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Vol. 13 No. 35…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…August 29, 2010

Intuit's Vibe

Beautiful Black Child

By Yohannes Sharriff Smith

Beautiful black child

Fill the world with wonder.

Breathe life into exhausted hopes.

Your pure innocent nature,

Not yet hindered by the evil of this world,

Forever changes those you touch.

Help us to honor the love still living in slave quarters.

The blood shed and pride fed to European insecurities.

Whips struck lashes like lightening

Across a horizon of shackled African bodies

Field hands wounded and bleeding run north to freedom.

Escaping the Klan,

Communing with Native People in swamp lands

Recaptured stretched necks

Suspended in midair from southern trees

Noose dangled strange fruit burned bare.

Blistered ebony backs frying in the Louisiana sun.

Crisp while picking cotton, crying a soulful moan,

As stalks pricked overworked fingertips

With impunity that master bastard raped

Our Queens forcing fathers to watch

All endured because babies can't go hungry.

Do not let fear rob you of your gift!

You are special!

Lead the way to the future for those who follow.

Defy the odd and let your light shine in defiance.

Your sheer brilliance blinding the faithless

And guiding the believers

An ever glowing tribute to your people

Beautiful black Pearl

The inhumane conditions you have endured

For thousands of generations transformed you.

Glory belongs to our ancestors' sacrifices.

Darwin is the witness.

Evolution is ours; we possess the will to survive.

Beautiful black butterfly

Rise as the sun with your dreams firmly in hand.

Boldly place them amongst the stars,

Ever burning spectacles for the world to gaze upon

Beautiful black people

Let our audacious ascension emulate the Nile River.

It began as a few struggling drops.

As time passed its surging growth overcame obstacles

Defeating whatever lay in its path.

Refusing to allow the world to define it

Instead our existence defines the world.

We are an unstoppable force, shaping the universe.

All lips shall utter these words, Black is Beautiful!

Beautiful black child, this is my pray for you!

Bit of History

Kenneth Bancroft Clark (1914-2005)

A racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, black and white alike.....Kenneth B. Clark

Kenneth Bancroft Clark was born to Arthur Bancroft Clark and Miriam Hanson Clark in the Panama Canal Zone on July 14, 1914. Mrs. Clark believed her children would have a better life in the United States, but Mr. Clark, a superintendent of cargo for the United Fruit Company, felt he could not get a comparable job in the US. Consequently, Mrs. Clark took Kenneth and his younger sister, Beulah, to New York City, leaving her husband behind (1919). The family settled in Harlem, New York, where Mrs. Clark became a seamstress in a garment sweatshop.

Harlem was home to a thriving immigrant culture, especially Irish, Italians and Jews. Clark entered Public School in 1920, which provided him an integrated perspective early in life. However, by the time he reached the ninth grade, his Irish, Jewish and Italian neighbors had fled Harlem, leaving Clark in a predominantly black world.

Clark transferred to George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan which promised a better education. Nevertheless, black students were steered into vocational training to prepare them for factory jobs. An independent woman, who had left her husband seeking better opportunities for her children and had helped organize the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Miriam Clark told the school counselor, "I didn't bring my son to the US to become a factory worker; he's better than that."

After graduation, Clark attended Howard University, where he studied political science under Dr. Ralph Bunche. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1935 and returned to Howard the next year to pursue a master's degree in psychology. Clark met and married Mamie Phipps (1938), who was also studying at Howard. Clark departed Howard for New York City, where he earned a PhD in experimental psychology at Columbia University (1940). Mamie Clark transferred also, earning her doctorate in psychology from Columbia in 1946.

Clark had the good fortune of working with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal on his classic study of the American Negro (1939-1941). This study documented the inequalities between whites and blacks in the United States. The team of Kenneth and Mamie Clark founded Northside Center for Child Development, a treatment facility for personality disorders (1946).

The Clarks' interest in the damaging effects of racism and its impact on the self perception of black children led to their groundbreaking investigation into the psychological effects of racism on identity and self-esteem and resulted in the development of their famous "doll tests" (1939-1940). They showed black children four identical dolls, two black and two white. The children were asked to identify the dolls racially, to indicate which dolls were best, which were nice, which were bad, and with which they would prefer to play. The Clarks administered the test to children in various communities around the country; their results revealed that a majority of children tested rejected the black dolls and expressed a preference for the white dolls. They believed these tests provided indisputable evidence of the negative effects of racism on the personality and psychological development of black children.

