You should know as we begin our week in Washington that a different language is spoken here, a sort of Orwellian code.
"Bi-partisanship," for example, in Washington means "when the other side caves in." "Spreading peace" means "pre-emptive war." "Staying the course" means "to relentlessly pursue a disastrous policy regardless of the consequences." "Compassionate conservatism" translates into "tax cuts for the rich." "Endangered species in need of government protection" are "the rich people's families who inherit mega estates."
"Activist judges" are "jurists who do not belong to the Federalist Society." "Non-partisan judicial appointees" are "jurists who do belong to the Federalist Society." "Faith-based initiative" means "passing out money and saying 'trust me'".
"Moral values" equate to "keeping homosexual illegal immigrants from burning flags." And "racial discrimination", of course, is "a problem of the past which no longer exists...."
In 1968, the Kerner Commission concluded that "white racism" was the single most important cause of continued racial inequality in income, housing, employment, education and life chances between blacks and whites.
But by the middle 1970s, the growing numbers of blacks pressing into traditionally white institutions created a backlash in the discourse about race.
Opinion leaders - both inside and outside government - began to reformulate the terms of the discussion. No longer was the Kerner Commission's finding acceptable. Instead, black behavior became the reason why blacks and whites live in separate worlds. Racism retreated and pathology advanced, and the burden of racial problem solving shifted from racism's perpetrators to its victims.
The failure of the lesser breeds to enjoy society's fruits became their fault alone. Thus pressure for additional, stronger civil rights laws became special pleading. America's most privileged population - white men - suddenly became a victim class. Aggressive and insatiable blacks were responsible for America's demise.
The cause of racial inequality migrated from bigotry and discrimination to individual and group misbehavior, equating race with deficiency.
But present day inequality and racial disparities are cumulative. They are the result of racial advantages compounded over time - and they "produce racialized patterns of accumulation and dis-accumulation. As a result, racial inequality is imbedded into the fabric of post-civil rights movement American society."
Another front against racial justice was opened in the same period and has gained strength and power ever since. Often led by scholars and academicians and funded by corporate America, this movement aimed at removing government regulation from every aspect of life and found a handy, hated target in civil rights....
Today's apologists argue that discrimination against minorities is not a problem; society has to protect itself from discrimination against the majority instead.
They argue that America is color blind, despite a recent national survey which reported that the majority of whites believe blacks and Hispanics prefer welfare to work, are lazier, more prone to violence, less intelligent and less patriotic....
Recently I visited Berea College in Kentucky, opened by abolitionists as an integrated school in 1855. It was closed by the Civil War, but opened again in 1866 with 187 students - 96 blacks and 91 whites. It dared to provide a rare commodity in the former slave states – an education open to all - blacks and whites, women and men.
One of those early students was my grandfather, James Bond. Like many others, I am the grandson of a slave. My grandfather was born in 1863, in Kentucky; freedom didn't come for him until the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865.
He and his mother were property, like a horse or a chair. As a young girl, she had been given away as a wedding present to a new bride, and when that bride became pregnant, her husband - that's my great-grandmother's owner and master - exercised his right to take his wife's slave as his mistress.
That union produced two children, one of them my grandfather.
At age 15, barely able to read and write, he hitched his tuition - a steer - to a rope and walked across Kentucky to Berea College and the college took him in.
My grandfather belonged to a transcendent generation of black Americans, a generation born into slavery, freed by the Civil War, determined to make their way as free women and men....
When my grandfather graduated from Berea, in 1892, the college asked him to deliver the commencement address.
He said then:
The pessimist from his corner looks out on the world of wickedness and sin, and blinded by all that is good or hopeful in the condition and progress of the human race, bewails the present state of affairs and predicts woeful things for the future.
In every cloud he beholds a destructive storm, in every flash of lightning an omen of evil, and in every shadow that falls across his path a lurking foe.
He forgets that the clouds also bring life and hope, that lightning purifies the atmosphere, that shadow and darkness prepare for sunshine and growth, and that hardships and adversity nerve the race, as the individual, for greater efforts and grander victories.
'Greater efforts and grander victories.' That was the promise made by the generation born in slavery more than 140 years ago. That was the promise made by the generation that won the great world war for democracy six decades ago. That was the promise made by those who brought democracy to America's darkest corners four decades ago, and that is the promise we must all seek to honor today.
