People Before Profit blog

Ending the U.S. blockade of Cuba an uphill battle in Congress

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 14:41:00 +0000

The same politicians that uphold the Confederate flag as part of American heritage believe Cuba should be blockaded, isolated and overrun by McDonalds and Burger King franchises that pay starvation wages.

To understand the political and economic injustice of slavery, racism and intolerance, one must dig deep into the roots of pre-Civil war history. A military adventurer from Texas named Narciso Lopez (1799-1851) led an ill-fated attempt to annex Cuba to the United States through a plan developed to extend the Southern slavocracy. It ended abruptly on Cuban soil.

While slavery was not abolished until October 1886 by Spanish royal decree, Cuba's neighbor to the North watched jealously as Mambises (Black patriots), criollos, peasants and independentistas fought the Necessary War (1895) organized by José Martí to gain freedom from colonial domination and prevent U.S. takeover of the American Hemisphere.

History has recorded that Cuba's long struggle for independence continued until the revolutionary victory of the Rebel Army led by Fidel Castro began on January 1, 1959. Why, then, do U.S. politicians that support efforts to destabilize Cuba drag their heels six months after the agreement by Presidents Obama and Raul Castro to change course last December 17, 2014?

For example, on Friday, June 12, 2015, the U.S. Committee on appropriations approved $30 million for "programs to promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Cuba," of which not less than $8 million shall be for the (anti-democratic) National Endowment for Democracy.

The House Appropriations Committee defeated an amendment by Rep. José Serrano (D- NY), to cut funding for Radio/TV Marti by $5 million (18 yes - 30 No). Another amendment which sought to restore funding for a potential U.S. embassy in Cuba was withdrawn after sensing it would also be defeated.

Does this not violate the original intent to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba?

Advancing the interest of both peoples becomes possible when U.S./Cuba negotiators can discuss all relevant issues. Common ground had already been established. In addition, numerous subjects concerning environmental protection from oil spills, hurricane response preparation and coordinated drug interdiction efforts could be discussed in the confines of either embassy.

Instead, extremists chip away at every opportunity to limit the scope of participation by both governments to resolve differences. In this instance, Cuba has pointed out that their freedom and independence is a non-negotiable item in the framework of current negotiations. They are asserting their inalienable right. Why the disconnect?

On September 14, 2015, authorization for the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) is due to expire. As a World War I Act designed to cordon off support for allies, and deny aid to combatants considered a threat to US forces, it served a purpose. But, the United States and Cuba are not at war. This was a pretext inserted into Title I of Helms-Burton as a measure to strengthen sanctions against the Castro government.

Thus, TWEA provides the basis for civil penalties and fines levied on U.S. citizens who travel to Cuba without a U.S. government license. This act was arbitrarily applied to prevent visitors from spending money in Cuba where Helms-Burton is considered slavery law.

Denying U.S. citizens their Constitutional right to travel and exchange educational, cultural and personal experience with their Cuban brothers and sisters is a stupid policy that has failed for more than 50 years. Congress continues to lag behind events.

The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act (S.299) sponsored by Senators Jeff Flake and Patrick Leahy has 43 co-sponsors. It does not, however, strike at the central contradiction in U.S. policy toward Cuba. The demand that President Obama sunset TWEA and terminate any contemplation to extend authorization of the act is a necessary element that conveys good faith in the negotiation process. The TWEA has no legitimacy because Cuba is not a threat to U.S. national security.

Politicians aren't interested in the opinions of people who can't vote for them! Insist that your senators support S.299 and overturn blockade legislation including repeal of Helms-Burton. Then ask your Representative to support its companion bill in the House, HR 664. Contact information for both your senators and your congressperson can be found on the official congressional website.

If they can take down the racist Confederate flag in South Carolina, they can end the criminal blockade of Cuba.

Photo: Tourists relax at the Hotel National, overlooking Morro Castle in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan, File)

From symbol to substance, is a new South coming?

Tue, 30 Jun 2015 11:39:00 +0000

"It is time to move the flag from the capitol grounds." With those words, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley captured the new understanding that came after the brutal murders of nine church members in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Over the weekend, I attended the emotionally draining funerals held for the slain. The governor attended each, receiving thanks for her commitment.

The blood of martyrs often changes the way we see. That was true after Emmett Till's http://www.peoplesworld.org/setting-the-record-straight-for-emmett-till/ mutilated 14-year-old body was displayed in an open casket in 1955. It was true in 1963, after the four little girls were blown up http://www.peoplesworld.org/today-in-labor-history-racists-bomb-birmingham-church-kill-4-children/ in the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. It was true after Dr. King was assassinated http://www.peoplesworld.org/memphis-1968-we-remember/ in Memphis. In South Carolina, the "amazing grace" of the relatives of the victims, directly offering the murderer forgiveness opened the way. The governor's declaration on the flag took the first step. Now states and companies across the South are taking down the Confederate flags and putting them - so long a symbol of hate - into the museums where it belongs.

Removing the flag is long overdue. But for the crucifixion to turn into a resurrection will require removing the flag agenda, not just the flag, addressing the substance, not just the symbol. South Carolina - like many states of the old Confederacy - has refused to accept federal money to expand Medicaid. This deprives at least 160,000 lower-income workers of affordable health care, and costs an estimated 200 lives a year. It deprives the state of $12 billion in federal money from 2014 to 2020. That costs the state's hospitals and medical facilities dearly. South Carolina could use this moment to accept the money and aid its workers, disproportionately people of color.

South Carolina is one of the states - aligning once more with many in the old Confederacy - to pass measures restricting the right to vote, particularly an onerous voter ID law, challenged by the NAACP and others as racially discriminatory. The state could express the consciousness by repealing this law.

South Carolina State University, the historically black college in Orangeburg, is imperiled. It remains open, still accredited but on probation due to its financial difficulties. The state has changed its leadership. Now is the time for the state to act boldly to rescue the only historically black college in the state.

As President Obama stated in his memorial address, we've had enough talk about race. Now is time for action. Action that will turn this act of terror into an era of new hope, this expression of the Old South into a reaffirmation of the New South, this crucifixion into a resurrection.

Action now is essential for the old forces of hate and division still exist. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that five predominantly black churches have caught fire over the past week, four in the South and one in Ohio, apparent targets of arsonists. Only continued action to bring us together can insure that we overcome those who would use terror and fear to drive us apart.

Gov. Haley has shown the way. She didn't wait for opinion polls. She didn't put her finger into the wind to see which way it was blowing. She worried about her state, asking "How are we ever going to pull this back together." And so she acted on the flag, starting a movement that is sweeping the South. Now the governor might show the way once more. Moving to pull the state together by acting on the substance of divisions as well as the symbols. The blood of the martyrs has once more forced us to look anew. Now is the time to act boldly to express this new consciousness.

Photo: Parishioners applaud during a memorial service at Morris Brown AME Church for the nine people killed June 17 during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., June 18. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

An American evolution: pride, love and rethinking social change

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 16:35:00 +0000

CHICAGO - This was one Pride Parade we were not going to miss. Apparently we were not alone because this past weekend millions of people celebrated a giant step forward on this nation's evolutionary path - the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states. The ruling came just two days before the Stonewall rebellion anniversary, June 28, the date around which pride parades take place. Simply put: Love won and millions celebrated even more heartily this year.

My family had marched in the Chicago Pride Parade in 2012 as part of the Barack Obama campaign contingent and it was one of the most incredible experiences we have ever had. The buoyancy and jubilation from the crowd that jammed the streets carried us to a beautiful place we had never been before. That's what love does. As the song goes, "What the world needs now is love sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little of. What the world needs now is love sweet love. No not just for some but for everyone." It has a power to change the world.

But this year it seemed that love has deepened. Evolution is in the air. The outpouring of love for the families of those nine innocents massacred in Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a racist terrorist has been accompanied by an unprecedented revulsion at a symbol held sacred by slavery supporters and apologists everywhere - the Confederate flag. Demands erupted to take down that symbol of a cause that - as President Obama put it simply in his eloquent eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney - "was wrong."

"Removing the flag from this state's capitol would not be an act of political correctness. It would not an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be acknowledgement that the cause for which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong," the president powerfully said.

The next day Bree Newsome, a 30-year-old black woman described as a "principled leader" originally from South Carolina and now living in Charlotte, N.C., performed another act of love. She climbed the state government's flagpole in Columbia, S.C. and cut down the Confederate flag flapping in the southern breeze. In that single act of love and courage Ms. Newsome sent an "instant message" heard round the world - and one that the American people in our multi-racial and multi-ethnic totality are ready to hear. After all the right-wing governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, has now called for the flag's removal, a call that has been repeated across the red state South. It was followed by pledges by giant retailers that they would stop selling the reviled symbol.

These retailers' announcements - including and especially Walmart's - should be welcomed because even though the form in which this decision has come is corporate, it is infused with content that their employees and their customers have created. That is not an insignificant development. When corporations take some kind of positive step it can often get overlooked or dismissed as PR without appreciating the class and social dynamics going on underneath the surface of such a decision.

Which brings me back to Chicago's Pride Parade. As we watched contingent after contingent, float after float, pass by, we could not help but notice the domination of corporate logos. But who were on those floats and marching down the street tossing out corporate paraphernalia to the adoring crowd? Workers, employees and their families and friends. It was another kind of Labor Day parade. Workplace after workplace came together to celebrate the right to be who you are and who you love. When you see Ford workers marching and carrying the Ford banner and wearing their Ford shirts with a UAW logo and a UAW banner in the mix, or Kraft employees or employees of insurance giant AON or sports teams like the Chicago Cubs, Bulls, Sky and Fire, or even Fox Chicago(!) in a jubilant display of upholding equality, you cannot help but realize the corporate logo is just the shell. The real living and breathing creature is these working people, friends, family and community. I did not see any 1 percenters marching or waving the rainbow flag: even if some in that elite group may support LGBT rights, they are inconsequential in forming this mass movement.

Of course the parade was also full of Christian and Jewish religious contingents, organizations like PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), Cook County's Ruth M. Rothstein CORE Center, which cares for people with diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Chicago Gender Society, a transgender and transsexual outreach group, small businesses like Alcala's Western Wear, and government workplaces like Chicago's Water Reclamation District and the Cook County State's Attorney office. The parade watchers were older and younger, families of all different colors, shapes and sizes. There was an outpouring of African-American youth there, which provided a stark contrast to the handful of backward ministers vowing to fight the Supreme Court decision. The victory for marriage equality has busted wide open a door to other democratic victories.