Dr. Clark conducted follow up tests in the Clarendon County school system of South Carolina which had three times as many black students as whites. However, white students received more than 60 percent of the funds earmarked for education. Dr. Clark tested 16 black children, ages 6 to 9. After showing them black and white dolls, he asked what they thought of each. Eleven said the black doll looked "bad" and nine thought the white doll looked "nice." When asked, "Now show me the doll that's most like you," seven said they actually saw themselves "closest to the white doll in appearance." Dr. Clark said, "These children saw themselves as inferior, and they accepted this inferiority as part of their reality."

Dr. Clark's tests in Clarendon County helped Thurgood Marshall develop the legal strategy in Brown v Board of Education (1954) which challenged the constitutionality of segregation's "separate-but-equal" doctrine. Dr. Clark's work proved that racism actually damaged black children. It showed clearly that equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment had been denied black children and that segregation was a violation of their human rights.

Following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John and Robert Kennedy, Dr. Clark became pessimistic over the difficulty in achieving integration in the North. He, as many blacks, grew wary with whites' prejudices and doubtful that racial equality would ever be achieved. Though discouraged, Dr. Clark remained a firm advocate of integrating American society. "I confidently expected the segregation problem would be solved by 1960. That shows how naive I was." Growing more and more pessimistic, he blamed "neoconservative whites for betraying civil rights in the US; blacks who thought they could succeed in isolation; politicians of both races who made empty promises; and defeatists who came to think that integration and real racial harmony were" too difficult to achieve."

Dr. Clark received many awards, honorary degrees and other accolades including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP (1961) and the Nicholas Murray Butler Silver Medal awarded by Columbia University (1966). Filmmaker Kiri Davis recreated the doll study and documented it in a film entitled A Girl Like Me.

Dr Kenneth Bancroft Clark died in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York in May 2005. He left behind two children: son Hilton and daughter Kate. (Sources: www.teachersdomain.org, www.nytimes.com and http://en.wikipedia.org)

Revisiting Racism

By John Burl Smith

On August 12, 2010, CNN's AC360° aired the Doll Study Revisited: Girl Calls Her Skin "Nasty," which reexamined the famous "Doll Studies" (1939) conducted by Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Although not expressed, there seemed to be doubt about the validity of the Clark's work, especially in light of today's "color blind society." An updated version of the study, CNN said, The goal was to determine the status of children's racial beliefs, attitudes and preferences as well as skin tones biases at two different developmental periods. Specifically, kindergarten and middle childhood youngsters attending grade schools either in the Northeast or Southeast regions of the United States of America were tested by same race female testers.

The study was comprised of 133 children -- 65 early and 68 middle childhood subjects. There were 75 African American and 58 white children of which 64 came from 4 Northeastern and 69 from 4 Southeastern schools. The 8 schools were from suburbs around New York City and Atlanta (within a 2-hour radius). Very similar to the Clarks' studies, the results seemed to shock commentators, as well as researchers, since 70 years have elapsed between the two studies.

Following the original studies by the Clarks, there were suspicions that the black psychologists used "junk" science to concoct their results to give a false impression about effects of segregation and the doctrine of "separate-but-equal." Today, many thought that effects they measured were temporary and had faded with time, especially after the so-called changes that occurred since Brown v Board of Education (1954). The fallacy in such thinking results from white refusal to acknowledge that slavery/segregation produced persistent residual effects that society reinforced.

Interviewed for Eyes on the Prize (11-3-85), Dr. Clark spoke candidly. The attempt on the part of my wife and me was to try to understand how black children saw themselves -- whether they viewed themselves as equal to others. In fact, what we were trying to do is see how children develop a sense of their own being, their own person. Dr. Clark analysis highlighted the essential fact underlying blacks' perilous existence -- development of their self perception.

Although, whites and blacks went through slavery in tandem, each perspective was very different. Whites determined everything about slaves' lives and slaves were forced to accept and adapt to any demand made upon them by whites. White skin represented power, status, wealth, beauty and any other positive characteristics imaginable. Simultaneously, a slave's skin color was a stigma, a badge of servitude, a depository for attributing any characteristic whites despised. A slave's blackness stood out as no other pigment, drawing to him or her the dread and wretchedness of perpetual bondage.

