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Volume 3 Issue 35… Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… September 8, 2000

 Note: 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 Daniel Mannix and Malcolm Cowley

In The Middle Passage, essayists Mannix and Cowley poignantly describe slave trade peculiarities, which included the debate among slavers. Every nation insisted their vessels were the best in the business. The Portuguese were highly critical of the English and vice versa. Englishman James Barbot, Jr. praised the Portuguese for their practice of baptizing slaves before boarding them on ship. However, he noted "It is pitiful to see how they crowd those poor wretches. The men stand in the hold tied to stakes, the women between decks and those that are with child in the great cabin and the children in the steerage, which in that hot climate occasions an intolerable stench."

In 1701, William Bosman claimed "the careful management of our masters of ship" - the Dutch masters, in this case- "exceeds all other Europeans. The French, Portuguese and English slave-ships are always foul and stinking; on the contrary ours are for the most part clean and neat." Mannix and Cowley suggest this assertion belie the fact that all slavers bore a horrible stench that could be detected from miles away.

From Reverend John Newton's description of life aboard a slave ship comes this insightful tidbit. "The poor creatures are in irons for the most part which makes it difficult for them to turn or move or attempt to rise or to lie down without hurting themselves or each other. Every morning, perhaps more instances than one are found of the living and the dead fastened together" It is any wonder, the poor wretches suffered from melancholy, given the horrible treatment they received along the Middle Passage?

Public Sector Discrimination

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Secret Service are the latest federal agencies to be found guilty of or are accused in lawsuits of maintaining hostile work environments. These complaints mirror those lodged against private sector employers, such as Georgia Power, Waffle House and Coca-Cola. Americans pretend the public sector is free of racial bias; suits, like those against EPA, IRS and the Postal Service, show the government uses the same practices as the private sector that keep blacks in the position of "last hired and first fired." Both sectors adhere to the long-standing tradition of lynching or the southern plantation style of management. All across America, blacks have no human or civil rights that must be respected in a system based on the absolute exploitation of their labor.

In the EPA situation, there are numerous complaints. One lawsuit has been settled; the court awarded the plaintiff $600,000. Some of the victims gathered at a news conference last week in Washington, D.C. to share their EPA experiences. Their stories hit home, especially Anita Nickens' description of blatant discrimination. Eliciting the standard government response, a promised investigation, Nickens claims her white supervisor directed her to clean the toilet in preparation for a visit by the agency's administrator Carol M. Browner in 1993. A devastating experience, even recounting it today brought tears to her eyes. Nickens talked about needing to be strong to survive employment in the public sector at an agency like EPA. Another employee from the southeastern region compared her work experience in the EPA to "being a punching bag."

Charging CEO Jones

America revolted against the predatory practices of the mother country - Great Britain in the 1770s. Colonial Americans refused to be robbed of their wealth by a foreign entity. In the national heritage of railing against predatory acts, The DISH has asked DeKalb County's newly elected CEO, Vernon Jones, to look at property and MARTA sales taxes.

DeKalb's black community is a victim of predatory practices. Black taxpayers bear the greater share of the burden of financing development and transportation in the region. Chief beneficiaries of our tax dollars are non-black areas in other counties, such as the folks that get free bus service in Canton, Georgia.

DeKalb's Commission embraced the ARC and GRTA plan and our legislators voted on the bill to extend the MARTA sales tax. Taxpayers voted on no referendum agreeing to be in financial hock till 2047 for development elsewhere. We have been here before. It is time our neighborhoods benefitted from our tax dollars. South DeKalb has paid for a train as part of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) and we demand our train. To continue taking our tax dollars and not provide the service is no different than what Great Britain did to the American colonies - acts that sparked the revolution. In South DeKalb County, the election of Vernon Jones was our cry for change: No more taxation without representation.

Disgruntled wants to know: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat cannot agree to further concessions on Jerusalem in negotiations with Israel. Everyone knows more concessions mean political, if not literal, suicide for the aging PLO Chairman. Question is, how long can the US keep Arafat from declaring a Palestinian homeland?

Disgruntled says: American businesses are salivating over the prospect of carving up China, where dog is fast becoming a sought-after delicacy. The prospect of selling things to a billion new customers is extremely attractive. Lobbyists and other influence peddlers are making a fortune cozying up to the Senate majority.

Disgruntled feels: When white folks do it and profit, the society calls it business, but when blacks do the same thing and make money, it becomes criminal activity.

