Volume 3 Issue 28…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… July 21, 2000

The DISH is based on themes from T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution. According to the President's Initiative on Race, "The issues that this book brings to the forefront are important in our efforts to achieve the goals set forth by the President for the Initiative. This work will serve as a solid resource for us as we begin to examine these critical issues." For your copy of T.H.I.N.C., The DISH or to submit comments, contact ICIM, Inc. at (404) 244-6023 or email us at icim@bellsouth.net. The DISH © 2000

by Yohannes Sharriff Smith

On your mark ... get ready... set... go!

Racing to heaven with firecracker inspiration, bottle rocket-thoughts rush.

POW! Now, I'm a super hero.

X-men with incredible crayons burst forward

With ultra-magnetic metamorphic metaphors, skateboarding across time and space.

Gracefully coloring outside the lines,

Cosmic bubbles fall from my native tongue in a sun-drenched summer breeze.

Virtual playgrounds birth worlds filled with butterfly,

Gum drop, mud pies that bake delicious wizardry.

Giants spit fiery incantations into the sky, as purple pirouetting pixies prance across the emerald green waters of the dragon's eye.

In a artful spell of afternoon delight,

Cool blue swimming pool cocoon awakens my dolphin dreams.

Too scared to hold their breath,

Jungle gym bullies never dare to harass my silent depth.

Fear hides at the surface, while magic carpet imagination soar the deep.

Beneath waves where sun rays pour like tears of joy.

The truth is... we are stars.

The truth is... as above so below.

The truth is... heaven is in your heart.

The truth is... your body is a temple that's why it houses your soul.

Know that life is what you make it.

Hell does not exist unless you create it.

God is in the details.

Celebrate the way ripe watermelon saturates eager taste buds.

Flooded senses guided by the spirit of the drum.

The sounds of the forest teach the ancestor's song.

Winter sleeping creatures stir in its warmth.

And, I am among them.

Part of the whole, at home with a handful of fruit and an ear full of organic music.

Undeniable spirals of life's cycle wrap my arms around trees and I sink into the bark.

Aspiring limbs stretch out from the dark and I listen to God whisper...

"I love you."

Roots bury me deep in Mother's earth.

And, since I live the infinite now, her spirit is the greatest present,...past and future.

On Media Integrity

by Dot

A local television station recently adopted the promotion tag line "New You Use." Every day, some print or video media use terms, such as "a work in progress" and "news you use," which come from THINC (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness) on which the weekly newsletter The DISH is based. Even the reparation conversation starter in the AJC screamed The DISH, but it was not mentioned as an information source in the newspaper article.

When is the media going to act responsibly and with self-respect and admit they sup from The DISH? If some guy can be fired for not citing his source, what can be done about the rest of the media world that regularly eats off The DISH? As far as using it as a source goes, everyone is encouraged to consume the information. However, after you eat, please give compliments to the chef whenever and wherever you burp in satisfaction!

by John Burl Smith

The significance of test scores lies in their validity as a measure. As gauges of human ability, test scores must be highly correlated with the ability tested. High correlation indicates high probability of performing well on tasks requiring that ability. Scores are viewed as bars or factors. As a bar, scores are barriers test takers must get over. For instance, an applicant scoring below 1200 is automatically rejected. As indicators, test scores, considered with other determinants, highly correlate with the task. Differences in how scores are used explain gaps in the number of blacks compared to whites in most professions.

The American Bar Association (ABA) Accreditation Committee moved "to effectively block opportunities for most minorities trying to attend private law schools." In 1995 the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a court order against the ABA over its accreditation process. The Justice Department alleged, "The ABA allowed its law school accreditation process to be captured by those with a direct interest in its outcome." In other words, the ABA's Accreditation Committee established criteria for law schools that functioned as barriers. The ruling further stated that "a private caste of monopolists was protecting mainline law schools in violation of antitrust laws." The Court concluded, "it is not good enough for the Accreditation Committee to say that they mean no harm," because the effect was to limit minority access to law school. The ABA was ordered to take affirmative actions to correct the injustice.

Fighting to protect the status quo, now the ABA requires exclusive use of the LSAT as a barrier rather than a factor in admissions decisions for all law schools. Traditionally, blacks and Hispanics have been denied access to higher education based on the use of test scores as a "barrier" rather than a "factor." This makes a significant difference in admissions rates, because blacks and Hispanics generally score lower than whites on the LSAT. The ABA has effectively gutted the results of the Justice Department's lawsuit. Their action allows private law schools to resegregate. The ABA's decision applies equally to historically black colleges, which used the LSAT as a factor and produced the majority of black lawyers.

