well summarized by the comments of a white respondent to a survey conducted by Essence magazine. "No place that I'm aware of," wrote the respondent, "makes [black] people ride on the back of the bus or use a different restroom in this day and age. We got the message; we made the corrections – get on with it."
Tell it to Lakisha Washington America has made the necessary racial "corrections" and now its time for blacks "to get on with it?" Tell it to the black job applicants of Boston and Chicago.
In a field experiment whose results were released last week, researchers Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhill Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent out 5,000 resumes in response to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. Each resume was randomly assigned either a very black-sounding name (such as "Lakisha Washington" or "Jamal Jones") or a very white-sounding name (such as "Emily Walsh" or "Brendan Baker"). This racial "manipulation," the researchers found, "produced a significant gap in the rate of callbacks for interviews." White names received roughly 50 percent more callbacks than black names. For white applicants, moreover, sending higher quality resumes increased the number of callbacks by 30 percent. For black names, higher-quality resumes elicited no significant callback premium.
Just "get on with it?" Tell it to black families trying to buy a home or rent an apartment in the Denver area. According to a report released last month by the U.S. Department of Housing, nearly 1 in 5 blacks trying to buy a home or rent an apartment there faces some kind of technically illegal discrimination, being diverted from white majority areas to communities predominantly populated by minorities. This was actually below with the national average (21.6 percent for blacks), determined through hundreds of matched-pair testing exercises conducted across the country.
Tell it to the roughly astounding one in three black men in the US now carry the lifelong mark of a felony criminal record thanks to the nation's 30 -year binge of incredibly racially disparate surveillance, arrest and mass imprisonment ("corrections" indeed!) conducted under the auspices of the drug war. They generally experience no real wage increases in their twenties and thirties, when American men without felony records typically experience rapid earnings growth. In a recent academic study conducted by Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the possession of a prison record reduced the likelihood of white testers being called back by a prospective employer by a ratio of 2 to 1. Among black testers, the mark of a prison record reduced that likelihood by nearly 3 to 1.
"We've made the corrections?" Tell it to the very disproportionately black students of the nation's highly and increasingly segregated urban public schools. They receive educational resources vastly inferior to those enjoyed by children in affluent white suburbs, thanks to the nation's racist and regressive reliance on local property taxes to fund "public schools" whose operation and outcomes resonate with the long reach of private privilege and related racial inequality.
The products of these inferior schools become all-too easy fodder – human raw material for the nation's prison industrial complex and racist mass incarceration lobby, which works to divert public dollars from education to pay for the construction and maintenance of yet more not-so "correctional" facilities. Those prisons create jobs and economic development for predominantly white rural prison towns even while the experience of incarceration pushes most black-ex-offenders yet further into the margins of the disastrous inner-city market for poorly educated workers.
The list of these sorts of disparate and not-so "color blind" policies is long and depressing. The problems experienced by the people and communities on their receiving end have little to do with explicit racial bigotry (public or private). It has much to do with what sociologist Joe Feagin calls "a system of racialized structural and institutional subordination that excludes blacks from full participation in the rights, privileges, and benefits of society." What he refers to as "state–of–mind racism" and open racial bigotry has declined appreciably in the last four decades. But "state-of-being," that is institutional, structural and systemic racism have not declined and may actually have become more deeply entrenched, despite and perhaps even, ironically enough, in part because of civil rights victories.
Pardoning Presidential Racism The deeper level racism's army of practitioners and apologists is large and bipartisan, far bigger than the likes of Trent Lott. Leading soldiers include people not normally associated with racism under the terms of the dominant public discourse in the US, which focuses on the level one variety. Take, for example, former President Bill Clinton, sometimes referred to as "America's First Black President." Clinton, who spoke with reverence about King, counted former National Urban League President Vernon Jordan as a close friend and placed five African-Americans in his cabinet, was no bigot. Not surprisingly, he Clinton called for Lott to step down because of his insensitive remarks.
As President, however, America's most racially sensitive President never worked seriously to address the dismantling of affirmative action in the United States. He betrayed his election promise to address the health care needs of impoverished African-Americans, failing to seriously push for a national health care program that would have provided crucial support the nation's most truly disadvantaged. He led the charge for "free trade" legislation that furthered the replacement of black workers by cheaper overseas labor. He gave lip service to black education but did nothing to improve funding for disproportionately poor black schools or to advance school desegregation so that black kids could attend more privileged schools. He signed a vicious, victim-blaming welfare "reform" bill that played on the racist myth of inner-city Black women as morally bankrupt Welfare Queens to force hundreds of thousands of African-American single mothers into the super-exploited margins of the American labor market. This bill removed millions of black children from medical coverage, making them pay for their mothers' alleged insufficient appreciation of the capitalist work ethic. Clinton passed repressive crime legislation that significantly expanded the remarkable over-surveillance, arrest and incarceration of African-Americans for nonviolent crimes in the name of a War on Drugs that is really a war on young black males.
During all this, in a classic expression of what the brilliant author and activist Elaine Brown calls "New Age Racism," Clinton lectured blacks on the need to heal themselves and take personal and collective responsibility for overcoming the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. It was and is a sentiment shared among many whites across the partisan board.
Or take George W. Bush, who boasts a number of black cabinet members, leads all Presidents except Clinton in naming women and minorities to political appointments, counts African-Americans among his intimate associates and has denounced Lott's comments as "contrary to the spirit of this country." Like Clinton, Bush rejects the notion that the US government owes black Americans even an apology for the crimes and legacy of slavery. He appointed as US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who opposes affirmative action and shares Bush's enthusiasm for the racially disparate death penalty and racist mass incarceration fueled by the War on Drugs. He pushed through an education "reform" that punished minority schools that fail to raise student test scores but does nothing to reform the nation's regressive, racist school funding system or address the savage re-segregation of American schools documented by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. At the same time, Bush embraces private school voucher plans that will only worsen the under-funding and segregation of the nation's schools – problems that particularly affect black kids.