Emancipation did not free slaves of what was their badge of dishonor. A curse that slave descendants spent their existence -- whitening and lightening -- trying to remove. Black skin means one can be denied equal access to the bounties of US citizenship - the right to vote, equal pay, employment, education, etc.-- even though all justifications for such treatment have long since been proven false. Moreover, slave descendants' skin color justifies the denial of "equal protection" codified under the 14^th Amendment to prevent discrimination, disparate treatment and hostile environment -- unequal justice, lynching, murder by police, school-to-prison pipeline, predatory lending, etc.

Dr. Clark explained what the process of segregation did to children he studied. Oh, of course, I saw the warnings signs, even before I knew there was going to be a case [Brown v Board of Education] against segregation. My wife and I saw them as fairly indicative of the dehumanizing effects of racism, of which segregation is the most concrete manifestation of racism, no question about that. In fact, we saw that so clearly that we were reluctant to publish the results, because the results of our studies were so indicative of the dehumanizing, cruel impact of racism in our allegedly "democratic society" and you know, these children were internalizing that. They saw themselves in terms of the society's definition of them as inferior. That's not a pretty thing to- and it was hard for us to pretend to be objective about it.

Dr. Clark's perceptive statement has been borne out by the CNN study. The source of children's self perception is information from the society at-large. Metaphorically, like an umbilical cord, society feeds the young images of how it perceives them and they build up what is called "residual-self identifying imagery" which serves as the basis of their personality. All one needs to do in order to understand this process is to observe society's message to realize that nothing has changed. A white skin still represents power, status, wealth, beauty and any other positive characteristics imaginable. Whereas, blackness is still a depository for everything negative - ignorance, indolence, ribald, poverty, crime, lack of opportunity, unemployment, degradation, homelessness, welfare, etc.-- attributable to people in American society.

The dehumanizing impact of racism on a child's psyche is profound. Look at television, videos or movies; the desirability of being white is overwhelming. Children see white people perform all the positive functions of society, while they are inundated with negative roles blacks play in society. Unlike the Clarks' studies, the CNN study assessed both white (58) and black (78) children; however, the systemic socializing impact of racism was remarkably similar. The reality of the CNN study is that American society is breeding racism today just as it did during slavery or put another way, slavery never ended! (Source: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com)

Hood Notes

Letter to Ban Ki-moon

By John Burl Smith

The Honorable Ban Ki-moon

Secretary-General of the United Nations

1st Avenue & E 46th St

New York, NY 10017

Honorable Sir:

You said of the Universal Periodic Review that it "has great potential to promote and protect human rights in the darkest corners of the world." It is in that regard this letter is addressed to you on behalf of the more than forty million slave descendants residing in the United States of America (USA) in order to present the accompanying petition to the United Nations General Assembly. This petition is an appeal by slave descendants for help in dealing with racism in America. When Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton announced in February of this year that for the first time the US would submit to the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, slave descendants applauded that decision. It was hoped that the US would use the review as an opportunity to begin a real dialogue about racism in America. Furthermore, it was hoped that the Obama administration would utilize Mr. Doudou Diène's, UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, report and recommendations (2008) as a beginning point to establish benchmarks in addressing the US' dismal human rights record.

Specifically, Mr. Diène recommended: a) Congress establish a bipartisan commission to evaluate the progress and failures in the fight against racism and the ongoing process of resegregation, particularly in housing and education, and to find responses to check these trends; (b) The Government reassess existing legislation on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in view of two main guidelines: addressing the overlapping nature of poverty and race or ethnicity; and linking the fight against racism to the construction of a democratic, egalitarian and interactive multiculturalism, in order to strengthen inter-community relations; (c) The Government should intensify its efforts to enforce federal civil rights laws; (d) The Government clarify to law enforcement officials the obligation of equal treatment and, in particular, the prohibition of racial profiling.

Special Rapporteur Diène was very clear that "racism is alive and thriving in America." The Obama administration not only ignored those recommendations, its report does not even recognize "racism" as a problem. Adding injury to insult, the Obama administration, hoping to appease white conservative voters, went where the Bush administration feared to tread and not only swept racism under the rug, it used civil societies to beat down the hump so that the international community would not see the bulge. Moreover, the current report did not indicate that the Obama administration recognizes racism as a human rights violation.

