Yet another H/T to the good folks at ColorLines/RaceWire . . .
Here is the direct URL to cut & paste and share via e-mail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnubLMg35k
For more great info on this subject and racial justice more broadly, Afro-Netizen highly recommends checking out the Applied Research Center's ground-breaking blog, RaceWire!
By Margaret Summers
Guest Contributor
Courtesy of National Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty (NCADP)
Martina Correia, a 42-year-old African American from Savannah, Georgia, is a “warrior woman,” inspiring death penalty abolitionists as well as women like her struggling with breast cancer.
Correia’s brother is Troy Anthony Davis, convicted in 1991 for the shooting death of white police officer Mark MacPhail. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. No murder weapon was produced. Seven of nine witnesses who initially implicated Davis have since recanted, stating in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into naming him. Davis’ attorneys are appealing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court will determine whether or not to review Davis’ habeas petition on June 25, and make its decision public on June 26 or June 29. If the appeal is rejected, Davis will be executed.
The case has generated global attention. Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the NAACP, and human rights organization Amnesty International, have called for Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue to grant Davis clemency. Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, former FBI Director William Sessions, and several former prosecutors and judges, have filed an amicus brief supporting Davis’ plea.
Long before her brother’s involvement in the criminal justice system, Correia opposed the death penalty. An Amnesty International member since age 13, she resigned her U.S. Army nurse position when told she couldn’t express “political opinions” against capital punishment. Since her brother’s conviction, “I speak at universities, high schools and before community groups. I talk about the injustices that lead to arrests of innocent people, why so many people of color get the death penalty, and how and why prosecutors select people for death sentences. I don’t just talk about my brother on death row, but the system that put him there.”
She didn’t know what to expect when Davis was tried. “I anticipated that my brother would get his day in court,” she explains. “But our judicial system is fraught with biases. Until my brother was accused of killing a white police officer, I didn’t realize just how black I was.”
Watching Davis’ trial, “I felt like people were angry that my brother had attorneys from out of town,” says Correia. “I thought he would have more time in the courtroom to argue his case, but he only got 20 minutes, and then a bell rang when he ran out of time.” Alarmed, Correia stepped up her fight for Davis’ exoneration.
Then in 2001, Correia was diagnosed with breast cancer. When chemotherapy treatments resulted in hair loss, she shaved her head and wore hats or scarves. The prison initially barred Correia from wearing head coverings during visits with Davis for “security reasons”; weapons could be hidden in headgear. Davis intervened. Correia was made an exception, “but whenever I wore a scarf the prison guards made me take it off to search it.”
Determinedly working through exhaustion, Correia’s only concession to debilitating chemotherapy is to request airfare from sponsors of appearances located more than five hours from her home. Otherwise, she drives herself, although chemotherapy makes her sleepy. “I have to try to stay awake while driving. When a speaking engagement’s over, I go home and rest, ”she says.
Correia serves on the boards of death penalty abolition organizations like Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and New Hope House. She also participates in efforts to increase federal funding for breast cancer research. She is a lobby delegation team leader in the National Breast Cancer Coalition. She teaches health maintenance classes to women with cancer in Savannah’s St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System.
Somehow Correia balances her advocacy with raising her 14-year-old son Antone, an Honor Roll middle school student, whose winning social studies project in a state competition last year was entitled: “How Does the Troy Anthony Davis Death Penalty Case Impact Georgia?” Antone, who considers “Uncle Troy” a role model, wants to be a medical researcher when he grows up, and find the cure for breast cancer that has stricken his mother and thousands of women.
Correia says her brother’s confinement on death row and her illness are difficult for her and their family but “I trust God, I have faith. It’s like Troy said when he was minutes away from execution (before the current U.S. Supreme Court appeal), ‘God didn’t take me this far to leave me.’ I pray for Troy and for Mark MacPhail’s family. I ask God to let me live to see my brother freed and my son graduate from school. My biggest prayer is that my mother doesn’t continue to suffer. If Troy is executed it will break her heart.