University of Texas Law School is a classic example. Following the infamous Hopwood ruling there were only seven blacks out of 483 enrolled at UT in 1999. Hispanic enrollment was even lower. Chris Lopez, nervous about attending UT, admitted his reluctance, "the last few years there were only four or five blacks entering law school, so you know the score for us. Texas makes a big deal of how things are changing for Hispanics but numbers do not lie." Texas uses LSAT scores as a barrier. This is why affirmative action is important, schools can not use things like scores, race, age, handicap, gender etc. as barriers to keep individuals out. Gov. Bush supports using test scores and race as barriers. John 2000

A Predatory Practice?

Georgia's Supreme Court ruled Carroll County could collect an optional sales tax beyond the referendum's revenue goal. The Court allowed the county to collect the tax for the full five years called for in the referendum; this means the county can collect more revenues than voters approved. In DeKalb and Fulton Counties, the state legislature extended the time period over which the MARTA sales tax could be imposed. According to Ken Davis, candidate for DeKalb CEO, Georgia's Supreme Court ruled the legislature could extend the sales tax without voter consent, though it seems unconstitutional.

Twice the general assembly approved extensions to improve bond ratings for development in areas outside the two counties and/or to create a transportation cash cow for Georgia politicians. The latest extension of the MARTA sales tax to 2047 gives a newly created state agency, GRTA, control over how the taxes, revenue from bonds and federal matching funds are spent, yet the state cannot help fund MARTA. Moreover, those who pay the sales tax do not benefit from the planned economic development funded with MARTA tax revenues. If this is not unconstitutional, it should be made an illegal act.

Georgia's Attorney General Thurbert Baker has been asked to request a ruling. The majority of those adversely affected are African American. Baker is black and silent, which is par for the course in the land of Booker T. Washington. Closely adhering to the predatory practices handed down by his predecessors, he maintains the status quo. Can we request a federal investigation into Georgia's transportation funding?

In Carroll County's case, the court based its decision on a voter-approved time limit for imposing the sales tax. However, in the DeKalb and Fulton Counties' MARTA sales tax case, the time voters approved is up.

Case Law in Constitutional Inequality

Though the Civil War and Reconstruction brought about the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, decisions by the Supreme Court, beginning with the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, effectively blocked efforts to make these amendments more than empty promises. Case history shows the Court fostered rather than eliminated racial inequality.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court let stand a Louisiana statute requiring racial segregation of train passengers. It held the separate-but-equal provisions of the law did not violate the 14^th Amendment's equal protection clause. The separate-but-equal doctrine influenced decisions on racial equality until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). In its case law prior to Brown, the court supported and legitimated racial injustice. Even after the Brown decision struck down "separate-but-equal," the Court delayed providing black Americans constitutional equality. Rejecting immediacy, the gradualism of "all deliberate speed" produced public schools today that are as segregated as before Brown.

Before Brown, the court rendered a number of decisions that weakened Plessy v. Ferguson. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), the court held that the "out-of-state scholarship arrangement employed for blacks that wished to study the law an inappropriate remedy inconsistent with the constitutional standard of equality." The court signaled it would no longer ignore the "equal" part of the separate-but-equal doctrine. A decade later in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (1948), the court reaffirmed its Gaines rulings. Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina responded to Gaines by establishing separate law schools for blacks. In Sweatt v Painter (1950), the court found that the educational opportunities at the Negro law school were not equal to those afforded white students at the University of Texas. And, in McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950), the court found the segregated practices to which McLaurin was subjected impaired his "ability to study, to engage in discussion and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.

Following the Sweatt and McLaurin decisions, legal attacks on segregated public education shifted from graduate and professional schools to elementary and secondary education. With it came the unanimous Brown v Board of Education decision on May 17, 1954; it struck down the fifty-eight years old Plessy separate-but-equal precedent. (Source: Civil Liberties and the Constitution: Cases and Commentaries edited by Lucius J. Barker and Twiley W. Barker, Jr., Prentice-Hall, 1970)

Disgruntled says: If mainstream media were not pushing the gay rights agenda, it would receive little attention. This observation is not homophobia. It is a sad fact of life in America; the media drives the message, so even sexual orientation trumps blatant racial discrimination, an issue deemed unworthy of coverage.