It's not too far of a leap from Black Lives Matter to Queer Lives Matter to All Lives Matter and that seems to be the moment we as a nation are in right now: a collective questioning of how all our lives matter and what blocks our individual and collective freedom to develop to our own potential. I think that mass questioning and what it can unlock often gets lost in narrow formulations - saying marriage equality is not significant enough of an issue and therefore downplaying this tremendous victory, or a knee-jerk pooh-pooh reaction to the corporate logos. Those are typical responses by some who consider themselves left or socialist. But that is not how masses of people are seeing it. For young people in particular, the Supreme Court decision has given them the life-changing collective experience that, yes, with struggle there is progress. For them, love won this round. And despite the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations cannot love. But people can.

Photo: Ford workers marching in the Pride Parade, carrying the Ford banner and wearing their Ford shirts with a UAW logo and a UAW banner. Teresa Albano/PW

Pope Francis offers a new vision for social and environmental justice

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 13:08:00 +0000

"We need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals... Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration."

"We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature."

"Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years... The earth's resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production."

- excerpts from the Papal Encyclical of Pope Francis

And so we have the outlines of a new, very powerful analysis and vision for social and environmental justice strongly delivered in the new Papal Encyclical of Pope Francis. It is very rare for a document calling for such fundamental change to put people and the earth before profits and the powerful-especially from the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion people.

It would be an awful tragedy for those of us who've struggled for justice against the most terrible forces of greed and evil to discount this Encyclical, because we have our own criticisms of the Catholic Church or even Pope Francis.

Rather it is crucial that we see the Pope's words as evidence, vindication, and powerful assistance in a building struggle or movement across the world.

We will not defeat the forces of greed and evil, which continue to force their will on our common home and our common good and our common humanity just by being right or correct. This fight in which we are engaged must be won with power from average people leveraged by moral authority.

Isn't that the ultimate lesson to left us by Dr. King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela?

So we read this wonderful Encyclical as an extremely important ally joining our struggle for justice.

And some of us read this letter as evidence of an inexorably growing movement for justice and common humanity.

"[The] common good calls for social peace, the stability and security provided by a certain order which cannot be achieved without particular concern for distributive justice; whenever this is violated, violence always ensues. Society as a whole, and the state in particular, are obliged to defend and promote the common good."

There is much, much more.

Photo: Children pass by posters with messages for Pope Francis as they carry plastics for recycling at the garbage dumpsite at suburban Quezon city northeast of Manila, Philippines. Pope Francis called for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he calls the "structurally perverse" economic system of the rich exploiting the poor that is turning Earth into an "immense pile of filth." (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Confederate flag, like the swastika, has no place in our future

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 12:35:00 +0000

BERLIN - Unlike the swastika, which was banned in Germany and elsewhere after the defeat of fascism in World War II, the Confederate flag was not banned in the U.S. after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War.

Flags and banners and even logos and gestures have always possessed great potency in world history, sometimes positive, often horrifyingly negative. Long insistence on the seemingly undefeatable Confederate "Stars and Bars" is one nasty example now at the center of attention.

Indeed flags, like the black-red-gold of Germans strivings for a republic, the revolutionary French tricolor, England's imperial Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes or the LGBT rainbow colors, with all their so very different messages - have lifted hearts or caused despair for centuries, too often accompanied by the always-red color of blood. Symbols on the flags have had the same effect; the Christian cross, the Muslim half-moon, the six-pointed Jewish Magen David and the hammer and sickle are striking examples, bad or good, depending on where you are standing.

Sometimes a motion was enough: fingers touching the body four times to form a cross, a two-fingered V for victory, upheld fists of many Communist fighters - or a defiantly poking middle finger.

Most notorious and most tragic, however, have been the Confederate flag in the U.S. and, in all of Europe and beyond, the fascist outstretched fascist arm salute to Hitler and the related Nazi swastika.

After the defeat of the Confederacy its banner was not forbidden. Those who display it claim that the display is protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Attempts to have it not banned but simply dropped from use by southern states and by racists, inside and outside the U.S.A were never successful.

Only now, after photos of the nine-fold killer in the Mother Emanuel Church with his flag became public, some governors and politicians in South Carolina, Alabama and other states finally find it necessary to drop it from official use - and hope the matter ends there.

As for the Nazi symbols, more than 50 million deaths caused by the Hitler-led killers demanded a more stringent reaction; the Hitler salute and the swastika were prohibited after 1945 in Germany and Austria, at first by the occupying powers, later by government law.

They also became criminal offenses in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the salute is illegal in Switzerland and Sweden "if used for propagating Nazi ideology."

In Germany any form of Nazi salute and any display of the swastika can be punished with up to three years in prison. Symbols like that of Hitler's special SS killer troops, a pair of Nordic runes like sharply angular S-letters, or the so-called wolf hook, a crossed line with a diagonal prong at either end, each facing a different direction, are also taboo; so are tricks like extending the arm as in a Hitler salute but with only three fingers. There has been no end of ingenuity in thinking up variants to circumvent such laws. With some judges this has occasionally been successful; usually it has not and often led to some new trick, like numbering the letters of the alphabet; 1 equals A, 8 equals H, thus 18 meant "Adolf Hitler," 88 stood for "Heil Hitler." This, too, is now forbidden. Special clothing has often been used by pro-Nazis for identification; not only black or camouflage dress and brutal boots but, for some years, jackets and other clothing of a company called Thor Steinar. Sold in special shops which barely disguised their pro-Nazi views, often "improved" with slogans or logos which could be altered if outlawed, this meant that a Thor Steinar jacket meant the wearer was a pro-Nazi, and often a brutal thug!

Until 2014, in Saxony‘s capital, Dresden, there were nine delegates of the neo-Nazi party, the NPD, in the state legislature. Once all nine appeared in Thor Steinar jackets. They were ordered to remove them or leave, and the clothing was henceforth forbidden there (and in other legislatures).

They are no longer represented in the legislature, but there are still more than enough neo-Nazis, with or without such jackets. They have been most numerous in or near Dresden. And new homes for asylum-seekers burn just as readily as southern churches for African-Americans.

Swastika bans were enacted in both the East German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, with one major difference. When the Communist Party of Germany was forbidden in the Federal Republic (the West) in 1956 its symbols were also taboo, but were difficult to outlaw since the hammer and sickle were also the official insignia of the USSR. Diplomatic relations prevented nonsense in this regard.

But five years earlier, in 1951, the FDJ, the Free German Youth, a pro-Communist youth organization, which till then existed in all of Germany, was forbidden in the West. Its rising sun logo with the letters FDJ was also forbidden. Young people were actually arrested for wearing its blue shirt with this logo on its sleeve.

A new problem arose with the annexation - called "unification" - of the GDR. The FDJ had been disbanded but one small left-wing group refused to recognize the demise of either the GDR or the FDJ and wore the blue shirt with logo at demonstrations. Since it had never been forbidden in the East it could not be considered legally taboo there - or could it? Must a person change his shirt on the subway train crossing from East to West Berlin? The lawyers are still arguing.

This was part of unceasing media and classroom attempts to equate Nazi Germany with the GDR, denouncing every last detail and every achievement of the GDR and thus hinder any hopes of a socialist future, especially among the younger generation. This policy of deception has often proved very successful; it is closely allied with pressures and propaganda aimed at a left-wing Greece or at Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and, ever since 1959, at Cuba.

While slogans, flags and other signals, good or bad, often have such importance that they cannot be ignored, the Confederate rag in Columbia, South Carolina, simply reflects all that lies behind it.

The super-wealthy too often succeed in embroidering their "proud heritage," fooling white working people into believing that their future lies with their white rulers rather than with an even poorer group at the bottom of the heap, and which, if they can keep it there, lets them believe they are somehow "up there with those on top". This deception and fears, since America was born, of losing a presumed advantage, have always made progress difficult or impossible.

This, of course, is what is behind "Stars and Bars," "Dixie"-incantations, Calhoun Streets and Robert E. Lee statues - and the former lynchings and present-day mass incarceration, police bullying and murder of African Americans.

In Germany, while those trying to out-trick bans on swastikas and Hitler salutes go marching through the streets in nearly every city, and are of great potential danger, an even greater menace, far broader, is a deception similar to that in the U.S.

There are relatively few Jews now, but far more people of Muslim faith. Now, due to terrible wars caused by the very same people who want to squeeze the entire economy and make more billions, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees of war and hunger searching for asylum, even at great risk in the stormy waters of the Mediterranean.
It is again Dresden where we see most dramatically how the anger of worried, dissatisfied and disoriented people can be misdirected with "Deutschland for the Deutsche" slogans that are no less vicious than slogans against minorities or immigrants in the U.S.

The homes of immigrants seeking asylum in Germany burn just as hot as the churches of African-Americans worshipping in the U.S.

Far in the background one finds the people and the institutions that benefit from the toleration and promotion of racist symbols like the swastika in Germany and the Confederate flag in the U.S.

The individuals involved, with their money stowed away in places like the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg, can be found enjoying time on their yachts, flying their luxurious jets or living in their countless mansions - enjoying and living off the profits of the weapons and other industries that are of little benefit to anyone other than themselves.
For the overwhelming majority of the human race, however, there really is no benefit to be gained from provocative and racist flags and slogans.

Photo: Protesters stand on the South Carolina Statehouse steps during a rally to take down the Confederate flag, June 20, in Columbia, S.C. Rep. Doug Brannon, R-Landrum, said it's past time for the Confederate flag to be removed from South Carolina's Statehouse grounds after nine people were killed at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church shooting. (AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt)

What It Means to Become 'BiRachel'

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 11:18:00 +0000

Rachel Dolezal grew up with straight blonde hair and a skin color that matched her European ancestry, but when asked if she considers herself to be African-American, the 37-year-old responded: "I actually don't like the term African-American, I prefer black. And I would say that if I was asked, I would definitely say that yes, that I do consider myself to be black."

Today, Dolezal's skin is a few shades darker than when she grew up. No longer blonde, her hair is now brown and over the past several years, she has sported a variety of traditional African-American hairstyles, including microbraids, dreadlocks and curly hair that she refers to as "the natural look."

