Category: Struggle for African American equality
worker |
January 19, 2016 |
7:50 pm | African American history, Analysis, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
worker |
August 25, 2015 |
12:47 pm | African American Culture, African American history, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
The Music of Malcolm X
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-music-of-malcolm-x
worker |
July 11, 2015 |
8:39 pm | African American Culture, African American history, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
By James Thompson
The Houston Communist Party wholeheartedly commends the decision by the South Carolina legislature to take down the stars and bars from the state capital. This is only right given the tragedy that occurred in a Charleston church recently.
Although this is a great leap forward, it is only a beginning. So much more needs to be done throughout the country.
The previously posted article “Bring down all racist symbols!†opens a series on this website dealing with racist symbols throughout this country. People in the USA should remember that the people of Germany renounced all Nazi symbols after the conclusion of World War II (also called the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union).
While the propaganda machine in the USA lambastes other countries for human rights abuses, the USA has failed to formally renounce its own history of human rights abuse. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)
The people of the USA need to take a critical look at our history and begin the process of redemption and reconciliation.
Let us start at home in Houston. However, we won’t stop here.
There has been a recent effort to rename Dowling Street to Emancipation Avenue in Houston. It is clear that the time has come to do this and any effort to resist this progressive development can only be characterized as racist. http://www.khou.com/story/news/local/neighborhood/2015/07/10/push-to-change-confederate-street-name-in-houston/29994145/
Much more needs to be done.
Houston’s most prestigious university, Rice University, was named after a vicious slaveholder, William Marsh Rice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Marsh_Rice . Rice accumulated a fabulous fortune from the labor of his slaves. The history of his life was a series of scandals and struggles to steal the wealth produced by his slaves. More research into the history of William Marsh Rice is needed but it is clear that it is a travesty for a prestigious university to be named after a slaveholding scoundrel. Graduates of Rice should renounce the racist history of their university and demand that the University be renamed. Further, it should be demanded that any descendents of the slaves which contributed to the wealth of William Marsh Rice and the University receive full scholarships for study at the University.
The Houston Communist Party welcomes any contributions about the issue of taking down racist symbols. Please submit to PHill1917@comcast.net .
worker |
July 7, 2015 |
8:33 pm | African American history, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
Racism: Hidden in Full View
– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/
How Pundits and the Media Deflect Attention from the Cancer
The June 18 murder of nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina was a racist act, a calculated political statement, an assassination, another instance of the pervasive racism that has seeped into everyday life.
It was not an act of derangement or a flag-inspired event. It was not a crime directed against religious practitioners or as an attention-getter. It was not caused by gun-mania. Nor was it terror-driven. It was not the inexplicable act of a lone, desperate gunman. Politicians, “experts,†and the media want you to believe it was any and all of these things.
They do not want you to see it for what it was: a deliberate, racist murder that springs from the politics, institutions, and culture of the United States.
For days, talk radio, NPR, network news, and the commentariat debated a civil war battle flag, as though racism would be extinguished if all the symbols associated with the losing side in a civil war concluded one hundred-fifty years ago were expunged from public display. Liberals talked of removing street signs and statues. Symbol watch dogs now ceaselessly scrutinize everything from Civil War re-enactors to license plates, as if a world absent these reminders of slavery would eradicate racism. The stench of racism is being taken for its fetid substance.
Gun control advocates reached out to remind us of the damage that a .45 caliber Glock pistol can do. They spin the assassination as enabled by the availability of lethal firearms, conveniently ignoring the ugly legacy of racist violence through lynchings, bombings, and burnings. In the minds of many commentators, the Charleston event was little different from unfortunate, everyday violence perpetrated with guns. Racism is swept under the rug.