“I’m going to fight this system until somebody says, ‘We made a mistake,’ she adds. “I know that the name Troy Anthony Davis is a name known all over the world by people who believe in truth, justice and fairness. That’s all I’m asking for, fairness.”
The NAACP and Amnesty International U.S.A. are co-sponsoring a “Week of Witness” for Troy Anthony Davis, June 19-26 2009. Faith communities are asked to pray for the Davis and MacPhail families during that week, sign a petition, ask their religious leaders to sign a clergy letter, or discuss Davis’ case during regular weekend worship services. Additional information, please visit the “Week of Witness”.
Guest Contributor
“God sent the shooter,” the signs wielded by anti-abortion protestors at the funeral of slain doctor George Tiller proclaimed. Last week’s assassination of abortion provider and feminist George Tiller in a Kansas church on the so-called holy seventh day was not only a barbaric act of religious cowardice but a terrorist assault on the rights of women. Tragically similar to the 1998 murder of New York doctor Bernard Slepian, Tiller’s murder was the culmination of years of attempted murders, death threats, bombings and arson attacks waged against abortion providers by white Christian terrorists.
Despite the scope of this orchestrated campaign mainstream media rarely identify these acts or those who commit them as “terrorist.” Those who invoke Christian fundamentalism as justification for their barbaric incursions against women and their allies are dismissed as aberrations, even though the profiles of the killers are always the same, the suspects—generally disaffected white middle aged males, aligned with a crackpot anti-government militia and/or fundamentalist ethos steeped in the bloody retribution of the Old Testament—virtually plucked from central casting.
These spasms of Christian fundamentalist violence are largely peculiar to the United States. Anti-abortion activism in Western European countries such as Great Britain, France and Italy doesn’t inspire anywhere near the level of militant resistance seen here. This virulent strain of fundamentalism was nourished by three theocratic Republican administrations that dismembered the Constitution and effectively sanctioned criminal campaigns against abortion providers. So while the U.S. condemns Muslim religious fundamentalism and trumpets itself as a beacon for individual and civil liberties unbridled by theocratic intolerance it has become a breeding ground for the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist terrorist movement in the world.
Christian fundamentalism has always objectified women’s bodies as patriarchal property and territory for reproductive control. It’s no surprise then that white men deem themselves to be Christian soldiers in the war over the wombs of Middle American and Southern white women. It’s also no surprise that the Bible Belt, fount of hyper-religious public policy that demonizes sex education and contraception, has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
Christian fundamentalist dogma is about keeping ‘em barefoot, knocked up and in obeisance to a God that would rather see an impoverished 12 year-old incest victim carry her rapist father’s baby to term and suffer lifelong psychological trauma than undergo a safe legal abortion and have a reasonable expectation for a future. And it is immoral, radically anti-woman positions like these which make the “pro-life” misnomer appropriated by the anti-abortion movement so infuriating.
In the militant anti-choice universe the lives of real babies living in poverty and their real mothers and real families are of no consequence next to protection of the religiously decreed “rights” of the unborn. White male anti-abortion terrorists can’t get similarly exorcised about cuts to women’s health care benefits and pre- and post-natal care to mothers in real time because it would mean ceding control to flesh and blood women.
Tiller’s assassination also dovetails with a dangerous shift in public opinion regarding the future of choice for American women imperiled by unwanted pregnancies. Influenced by a decade of unrelenting right wing propaganda that equates abortion with murder and abortion providers with Nazi eugenicists, polls indicate that a growing majority of the American public has adopted a “pro-life” stance and is willfully ignorant about the life-giving and life-saving potential of legal abortion. Dispatching shooters from “God,” the anti-abortion movement must accept responsibility for the murderous religious rhetoric that led to the assassination of George Tiller and the terrorist assault on the rights and lives of American women.
Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of BlackFemLens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7FM.