Dolezal's misrepresentation of her ethnic ancestry most likely aided her employment opportunities. While this may have been illegal, more importantly, she gained economic advantages from racially passing herself off as a person of color. Therefore, she put her own self-interest in front of those she proclaimed to help with her civil rights work.

While there is nothing essentially wrong with adopting another culture, Dolezal's deception presents some real social dangers that affect African-American communities. This case also raises issues for people of mixed or ethnically blended heritage, because Dolezal chose to pass as a relatively light-skinned African-American woman of mixed descent.

The timing of Dolezal's racial transition is extremely important. She benefitted from the inherited privileges of whiteness while growing up and through most of her adult life, then she later exploited light-skinned privilege while identifying as an ethnically mixed person.

While the Dolezal story has inspired thousands of jokes and memes that highlight her "multiracial" mimicry, we should also remember that many mixed-heritage people face real struggles around identity.

B(l)ackground

Rachel Dolezal had the advantages of white privilege for roughly the first 30 years of her life before she made a full racial transformation around 2006-2007. Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal are Rachel's biological parents and have explained that their ethnic background is Czech, German and Swedish with "faint traces" of American Indian that they apparently no longer associate with.

Dolezal grew up racially as a "white person" and over time, developed an affinity for African-American culture, especially in her teens (as do many Euro-American teenagers). When attending college in Mississippi and later at Howard University, Dolezal "had straight, blonde hair," said a former classmate.

Today, Dolezal teaches Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University "with a specific emphasis on Black women in visual culture" (surprise-EWU has since removed her faculty webpage). She was also head of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, until she resigned amidst the controversy.

In her NAACP resignation statement, Dolezal said, "I am consistently committed to empowering marginalized voices." She also spoke of her devotion to "moving the cause of human rights and the Black Liberation Movement along the continuum... into a future of self-determination and empowerment." These are excellent goals, though "self-determination" means that the people from a particular group will empower themselves.

Dolezal's statement did not include an apology. It does say that she has "waited in deference" while allowing others to speak "their feelings, beliefs, confusions, and even conclusions-absent the full story." (We've since been getting more of the story.)

Being #BiRachel

Last year, Spokane's mayor selected Dolezal to help chair the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission. City officials involved in the hiring process say racial background was not a prerequisite for a position, though they sought to achieve ethnic diversity when fielding candidates. On her application for the commission she selected "white, African-American, Native American and two or more races," for her ethnoracial background.

When Dolezal fashioned her personal appearance as a woman of color and checked "two or more races" on the application, she clearly chose to identify herself as a multiethnic person. She also told people the same, speaking at length about her experience as "a black woman" in the classes she taught and in extended autobiographical interviews (yes, the rabbit hole goes deep).

This is an important part of the Dolezal conversation. She portrays herself as a relatively light-skinned mixed person, which carries it's own pitfalls and privileges within African-American communities as well as in wider U.S. society.

While people have joked about Dolezal being #BiRachel, many of those who recognize their mixed ancestry aren't laughing. Dolezal's racial passing does not help people of blended ethnic heritage who have been questioned over a lifetime about their identity, cultural authenticity, and loyalty to one group or another.

Mixed-heritage people have historically been excluded from full participation in European American society, where racial notions are so rigidly fixed. Though African American, Native American and Latino communities have generally been more accepting of mixed-heritage people, there are still complex histories of colorism within these groups as well.

There's a general contradiction for many ethnically mixed people who have European heritage in communities of color: one has light-skinned privilege while, at times, they also receive scorn and condemnation from those who resent them for the advantages that light skin and European ancestry bring.

Dolezal may have dealt with this in her thirties as an adult, but she never had to grapple with it in childhood or adolescence. Her European ancestry and light skin tone also give her an advantage that relatively dark-skinned people of mixed-heritage and most African Americans do not have: the ability to pass for "white."

Passing for Personal Gain

African Americans who were racially light enough to "pass for white" made the decision to do so in order to escape discrimination during the eras of U.S. slavery and Jim Crow segregation. They did this for personal and sometimes family gain.

In previous centuries, people in the U.S. might choose to racially pass for many different reasons, but usually Euro-Americans did not choose to pass as African American since it would drop their social status. In the 21^st century, Dolezal found a space where she could excel by passing as a mixed person of partial African ancestry. She simply replaced her previous white privilege with light-skin privilege under the guise of a mixed-heritage person.

Sure, Dolezal has put a new twist on passing, but at its core her racial passing in 2015 is little different than it was 100 years ago: she stood to gain by changing her race in the U.S. Northwest.

Today, many universities, public offices, and political organizations are looking to diversify their personnel in terms of gender and ethnoracial composition. In Spokane, where the African American population is only 1.9%, Dolezal excelled in positions in all three of these areas.

Dolezal also claimed she was pursuing pre-med studies and was "working toward an MD and a residency in trauma surgery." If she identified as African American on her medical school applications, she would have essentially used blackface to aid her educational and employment opportunities.

"We're all from the African continent"

Many people find Dolezal's racially altered appearance disturbing and some are also upset by her affiliation with traditional African-American culture. What's more offensive is that by professing African ethnic ancestry she lays claim to the same multigenerational struggle of African Americans.

"We're all from the African continent," she says.

This is true, but not all of our ancestors chose to immigrate to the U.S. freely or struggled through slavery. Our parents and grandparents, as people of color, could not simply opt out of Jim Crowism. They faced institutional discrimination 24/7 from birth until death. Likewise, many people today cannot simply avoid inadequate schools, discriminatory economic policies, or police and the judicial system.

Perhaps Dolezal feels it's her right to accept affirmative action because she works against racial inequality and considers herself "to be black." Such blatant dishonesty delegitimizes her credibility and makes a mockery of her actual civil rights work.

As others have pointed out, Dolezal could still succeed in advancing civil rights causes while being honest about her ethnic background. She can also still identify with African American culture, teach Africana Studies, and fight racial discrimination. There are many people of European descent who already do these things as allies.

Adopting culture, changing race, born into ethnicity

Certainly, part of the reason the Dolezal story has sparked so much commentary and debate is that she convincingly pulled off both a black racial transformation and African American cultural assimilation. Still, she can never alter her ethnic background.

Indeed, everyone in the U.S. has a connection to African American culture under the umbrella of the nation's history and present. Though Dolezal started out with an admiration of African American culture, she allows herself to move dangerously over into fetishism and donning blackface every time she lies about her ancestry or incorrectly checks the African American box on a job form.

Still, there's a fine moral line to walk when we judge the legitimacy of anyone's identity. True, Dolezal laid claim to a history and legacy that do not immediately appear on her family tree, but what if she decided to claim her Native American lineage or identify as a mixed person in this regard?

Better still, what if Rachel Dolezal follows up on her threat to take a DNA test and finds her African roots are closer than we all thought? Many of us would be scrambling to rearrange our arguments for a much more complex debate on both African American and mixed identity.

Reposted by permission of the author.

Photo: Rachel Dolezal poses for a photo in her Spokane, Wash., home, March 2, 2015. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP, File)

Racist terrorism in Charleston

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:05:00 +0000

People from every state in the nation are sending their deepest heartfelt condolences and solidarity to the families of the nine people senselessly murdered while at Bible study at Charleston's historic Mother Emanuel AME Church. This is the church of former slave and abolitionist Denmark Vesey, who was hanged for organizing a slave rebellion. This is a church that was burned down and had to conduct its services in secret. Yes, members of Mother Emanuel AME were criminalized and forbidden to attend services because of their courageous anti-slavery activity.

Members of Mother Emanuel fought Jim Crow and supported SEIU 1199's 1968 campaign to organize hospital workers, a church which protested the police shooting of 40 black students, killing two at Orangeburg State in the '60s, and the recent police shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston.

The African American community in Charleston and all those who support racial equality, democracy and justice understand that the world is watching, and this is time to mobilize and step up the struggle to bring an end to racist terror and structural racism in general.

The Republicans are in denial and having a hard time defining what happened in Charleston. Jeb Bush at first said he didn't know what was on Dylann Roof's mind when he murdered the nine. But at the right-wing Republican "Faith and Freedom Summit" he added that racism motivated Roof. It was said like an afterthought. He apparently was responding to criticism with that "correction."

Most of the Republican presidential contenders are talking about Roof's mental illness but not his racism. They're afraid to use the "R" word because racism is how they mobilize their base. And once again they hope to ride that wagon of racism into the White House in 2016.

Racist vigilantism is a logical course of action for those who think big government is the problem. It's like red meat for those who hate President Obama and want to "put black people in their place." Add the elements of the insane proliferation of guns (another GOP core issue), daily doses of racist propaganda on Fox, the crisis of mental health care, and it's clear that the threats of more shootings like Charleston continue to touch hundreds of communities.

There are 310 million guns in private hands in our country. Guns killed eight thousand Americans in 2013 - five thousand so far this year and it's only June. I don't know if that includes police murders. That's another layer of the problem that must be stopped.

Black Lives Matter. That slogan hits home when it comes to the mass shootings and especially the actions of organized racist groups - which have grown at an alarming rate since the election of President Obama.

Hillary Clinton has come out for stronger gun control. As Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed it, "What happened in Charleston was not just a tragedy. It was an act of terror."

It is a shameful expose of Republican backwardness and lack of regard for the safety of our nation. Most of their candidates continue to run with the National Rifle Association's money and seal of approval.

It's more than the 2^nd Amendment, which does not compute based on today's realities and is wrongly applied. There is an element among right-wing voters that have been convinced that some kind of race war is inevitable and they are preparing for it. Meantime, the Republicans who are always ready to go to war over terrorism all over the world block any restrictions on access to guns here at home. So these tragic mass shootings continue to occur in our country. The nation is sick of these murders. I can only hope our justified disgust shows up at the polls in 2016.

Is it a hate crime or terrorism?

All presidential hopefuls, and all people with a public voice, need to speak out against the racism that motivated Dylann Roof. Republicans especially need to take on Donald Trump in his racist rant against Mexican Americans. Today, as tenants of New York are fighting for their survival against powerful real estate interests, Donald Trump shows the deep bigotry and arrogance of his class. Profits before people breeds racism.

Extreme racism is a form of mental illness. The ultra right's dependency on racism to win elections so that they can govern - to preserve and protect the wealth, power and high privileges of the 1 percent - also gives license to lunatics to commit heinous act of racist violence. Most acts of terrorism are hate crimes and Charleston is no exception.