He is strictly opposed to national health care, of course. His version is of welfare "reform" is harsher than Clinton's, expanding work requirements but denying significant job assistance in a time of recession and insidiously suggesting that moral laxity in the form of single-parenthood are the real cause of black poverty. Bush has spearheaded monumentally regressive tax cuts and launched an historic expansion of imperial "defense" expenditures that combined to limit desperately needed (especially by poor blacks) social programs while making the disproportionately white rich richer and the disproportionately black poor poorer. He as refused to extend unemployment benefits for the nations' disproportionately black jobless; 800,000 Americans without work are scheduled to lose their benefits on December 28th (Happy Holidays). He spearheaded a "faith-based" initiative that gives federal funding to religious groups that provide social services without requiring compliance with anti-discrimination laws. He shares Clinton's tendency to lecture blacks on the need to take responsibility for their own plight while embracing "free trade" and prison-filling "get-tough on crime" policies that make it yet more difficult for disadvantaged blacks to make it in America. Owing his Presidency in part to racist felony disenfranchisement laws and other race-based voting rights problems in Florida, Bush used 9-11 as a pretext to assault civil liberties (always a special concern for the black community) at home and to divide Americans yet further along lines of class and race.
"Changing One Horse for Another"
Or look at the records of those who were considered most likely to replace Lott as Majority Leader – Bill Frist (T-Tenn), a close Bush ally, Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania). Each of these Senators receive an ‘F' from the NAACP for their recent voting history. In the last Congress, they voted for school vouchers, against raising school spending, for Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut, against strengthening the federal response to hate crimes, against managed care health reform, for the nomination of Ashcroft and against funding for bilingual education and (surprise) restoring ex-felons' voting rights. No wonder that civil rights movement veteran and US Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) remarked that the Senate Republican Party would respond to the Lott fiasco by "just … changing one [racist] horse for another [racist] horse."
Lott's successor, Frist, has voted against community technology centers for minority neighborhoods, sanctions for predatory lending, the expansion of minority higher education credits, increasing global funding to address the AIDS crisis in Africa, alternative voting verification methods and strong community investment requirements for banks. He has voted for decreasing voter registration through the purging of voting rolls and harsher juvenile criminal justice measures. A former surgeon with $25 million of stock in his family's for-profit hospital chain and a recipient of massive campaign largesse from the pharmaceutical industry, Frist has led the effort to deny serious health care reform to the nation's poorest citizens. He sponsored pharmaceutical giant Eli-Lily's campaign to win federal protection (strangely included in the recent Homeland Security bill) from lawsuits by parents of children who developed autism as a result of faulty child vaccines.
How offensive, then, it was to see the Chicago Tribune's editorial writers recently laud Frist as a "southerner who has no unsavory history on racial issues" and has "distinguished himself for his work on health care issues" (CT, 21 December, 2002). The Tribune applauded Frist's "longstanding practice of traveling to Africa every year to work as a medical missionary" – ministering perhaps to some of the millions of Africans who are effectively denied access to life-prolonging AIDS drugs by American drug companies protecting their patent monopolies in the name of "free trade." Such are the perverse racial sensibilities of New Age Racism, whereby the defeat of level-one racism obscures and provides cover for the disease's deeper variant, which is most efficiently spread by policymakers who know enough to sell their policies and values as "color-blind" and consistent with the principles of King.
Another Dangerous Opportunity for White Racial Self Congratulation
For those who like to think that racism has been swept into the dustbin of American history, it is comforting to see the heavily white-led and white-supported Republican Party drum their own Senate Majority Leader out of office because of his "intemperate remarks." The harsh reality missing from "mainstream" (really corporate) media accounts is that the party's post-Lott downfall agenda is the same and as fundamentally racist as the one before his "gaffe." Lott was removed from Republican leadership because his breach of good taste threatened to take the color-blind veneer off the deep racism at the heart of the party's assault on affirmative action, civil rights legislation, and social democratic public policy in general. As an article recently posted on The Black Commentator (www.blackcommentator.com) noted, "Lott had to go in order to maintain the momentum of the GOP's assault on affirmative action and civil rights leadership."
In this regard, it is interesting to note how much more forceful top Republicans were than leading national Democrats in calling for Lott's demotion. The latter undoubtedly hoped to run against a party stuck with a publicly exposed racist in a leadership position. Such a target promised to help them continue to garner the lion's share of the black vote. It also promised to divert attention from their own heavy involvement in the deeper covert and systemic racism that envelopes this nation from top to bottom. Such is the persistent and tragic reality of race in an age when white America loves to congratulate itself for dropping racial slurs from acceptable public discourse, outlawing lynch-mobs, letting blacks sit in the front of the bus, and claiming to honor the legacy of King.
The most depressing and distressing thing about the Lott fiasco is the way it is providing white America yet another dangerous opportunity to pat itself on the back for advancing beyond the primitive state of level-one racism while digging the hole of the deeper racism yet deeper.
Paul Street is Vice President for Research and Planning at the Chicago Urban League. His articles and essays have appeared in Z Magazine, Monthly Review, the Journal of American Ethnic History and Dissent. He is the author of The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago, IL: Chicago Urban League, 2002), which can be viewed at www.cul-chicago.org.
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