By Sikivu Hutchinson
Guest Contributor
“God sent the shooter,” the signs wielded by anti-abortion protestors at the funeral of slain doctor George Tiller proclaimed. Last week’s assassination of abortion provider and feminist George Tiller in a Kansas church on the so-called holy seventh day was not only a barbaric act of religious cowardice but a terrorist assault on the rights of women. Tragically similar to the 1998 murder of New York doctor Bernard Slepian, Tiller’s murder was the culmination of years of attempted murders, death threats, bombings and arson attacks waged against abortion providers by white Christian terrorists.
Despite the scope of this orchestrated campaign mainstream media rarely identify these acts or those who commit them as “terrorist.” Those who invoke Christian fundamentalism as justification for their barbaric incursions against women and their allies are dismissed as aberrations, even though the profiles of the killers are always the same, the suspects—generally disaffected white middle aged males, aligned with a crackpot anti-government militia and/or fundamentalist ethos steeped in the bloody retribution of the Old Testament—virtually plucked from central casting.
These spasms of Christian fundamentalist violence are largely peculiar to the United States. Anti-abortion activism in Western European countries such as Great Britain, France and Italy doesn’t inspire anywhere near the level of militant resistance seen here. This virulent strain of fundamentalism was nourished by three theocratic Republican administrations that dismembered the Constitution and effectively sanctioned criminal campaigns against abortion providers. So while the U.S. condemns Muslim religious fundamentalism and trumpets itself as a beacon for individual and civil liberties unbridled by theocratic intolerance it has become a breeding ground for the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist terrorist movement in the world.
Christian fundamentalism has always objectified women’s bodies as patriarchal property and territory for reproductive control. It’s no surprise then that white men deem themselves to be Christian soldiers in the war over the wombs of Middle American and Southern white women. It’s also no surprise that the Bible Belt, fount of hyper-religious public policy that demonizes sex education and contraception, has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
Christian fundamentalist dogma is about keeping ‘em barefoot, knocked up and in obeisance to a God that would rather see an impoverished 12 year-old incest victim carry her rapist father’s baby to term and suffer lifelong psychological trauma than undergo a safe legal abortion and have a reasonable expectation for a future. And it is immoral, radically anti-woman positions like these which make the “pro-life” misnomer appropriated by the anti-abortion movement so infuriating.
In the militant anti-choice universe the lives of real babies living in poverty and their real mothers and real families are of no consequence next to protection of the religiously decreed “rights” of the unborn. White male anti-abortion terrorists can’t get similarly exorcised about cuts to women’s health care benefits and pre- and post-natal care to mothers in real time because it would mean ceding control to flesh and blood women.
Tiller’s assassination also dovetails with a dangerous shift in public opinion regarding the future of choice for American women imperiled by unwanted pregnancies. Influenced by a decade of unrelenting right wing propaganda that equates abortion with murder and abortion providers with Nazi eugenicists, polls indicate that a growing majority of the American public has adopted a “pro-life” stance and is willfully ignorant about the life-giving and life-saving potential of legal abortion. Dispatching shooters from “God,” the anti-abortion movement must accept responsibility for the murderous religious rhetoric that led to the assassination of George Tiller and the terrorist assault on the rights and lives of American women.
Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of BlackFemLens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7FM.
By Terry Keleher
Republished courtesy of Yes! Magazine
The appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has stirred up another round of debate about race in America. Clearly we have not yet achieved a post-racial society. But we could take some steps in that direction by acknowledging historic wrong-doings and making sure future policy making promotes racial equity.
President Barack Obama meets with Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and Vice President Joseph Biden prior to an announcement in the East Room, May 26, 2009. Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Latino Supreme Court justice.
Official White House photo.
In his historic Philadelphia speech on race, then candidate Barack Obama genuinely tried to unify us in facing our failures. Many people hoped that President Obama would be our racial savior, single-handedly bringing an end to centuries of struggle against discrimination. Some were quick to declare that racism, as we knew it, is over.
Yet familiar patterns and headlines persist: A spike in racial hate crimes and hate groups. More police killings of people of color. Skyrocketing unemployment rates among Blacks and Latinos. Crackdowns on immigrants. An historic loss of wealth for people of color forced into foreclosure. And racist speech all over the Internet.