And then there are the hair-splitters who want to press the description of “terrorist†on the young racist assassin, correctly noting the hypocrisy of applying it selectively for some acts and not others. But the word “terrorism†has no legitimate use. It is dishonestly stretched to include virtually every national liberation movement from the Algerian FLN, the Palestinian PLO, to the South African ANC, earning Nelson Mandela the dubious distinction of being labeled a terrorist. On the other hand, the term has been opportunistically shrunk to exclude the death squads in US-friendly nations and the death-dealing, genocidal invasions and aggressions of the US military and its NATO allies. “Terrorist†has become the emotive expletive reserved for the victims of the bullies of the world. Does it enlighten to include the racist killer in the corrupted category of terrorist?
Talk show hosts think so. They consult experts to debate the question. And the question of racism is again evaded.
Politicians speak earnestly of a conversation or a dialogue on race. They want no such discussion unless it skirts the question of societal, institutional racism. They do no want to raise the matter of African American joblessness or African American poverty. They do not want to acknowledge the fact that many if not most Northern Blacks live in urban ghettos akin to Apartheid Bantustans. While African Americans are not required to carry internal passports, their skin color serves the same purpose in modern-day North America.
The media windbags will not revisit the betrayal of school desegregation in the 1974 Supreme Court decision Milliken v Bradley which effectively eviscerated Brown v Board of Education. The Burger Court stopped the desegregation process at the city limits, stoking white flight, accelerating the neglect of urban schools, and stifling the opportunity for urban African Americans to get a decent, equal education.
No leader dares shed light on the mass incarceration of Blacks, a process that has left millions of African American males socially ostracized, disenfranchised, and removed from life-opportunities. The passing of draconian laws and the simultaneous militarization of the police forces have been enforced with a Nazi-like brutality, only now marginally recognized by a justice-impaired media.
Pundits and policy makers willfully ignore the extreme and asymmetrical effects of radical deindustrialization upon the Black working class in Midwestern cities since the 1980’s. Once vital, neighborhoods are now in shambles. And throughout the United States the near absence of Black faces on building sites can only be overlooked by those choosing to ignore it.
Public spaces for candid discussion and debate are dominated by shrill voices of fear. Before there was a Red scare in the US, before there was hysterical fear of Islam, there was fear of Black people. Birth of a Nation and Willie Horton book-end a century of scurrilous demonization of African Americans. Like anti-Communism and Muslim-hating, the consciously contrived fear of Blacks distracts the majority from its own grievances, its own abuse at the hands of the rich and powerful.
It is a bitter irony that these fears once enriched realtors who used the Black scare to herd whites to the suburbs and exurbs. Their children are now “gentrifying†cities, forcing Blacks from formerly affordable housing and out of these same cities, a not-too-subtle form of ethnic cleansing worthy of the Israeli settler-colonists in Palestine.
And when Black people rise up, as they did in Ferguson, Baltimore, and hundreds of places earlier, they are labeled “thugs,†“looters,†and “rioters.†The same press that delivers only invective in response to African American insurgency hypocritically labels Nazis in Ukraine “freedom fighters.†The same press that celebrates US-instigated coups against elected governments in Honduras and Ukraine finds nothing noteworthy in the institutional disenfranchisement of Black people through electoral maneuvers.
It is not merely hypocrisy that infects our media and culture, but the malignancy of racism. Mass culture– television, film, etc– and news media almost universally depict urban African Americans as gangsters, drug dealers, addicts, and other purveyors of violence and vulgarity. True, mass culture occasionally portrays Blacks sympathetically, but as the exceptional character escaping dysfunctionality.
The example of a dramatic shift in popular acceptance of gay marriage demonstrates the power of a cultural shift, a mainstreaming of a minority. As the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows, in only six years– from 2009 to 2015– support for gay marriage grew by 20 points, from 40% to 60%. This remarkable turn-around surely shows the effects of depicting gays as sympathetic figures in movies, sitcoms, news print, etc.