Disgruntled wants to know: Much has happened to color justice under the reign of Attorney General Janet Reno. From the shootout at Waco and her silence on the U.S. Marshall that shot a kid because he thought his candy wrapper was a gun to her refusal to appoint more independent counsels to investigate allegations of wrongdoing in the Clinton/Gore administration, Reno is a mass of walking judicial contradictions. How do we reconcile the speed of her decision to look into the police beating in Philadelphia, PA and the lynching in Kokomo, MS with her reluctance to look into the obvious civil and human rights violations in the murder of Amadou Diallo?

Disgruntled feels: Hard pressed to go vote for self-serving politicians!

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro constantly fights the forces of evil. When asked for this week's comments on his many battles, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro replied, "I have too much to do to talk about it."

by John Burl Smith

The point of the picador's role is a sharp one indeed! Its fine edge is intent, not performance. Preceding matadors, picadors set el toro up for the kill. Stabbing him in the neck and back, these horsemen weaken bulls. Throbbing with pain, frustrated bulls charge wildly, allowing matadors to make the kill. Presented as a contest of man against beast, el toro is greatly over matched.

Analogous to blacks in America, the bull is dead on arrival. Victims, blacks are trapped in Willie Lynch's system designed To Make A Slave. An article by Leonard Pitts (AJC 7-13-00) poses the question, "What's wrong with black woman?" An affront, his article does not deserve comment. My mother and wife, not to mention my daughters, are all beautiful black women.

Willie Lynch's system made black women the linchpin of slavery. For four hundred years, black men have endured not being able to protect or provide for their women. Black women were made to understand "their survival depended on white men." Replacing black men, white slave masters bred generations of children without fathers with whom to identify. Watching their women and children sold on the slave masters' whims taught black men to avoid strong attachments to what would normally be considered family. Reduced to impotency before his woman by white men, black men could not raise their own children and would not accept responsibility for the white man's.

It is asinine to pretend blacks have had the same opportunity as whites to form families. Whatever blacks developed in terms of family, like everything else we have, is what we created in spite of slavery. Then, there is welfare or public assistance. Everyone contends it destroyed the black family, but refuses to recognize it was designed to perpetuate Lynch's philosophy. Public welfare barred black men from living in the house with their families as a condition for receiving assistance. This was a barrier to establishing stable families. Justifying absentee fatherhood, this system taught generations of black children the same lesson it taught their parents. Therefore, like picadors welfare and institutionalized racism frustrated black women and men prodding them into the present cycle of blame to hide the pain.

"What's wrong with the black women?" They and black men are victims of 400 years of slavery and lynching. Nothing has happened during the intervening years to reverse that training. The day a bull comes into the world, even if he survives the hazards of maturing for the ring, the best a bull can hope for is a date with a picador and the matador that slays and/or cripples him. So it is with black men and women. John 2000

Oozing compassionate conservatism, George W. Bush, Jr. slid into Elizabeth, N.J. to deliver a death penalty message. Tying together all the right phrases, he appealed to conservative, anti-drug, "faith-based," pro-life Christian death penalty supporters. Reminiscent of his father and the "Willie Horton" incident, the younger Bush looked clumsier and very contrived in his surreptitious communication. Although he studied at his father's knee, Jr. was out to lunch the day the elder Bush covered subtlety.

Typifying "Willie Horton," Republicans are projecting the death penalty to pander to white racial stereotypes. Swerving while making a sharp turn to the far right in South Carolina, Bush ran John McCain down to send a message of support for the racial hatred symbolized by the Confederate flag.

Bush's campaign has made killing blacks and "upholding the law" synonymous. Coupled with his pledge to appoint judges who will strictly construct the Constitution, i.e., support the 3/5ths Compromise of Article 1 Section 2, and to "uphold the law," support the death penalty, Bush has made the 2000 election a clandestine referendum to re-segregate blacks in America.

Emblematically, Richard Nixon's election was the death knell for the protest movement in 1968. George Jr. is disguising his rhetoric about the death penalty to symbolize killing all advancement by blacks in America and returning the country to Plessy v Ferguson. However, whites should be aware, like his father's "no new taxes" pledge, Bush is a con-artist. "Read his lips" and know he brings social dis-ease. In general, Bushes tend to shake from the slightest breeze.

ICIM Boycotted People Places and Things: The death penalty, Bush babies, George Jr. and Jeb, MCI, Coke, Confederate flag, Waffle House, Monsanto, MARTA sales tax, IRS, NORTEL, Wal-Mart, Lord & Taylor's security guards and police use racial profiling, fenced in churches, neo-slave masters like temp agencies, Bob Barr, Trent Lott and other weapons of mass destruction.

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