Although the delusion of “post-racialism” was clearly preposterous, since President Obama took office, we’ve heard hardly a mention of the structural racism that permeates our economic, political, and cultural institutions.
The good news is that sensible solutions exist. Two especially promising solutions are public reconciliation processes, like the one made famous in South Africa, and proactive racial impact planning and analysis now being employed widely in the United Kingdom.
Truth and Reconciliation—Then and Now
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; provided a forum for constructive and candid conversation about historic racial inequalities. The court-like commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, held hearings around the country to investigate human rights abuses, restore victims’ dignity, formulate rehabilitation proposals, and consider individuals’ applications for amnesty. The public airing of the ongoing harm caused by abuses of justice and human rights transformed the country. And the commission sparked nationwide discussion of appropriate responses, ranging from amnesty to reparations.
South African emphasized a restorative, rather than retributive system of justice, where individual offenders and society as a whole were obligated to officially acknowledge and take responsibility for the harms done to victims and communities. “Revealing is healing” was not simply a slogan, but a cornerstone for conciliatory power.
Archbishop Tutu wrote in the commission’s final report: “There were others who urged that the past should be forgotten—glibly declaring that we should 'let bygones be bygones'. This option was rightly rejected because such amnesia would have resulted in further victimisation of victims by denying their awful experiences… The other reason amnesia simply will not do is that the past refuses to lie down quietly. It has an uncanny habit of returning to haunt one."
Amnesty International, which advocates for effective truth commissions, reported in 2007 that truth commissions had been established in 28 countries and others were being considered, with more than half of them created in the previous ten years. Functions may include investigating past abuses, holding perpetrators accountable, fostering reconciliation, developing a historical record, memorializing past events, recommending reparations, and proposing institutional reforms to prevent future problems.
Surfacing the truth, of course, does not by itself remedy past injustices or change unfair institutions and policies. But it’s a necessary first step.
If the U.S were to follow suit by establishing an officially sanctioned process for acknowledging our racialized history, it could help build deep understanding across communities and reveal new transformative possibilities. The scope of a truth commission here would certainly have to be negotiated since the legacy of racial inequality in our country has both longstanding roots and current manifestations.
Even a scope limited to racially inequitable policies and institutional practices that have occurred in our lifetime could offer many lessons for today. For example, a thorough airing of practices ranging from redlining and blockbusting to exclusionary covenants and public contracting would shed light on our enduring racial wealth divide. Such an examination could also help us understand how the prevalence of predatory lending in communities of color has resulted in a multi-billion dollar loss of wealth for people of color who are forced into foreclosure.
Indeed, some individual states and locales have adopted or are promoting variations on the truth commission model. The Oklahoma Legislature created the Tulsa Race Riot Commission to investigate a 1921 incident where a white lynch mob went on a two-day rampage where they killed as many as 300 African Americans, burned homes and churches and destroyed the “Black Wall Street” business district. In its final report issued in 2001, the Commission recommended direct payments to survivors and descendants, a memorial to the dead, and scholarships and economic development funding for the affected community. Later that year, the state legislature passed a Race Riot Reconciliation Act, approving some, but not all of the commission’s recommendations.
Other cities have created race riot commissions to examine particular historical events such as Greensboro, North Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina. And there’s a grassroots effort underway towards establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the state of Mississippi.
Preventing Future Discrimination
While truth commissions have a largely retrospective focus, another model for addressing structural racism from a more prospective standpoint is one that has been adopted in the United Kingdom, known as the “Race Equality Duty.” This is a far-reaching government commitment and legal responsibility to eliminate discrimination, promote racial equality and foster good race relations.
Public agencies from federal authorities to local police departments and schools are required to create strategic plans to advance racial equality. And major policy proposals must undergo Race Equality Impact Assessments, a systematic review aimed at anticipating and preventing adverse impacts for any racial group.
Since 2001, when the law was adopted, public entities across the U.K. have developed racial equality plans. At their best, they attract public engagement and vigorous debate, which informs and improves collective decisions. But, like any government task, if political leadership is lacking, the plans can also become bureaucratic paperwork with minimal public input or impact.