At the scene of the crime, when asked why he did what he did, Dylann Roof told the sole survivor, "You (Black people) rape our women and you're taking over our country." So he kills nine innocent people, including six women, and his actions were supposed to be a fight against the rape of women? The use of the rape charge to murder Black men is as old as racism and has cost thousands of innocent lives over the centuries.

In South Carolina, Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and they keep corporate profits high and wages and union organization low. Remember the Charleston 5 dock workers strike; the 2001 police frame up of 5 Black striking Charleston Longshore workers described in Tim Wheeler's article "Unite against Racist Terror." The GOP opposes gun control and pushes mass incarceration and racial profiling in policing, convictions and sentencing. African Americans are 28 percent of the state's population but are 62 percent of those in state prisons. Over 70 percent of those incarcerated in South Carolina are Black, Latino and Native American. They talk anti-crime but in reality they are conducting a war on the poor.

The Confederate flag is still flying at the State House in Columbia.

Mass pressure forced the state government to remove the flag from the State House dome in 2000, but the compromise was to build a Confederate Soldiers Monument on State House grounds with the flag of the slavocracy flying high. When you look at the state capitol you will see the Confederate flag still ascendant.

Not just African Americans are opposed to that flag. Three-quarters of a million Americans died in the Civil War. The largest number of casualties were on the Union side, including over 40,000 black soldiers. They fought against the confederate flag and all it represented.

Shamefully, Republican Governor Nikki Haley, in the wake of the racist murders, ordered the flags on the State Capitol to fly at half mast, but at this writing the Confederate flag still has not been lowered.

Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old who murdered Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Cynthia Hurd, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Tywanza Sanders, Depayne Middleton Doctor and Myra Thompson, according to those who know him, is an avid racist who told his friends that the problem in the country is that black people had taken over the country. He posed for a photo wearing a leather jacket with the old apartheid South African flag and the white supremacist Rhodesian flag, along with numerous pictures with him and the Confederate flag. He had a "Confederate States of America" license plate on his Hyundai. He wrote a 2000-word racist and anti-Semitic manifesto that he circulated.

In Germany it is illegal to fly the Nazi flag.

In the name of humanity, racial justice, and the Mother Emanuel 9:

Take down that flag!!!

The 2016 election can be a powerful rejection of racist politicians and policies if there is a maximum mobilization of progressive voters nationwide.

Twenty-eight percent of African Americans in South Carolina live in poverty. The fight for unionization and for a $15.00 minimum wage has to be part of the total fight for racial justice.

All people of good will, while we mourn, must demand justice for the families of the Nine as they are doing in Charleston. The struggle for freedom and justice must and will continue.

Black Lives Do Matter! All lives matter!

Photo: At city hall in North Charleston, S.C., a man holds a sign during a protest for the shooting death of Walter Scott, who was killed by a North Charleston police officer after a traffic stop. The officer has been charged with murder. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

Lupe Fiasco posts reflection on white supremacy via Instagram

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:10:00 +0000

Among those who have spoken out on racism and white supremacy since the Charleston, South Carolina massacres is hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco. On June 21, Fiasco delivered a thoughtful reflection on the bankruptcy and futile nature of white supremacy in human society reprinted here.

(Instagram) - Things are created in collaboration and in tandem with other cultures, knowledge structures and movements and more important, People. I mean if those Muslims didn't catalog all that Greek philosophy for research we might not even know who Plato was. Now whether this collaboration is forced, which is seen so much but not exclusively throughout human history, does not take away the fact that it is done with the help of somebody else.

We are supreme as a spectrum of colors in collaboration. One color does not dominate the other nor can it. Sure Steve Jobs was white. But the guy who built the computer was probably Chinese. And the girl who wrote the programs for the computer is probably from Mumbai. And the raw materials that were used to make it where probably first pulled out of the ground by somebody in South Africa. And if you take this highly collaborated upon piece of high technology to an indigenous tribe in the jungles of Brazil they'd probably use it as a boat paddle. And we can go on and on down or up the rabbit hole all day long and you'll always find a regular somebody relying on the abilities of a just as regular somebody else that another regular somebody doesn't even care about.

White Supremacy is a lie white regularists tell to themselves in hopes that they can get a one way ticket to the top and hope we other colors overhear it. Here's the bad news, ain't no top. Here's the good news though, ain't no bottom neither! It's just the regular ole middle where nobody is safe from being influenced by somebody else's extreme regularness. Is your swastika flag printed in Mexico? Did you know the swastika is originally from Asia and the subcontinent? Did you know black people had slaves in Africa too? Did you know in the world your considered a minority too? I mean you call us niggers and beaners but you gotta ship all your formerly Native American land, backwood sourced ginseng to China to get money to support your meth habit. Meth that's made with chemicals produced in India. I mean Hitler hated everything about the Jews expect every possession they had.

It's funny how the things you hate so much you have to rely on the most for your survival.

Photo: Lupe Fiasco performs in Sydney, Australia, in 2012. (Eva Rinaldi/CC/Wikipedia)

Toward a new foreign policy

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 12:09:00 +0000

There's something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.

Despite glimmers of hope - a tentative nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba - we're locked into seemingly irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating cycle that reflects an inability - or unwillingness - to see the world as it actually is?

The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world, but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms of "world order."

While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed "American Century." The idea that the United States had "won" the Cold War and now - as the world's lone superpower - had the right or responsibility to order the world's affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started with President Bill Clinton's intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W. Bush's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration's own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.

In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions that drive this impulsive interventionism.

It's this disconnect that defines the current crisis.

Acknowledging new realities

So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to mind.

First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East - and to a significant extent, our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia - distract us from the most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective action.

That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.

Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified conflict, terror, and human suffering. There's no short-term solution - especially by force - to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.

Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent, including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into "friend" and "foe" according to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides common interests in the 21st century.

Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin, alternative centers of economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people); the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.

Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles. Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.

Short memories and persistent delusions

But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate to the rest of the world.

The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.

While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited, our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) - itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common ground in the fight against ISIS with designated "foes" like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government, despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.

A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. Though it's attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions with planned military realignments like the "Asia pivot" aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It's also taken a more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.

We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an "American Century." International order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries - if we don't learn to take our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of war, there may well be no tomorrows.

Unexceptionalism

There's a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the name of "American exceptionalism," it's the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine, technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.

Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact they've dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates. We've made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education as those in the rest of the world.

Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations studied.

The old antiwar slogan "It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier" is as appropriate today as it was in the 1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.

But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices.

The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology "superior" is hardly unique. But no other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview on others.

The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders.

The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world's military spending. It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny bases called "lily pads" of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.

The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.

The home front

The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.

According to Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars - including the long-term health problems of veterans - will cost U.S. taxpayers around $6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related items. The "official" defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn't include such items as nuclear weapons, veterans' benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions a year in interest we'll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already paid out $316 billion in interest.

The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.

We spend more on our "official" military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11, we've spent $70 million an hour on "security" compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.

As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland.

The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report, most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.

Bombs and business

President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that "the business of America is business." Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.

Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that its products don't always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example - the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history - will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn't work. It's over budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.

Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals. Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.

Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."

It's no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests of Washington and its allies - Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.

Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international tensions. It's critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.

As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined - and the impulse to respond by military means - is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.

Finding the common interest

These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.

There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in "American Century" exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.

There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty, to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.

Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity. Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around us.

After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in a way the political establishment could not defy.

The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial efforts were labeled "quixotic."

There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger of the course we're on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians - and much of the public - are beginning to say "enough" to war and military intervention all over the globe, and the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into "friend or foe."

This is not to be Pollyannaish about antiwar sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it.

It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.

Making space for the unexpected

Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?

Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.

However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further into perpetual militarism and war.

That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.

Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans - right, left, or neither - who sense the futility of the course we're on. These voices have to be represented or the election process will be even more of a sham than we've recently experienced.

One can't predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward, although a limited bilateral pact cannot substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in the U.S.-Russian joint action that removed chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite fierce opposition from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama's bold move - long overdue - to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.

We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations. We are certain that there is much we've missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S. foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests of the majority of the world's people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.

If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy, and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won't all agree with each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern of political action.

So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do we consider the problem of power?

The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible - as well as necessary - to make significant changes in the power structure itself.

Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party that was successfully elected to power on a platform of ending austerity. Spain's anti-austerity Podemos Party - now the number-two party in the country - came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate that there are multiple paths to generating change.

Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues, particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn't be conceived of as dependent on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.

Some proposals

We also feel it is essential to focus on a few key questions lest we become "The United Front Against Bad Things." There are lots of bad things, but some are worse than others. Thrashing those out, of course, is part of the process of engaging in politics.

We know this will not be easy. Yet we are convinced that unless we take up this task, the world will continue to careen toward major disaster. Can we find common programmatic initiatives on which to unite?

Some worthwhile approaches are presented in A Foreign Policy for All, published after a discussion and workshop that took place in Massachusetts in November 2014. We think everyone should take the time to study that document. We want to offer a few ideas of our own.

1) We must stop the flood of corporate money into the electoral process, as well as the systematic disenfranchisement of voters through the manipulation of voting laws.

It may seem odd that we begin with a domestic issue, but we cannot begin to change anything about American foreign policy without confronting political institutions that are increasingly in the thrall of wealthy donors. Growing oligarchic control and economic inequality is not just an American problem, but also a worldwide one. According to Oxfam, by 2016 the world's richest 1 percent will control over 50 percent of the globe's total wealth. Poll after poll shows this growing economic disparity does not sit well with people.

2) It's essential to begin reining in the vast military-industrial-intelligence complex that burns up more than a trillion dollars a year and whose interests are served by heightened international tension and war.

3) President Barack Obama came into office pledging to abolish nuclear weapons. He should.

Instead, the White House has authorized spending $352 billion to modernize our nuclear arsenal, a bill that might eventually go as high as $1 trillion when the cost of the supporting infrastructure is figured in. The possibility of nuclear war is not an abstraction. In Europe, a nuclear-armed NATO has locked horns with a nuclear-armed Russia. Tensions between China and the United States, coupled with current U.S. military strategy in the region - the so-called "AirSea Battle" plan - could touch off a nuclear exchange.

Leaders in Pakistan and India are troublingly casual about the possibility of a nuclear war between the two South Asian countries. And one can never discount the possibility of an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran. In short, nuclear war is a serious possibility in today's world.