Dubya

Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) political cartoonist Mike Luckovich is having a ball with George W. Bush, Jr.'s lack of gravitas, a fancy way to say he is not a heavyweight when it comes to intelligence. In fact, Junior is an intellectual lightweight. Well G.W. is not alone in that department. But, there is hope for everyone, including G.W. Every individual is a work in process (AWIP). Having said that, it does not mean everyone or just anyone should be president of the only country to have ever actually pulled the nuclear trigger.

For some time now, I have been trying to figure out Bush's nickname "Dubya." I surfed the Internet for the answer to my quandary, but found no explanation. Unsure of the pronunciation, John laughed when I called it Du-by-a. He informed me it was Dub-ya for the letter "W" with a little "ya" to give it that southern twang. So "Dubya" or W-ya is what Texans call George W., rather than calling him George, his father's name. When you think about it Dubya (W-ya) is a fitting moniker for a man who freely interchanges words like "hostile" and "hostage" and "preserve" and "persevere."

Black Blondes in Atlanta

Black blondes populate the Atlanta landscape; they occupy some high profile positions. One of the most famous is Monica Kaufman, a local television news anchor. Over the years, Monica has sported some unusual hairdos. Her latest is a blonde affair. Shirley Franklin, one of the black candidates for Atlanta mayor, wears a similar hairstyle. The election is not until 2001, but several individuals, including Jack Jersawitz and Robb Pitts, have announced their candidacy. In a letter to the editor of Creative Loafing (8-26-00), one Lewis Charles of Atlanta wrote, "I won't vote for Shirley Franklin because she has her hair dyed blonde. I think that is a sign of racial self-hatred, unless she has a medical reason for having it done. That narrows my choices down to two, so Gloria Tinubu stands a very good chance of getting my vote." Blah on the high profile black women in blonde drag; they give being black a bad name. Blah! Blah! Black blondes and perms to make it bone-straight scream self-hate.

by John Burl Smith

County Officers Association President, Andy Pipkin verified the existence of a tax line stating, "The practice of rural counties paying the tax commissioner based on a percentage of the taxes collected is still used but the beneficiaries keep it quiet." Apparently, this was the case for DeKalb County Tax Commissioner Tom Scott until Fulton County Tax Commissioner, Arthur Ferdinand demanded the same gratuity. Justifying his kickbacks that added about $20,000 to his $105,000 salary from taxes, Scott claimed "he takes on additional personal liability for the tax collections." Under a 1988 state law, "a county tax commissioner can be paid a personal fee from collected taxes."

Down in Liberty County Georgia, Tax Commissioner Carolyn Brown, a black woman, is accused of stealing over $1 million. Elected in 1993, she added the money to her salary as "a personal fee on taxes collected." Although the law authorized this practice and she was taught how to apply the law by the county auditor based on past commissioners' practices, she has been indicted for racketeering and theft for doing essentially the same as Tom Scott. This case points to the major flaw in the corruption/ethic investigations in Georgia.

Commissioner Brown crossed the line when she angered white businessmen and large landowners by raising their assessments. She reduced property assessments for black people. This made it possible for black property owners to pay their taxes. Moreover, foreclosures went down, eliminating a cheap source of property for whites purchasing tax lends. That kind of thing gets you lynched. DeKalb County has the highest foreclosure rate in the state.

Blacks remember State Senator Diane Harvey-Johnson's trial. Sen. Johnson's behavior was no different from that of Rep. Michelle Henson and Nan Grogan Orrock. They got funding for the Georgia Holocaust Museum, then accepted paid positions with the museum. That violates ethical standards, if not the law.

Whites have always controlled politics in Georgia and used their positions the same way black politicians are being taught "the ropes." When whites engage in such activities it is considered business. No one dares suggest Tom Scott, Michelle Henson, Nan Grogan Orrock or even Mitch Skandalakis would use their positions for personal gain in violation of the law. Conversely, when black politicians do as taught by whites, their activities are viewed as criminal. Georgia's corruption/ethical investigations have color lines separating white business from black crimes. John 2000

Education Reform: Code Words

In education, America desperately needs to tear down some walls and change some perspectives. The use of standardized test scores as roadblocks to higher education is one area that needs to be changed. Another is treating normative social tests as indicators of potential and future performance. Current attitudes and views on education and human potential are shaped by past experience. White people have long sought to keep blacks ignorant. They knew that once blacks learned to read, it would no longer be possible to hide information in plain sight between the pages of books or on account ledgers. Once blacks understood their situation, their oppressors knew there was no keeping them from complaining and working to change the black condition.