The U.K. is refining its process to make it more effective and better aligned with other interests, including human rights, gender equity, and disability rights. The government is now developing a new Equality Bill to clarify and unify its framework, with enforcement to be largely overseen by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The U.K. model places government at the forefront of not only eliminating racial discrimination, but of actually promoting equality, opportunity, and inclusion across society. Instead of waiting for discrimination to occur before taking action, government authorities are charged with the duty of preventing potential adverse impacts.
In Northern Ireland, the Department of Transport and Industry introduced a national minimum wage. The Department’s racial equality impact assessment found that the minimum wage would benefit 130,000 ethnic minority workers in the U.K. The government conducted public awareness campaigns in multiple languages, resulting in a significant increase in complaints of underpayment. Through proactive research and action, the government was able to address racial disparities in wages and income.
There’s no magic bullet for eliminating structural racism, and each country has its unique racial history and dynamics. The United States does not, yet, have this sort of national legislation, but a handful of states, cities, and counties are moving ahead with their own forms of racial impact assessments:
Last year, Iowa—which ranked worst in the nation in its ratio of incarceration rates between African Americans and whites—enacted the nation’s first law requiring policymakers to prepare racial impact statements for proposals affecting sentencing and probation. Iowa Governor Chet Culver, upon signing the bill, said “I am committed to making sure state government at all levels reflects our shared values of fairness and justice.”
Connecticut has since passed a similar law. Illinois, Oregon, and Wisconsin are also considering adopting racial impact statements for criminal justice policies, much like environmental impact statements are used to minimize adverse impacts.
The city of Seattle directs all its departments to use a Racial Equity Analysis to guide policy development and budget making. This is helping the city make improvements in areas such as hiring and promotions, public contracts, and immigrant and refugee access to city services.
King County, Washington, uses an Equity Impact Review Tool to assess key policies, programs and funding decisions. This new tool is part of a broader county-wide Equity and Social Justice Initiative, which has resulted in culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach materials for early childhood intervention services for Somali-, Vietnamese-, and Spanish-speaking families.
A coalition of community groups in St. Paul, Minnesota is proposing a new policy requiring city staff and developers to compile a Racial Equity Impact Report for all development projects that receive a public subsidy of $100,000 or more.
These initiatives recognize that racism is far more than personal prejudice—it’s a historically rooted system of bias that continues to manifest itself in our laws and institutions. Conscious consideration of racial equity is one of the best ways to prevent the unconscious replication of systemic racism.
Jump Start Racial Justice
Instead of embracing the empty rhetoric of “post-racialism” and “color-blindness” where systemic problems are ignored, we can build a modern racial justice movement. There’s no lack of solutions. We just need leadership and action from the grassroots up, and the political will to think bigger and act boldly.
We can’t pin all our hopes on President Obama, but there’s certainly no need to remain in our racial rut. Instead, we can jump start racial justice. There’s a path forward. Let's take it. Together. Today.
Terry Keleher wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Terry is the Midwest Director of the Applied Research Center and a contributing writer to RaceWire, the blog of ColorLines, the national newsmagazine on race and politics (Racewire.org).
By Imani Perry
Guest Contributor
Today is a day of contrasts. President Obama nominated 2nd circuit appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. If Sotomayor is confirmed she will be the first Latina/o on the nations highest court. This is unquestionably a sign of progress for our nation. A Nuyorican product of the Bronx who was raised in public housing she is a noteworthy representative of the brilliance and potential that exists in the most neglected sectors of our society.
Also today, the state of California upheld Proposition 8, a ballot measure that changed the California state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, thereby withdrawing the right of same sex couples to marry, a right the court had affirmed just last year. This is obviously a step backward in the march towards inclusion and equality that Obama’s election symbolized for millions of people here and abroad.