In honoring that promise, we remember what Dr. King said when he confronted the Vietnam war: "Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.[But] we must speak . [and we must] move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high ground of a firm dissent based upon the mandates and the reading of history."
So speak we will. Oppose we must.
Recent events only serve to underscore how the war in Iraq has weakened, rather than strengthened, America's defenses, including our levees.
The war has as much to do with terrorism as the administration has to do with compassion.
Early on, they decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to disobey the rules, including the Geneva Conventions and the United States Constitution.
This war isn't just about torture; it's about tortured lies. The problem isn't that we cannot prosecute a war in the Persian Gulf and protect our citizens on the Gulf Coast here at home. The problem is that we cannot do either one.
They know all about 'cut and run'. That's what they do – cut taxes for the rich and run the country into the ground. They have continued an assault on our civil liberties and civil rights, orchestrated a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, increased poverty every year they've been in office, created dangerous deficits, substituted religion for science, ignored global warming, wrecked environmental protections.
We pay starkly for this folly - not just in monies spent and lives lost abroad, but in monies not spent and lives lost here at home.
They used 9/11 as an excuse to wage war in Iraq. Then they used the hurricane as an excuse to wash away decent pay for workers and fairness for minority and women-owned businesses. They are turning the recovery over to the same no-bid corporate looters who are profiting from the misery of Iraq.
They boasted they wanted to make the government so small it would drown in a bathtub - and in New Orleans, it did.
But Katrina and its aftermath forced President Bush to go on television and acknowledge the "deep, persistent poverty" which exists in our country. "That poverty," the President said, "has its roots in a history of racial discrimination...."
[W]hen I am asked why the NAACP doesn't focus on social service, and why we don't surrender to the great tutorial instinct so prominent among blacks in the middle class, the urge to instruct our less fortunate brothers and sisters and their children in the proper way of doing things, of saving, of learning and speaking, I respond that we are an organization that fights racial discrimination. There are thousands of organizations in America which deliver social service, and properly so. The NAACP is one of very few which concentrates on social justice. We believe that racial discrimination is a prime reason why the divide between black and white life chances remains so deep. And we believe that to the degree we are able to reduce discrimination and close these race-caused gaps, we will see the economic and educational lives of our people improve and their prosperity increase. We believe that when our people have social justice, they will need fewer social services....
Today, 37 million Americans live in poverty. They represent about 13 percent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. Their number has grown since 2001, with 5.4 million people having slipped below the poverty line during the Bush Administration.
Most of America's poor are not lazy or listless. They aren't even unemployed. Most have jobs. Many have two. But they don't have health insurance.
Even families with two working parents are often one step away from financial catastrophe. The minimum wage, which is $5.15 an hour, has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956.
What do the powers-that-be value? They would rather provide minimum taxes for the wealthy than a higher minimum wage for the workers.
And so the gap grows between the haves and the have-nots. The top 20 percent of earners take over half the national income, while the bottom 20 percent gets just 3.4 percent. Black Americans, of course, are more likely to be among the bottom-earners than the top. Almost a quarter of Black Americans live below the poverty line as compared to only 8.6 percent of whites.
What do the powers-that-be value?
We have a President who had to be told he was subject to the rule of law, but at least the Supreme Court was up to the task. Two weeks ago, the Court rejected the President's plan for trying detainees at Guantanamo, saying "the executive is bound to comply with the rule of law that prevails in this jurisdiction."
The President's approach to the detainees is part of one of the broadest efforts to expand Presidential power in all of American history. Rather than demonstrating a belief in the rule of law, President Bush has claimed the authority to disobey the law.
Some of the results - torturing detainees, spying on Americans, are notorious; others are hardly acknowledged. One reason this President is the first in modern history who has never vetoed a bill is because, after publicly signing a bill, he quietly files a "signing statement" - where he asserts the right not to follow the new law he has just signed.
This has happened more than 750 times. Among the laws the President has said he could ignore are military rules and regulations, "whistle-blower" protections, safeguards against political interference in federally funded research, and affirmative action requirements. At least nine times he has disagreed with provisions seeking to ensure that minorities receive government jobs, contracts, and grants.
Our history as a nation and our long dedication to the rule of law must cause all Americans to disagree with the President's arrogation of power and disregard of our laws in secretly assuming powers he does not have.
