RACISM--USA:
ETHNIC CLEANSING AT HOME
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination defines racism as "the process of distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin." This process occurs not only when a white man simply calls a Black man a "nigger," but when the New York City Police Department is allowed to murder a young man by shooting him forty-one times when he is weaponless and committed no crime, and when there are more Black men in prison than there are enrolled in higher education in the USA.
In a democracy, freedom should include one's being able to enjoy fundamental human rights without interference and with the encouragement of the state. In fact, it wasn't until thirty years ago that Blacks could even go to the same schools as Whites and this right was only gained through sheer struggle. Today, the face of racism is not the same. If one is not careful, he or she may fail to see racism in its various forms. This is why it is important to understand its very essence. If we confuse it simply for an isolated act of hatred perpetrated by a White individual, we'll miss the point. We must recognize it by its character--an economic tool of the imperialist powers to subjugate one group of people for the sake of another.
Racism in the United States has meant that forty million African ex-slaves do not share the fundamental freedoms that have been laid out in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Blacks in the USA suffer from poor education, high unemployment, high cases of incarceration, poor health care, and inadequate housing. Let us look at the disproportionate rates in regard to standards of living, and we shall clearly see how racism takes its form in 1999.
Blacks today, in the United States have an infant mortality rate of 14.6 per thousand births as compared to 6.3 per thousand births for Whites. Blacks, because of lack of access to the health care system are also one and a half times more likely to die from treatable illnesses than are their White counterparts.1 There was an incident in New York City of a young, single Black mother named Tabitha Walrond, whose baby died due to malnutrition because her breast milk was not sufficient to nourish the child. As the baby lost weight, she attempted to take the child to the doctor for checkups, only to be turned away because her baby had not received a medical insurance card yet. Ms. Walrond attended Lamaze class faithfully, went to all her doctor's appointments, and decided to breast feed. However, when the baby's weight loss dropped sufficiently and she decided to take the baby to the hospital, the baby died in her arms in the taxi. Consequently, Tabitha Walrond was convicted of manslaughter for the death of her baby, when all she was guilty of was being neglected by the health system in the largest economy in the history of the world built on the blood and sweat of her great-grandparents' slave labor. Yet, she was charged with the crime.2
It's not enough that the health care system fails Blacks; the educational system fails Blacks also. In 1999, 400,000 children, 85% of whom are Black and Latino, failed to advance to their next grade. This is nearly one-third of the school system. In addition, statistics show that for every Black man who graduates from college each year, one hundred Black men are arrested.3 Prison has become the new home for young, Black males, where one out of every three Black males from age 20-29 is under the supervision of the criminal justice system.4 Thanks to the state police in certain states in the U.S., the term "driving while Black" has entered the lexicon because as Congressman John Conyers states, "There are virtually no African-American males who have not been stopped one time or another for an alleged traffic violation, namely driving while black."5 He is referring to the fact that in states like Baltimore and Delaware, 73% of the police traffic stops involve African-Americans, who made up only 15% of the drivers.6 David Cole, law professor from Georgetown University reported that "Often, the patterns of harassment were more than isolated incidents of sidewalk justice dispensed by a few rogue cops ... they reflected a widespread pattern of police abuses rooted in departmental policies. In some cases, police departments created roving task forces that swooped down on high-crime neighborhoods and conducted indiscriminate street stops and searches."7
Sometimes these street stops can end up fatal, as in the case of African immigrant Amadou Diallo. Diallo was murdered by the New York Police Department's (NYPD's) Street Crimes Unit (a special highly-trained task force of the NYPD) in a hail of 41 bullets, 19 hitting him until he was killed and he committed no crime nor was he armed.8 Resistance to this type of behavior led to the Amadou protests, where hundreds were arrested. Prior to this murder, youth from around the country convened in New York City for a Million Youth March, of which I was a chief organizer, only to be harassed by police during the rally and at the conclusion of the peaceful march attacked, beaten, and sprayed with mace. Some had to be hospitalized.
In terms of economic disparities, only 45% of Black families owned homes, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, as compared to 73% of their White counterparts.9 This was partly because the median income for Black families was only sixty percent of the median income for White families, but studies have also shown that affluent Black families found it harder to obtain a real estate loan than do low-income White families.
In the field of agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture themselves reported that there was disparate treatment in loan applications for Black and White farmers, where White farmers' loan applications took 84 days to process and 222 days to process for their Black counterparts.10
ENDNOTES:
1. U.S. Bureau of Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1996.
2. Katha Pollitt, "A Bronx Tale: Tabitha Walrond Unfairly Convicted in Death of Her Baby," THE NATION, .June 14, 1999.
3. David Cole, "No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Justice System." The Houston Chronicle, June 6, 1999.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. CNN Interactive, "Officers Indicted in Diallo Case Want Murder Charges Dismissed," August 2, 1999.
9. Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Report. June 8, 1997.
10. U.S. Bureau of Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997.
--Excerpted and edited from the December 12th Movement Presentation to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights by -D12 member Jed Michel. December 12th Movement International Secretariat, 456 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11216, Ph. (718) 398-1766 , Fax (718) 623-1855, D12MOV@aol.com.