One idea is the campaign for nuclear-free zones, which there are scores of - ranging from initiatives written by individual cities to the Treaty of Tlatelolco covering Latin America, the Treaty of Raratonga for the South Pacific, and the Pelindaba Treaty for Africa. Imagine how a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East would change the politics of the region.

We should also support the Marshall Islands in its campaign demanding the implementation of Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty eliminating nuclear weapons and moving toward general disarmament. If the great powers took serious steps toward full nuclear disarmament, it would make it difficult for nuclear-armed non-treaty members that have nuclear weapons - North Korea, Israel, Pakistan, and India - not to follow suit. The key to this, however, is "general disarmament" and a pledge to remove war as an instrument of foreign policy.

4) Any effort to change foreign policy must eventually confront the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which, in the words of former U.S. Central Command leader James Mattis, is a "preeminent flame that keeps the pot boiling in the Middle East." While the U.S. and its NATO allies are quick to apply sanctions on Russia for its annexation of the Crimea, they have done virtually nothing about the continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian lands.

5) Ending and renouncing military blockades that starve populations as an instrument of foreign policy - Cuba, Gaza, and Iran come to mind - would surely change the international political climate for the better.

6) Let's dispense with our predilection for "humanitarian intervention," which is too often an excuse for the great powers to overthrow governments with which they disagree.

As Walden Bello, former Philippine congressman for the Citizens' Action Party and author of Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmasking of the American Empire, writes: "Humanitarian intervention sets a very dangerous precedent that is used to justify future violation of the principle of national sovereignty. One cannot but conclude from the historical record that NATO's intervention in the Kosovo conflict helped provide the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, and the justifications for both interventions in turn were employed to legitimize the invasion of Iraq and the NATO war in Libya."

7) Climate change is an existential issue, and as much a foreign policy question as war and peace. It can no longer be neglected.

Thus far, the U.S. has taken only baby steps toward controlling greenhouse gas emissions, but polls overwhelmingly show that the majority of Americans want action on this front. It's also an issue that reveals the predatory nature of corporate capitalism and its supporters in the halls of Congress. As we have noted, control of energy supplies and guaranteeing the profits of oil and gas conglomerates is a centerpiece of American foreign policy.

As Naomi Klein notes in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, the climate movement must "articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals, but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis. A worldview embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy."

International and regional organizations

Finally, international and regional organizations must be strengthened. For years, mainstream media propaganda has bemoaned the ineffectiveness of the United Nations, while Washington - especially Congress - has systematically weakened the organization and tried to consign it to irrelevance in the public's estimation.

The current structure of the United Nations is undemocratic. The five "big powers" that emerged from World War II - the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia - dominate the Security Council with their use of the veto. Two of the earth's continents, Africa and Latin America, have no permanent members on the Council.

A truly democratic organization would use the General Assembly as the decision-making body, with adjustments for size and population. Important decisions, like the use of force, could require a super-majority.

At the same time, regional organizations like the African Union, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Arab League, and others, have to be strengthened as well. Had the UN Security Council listened to the African Union, which was prepared to start negotiations with the Gaddafi regime, the current Libyan debacle might have been avoided. In turn that might have prevented the spread of war to central Africa and the countries of Mali and Niger.

Working for a dramatic shift in U.S. policy, away from the hubris of "American exceptionalism," is not to downgrade the enormous importance of the United States. Alongside and in contradiction to the tragic consequences of our misuse of military power, the contributions of the American people to the world are vast and many-faceted. None of the great challenges of our time can be met successfully without America acting in collaboration with the majority of the world's governments and people.

There certainly are common interests that join people of all nations regardless of differences in government, politics, culture, and beliefs. Will those interests become strong enough to override the systemic pressures that fuel greed, conflict, war, and ultimate catastrophe? There is a lot of history, and no dearth of dogma, that would seem to sustain a negative answer. But dire necessity and changing reality may produce more positive outcomes in a better, if far from perfect, world.

It is time for change, time for the very best efforts of all who nurture hopes for a saner world.

Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear online at Dispatches From the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments on current affairs appear online at Leon's OpEd.

The authors would like to thank colleagues at Foreign Policy In Focus and numerous others who exchanged views with us and made valuable suggestions. We also appreciate Susan Watrous' very helpful editorial assistance.

This article originally appeared at Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Ryan McFarland/Flickr Creative Commons

A monumental contradiction

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:56:00 +0000

(Capital & Main) My wife Susan and I have just returned from a three-week trip to the East Coast. The journey included a week or so in Washington, D.C., which Susan had never seen and which I have not visited in a couple of decades. Our purpose was to witness the graduation of a nephew, but we also had time to visit the various monuments that cover the core of the city. These memorials invariably quote some of the masterpieces of our heritage, a reminder of the values that ground the American experiment in democracy.

We left Los Angeles as Baltimore's social upheaval was erupting - during the same week that marked the 23^rd anniversary of the so-called Rodney King riots here. It felt appropriate that on our first night, following dinner in a gentrifying neighborhood of the capital, a friend took us to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. He said it was best seen at night, bathed in floodlights, but almost empty of people. He was right. It was a sacred moment.

The monument is three massive pieces of white granite, the tallest 24 feet high and in the shape of a mountain. The center piece stands between but just forward from what would be the two flanking sides. Chiseled into its face is the profile of Martin Luther King, and below it, a line from one of his speeches: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

Several days later we stood on the steps of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and gazed across the Tidal Basin toward the King monument. We had read the stirring words of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, etched into the interior wall. Now we witnessed the contradiction. While Jefferson announced to the world that "All men are created equal," he clearly did not see that such a declaration included people of color or even white women. That notion was opaque to him. By happenstance or design, the blindness of our Founding Fathers reveals itself in the juxtaposition of the two monuments across the water from each other. From the Jefferson Memorial the MLK monument looks like a solid "mountain of despair" - no "stone of hope" stands out.

Two weeks passed before I was home again and began rummaging through a few thousand emails. Among them, I found a message from a friend who had visited a current exhibit at the Autry National Center here in Los Angeles. The Autry museum's display focused on the Civil War and the West. But my friend was distressed that it was mostly about white Southern sympathizers and their resistance to ending slavery, with the few references to slaves themselves as "stealing, killing and running away," as she described it. Even more disturbing was the discovery that in the gift shop you could buy your seven-year-old a Confederate cap complete with a Stars and Bars flag on top.

This too is how our racism remains opaque to us. We white people and the institutions we run apparently cannot see the world as others see it, as we have been reminded often this past year. Not just in Baltimore, but on Staten Island and in Ferguson, and on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

As Jelani Cobb wrote in the New Yorker, the killing of black men by police is a symptom of "an entire web of failed social policies on education, employment, health and housing." This web of failure is grounded in our racism - both the kind that pits one ethnic group against another, and the kind that socio-economic isolation keeps us from bridging - so it remains hidden and obscure to us.

Jefferson could not see this, just as the Autry apparently cannot see, just as we sometimes cannot see, even when we say the right words.

Reprinted by permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Image: Capital & Main.

Rachel Dolezal and the individual right to ethnic self-determination

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 14:44:00 +0000

Rachel Dolezal has dropped out of the headlines following the horrible racist killings in South Carolina last week. But the controversy about her is worth some thought. Dolezal, who resigned as president of the Spokane, Wash., NAACP, is more complex than the debate that has focused on her alleged breach of ethics and the fact that, unlike most black people, she could revert to being white if she chose to do so.

Despite pounding by the media, Dolezal has insistently reaffirmed her identification as a black person and her continuing commitment to social and racial justice.

There are certainly questions about her honesty regarding her biological background and her consistency throughout her life, but that is not a reason to doubt her sincerity at the present moment and in recent years in identifying as black. In this she has the support of the regional NAACP, which issued a statement June 12 declaring, "One's racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership. The NAACP Alaska-Oregon-Washington State Conference stands behind Ms. Dolezal's advocacy record."

It may be extremely unusual, and for some "weird," but Ms. Dolezal, is not the first noteworthy person of white heritage to identify as African American. in the 1940s, Mezz Mezzrow, a jazz musician and one time manager for Louis Armstrong, insisted he was "a voluntary Negro" and wrote about it in his autobiography "Really the Blues." Mezzrow lived in Harlem with his black wife and, when he was imprisoned on a marijuana charge, demanded and received placement in the blacks-only unit where he said he was far more comfortable than in the whites-only units. There are of course many cases of children of white or very light-skinned parents raised in black families who grow up with and maintain African American identities.

It is also extremely common for people to choose an ethnic identity different from the one of their parents or the one in which they were raised. It happens every day when immigrants renounce their former citizenship and become, sometimes quite vehemently, citizens of the United States. It frequently happens when people marry someone of a different background and adopt their spouse's ethnicity. Growing up in a predominantly Jewish community, I knew people married to Jewish spouses who, while not converting to the Jewish religion, dropped their Christian backgrounds and identified culturally as Jews.

There is no genetic basis for race. There are no African American genes. In the more than 1 million years since our species, homo sapiens, appeared on the African continent, there has been so much genetic mixing that it is impossible to distinguish ethnic groups on that basis. African Americans have the full range of skin color, the primary means used to identify them. But in many other ethnic groups there are people with extremely dark skins, including people from India and South Asia, and people from Caribbean countries and Latin America, not to mention the innumerable peoples and ethnic groups from the continent of Africa.

But even if there was some genetic basis in distinguishing African Americans, Caitlyn Jenner has made it clear that one's identity can be independent of their biological makeup. Jenner, born genetically male, is a transgender woman who deserves to be respected by everyone else for expressing her gender identity.

Ethnic groups are a social and historical category, which, unfortunately, dominant oppressive classes have exploited as a means to divide and conquer and extract super-profits. From the beginning of our country, the propertied classes promoted the racist concept of white superiority to rationalize the enslavement of people kidnapped from Africa, whose labor was the basis for the American economy until the end of the Civil War. The dominant racist view was that Africans and people of African heritage were genetically inferior. That view has mostly become unacceptable today but has been replaced by equally false and harmful ideas of cultural superiority alleging that African Americans have inferior values in such areas as family structure, parenting, work ethic and proneness to crime. This serves as the means to blame the victims for the inferior conditions of life the American capitalist system's pervasive racism imposes on people of color.