One thing is clear: the culture wars that marked American political and social life in the 1990s are not dead. But something about them has changed. In the 90s, it was the political left who were identified as those who had identity politics, who talked about race, class, gender, and sexual orientation as framing their experiences and perspectives. This attention to identity was useful for expanding our ideas about everything from housing and education to reproductive rights and criminal law.
Nowadays, the right wing has become experts at identity politics too. They talk about their religion and regional cultures, and how those things shape their values. Think, for example, about how much more you know about the ethnicity, culture and religion of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court as compared to their liberal counterparts. Moreover, the conservative justices identities clearly frame how they interpret the Constitution. And more broadly, for the right wing, religious beliefs and cultural practices have become central to their political and legal ideals.
The difference between the left and right on this score, however, is whereas identity politics on the left has been used to argue for an expansion of rights and opportunities, on the right they are used to narrow the scope of rights and opportunities, and exclude citizens and residents of our nation from many of its benefits.
The Supreme Court has recognized that marriage is a fundamental right. It is a right, therefore, that all citizens theoretically possess. In constitutional law, when a state denies a fundamental right, and that denial comes before the Supreme Court, it is automatically subject to strict scrutiny, the highest level of scrutiny the court applies to state action. In order for the state’s action to be considered constitutional, and therefore upheld, it must be “narrowly tailored to meet a compelling state interest.”
As someone who has spent the better part of my adult life studying the Constitution and issues of inequality, among other things, I cannot understand how in good conscience anyone could argue that denying same sex couples to marry is a compelling STATE interest. It may be an expression of a particular religious or cultural perspective, and a given denomination or congregation has the First Amendment right to express their disapproval of same sex marriage now just as they did (and some still do) of interracial marriage. But denying one group of citizens access to their fundamental rights and justifying it by citing the religious and cultural beliefs of another group of citizens is plainly unconstitutional.
If we want to successfully work together while embracing our diverse cultures, religions, politics, and many other identity markers, it has to be done with a respect for some basics of human and constitutional rights. Our Constitution at best operates as a common ground for citizens, cutting across difference to clearly define what it means to belong to a nation. We share rights and responsibilities.
Culture and ideology, whether it be the tyranny of the majority or the power plays of elites, should not ever be used to desecrate that common ground. When guaranteed rights are denied it is the hallmark of such desecration.
Eventually the Supreme Court will find itself addressing the issue of same sex marriage, likely over the issue of whether one state, which denies same sex marriage, must recognize the same sex marriage of another state. At this point, it is worth noting that the parallels to the history of interracial marriage are significant. During Reconstruction, several southern states allowed interracial marriage for a few years only to withdraw that right when southern white majorities recovered power during an era they called Redemption. “Redemption” was dedicated to reestablishing white supremacy through law, policy, violence, and social norms. The California Supreme Court’s decision to snatch away a right so recently granted and so hard fought for is eerily similar. It is to our national disgrace that we are allowing the kind of practice that marked one of our darkest historical moments to be repeated just as we began to hope.
I believe that if Sotomayor joins the Court, a woman who not only benefited from the expansion of opportunity created by social justice movements, but who used that opportunity to build a remarkable career as a jurist, she will aid us in turning the tide away from contraction and exclusion, and towards expansion and inclusion in American law.
Pray that we’ll find ourselves with such a smart and accomplished judge to tend to our precious common ground.
Imani Perry is a professor at the Center of African American Studies at Princeton University.
Guest Contributor
In some Black communities it’s akin to donning a white sheet and a Confederate Flag. In others it’s ostensibly tolerated yet whispered about, branded culturally incorrect and bad form if not outright sacrilege.
For Black atheists like myself, proclaiming one’s non-belief amidst genial wishes to “have a blessed day” is never easy in the seemingly innocuous context of casual chit chat between Black folk. Yet, according to the New York Times, a small but growing segment of the American population, galvanized by the hyper-evangelical climate of the Republican Pleistocene, have begun organizing nationwide and becoming more vocal about their atheism.