We had wondered - if the President has inherent authority, not sanctioned by law or court ruling, to eavesdrop, to kidnap and torture, to detain indefinitely, what is it he cannot do?
Now we are grateful that the Supreme Court has ruled that there are things the President cannot do, there are powers he does not have. But only five Justices subscribed to this view, reminding us once again of the value of one vote....
Although blacks are roughly 13 percent of monthly users of illegal drugs, blacks are 30 percent of drug arrests, 53 percent of drug convictions, and a staggering 67 percent of the people imprisoned for drug offenses.
"Because of the explosion of incarceration driven by drug prohibition, more than 5 million people are now barred from voting."
We are the only industrial democracy that does this. As a result, in the states of the Deep South, almost one-third of all black men are barred from voting because of felony convictions, some of them permanently.
We only need look at Florida in 2000 to see what this means. There, 200,000 blacks were barred from voting because of prior felonies. If as few as one-third of them had cast votes, in the proportion that blacks usually vote Democratic, Al Gore would have won Florida by 42,000 votes.
The stakes could not be higher, so voters they cannot bar, they try to suppress.
In 2004, the NAACP and People for the American Way (PFAW) documented the long history of efforts to keep minorities from casting votes.
They posted armed guards and real and make-believe police officers at the polls. They told black voters they could cast votes on alternative days, even after the actual election was over. They demanded forms of identification not required by law. They told voters outstanding warrants or utility bills would prevent them from voting. They said immigration officials would haunt the polls, checking on voters' immigration status. They constructed phony purge lists which included names of long-time legitimate voters. They loosed the FBI and State Police on elderly voters. They set up so-called "ballot security" and "ballot integrity" programs, based on the racist and unfounded presumption that minority voters are inveterate election-day cheaters, and they harassed and intimidated those voters at will.
As we approach this year's mid-term elections, these efforts are again rampant. If they're this afraid of our votes, those votes must be really valuable to someone. We vow to protect this precious power.
Our troops may be fighting to secure democracy abroad, but we must fight to make our democracy secure at home.
This is a war, friends, and we are on the front lines. Their weapons of choice this year are discouraging and criminalizing registration drives, purging eligible voters, and imposing unreasonable identification requirements.
They claim these are anti-fraud measures. They spell fraud N-E-G-R-O. Any party that attacks my right to vote isn't interested in winning my vote.
In Florida, they're at it again. The legislature passed a law in January seemingly aimed at making voter registration by nonprofit organizations impossible. The law imposes onerous fines and penalties if voter registration forms are turned in late, for any reason, even a hurricane or other event beyond anyone's control.
"Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting."
The latest such measure comes from Ohio, the Florida of the 2004 election, where election rules are issued by Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Clarence Thomas of state elected officials. Blackwell has implemented new rules making some legitimate voter registration activities punishable as crimes.
If you manage to register, you might still be purged from voting lists, even - or maybe especially - if you are black and serving in the armed forces. A GOP purge in 2004 targeted black service men and women overseas, identifying them as registering to vote from false addresses when letters sent to their home addresses intentionally marked "do not forward" were then returned as "undeliverable." They even make war on our soldiers' rights. Iraqi citizens living in the United States could vote in their elections; some Americans fighting in Iraq could not vote in theirs....
[T]his year we observe the 100th anniversary of the Niagara Movement, forerunner of the NAACP, at Harpers Ferry. It was at Harpers Ferry, in 1859, that the abolitionist John Brown fired what many believe was the first shot of the Civil War.
Before the raid, John Brown met secretly with Frederick Douglass in a small town in Southern Pennsylvania. Brown explained his plan for attacking the arsenal at Harpers Ferry and starting a slave insurrection.
He told Douglass: "[W]hen I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them." Douglass refused and tried to dissuade Brown, fearing that Harpers Ferry was
a military trap.
Douglass turned to his servant, Shields Green, like Douglass an escaped slave, and said, "Let's go, Shields". Shields Green replied, "I believe I'll go with the old man."
Shields Green would die, along with Brown and 16 of his 21 other men, at Harpers Ferry. But they would not die in vain.
As our founder W. E. B. DuBois wrote: "Jesus Christ came not to bring peace but a sword. So did John Brown. Jesus Christ gave his life as a sacrifice for the lowly. So did John Brown."
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