More problematic than Ms. Dolezal's choice of ethnic identity or her unwillingness to disclose her background is her white parents' action to denounce and "expose" the decision and lifestyle choice of their grown daughter and to thereby disrupt the NAACP. Equally reprehensible was the action of the cynical reporters who exploited the situation for the purpose of sensationalism and self-promotion.

The individual right to ethnic self-determination has generally been recognized in socialist countries. In the former Soviet Union, for example, all adults had ID cards stating their ethnicity which was their own choice to make. Ms. Dolezal has been criticized on grounds that she could have easily fought for civil rights and led the NAACP as a white person, but her identification as black clearly goes deeper and is more complex than political beliefs. She has made a personal ethnic identification and, hopefully, can go on with her life without further uproar.

Photo: Rachel Dolezal poses for a photo in her Spokane, Wash., home, March 2, 2015. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP, File)

Obama uses N-Word to make point about not using N-Word?

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 14:05:00 +0000

President Obama appeared on the Marc Maron WTF podcast show Friday, and while making important points about the Charleston murders and the continuing menace of institutionalized racism used the N-Word to make his point.

The president said, "Racism, we are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say (here he says the N-word) in public."

He continued, "That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior."

The president is right, it's not a matter of being polite; nor is it a matter of only overt discrimination (although this happens all too often); it is a matter of recognizing and struggling against racism in all of its various forms, particularly its institutional features. Here it's important to recognize the existence of a racist social division of labor. Economist Paul Krugman made precisely this point in an op-ed this morning writing " the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens."

That said, the president made a mistake in using the N-word to make his point. In this regard a longstanding campaign has been waged to end its use in any company.

Nearly a year ago, Rev. Al Sharpton himself made the same point responding to news that Justin Bieber had used the term repeatedly while in his teens. Sharpton said, "No one should use the N-word; it has no place in our culture, not in sports and not in music."

But what about politics in order to point out that it should not be used? Is there a grey area here? Not hardly. The president is the head of state and is therefore responsible for helping set forth both the forms and content of debate. In this conversation the N-Word should be out of place, no matter what the intention. Call it an ideological no-go zone.

It's likely that President Obama's supporters, including Rev. Sharpton, will lament its use and point to the larger points made in the interview, including the need for gun control and move on. It's also likely Obama's detractors will use it to attack the president's agenda and peel off sections of his base.

With the 2016 election heating up and issues like fast track (and here again the president is way off base) causing rifts in the democratic coalition, care must be taken to not make matters worse.

The racist-inspired terrorism in South Carolina, the Confederate flag still flying at the state capitol in Columbia - and the new campaign against this, the ongoing spate of police murders of black men and women - all point to racism's systemic sources.

All must be addressed, including in language. Even when stumbling President Obama has been on the right side of these issues. Let's acknowledge the mistake, offer a hand up and move on.

Photo: Marc meets Obama.

Time to unite against racist terror

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:04:00 +0000

In the spring of 1969, Daily World editors asked me to travel down to Charleston, S.C. to cover a strike by Hospital workers, Local 1199. I took the night train. The strikers, virtually all African American women, staged a massive rally at "Mother Emanuel" AME Church.

I was conscious that this was a place laden with history. It was in this church that the Rev. Denmark Vesey planned a slave revolt in 1822. He and his five compatriots were hanged. This was the state that sent Sen. John C. Calhoun to Washington, the chief ideologue of chattel slavery, who dreamed of a slave empire that encompassed the entire western hemisphere as far south as Tierra del Fuego. From the artillery emplacements along the battery, the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, April 12, 1861, igniting the Civil War.

Mary Moultrie, leader of the Charleston strike was softspoken yet the crowd greeted her speech with a standing ovation. These women were seeking a living wage, dignity on the job. "Mother Emanuel" was their sanctuary.

The governor had declared a "State of Emergency," ordering the South Carolina National Guard into Charleston, turning the lovely city into an armed camp. Ruling circles in South Carolina were determined to smash 1199 in their drive to preserve the South as a "Union-Free Environment."

Forty-six years later, "Mother Emanuel" AME is back in the news. Nine African American women and men, worshipping peacefully in the church were murdered in an act of racist terrorism by a white supremacist who invaded the sanctuary and opened fire.

Who killed them? The answer from the ruling powers will be that the killer acted alone, a deranged individual. No, he did not act alone. The killers are those politicians in high places who spout racist rhetoric, inciting hatred and bigotry. They rant that white people are now the "victims" who must "take back our country" from African Americans, Latinos, uppity women, gays and lesbians, poor people, and all the other folks fighting for dignity, equality, civil rights and civil liberties. These racist elements are open in their incitement of hatred of President Obama, our first African American president.

Among those murdered by the gunman was Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, pastor of Mother Emanuel AME. Rev. Pinckney was also a South Carolina State Senator who, a few weeks ago, delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor denouncing the shooting death of Walter Scott, 50, an unarmed African American, by a white police officer in North Charleston. Scott was unarmed. He had been pulled over for having a broken tail light.

Rev. Pinckney's leadership in the struggle against police use of lethal force against innocent, unarmed African Americans, was likely the reason the racist killer targeted him for assassination.

Decades after I attended that Local 1199 strike rally, the unionbusters struck again in Charleston. It was in 2001 and the target was the predominantly African American International Longshoremens Association, Local 1422.

Dock workers peacefully picketing to win a decent contract were viciously assaulted by Charleston police and South Carolina troopers. Five were arrested and charged with incitement to riot. It was the beginning of a year-long nationwide struggle to "Free the Charleston Five."

Roy Rydell, himself a retired National Maritime Union seafarer and I traveled to Columbia, S.C. to cover a massive rally at the state capitol building to demand freedom for the Charleston Five and a just settlement of the strike.

The labor movement mobilized a movement so strong that the shipping companies and unionbusting forces were compelled to free the Charleston Five. I returned to Charleston for a victory rally at ILA Local 1422 headquarters, March 2, 2002.

In the spring of 2008, Rev. Pierre Williams and I rode a bus organized by the Black Caucus of the Maryland General Assembly down to Columbia to go door to door to help elect President Barack Obama, our first Black President. That struggle too, ended in victory.

There are lessons from these struggles. The labor movement, all progressive, forces must unite against the racist hatemongers. We must organize solidarity rallies everywhere to express our outrage at this massacre. If the racists succeed in their scheme to divide us along lines of race, ethnicity, or gender, they will always win. If we are strong and united, we will always win.

Photo: Coretta Scott King leads the march of striking hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. in 1969. | Preservation Society

South Carolina murders at Emanuel Church are terrorism, says Jon Stewart

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 13:32:00 +0000

Jon Stewart, the Daily Show host, nailed it last night in a heartfelt monologue reacting to the murder of nine African Americans at a historic South Carolina black church.

Describing the murders as a terrorist act Stewart said, "Al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS, they aren't shit compared to the damage that we apparently can do to ourselves on a regular basis."

He described a "gaping racial wound that we pretend doesn't exist," lamenting the disparity of response to domestic as compared to terrorist attacks abroad: "We invaded two countries," he said but suggested that when it comes to similar atrocities at home the response is woefully lacking.

Nine people shot in a church. What about that? "Hey, what are you gonna do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?" That's the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around, and you know it. You know that it's going to go down the same path. "This is a terrible tragedy." They're already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this. This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina, which is a symbol for the black community.

Listen to Stewart below:

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Michelle Obama's deeply moving words

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:27:00 +0000

Last month at the graduation ceremony of Tuskegee University, a historically black college, first lady Michelle Obama spoke candidly about the racial barriers facing African Americans and encouraged them to overcome continuing discrimination by staying "true to the most real, most sincere, most authentic parts of yourselves."

People, she said, "will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world." She and her husband have "felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives." But "those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up. ... They are not an excuse to lose hope."

Michelle's comments were deeply moving because they came from her lived experience. Today, two of three Americans have a favorable opinion of her; she is far more popular than her husband. She's hailed as a fashion icon for her stylish mixing of designer with off-the-rack clothes. She's confident enough even to release a video of her exercise routine featuring kick-boxing and lifting weights. Her campaign against obesity and for healthy living has helped transform school lunches and vending machines across the country.

But it wasn't always this way. She was raised in the South Shore community in Chicago. Her father, a municipal worker, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man. Her mother and father surrounded their two children with love, with high expectations in hard conditions. This month in Chicago, Michelle gave another commencement address, to graduates of Martin Luther King Jr. Preparatory High School, and spoke to students from experience: "I know the struggles many of you face. How you walk the long way home to avoid the gangs. How you fight to concentrate on your homework when there's too much noise at home. How you keep it together when your families are having hard times making ends meet."

Michelle flourished in school, and went on to Princeton, where she felt virtually like an alien in a school filled with the children of privilege, where only 8 percent of the student body was African American. Yet she graduated with honors and went on to earn her law degree at Harvard Law School. After experience in a corporate firm, she turned her energy to more public-spirited work, eventually as a vice president for external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospital, creating bridges to the surrounding community where she had been raised.

But as Barack Obama's comet rose in 2008, Michelle became the target of harsh criticism. She was burlesqued as "Mrs. Grievance" or "Barack's bitter half." The fist bump she gave Barack when he clinched the Democratic nomination was called a "terrorist fist jab." She was accused of exhibiting a "little bit of uppityism." As she told the graduating class at Tuskegee, "as potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?"

But she made her way. She focused her political energy on fighting obesity, a plague across America, disproportionately afflicting African Americans and Latinos. She made healthful eating and exercise more popular, while mobilizing public pressure on food and beverage companies to cut the sugar and change the offerings in school lunches and vending machines. Her work on issues military families face, particularly the pressures they feel not only when deployed but after they come home, helped thousands find decent work.

Perhaps her biggest triumph was her biggest priority - raising her children in the White House. Her mother moved in to provide an anchor. The president came back at 6:30 to eat with this family, attended school events and athletic practices like a regular parent. Their tight and loving family has been an exemplary model for families across the country. And today, the vast majority of Americans have respect and affection for the first lady who made this happen.

Michelle Obama has said she has no intention of running for political office when she leaves the White House. But the interest in her running never subsides. If she decides to run, she would be the odds-on favorite, particularly for the Illinois Senate seat now held by Mark Kirk, whose most recent infamy was his attempt to use "street language," degrading Sen. Lindsey Graham and the South Side of Chicago.

As Barack Obama's presidency heads into its final years, one thing is clear. Michelle Obama's grace, intelligence, and discipline have served her family, her husband and the nation well.