While the media should be applauded for helping secure this welcome change, it must be roundly condemned for persisting in demonizing African Americans. No similar effort has been made to mainstream Blacks. Instead, the powers owning and controlling our news and entertainment corporations fuel the fear, disdain, and even hatred directed at African Americans. They depict a minority alien to the values of hard work, civility, and respect. By portraying Blacks (and Hispanics as well as other minorities) as unworthy, they support their ruling class brothers and sisters and sow disunity in order to guarantee low wages and benefits, a ravaged social safety net, and social and political stability. There is nothing that ruling class elites fear more than the dissolving of the divisions, prejudices, and ignorance that preclude a unified, clear-sighted working class.
The corporate cultural and news complex, more than a shabby Civil War symbol, is responsible for the tragic event of June 18.
Given centuries of oppression and exploitation, along with a relentless campaign of social rejection, it is no wonder that Blacks are the only social group in the US with a more positive view of socialism than capitalism (Pew Research Center, May 4, 2010). One would hope that this wisdom garnered from the harsh lash of capitalism will be welcomed by others who are appalled by our country’s treatment of their fellow citizens.
Zoltan Zigedy
worker |
May 31, 2015 |
3:09 pm | African American history, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
worker |
April 14, 2015 |
10:01 pm | Action, African American history, police terrorism, political struggle, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
We Charge Genocide!
By James Thompson and A. Shaw
Workers in the United States and around the world unite to renew the 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide†submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress and others. The 1951 petition opposed the genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States at that time. This renewal opposes the contemporary genocidal violence towards African-Americans in the United States and it is a plea for relief from the United Nations.
The United Nations declared that genocide imperils world peace. The opening statement of the 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” reads “The responsibility is particularly grave when citizens must charge their own government with mass murder of its own nationals, with institutionalized oppression and persistent slaughter of the Negro people in the United States on a basis of ‘race,’ a crime abhorred by mankind and prohibited by the conscience of the world as expressed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948.”
The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called “genocide.”
Article III described five punishable forms of the crime of genocide: genocide; conspiracy, incitement, attempt and complicity.
64 years after the original petition “We Charge Genocide” was filed, the people of the United States continue to be subjected to the most violent terrorism by the government. One sector of the population, African-Americans, has borne and continues to bear the brunt of this terrorism. The terrorism is multifaceted and includes murders of individuals by the police, mass incarceration, unbearably high unemployment rates, homelessness, lack of access to healthcare and education, drug infestation, soaring crime rates, endless wars and capital punishment.
According to the NAACP, 76 “unarmed men and women of color” were murdered by police officers between 1999 and 2014.
The 1951 petition “We Charge Genocide” points out that violence on our shores leads to violence against other countries and this insight is just as true today as it was then.
We demand that the genocidal violence against African-Americans in the United States end immediately. The recent increase in police murders of African-Americans in the United States must cease immediately. If these senseless murders continue, it will become readily apparent to all that these acts may be a result of some deranged national policy. Similarly, we will not tolerate mass incarceration and astronomical unemployment rates any longer. The lack of affordable housing, and diminishing access to healthcare and education leads to drug infestation and soaring crime rates and this must be reversed if we are to continue as a civilized society.
The lack of opportunity for young black people in the USA propels them towards either mass incarceration or military service. Mass incarceration and military service are modern day forms of slavery. We demand that young African-Americans have opportunities to be productive members of society and fulfill their potentials.
The death penalty must be stopped on a national level. It has been disproportionately administered to African-Americans in the USA. It is inherently cruel and unusual punishment. It is an egregious violation of human rights. It is genocidal.
Please join the fight for justice in the USA and to end the genocidal practices against African-Americans. Do this to honor Michael Brown, James Byrd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Eric Courtney Harris and many others.
Please click on the link to sign the petition:
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/we-charge-genocide-1?source=c.em&r_by=8638452
worker |
March 9, 2015 |
7:51 pm | African American Culture, African American history, Struggle for African American equality |
Comments closed
MLTodayConnect with Us
- CPUSA National
- People’s World
- An error has occurred, which probably means the feed is down. Try again later.
- Political Affairs