Although African Americans are not visible in the “movement” some are easing away from religion. For Black atheists, actively breaking with religious tradition is an even graver rejection than that of white intellectuals electrified by the “pew-storming” rhetoric of atheist gurus like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. This is partly due to the fact that the history of African American civil and human rights resistance is heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian religious dogma. Despite the White Anglo Saxon Protestant religious justification for slavery and domestic terrorism,
African Americans converted to Christianity and utilized it as a source of succor, community and spiritual redemption. No matter one’s actual deeds, life path or personal mores, to be unquestioningly religious in some quarters is to be inoculated from criticism. Noting this historical irony in his blog, The Black Atheist, Wrath James White states, “In these (black) communities you find more tolerance towards gangbangers, drug addicts, and prostitutes, who pray to God for forgiveness than for honest productive citizens who deny the existence of God.” For Wright, this “is one of the most embarrassing elements of Black culture, our zealous embrace of the God of our kidnappers, murderers, slave masters and oppressors.”
While there have been critical appraisals of African American adoption of Christianity within the context of European conquest and racial slavery, few propose atheism as a corrective. Indeed, atheism would seem to fly in the face of a cultural ethos that frames earthly pain and suffering as a crucible for achieving rewards in the afterlife. In the midst of extreme brutality religious faith can either be seen as a means to mental health, or, as Karl Marx put it more bluntly, an opiate.
In this sense contemporary Black religiosity is the legacy of a culturally specific survival strategy. Many black secular community-based organizations still look to the Black church as a coalition partner and resource. Disturbingly, the church is often uncritically perceived as the “backbone” of the Black community. However, as the debate over California’s Proposition 8 demonstrated, the notion that there is a monolithic “marching in lockstep” Black community is terminally outdated.
On issues of gender and sexual orientation, the overwhelming opposition of many prominent Black churches to granting civil rights to partnered African American gays and lesbians is morally indefensible. When it comes to attitudes about traditional gender roles, gender-based assumptions about Black female religiosity are double-edged. While Black male non-believers are given more leeway to be heretics, Black women who openly profess atheist views are deemed especially traitorous, having abandoned their family role as purveyors of cultural and religious tradition. Images of Black women faithfully shuttling their children to church and socializing them into Christianity are a prominent part of mainstream black culture.
If being black and being Christian are synonymous, then being Black, female and religious (whatever the denomination) is practically compulsory. Black women with children who don’t fall in line, who raise their children as atheists, may find their race credentials revoked.
On the national level the contradictions between American secularism and religion have produced a schizoid tension in the U.S., whereby religious fundamentalism and intolerance for secular thought have become the norm. When it’s practiced in the non-Western world Americans routinely brand this kind of propaganda as backward and extremist. Yet, in this, the most swaggeringly “liberal humanist” of all nations, “coming out” as an atheist in a culture that parades religious dogma as a substitute for true morality may be one of the final ideological frontiers for African Americans.
Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of BlackFemLens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7 FM.
By Steven Pitts
Guest Contributor
(Originally published by Roll Call)
Growing up in Chicago’s Southside in the 1960s, the saying went around that when America sneezed, the Black community caught a cold. Today, as our country endures what most economists expect to end up as the worst crisis since the Great Depression, Black families can brace themselves for the economic equivalent of a life-threatening bout of pneumonia.
That gloomy outlook is evidenced by February jobless figures for the U.S. that show 8.2 percent of whites were officially unemployed; for Blacks, the figure was 13.8 percent.
Many actions need to be taken to address this economic inequity. One very important step is the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
This legislation will help to increase workers’ ability to bargain with their employer for better wages, and that’s especially important for Black workers, whose economic problems started long ago.
During the 27 years after World War II, median incomes for Black families rose by 131 percent after inflation, reflecting the migration of Blacks away from the rural South, the gains from the Civil Rights Movement, effective public policies such as the minimum wage laws, and the presence of a strong union movement.
In contrast, between 1973 and 2007 median Black family incomes rose by only 33 percent. This anemic growth rate (mirrored for workers of all races) reflected greater global economic competition, the rise to dominance of the conservative movement whose aim was to weaken pro-worker social and economic policies, and the diminished strength of unions in the face of these transformations.