Photo: Brynn Anderson/AP

"White privilege" is a racist concept

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 15:45:00 +0000

Progressive radio, while certainly not perfect, has generally been an oasis of truth in a hailstorm of right-wing crap. My favorite has been Thom Hartmann's program. He isn't a screamer, always is prepared, has done his research, tends to center his discussion on what is good for regular working people and treats his callers with respect. However, in the recent period, when speaking about the epidemic of racist police murders of African Americans, he has resurrected the concept of "white skin privilege," a long discredited political idea, one I hadn't heard since the 1960s-70s.

Some might say, "Well, of course! White folks aren't the victims of racism, they have privilege!"

However, the concept of "white skin privilege" isn't a description of slavery and the racism that has historically been central to the foundation and development of our nation. "White skin privilege" is a political concept that affects how forces within our nation's multiracial working class relate to, work with, each other and how we jointly work to defeat racism. The application of this concept in real life divides, rather than unites, working folks. At its base "white skin privilege" tells white working folks that they do actually benefit from racism. As well, the message to African Americans and other victims of racism is that they have no potential allies in white working folks. Instead it says that "white people," not the mainly white capitalist ruling class, are the originators and beneficiaries of racism. The message is that racism is actually in the interests of white working people and that they have no interests in its elimination. It is a message of isolation and certain defeat for the victims of racism.

For proof of the existence of "white skin privilege," Hartmann has cited composite income numbers for racial categories of people in our nation, which include wealthy as well as poor and working folks, to "show that white people gain economically from racism." When a person calls Hartmann's program, Hartmann's response has generally been that he "is just a poor white person that doesn't know anything of the experience of African Americans."

This patronizing attitude is the opposite of a working class, Marxist, approach, which holds that, while racism absolutely does great harm to African Americans, it also ultimately harms white workers as well, splitting working people and strengthening only the overwhelmingly white corporate ruling class. The working class approach holds that, because it is white folks who are infected by racism, white workers have a responsibility to help lead in the fight against racism. A working class approach, further, holds that the working class is multiracial, only artificially divided, and that overcoming racism is a necessity if this multinational working class is to make any gains. this approach has been proven by history to be successful in combating racism, winning gains for all working people.

At its heart, the concept of "white skin privilege" is actually the oldest, most effective weapon, the one most used historically by the ideologues of the racist ruling class. From the days of slavery until the present, their most relied upon narrative when speaking to white working folks has always been: "At least you are white!"

It is this horrible, destructive narrative that was used to get hundreds of thousands of poor and working class white Southerners to fight for, lay their lives down for, the slave-holding ruling class of the old Confederacy.

It is that narrative that has always been at the very center of racist "talking points," always with the clear, and false, political point that the basic interests of African American and white working folks are not the same.

Our nation's history is not only the history of slavery, racism and division, but also the history of struggles to defeat them, of both white and African-American people. Another part of the false ruling class narrative, that of the "happy slave," is put to bed by the true historical record of slave rebellions, at times when defeat and ultimate death could be the only outcome. However, the struggle that finally defeated slavery was peopled with thousands of heroic, courageous white, as well as African American, fighters for democracy. Without William Lloyd Garrison, the Tappan brothers and John Brown, not to mention Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army, this struggle could not have been won.

The fight for the abolition of slavery, as well, gave birth to the modern women's movement in our nation. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and thousands who later became the core of our nation's fight for women's rights were able to be active in the abolitionist movement at a time when women were denied any voice in politics.

The organizing of the unorganized in the 1930s was only able to occur when the great CIO slogan "Black and white, unite and fight," was put into practice. There is no question the civil rights movement of the 1960s could never have won the great gains it did were it not a multiracial movement.

While racism is at the very core of our entire nation's history, it is in the old South, the former Confederacy, where African American slavery was ingrained, that this vile racist ideology has historically had its strongest political base. If "white privilege" was in reality a correct historical concept, then this region would be where white working people have the best working conditions, the best schools, the most elected representatives, the strongest retirement security, etc. The reality is the opposite! For both African American and white working folks, this region, where the racist division is most historically and deeply ingrained, is also the area of lowest wages for all workers, the least unionization and the highest level of folks without health care, the poorest schools and the lowest levels of retirement security. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of what would be (for white workers) if "white skin privilege" were a real economic/political reality.

In truth, "white skin privilege" is a key racist concept that our nation's ruling class has used to divide and weaken our multinational working class. And history has shown that the mainly white ruling class is the only winner when we are divided.

This past week, we were informed of the loss of the great African American leader of the Steelworkers union, Oliver Montgomery. This bad news brought to mind some of the tough struggles that he helped lead, and what they say about the issue at hand.

Oliver Montgomery was one of the leaders of the struggle of African American and progressive steelworkers to break the racist practice of the basic steel corporations of only hiring and keeping minority steelworkers in the coke plant and blast furnace, the toughest, dirtiest, most dangerous areas.

In the early 1970s, the Ad Hoc Committee of Concerned Steelworkers, the Youngstown-based Black Caucus led by Jimmy Davis, had filed a lawsuit in federal court urging the court to break this racist corporate hiring/staffing policy and set up a new, fairer system. Hundreds of African American steelworkers were plaintiffs in the suit. Oliver Montgomery was part of the suit, but also saw the need to win the fight politically to win all steelworkers to support it. Along with the National Steelworkers Rank & File Committee (NSWRFC), the left-led multiracial reform group in the USWA, with George Edwards, Juan Chacon and Butch Henderson co-chairs, Montgomery helped launch a campaign to show how white as well as African American workers would win if Black workers won their legal fight. Working with Montgomery, the NSWRFC filed an amicus brief in favor of the suit and threw itself into a mass campaign to win the whole union, especially white workers, to support this fight.

In 1974, a federal court in Fairfield, Alabama, ruled, in a sweeping decision, that African American workers had suffered historic discrimination, being hired and kept in the worst, most physically demanding and dangerous jobs, and denied rights to transfer to better positions in other areas of the mill. The ruling also stated that these minority workers had been denied the most favored craft positions. The USW and the basic steel companies, under pressure from the federal court, then agreed to a historic consent decree, to apply the decision to the entire steel industry.

The consent decree paid back pay to many African American workers who'd been denied transfers/promotions, set up a job posting procedure that gave all workers the right to transfer to jobs in other areas, and opened new apprenticeship positions to highly sought after craft positions, with African American, women and Latino workers given preference.

However, for many white workers, the immediate response was negative. Many white workers, influenced by racist ideas, packed union meetings to attack the decree, feeling they had "lost rights." Outright racist organizations kicked in also, funding court cases, citing so-called "reverse racism." Their position was that since minority workers had won rights, this supposedly denied rights to white workers. These included the Weber, then later Bakke, cases calling for the consent decree's reversal. Oliver Montgomery was key to calling a series of multiracial meetings of progressive steelworkers for the purpose of defending the hard-won gains of African American workers. Central to the campaign that emerged from these gatherings was the concepts that:

● The gains won in the consent decree were a real blow to historic corporate racism, winning gains due minority workers.

● However, these gains not only benefited minority workers, but helped all steelworkers and could be the base to greatly strengthen unity of all steelworkers.

● The consent decree and its gains could not be defended only by African American workers. A campaign had to be launched to win white workers also to its defense.

● Without this unity campaign, corporate-funded racist attacks could succeed in rolling back our gains, ultimately harming all workers and the USWA.

The National Steelworkers Rank & File Committee, with George Edwards, a white steelworker, taking the lead and working closely with Oliver Montgomery, mobilized progressive workers and union leaders and worked with other union reform groups to fight to defend the gains won in the consent decree. To do so they were able to show numerous ways that the fight against racist practices, and the consent decree, concretely helped all workers and that, without a fight to defend these gains, again, all workers, not only African American workers, would lose significant and hard-won rights.

Using research Edwards had done, they were able to show that the steel corporations had kept pay rates artificially low on coke plant, blast furnace and others of the "worst" jobs (but also the most important jobs) which the companies had filled exclusively by minority workers. This racist practice had not only kept those jobs poorly paid, but had also been a drag on all other job pay rates, harming all workers. The consent decree laid the base for defeating this, winning raises for all steelworkers.

As well, reform forces were able to highlight how the consent decree's establishment of a procedure for posting of jobs plant-wide helped all workers. Previously workers were kept by management in the same area they were hired into. While the fight was against racist company hiring/staffing practices, this new procedure democratized the workplace and created new transfer and staffing rights for all workers. These new rights, won through difficult struggle against corporate racism, would disappear if the consent decree was rolled back.

While there were arguments over filling the newly opened up craft positions, the reform forces were able to show that the companies had stopped filling craft jobs from within, only hiring from the street when they filled a craft job. The creation of the new craft positions was another gain from the struggle for African American job rights, without which there would be no new craft jobs for anyone to bid on. Putting the fight in this context, it became possible to show white workers that African American workers had long fought for these positions and been unjustly denied, therefore they were rightfully entitled to fill them first. Latino and women workers also were brought into this mix, and also won new rights due to this struggle.

The upshot of this fight was that the very same union halls where some workers were so adamant that the consent decree needed to be killed, would have almost literally killed anyone coming there just a few months later if that was the message they brought. Steelworkers, in the great majority, were quickly won over to seeing how the decree, and the struggle to win it, was in all of their interests. This outcome was not possible without an understanding that our working class is one multiracial class and that racist company practices harm us all. Only a united struggle against racism, with white workers playing a significant role, could win gains for all. Had Oliver Montgomery, George Edwards and other fighters for justice not taken this fight up as central to progress for our entire working class, had progressive unionists been influenced by the poisonous concept of "white skin privilege," there is no way white workers could have been effectively mobilized to defend the gains won in the fight for African American workers rights, a fight that ultimately won new rights for all workers.

Someone much smarter than me once said that "there are no new ideological fights, only the same old ones we keep re-fighting and calling by new names." I believe we can only win them when we learn from the struggles of working folks that fought them before us.

As we see the rise of a new, powerful movement for justice, for Black Lives Matter, against mass incarceration and racism, it is important that we look at the lessons of past historic victories and how we got here. Oliver Montgomery, George Edwards and those other real heroes upon whose shoulders we now stand helped us learn not just how to fight, but ultimately how we can beat the entrenched power of the corporations. We cannot allow a new generation to be sacrificed because they don't have every tool that has to be used in the struggle against racism, for unity and justice!

