The public is paying attention to something happening in our own country for once and unfortunately it has to do with old race issues that have not improved since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and if anything have gotten worse. We are still living in a Jim Crow era - separate and not equal!
Ferguson is the latest in assassinations of unarmed black people all over America over many years. Regardless of whether they commit any crimes or not - they are due due process of the law - innocent until proven guilty and not to be shot and killed at point blank range. Especially when they put their hands up to signal surrender. US Police and Military forces have historically granted this basic surrender moral principal of taking the most wanted world dictators like Saddam Hussein and serial killers into custody without harm as law of the land - with the only exception being black people.
The old underlying tensions leading to this disaster are all over America. Historical racial divides based on planned real estate red lining segregation (illegal), white flight, over double the percentage of unemployment (20-25%) in the black community, especially the men and worst of all 49/50% of young black men end up in prison (evil privatized industrialized prison complex institutions), mostly for non-violent crimes. And once you are an ex-con, you basically cease to be a full citizen with the all the rights guaranteed by law. Ex-cons lose their right to vote or receive most public assitance. Most employers will not hire an ex-con. They receive no skills or rehab therapy while in prison - so recidivism (back to prison) is of course very high.
America has the biggest prison population in the world at a little over 2 million. Yes, bigger than China and many other corrupt countries all over the world. It has increased 10 fold since the early 1970s. This coincides with the switch over of many prisons to privatization. It has become a US government subsidized, corporate money-maker with humans treated like contemporary slaves/commodities for free labor. 80% of those humans are people of color - mostly black. This is not good considering they are only around 13% of the population. It's obvious that something is very wrong.
This situation is so pathetically ironic and surreal considering we have the first black president in office. Yet because Obama is the son of a high African official that went to Harvard, he does not have the scars on his psyche that blacks who have 300+ years of slavery in their subconsciousness - quite close to the surface in time and place. Therefore he cannot totally relate to the American black men who have this unique history of being taken by force from Africa and being slaves that were treated worse than animals for hundreds of years. Yes, his wife Michelle does have this in her family's roots but she was fortunate to have a successful family unit based on geopolitical liberal work scenarios post WW II for black men in certain parts of the USA. Many of the blue collars jobs that built a small but temporary middle class black American experience have disappeared in the new world (NAFTA) economy that is basically all about exploiting cheap labor. Black women tend to get work easier than black men because of the ubiquitous viewpoint that women are more docile and do not pose a threat to the white man usually in charge of any given situation, in the white hegemony western world environment.
There needs to be some kind of massive healing in the form of reparations. What form they take and how it is done could be figured out by the best and brightest black folks, with input from other marginalized peoples as well. During Reconstruction after the Civil War the congress was throwing around the idea of giving the newly freed blacks 40 acres and mule as some type of recompense for the legacy of 300+ years of slavery as well as a practical monetary way to start a new life based on the fact that they possessed nothing in the way of material goods. But this never came to pass and they were freed, only for most to return to a new type of servitude with a new job title as share croppers - still picking cotton for the man and being exploited for horrible wages. Only now they were pitted against poor whites as well, and ever since. This is the Machiavellian wedge that has kept two groups that actually have have more in common than most realize - from uniting as a power base. Although it happened unintentionally to avoid another horrible Republican Administration in the form of electing the first black president Obama.
Poor and working class whites make up a sizable portion of the population - at least 25-30% and if they would only make the connection or realization that there is a glass ceiling for politically unconnected whites who wish to be part of the wealthy white 1-10%. Well guess what - like corporations - the rich are like aristocracy of the past. They only do $ mergers as in if you do not come from a rich family - you are not in the running as a potential mate for their son/daughter. On rare occasions women from lower class backgrounds are let in to the elite circle because of they are not male so do not pose a direct threat and usually other superficial reasons such as physical beauty - they will make good looking babies.
I suggest that the next big revolution - hopefully peaceful - will be about the color green and not the colors black or brown because the white hegemony 1% in power that control the show want us - the working class whites, blacks and browns to be at each other throats while they build up their offshore bank accounts gated communities and let the rest of us 99% fight for the scraps in a dying local economy. It's classic Roman divide and conquer tactics that we all fall for over and over again - when will we learn that working people are on the same side of the fence? The time to organize as a formadable power base is now! Reach out to folks that you normally do not and make connections and bonds - these will be the foundation of the new peoples army - to fight for what FDR called a human rights declaration - the basics and like it says in the Declaration of Independence - the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How can any of us be happy when we are all stressed out about basic day to day survival - all while the top 1% have quadrupled their wealth over the last 30 years and the middle class wages have completely stagnated or gone down! Enough is enough! Let's unite the 99% of all colors and creeds to make our country a better place for everyone and not just a few thoasand out of 315 million real people with real lives!
I have attached a recent, smart, well argued case for reparations from the Atlantic magazine. If we can afford much blood spilled and trillions of tax dollars to secure oil in the Middle East - then we must come up with the resources for reparations to the blacks who helped build this country - and endured the evil legacy of slavery for over 400 years now if you include post Civil War Jim Crow like conditions that continue today post Civil Rights era - separate but definitely not equal! If we compensated the Japanese for interment camps during WW II - surely we must do the same to the black people for the much worse infringement of human rights and dignity that is slavery.
I have my own ideas such as paid for education at the best institutions as well as free healing therapies to deal with all the psychic scars that will take a lot of time to heal - maybe as much as it took to create them - but hopefully not. If we all come together as one nation of peoples on the same team - we will reach our true potential as a great country. Otherwise if we continue with the status-quo stratification and fragmentation that is currently happening, then the future does not look good at all. But I always see the glass as half full and a little effort on the peoples part will go a long way! Do something to be part of the solution today!
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/#
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