But for Black working families, it meant adults often were forced to work multiple jobs, high school and college-age youth were forced to sacrifice schooling opportunities in order to earn money for their families, and some household members had to find employment in the underground economy.
When our current recession began, the Black community faced a two-dimensional job crisis: all-too-familiar unemployment and a ghettoization into primarily low-wage work. Two years ago 8.3 percent of Blacks were officially unemployed; at the same time, close to half of all full-time Black workers earned less than $30,000 – which is just under twice the federal poverty level for a family of three.
For the Black community, the Employee Free Choice Act will enhance the chances of earning better pay and benefits by removing some of the current barriers to workers forming a union. And that’s important.
Workers in unions receive 14.1 percent higher wages overall than their counterparts who are not in unions. For Black workers, the advantage to joining a union is even greater – by 18.3 percent. Black workers in unions also have a higher likelihood of enjoying employer-based health care and a pension, compared to their non-union counterparts. These are the type of wage and benefit gains that move people into the middle class.
Maybe this is why Blacks strongly favor passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. A December 2008 poll by Peter Hart and Associates found that 88 percent of African Americans favor the legislation.
Throughout our country’s history, laws have been passed to establish new processes to radically improve the lives of everyday people. For example, in 1935, the Wagner Act set up procedures to help workers organizing unions and helped to develop the blue-collar middle-class. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act opened doors for Blacks to elect thousands of officials who better represented their interests.
Similarly, the Employee Free Choice Act will help a new generation of low-wage workers forge a proud pathway toward economic security.
As we seek solutions for our recession, we must not allow ourselves to simply return to a pre-crisis economy which did not serve any workers well, particularly Black workers. We can seize the moment to build an economy that really works -- for everyone. The Employee Free Choice Act is one crucial tool for that construction.
Steven Pitts, Ph.D. is a labor policy specialist at UC Berkeley and the author of numerous reports on job quality and Black workers.
By Jamal Simmons
Guest Contributor
(Originally published by Politico)
Throughout Barack Obama’s campaign and swearing-in as president of the United States, the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. loomed large. But the foundation of Obama’s success was laid 20 years before King told the nation about his “dream.”
Meanwhile, many African-Americans also had successful careers as government workers. At 12.6 percent of the population of the United States, blacks make up 17.9 percent of the federal work force and only 10 percent of the civilian workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program Fiscal Year 2008 annual report.
These civil service and manufacturing jobs helped generations of African-Americans take part in the American dream by buying homes and sending their children to college. Undoubtedly, these doctors, lawyers, newscasters, business consultants and other professionals who have moved into every aspect of American life have helped make white Americans more comfortable with people of color in positions of responsibility over the past 40 years.
Take the case of former Sen. Larry Craig, who was arrested in a Minneapolis airport for disorderly conduct. Craig, a white Republican from Idaho, chose as his lawyer Billy Martin, an African-American from Washington, D.C. There surely was no concern about the racial makeup of a Minneapolis jury to explain this choice, as the city is more than 65 percent white. It appears he chose Martin, who had represented him in an earlier harassment case, because he was the best lawyer for the case.
Cases like this are apparent all over America because of the educational and social advancements made possible by the actions of Randolph, Roosevelt and Truman, followed by King, Kennedy and Johnson.
Finally, the appointment of Colin Powell as national security adviser by President Ronald Reagan and his success during the first Persian Gulf War as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush established that a Black man could be trusted with America’s security, erasing the last barrier to Black leadership of the nation.
Certainly, there is not one individual or singular action that led to Obama’s election. Instead, it was the cumulative effect of generations of Americans, Black and White, to erase the barriers to the American dream for every citizen. We rightly recognize Martin Luther King Jr. and his contemporaries for the work they did in the 1950s and 60s, but we should not let the light from those stars blind us to the contributions of those like A. Philip Randolph who came before them.
Jamal Simmons was a Clinton administration political appointee and an adviser to the Democratic National Committee and the Obama-Biden campaign in 2008.