Photo: Steelworkers at a Save Our Steel Jobs rally, May 6, 2014, Lorain, Ohio. United Steelworkers/Flickr

An American Indian should replace Jackson on the $20 bill

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 13:04:00 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn.- On Saturday, June 6, 2015 local Native Americans held another in a series of demonstrations at the Hermitage on the issue of the legacy of the notorious "Indian Killer" Andrew Jackson. This demonstration differed from those held prior in that the call was for an American Indian, and only an American Indian, to replace Jackson on the $20 bill.

Recently, an organization, Women On $20, has come forth with the proposal that a woman should replace Jackson on the denomination. This organization collected signatures online in which the voters' choice was the historical African American heroine, Harriet Tubman.

From the vantage point of Native Americans in Nashville, we have been besieging the doors of the Hermitage literally for months now, and historically for decades. Other local Native organizations, most notably, the Middle Tennessee Indian Lodge, going as far back as the 1970's, were demonstrating at the Hermitage against the glorified memory of Jackson, this early day American Hitler.

American Indians have born the brunt of opposing Jackson both when he was alive and again today.

Why should only an American Indian replace Jackson on the $20 bill? It would only be the most fitting justice that Jackson should be replaced with a representative of the people he so viciously tried to exterminate.

I would, of course, opt for Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation in the 20th century. Considering that Jackson was responsible for the deaths of 4,000-8,000 Cherokees and thousands of other Native Americans there should only be Mankiller or another American Indian considered.

Jackson did not kill thousands of women or those of other races. He killed thousands of Indians- men, women, children and elderly. He enslaved Native children at the Hermitage taken as war captives. He massacred thousands beginning with the Creek War in 1813. In fact that War, according to prominent historian, William G. McLoughlin, was "a massacre from beginning to end."

There is a story current to this day among present-day Muscogee Creeks that the origin of Jackson on the $20 bill stems from Creek children taken in that conflict being sold as "pets" for $20. Hence, the beginning of Jackson's association with $20.

While we have great respect for the efforts of Women On $20 and the memory of Harriet Tubman, Jackson's victims of choice were American Indians. His legacy lives on in the marginalization of Native Americans in every economic, social and political venue imaginable in this country. Recognition of Native Americans is more than long overdue.

This writer recently posted a letter to the editor that ran in the local paper and all the email responses were overwhelmingly in favor of an American Indian on the bill. Further, since the last demonstration I have been stopped on the street by everyday citizens who expressed support for a Native American to replace Jackson on the money.

We, Native Americans of Nashville, locked in struggle against the exalted memory of this racist beast, call upon all other American Indians nationwide to support our call for a Native American to replace Jackson on the $20 bill. Further, we call upon Women On $20 and all others involved in this movement to support our advocacy for an American Indian on the bill.

Photo: Wilma Mankiller. | J. Pat Carter/AP

Bratton episode underlines need for diverse New York police force

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:34:00 +0000

NEW YORK - The recent story that broke in The Guardian was an embarrassment to New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, summed up in this quote: "We have a significant population gap among African American males because so many of them have spent time in jail and, as such, we can't hire them," Bratton said.

Bratton has since asked for a retraction, saying that his comments were taken out of context.

It's interesting to note that the architect of the Broken Windows policy that in effect led to Stop and Frisk arrests of thousands of young African American and Latino youth is now blaming the victims of these policies.

Backtracking, he acknowledged the "unfortunate consequences of stop and frisk" but continued to express his dissatisfaction with the article.

Missing from Bratton's conversation, interestingly - was any mention of women who may be candidates for the force and may be of African heritage.

An analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than five million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent; according to the NYPD's own reports.

In 2014, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 46,235 times. Of those, 38,051 or 82 percent were totally innocent. The number of black people stopped was 24,777 or 55 percent. The 12,662 Latinos stopped accounted for 29 percent while the 5,536 white people stopped amounted to only 12 percent.

In the first quarter of 2015, New Yorkers were stopped by the police 7,135 times. A high percentage, 82 percent, were again toatally innocent. The 3,693 of those who were black accounted for 53 percent of thestops and the 2,123 of those who were Latino accounted for 30 percent. The 864 who were white amounted to 12 percent.

Perhaps Commissioner Bratton needs to examine his department records before asking for a retraction as he continued to dig himself deeper into his own racist language: "It's an unfortunate fact that in the male black population, a very significant percentage of them, more so than whites or other minority candidates, because of convictions, prison records, are never going to be hired by a police department. That's a reality. That's not a byproduct of stop-and-frisk."

Sadly, the Commissioner seems to have overlooked the underlying reasons for mass incarceration here and around the country; The U.S. has the largest number of prisoners in the world. Here in the wealthiest nation on the planet where the gap between those that have, the one percent, and the rest of us continues to grow.

The Black Lives Matter movement that has proven to be a diverse, multi-racial and intergenerational movement is playing an important role in this period of social justice and policing reform and has brought pressure to bear on the Commissioner.

City Public Advocate, Letitia James, said, "This is a teachable moment that affirms that broken windows policing destroys lives and opportunities. We need to enact policies that promote diversity of our police force and city as a whole."

Photo: New York City Police Commisioner William Bratton, left, speaks at a recent press conference. In the background is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Bratton, the city's "top cop," said a British newspaper misrepresented his view on hiring minorities. | Kevin Hagen/AP

Critical that Sen. Sanders continue the fight against TPP

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 14:27:00 +0000

I swear sometimes it seems that the only elected voice in Washington we hear opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership belongs to Sen. Bernie Sanders.

I fear this gigantic, destructive trade deal will be much of the legacy of President Obama -- and that hurts my heart.

Even more I fear this corporate driven transfer of more of our wealth to fewer and fewer people at the very top will have devastating effects on the global economy and the America's economy and politics.

Were it not for Sen. Sanders and hundreds of thousands of rank and file union members, environmentalists, human rights activists, and people of faith this horror of a trade deal would already be passed by the Congress and signed by the President.

Bernie is showing real leadership on our behalf. We gotta have his back as he has our backs.

The TPP is not even really a trade deal.

It is an effort to remove any obstacles to corporate power in the U.S. and Asia.

It is an effort to override national sovereignty governing corporations with adjudication bodies run by corporate attorneys.

It is not inevitable nor assured that we should have a global economic race to the bottom. It is the will of the wealthy whose greed has gone so deep as to be dangerous to us all.

Thank God Bernie Sanders is fighting to stop TPP.

We all need to re-double our efforts to stop TPP.

It will do nothing to American workers but take jobs and lower wages.

You cannot with any integrity say journey for raising wages and increasing the minimum wage and support TPP.

And the poorest and most vulnerable workers in the world will be hit the hardest by the Trans Pacific Partnership as they suffer the worst kind of labor and environmental abuses.

The overwhelming power of wealthiest in the history of the world will ride right over U.S. if TPP and fast track authority are passed.

Again, it is critical right now that we burn up the cell towers with our calls to the Capitol to stop TPP.

The Capitol switchboard number is 202-225-3121. Call both your senators now. Don't wait. Don't worry about which political party they are in.

If Bernie can fight, we can fight. Don't let up. Don't give up or give in or give out.

We in organized labor don't have litmus tests, but you can bet every -- and I mean EVERY -- union activist in America will know how her senators voted on this.

No one gets a pass on this one.

Photo: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a news conference with House Democrats at the House triangle to urge Congress to not fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership and recognize a petition signed by 2 million Americans also opposing it, June 3. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

America and race: 318,881,992 shades of grey

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 13:48:00 +0000

DOTHAN, Ala. - I chose the title because the current population of the United States according to the U.S. Census is 318,881,992 people. However, I choose to call the country in which I live just America. You might say: no, it's the United States of America, but I beg to differ. How can we call ourselves United when we live in a country of such hatred that's filled with racism? Doesn't United mean a people that are together or combined into a single entity? We are neither! So I will call us America, untiI I am convinced otherwise.

For far too long there has been such racial dissension and oppression in this country. Mostly from the white population. I am from South Alabama where it's far too apparent what white people think about the minority, and I am not just talking about the bigotry shown towards blacks either. Racial bigotry is being shown towards the Mexican, Asian, Middle Eastern, and black people. How can a country as powerful as ours expect to continue its power and longevity when it shows a fundamental weakness in the intolerable hate we show towards each other as a people?

I recently went to a tobacco shop here in Dothan where I walked into a most distasteful conversation among a group of older gentlemen. Eavesdropping on their conversation I heard one of them say, "These damn n-----s are stealing our tax money because they are all on welfare and receiving government assistance." The Mexicans are stealing everyone's jobs, and all the Arabs are insurgents and terrorists! Being the non-confrontationalist that I am, I hesitated to say anything, but uncontrollable rage got the better of me.

I told the man, "Well, sir, I know just as many whites that receive government assistance as I do anyone. The Mexicans are working jobs that Americans are too prideful and lazy to do, and the Arabs wouldn't be over here if we weren't blowing up their homes in our wars." I then told the man that they have as much right to be over here as we do. He kept on using the word n----- and i simply explained to him that the word is used by a person who's ignorant, used as a disparaging term for a member of any socially, economically, or politically deprived group of people, and that the way he was loosely using it was just out of ignorance. He became angered with me and left.

See, there are three types of racist down here in the South:

1. There are your generational (or hereditary) racists. They are the ones who have had the seeds of racism passed down to them from family who don't know any better. They keep to themselves about their thoughts and views on anyone that is not of white skin because of the fear of backlash from the community or fear that they might work for or with someone of a different ethnic background.

2. You have your Klu Klux Klan racists who hide behind their racism but will cause harm to any minority if they have the chance and know they can get away with it.

3. You have your fascist (or Third Reich as I like to call them) racists, who will openly admit their ways and cause harm or malice to anyone despite the consequences.

To me all three forms are despicable and intolerable. This country will never gain ground in any way, shape or form if we can't simply walk hand in hand and learn to love one another. I think of all the great leaders of racial equality through the years like Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Russell Means, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm Little (or Malcolm X) and many others who have defended social equality and justice. I think that it will not take just one great person to overthrow the bigotry and racism in our nation, but that we will all have to see 318,881,992 shades of grey in order to finally put the past behind us and move forward to a future that's bright and filled with possibility in order to achieve true success as a country.

Photo: Mural in San Francisco. Jay Galvin/Creative Commons