Rather than improving education for black Americans, the new education reform code words do not bode well for the future. True to its dark side - the Evil Empire- is committed to keeping intact those traditional "family values" of the 3/5ths Compromise or white supremacy (Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution). Crowned prince "Dubya" preaches private school vouchers and local control, the code words for maintaining the status quo, which limits black access to a quality education. Dubya's education reform code words are similar to quotas in affirmative action. The debate couched in these codes is just another symptom of the hostile environment in which blacks are not given an even-handed opportunity to succeed or fail. Efforts are unevenly rewarded. Education, training and promotions are not equally available to black and white workers. In America, blacks are considered less, so they deserve less and receive less purely as a consequence of skin color. That is the nature of the country's hostile environment for its black 3/5ths citizens. As far as opportunity goes in this country, in black face is to be DOA (dead on arrival).

With code words like private school vouchers and local control being espoused by presidential candidates, some members of this society continue to want to limit black access to education.

Déjà Vu: G. P. Johnson and James Byrd, Jr.

The horrible events surrounding G.P. Johnson, James Byrd, Jr. and Abelina Ntjantja Rampuru's deaths show South Africans how tightly woven are our histories, current conditions and most likely futures. Like G.P., before going home from work, Abelina thought he knew his white boss well enough to share drinks. After drinking with whites he knew, James Byrd, Jr. trusted some other whites enough to accept a ride home.

South Africans must recognize that slave descendants have spent the last 137 years trying to overcome the same problems they are experiencing today. South Africans have been told that apartheid is over and now there is truth and reconciliation. Similarly, slave descendants were told we were free, a freedom that was gradually taken back. Forced into a system of segregation and then defacto-segregation, American slave descendants today are still demanding the reparations our fore parents were promised. Sisters and brothers, if you wish to know your future, study blacks in America's history. Slavery never ended.

To Pop

Kudos to a man whom I respect tremendously, Richard Williams, father of Serena and Venus. The hottest duo in tennis continues to blow up matches like bolts from the blue. Chicken hawks are circling these prime nestlings, which keeps an ever-vigilant pop on the porch with shotgun in hand. Quick on the draw, pop shot down a recent proposal from Donald Trump to pay his chicks a $1 million prize to play John McEnroe in a Billy Jean King/Bobby Riggs style winner-take-all match. Shades of efforts to make Sergio Garcia legit on the big money pro circuit, such a match helps McEnroe and white men more than these young black women.

Pop demonstrated a quality most tennis parents lack, a concern for more than the economic potential their children represents. Media horror stories about current tennis stars Monica Seles and Jelena Dokic and former champions Tracy Austin and Stefi Graf tell of parents pushing their children onto the court too soon or trying to overshadow or rob them under the guise of management; Richard is a very different breed. His statement says his daughters are not scratching out a living entertaining rich folks. They do it because scratching entertains them. Kudos to a straight shooter!

On Legacy of the Sable Venus

The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies is a painting reproduced in the second volume of Bryan Edwards' History of the British Colonies in the West Indies (1793). It appears beside a poem by an unnamed Jamaican author with the same coarse message, i.e., slaves are preferable to English girls at night, because they are passionate and accessible.

The painting and poem depict the Sable Venus being carried from Angola to the West Indies. She roams the deck of a ship that stank of excrement, which could be smelled five miles down wind. Snatched from her husband and children, she is branded on the left buttock, and carried to the ship bound hand and foot to become prey for the ship's officers.

While the slave industry by today's standards is a morally bankrupt enterprise, the horrid treatment of slaves like the sable Venus was just business in the Middle Passage. Like the tobacco industry and other unsavory businesses, slavery was highly profitable for the CEO's of insurance companies, banking establishments and European shipbuilders, as well as the overall American economy, particularly the agrarian south. Africans that provided the slave labor were the hot commodity of this new entrepreneurship; black blood and sweat greased the world economy, and much like the Internet today, their labor changed how the world did business. A precursor of things to come, their treatment aboard slave ships showed how slaves and their descendants would be treated once on American soil.

The social structure that developed to support slavery was hostile for slaves and their descendants. Blacks in America were lynched to maintain absolute control. In states with large slave populations, like Louisiana, male slaves were restricted to the fields of plantations and black women were kept in cities, where they were easily accessible to white males. The offspring from these unions produced a hodgepodge of skin colors around which a hierarchical system of valuing people based on skin tint or bloodlines was developed. Skin color is still important in American society today. The Sable Venus is still relegated to the bottom of the social strata. (Source: The Middle Passage).

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