Going back to the first World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, slave descendants from around the world were vociferous in demanding that racism be recognized as a crime against humanity. At that conference, the US opposed those efforts and fought in every subsequent arena to protect its racist heritage of discriminating against slave descendants.

However, thanks to the valiant efforts of African, Asian, Pacific, Middle East and South American nations, the US did not prevail. Slave descendants took heart from the creation of the Human Rights Council and the establishment of the Universal Periodic Review. Hopes of poor and powerless people worldwide were lifted when countries such as China, Russia and Iran faced the harsh light of international scrutiny. Yet, during those reviews, the US, standing on the sideline, wagged its finger at nations under review and condemned their effort as insufficient.

Now, it is clear that the US' refusal to join the human rights process was a delaying tactic to avoid exposure of its racist hypocritical human rights record. Its sudden agreement to submit to the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review came after months of arm twisting and threatening vulnerable nations not to oppose its spineless and inept report. US used it consolation with NGO/civil societies as a rouge to give the impression of agreement with the Obama administration's position on human rights. There were no public announcements through the media, which allowed the Obama administration to avoid serious domestic scrutiny. If human rights are bedrock principles of the international community and not a ploy to placate the poor and powerless, the current report by the US must not be allowed to go unchallenged.

The United Nations, through UNESCO in 1950, published a declaration called The Race Question and drew international attention to the desperate plight of black people living under a murderous racist segregationist US regime. America was built on the backs of slaves. Following a bloody Civil War over slavery, governments -- federal, state and local -- beginning in 1890, allowed groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, to employ extrajudicial murder -- lynching of blacks - that continued unabated until the 1950s. This was US-style South African Apartheid. South Africa's white ruled government was condemned worldwide, while the US, which had a similar murderous regime, is praised as "a color blind society." Unlike South Africa, the US refuses to discuss its racist past, offer an apology for it or extend equal access for slave descendants.

If the United Nations, which represents the international community, accepts the US' Universal Periodic Review, which is supposed to address its egregious human rights record, yet does not address racism, it will make a mockery of racism as a human rights violation. Slave descendants in the US submit this petition to the UN General Assembly in hopes that representatives from counties with similar histories that love freedom will support this plea.

Respectfully,

John Burl Smith

The Dialogue on Race International Network (www.thedish.org)

News You Use

US Report to UN

On August 23, 2010, the US State Department submitted the Obama administration report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in advance of the US' Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the Human Rights Council scheduled in November. The report claims extensive protections in U.S. law and practice for human rights as well as several important steps recently taken to improve human rights and U.S. adherence to international standards including: (a) Issuance of the Executive Order 13491 on Ensuring Lawful Interrogation which ended the use of secret cruel interrogation techniques and closed secret CIA prisons. (b) Continued commitment to close Guantánamo Bay and to the premise that there are no "law-free zones." (c) Revised parole guidelines for individuals in expedited removal proceedings found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture. (d) Enactment of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 bolstering the U.S. government's ability to prosecute hate crimes, including those motivated by animus based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Although these issues are important in the international arena, the US omitted the most important issue facing America today - racism. The US was admonished severely by UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Mr. Doudou Diène in his report to the UN 2008 and has done nothing to address any of the issues raised in that report. The US has resisted recognizing racism as a crime against humanity and a violation of human rights. This report continues that Bush administration policy. Consequently, human rights advocates around the world are gearing up to oppose the US' UPR as totally inadequate in light of it atrocious treatment of slave descendants throughout its history.

The US made no mention of this fact, nor did it offer any indication that it plans to address the problem of racism in any way in the future. The Dialogue on Race International Network (www.thedish.org) has submitted a petition to the Human Rights Council, also to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN General Assembly opposing the US report. It is our firm belief that to allow the US report to go unchallenged will be to agree that racism is not a problem for slave descendants in the US.

We are asking DISH readers to come to the website at www.thedish.org and read our petition and to support this effort by emailing, writing and calling the UN to register your opposition to the US omission of ongoing racism as a human rights violation that must be addressed. To read the US UPR, visit www.state.gov/documents/organization/146379.pdf.

Emails should be sent to ecu@un.org or petitc@un.org. Letters addressed to the UN Secretary-General should be sent to: The Honorable Ban Ki-moon; Secretary-General of the United Nations; 1st Avenue & E 46th St; New York, NY 10017. You can telephone the UN at 212-963-5012.

Disgruntled feels: Inferiority! I do not need a 'doll test' to gauge black feelings of inferiority. Just take a cursory look at our behavior and outward manifestations, which no longer say "black is beautiful." There is little wonder that our children detest their exterior; the vast majority of black adults show no pride in their natural beauty. Take for example the issue of black hair. Black women are by far the worse of the lot when it comes to destroying black locks. Dripping self-hate, they are enriching those who sell human and fake hair and chemicals, including lye and dye, in a desperate attempt to look more like white women, at least by the head. Black men mostly shave themselves bald in their haste not to offend. Even those too young to exhibit signs of male pattern baldness, the excuse most often cited for self-shearing, are called upon to lop off their locks; it is what older black males do best, show self-hate. More important, the young ones are told they look clean without that nappy mess! This and other lies are fed to our children by blacks and the larger society on a daily to reinforce a sense of inferiority! No wonder our children prefer white dolls to black ones. Their parents do too!

Disgruntled says: This week former US Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod met with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss the possibility of her returning to the federal agency in a different capacity. You will recall, selective excerpts from one of Sherrod's speeches on racial healing were posted on the Internet by a scoundrel, who wanted to point a finger at a "black racist." The effort backfired but not before Sherrod was fired by the politically correct Obama administration. Mr. Obama has apologized for the government's hasty action, but the scoundrel that caused this brouhaha has not seen fit to apologize. Sherrod is contemplating suing the devil. Understandably, Sherrod refused the new position. In doing so, she called on the nation to engage in that long overdue discussion of racism in America. I second the notion and say 'let's get it on!'

Disgruntled wants to know: The co-chair of President Obama's Debt Commission, former Senator Alan Simpson, described Social Security as a "milk cow with 310 million tits." Simpson has made it known that he opposes Social Security and would love to dismantle the New Deal program. For some time, the program has been viewed, mostly by Republicans and the ruling elite, as a problem child, budget-wise, when in fact the program has run a surplus until recently. Had those surpluses been invested in anything other than the general revenue and used to fund unnecessary wars and other big business interests, the program would be solvent for years to come. Republicans would love to never have to repay Social Security for its used surpluses. However, dismantling Social Security will mean fewer dollars flowing into the treasury, which will exacerbate the deficit and national debt problem. Or, do you suppose Republicans and the ruling elite expect workers to continue paying the Social Security tax when there is no benefit?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.truth-out.org California Assembly Votes to Report on Human Rights to UN Committees...By Marjorie Cohn...On August 9, the California Assembly took the historic step of becoming the first state to agree to publicize the text of three ratified UN human rights treaties, and to submit the required reports to the State Department for consideration by the UN treaty committees. The State Assembly voted to pass ACR129, the Human Rights Reporting legislation, by a vote of 52 to 11, with 16 abstentions. The legislation will now move to the state Senate. The International Convention on Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination requires the United States to publicize the text at the federal, state and local levels and to make periodic reports to the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination every two years on complaints of racial discrimination in every aspect of life and on progress in eliminating such discrimination. The US ratified this treaty in 1994 and has issued some of the required reports, but has never publicized the text nor has it sought, or included, information from each state, as required. Now the California Assembly has voted to publicize and make the required reports.

Email www.wbci.com Mississippi Middle School Segregates Student Government Officers: Only Whites Can Run for President ...With the election of President Barack Obama, the country heralded the coming of an age in which an African-American could overcome significant historical prejudice to ascend to the presidency. But while the country celebrates this collective step forward, a Nettleton, Mississippi public school is taking a clear step back. According to Nettleton Middle School's rules, children running for certain class officer posts must meet a specific race requirement: to be president, the child must be white. A school memo, obtained by MixedandHappy and The Smoking Gun, was passed out to every 6th, 7th, and 8th grader to inform them of the breakdown. The upcoming elections are divided between offices delineated for black and white students. Of the 12 offices for which students can compete, "eight are earmarked for white students, while four are termed 'black seats." The presidency is reserved for white students across each grade, but a black student is permitted to be the 8th grade vice-president or reporter, the 7th grade treasurer, or the 6th grade reporter. So, along with a "B" average and "a good disciplinary status and moral character," a child hoping to represent his or her class must be the right race: According to Nettleton parent Brandy Springer, the school's handbook also states that "other elections such as homecoming court operate in a similar fashion. Positions are not held by one girl and one boy but by four individuals; one black couple, the other white."

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