Volume 3 Issue 50…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race… December 22, 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. The DISH © 2000

by Dot

How many of you have web sites? Have you read the fine print on the agreement you electronically signed with your Internet Service Provider (ISP)? The reason I ask is because The DISH site was recently shut down by our ISP - AT&T Worldnet.

Calling it spam, someone receiving our weekly newsletter through a third, fourth or fifth party complained about receiving The DISH. According to one AT&T service representative, the complaint was filed in October 2000. Another representative called to inform us someone would call in 24-48 hours to explain why our service was interrupted. There has been no call to provide more information on the situation. We were provided neither names nor specifics about the complaint. More important, AT&T gave no notice of their decision to discontinue our Internet service, which effectively closed our site. AT&T has seized all our on-line intellectual property and blocked our access to the site.

AT&T's actions, without due process, left us without an opportunity to remove our intellectual property and provide seamless service to our readers. Their actions raise serious questions about equal protection and the first amendment right of free speech. But, then that is what this really boils down to - the truth, which is a powerful messenger. The DISH is on point. Those who cannot refute it intellectually want it silenced, because it shows the hypocrisy and historic deception of racism in America. They will not stop its international dissemination. We owe those who have gone before us to continue telling the truth.

The DISH is free. We do not see it as spam; there is no obligation to buy anything. When asked, those who do not wish to receive it are removed without question. Unfortunately, we cannot control its dissemination on the information superhighway beyond our mailbox. If it is sent to your mailbox by another list, a friend, family member or foe, we cannot control the flow of information. No one should have that kind of power. Information must flow, if there is democracy.

For now, out web site is down. We apologize to those who rely on it. Please note our new email address at icim@bellsouth.net. In the meantime, we are calling for an international AT&T boycott. Please pass the word. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Disgruntled says: Say what we will about judges, you have to give those Florida justices who ruled to count the votes under difficult circumstances some credit. Even votes of questionable legality were counted. They honored the "intent of the voter."

Disgruntled feels: Black people do not buy the Supreme Court's coup d'etat. Too many of our ancestors died for the right to have our voices heard to be silenced by another Roger B. Taney-type action. A crescendo will build in America as blacks come to understand this new millennium disenfranchisement.

Disgruntled wants to know: DeKalb County's sheriff-elect Derwin Brown was gunned down outside his home over the weekend. News reports of his assassination revealed the sheriff does not run the County Police Department, just the jail and other ceremonial functions, such as issuing summons. Brown's demise will not disrupt DeKalb policing. Besides who killed Brown, DeKalb citizens are wondering who runs DeKalb's finest and why is this not an elective office?

The Great Paradox: Equal Protection

by John Burl Smith

The Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore illuminates the great paradox. Stopping the vote count to protect George W. Bush, Jr., the Court established a precedent for the 14^th Amendment, which trumps any state process where "clear and fair standards" are not employed to insure "equal protection." Enigmatically, the Court did not so rule in 1978. In Bakke v. University of California, the Court established "reverse discrimination" as a constitutional claim for whites. It outlawed race as a standard in fashioning remedies for black victims of pass racial discrimination. Ruling in Bush's favor, the Court revisited "equal protection" in such a way that it made clear its earlier decision in Bakke stood "equal protection" on its head.

The mantra for strict constructionists is that the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments are unconstitutional because Article I Section 2 was not repealed. Hence, it was illegal for the President and Congress to free slaves by emancipation. Therefore, former slaves cannot claim the same rights nor can their votes be valued as equal to real citizens.

The infamous Dred Scott decision affirmed Article I Section 2 (the 3/5ths Compromise) in 1857. Following Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), "separate but equal" became the law of the land. Strict constructionists demanded state's rights to determine their own standards for dealing with the "race problem." They insisted states would be fair and equal, while maintaining separation of the races. Moreover, they claimed mixing the races damaged whites and destroyed the community's moral fiber.

Following the Civil War, Congress passed the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to remove slavery's stigma. The 14^th Amendment guarantees that no "State shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Strictly constructing the Constitution using the 3/5ths Compromise "separate but equal" racial standards, states refused to recognize the 14^th Amendment as law. This logic prevailed until the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reversed 165 years of segregationist standards based on race. Consequently, state and federal laws permitting segregation to legally deprive slave descendants of "equal protection" violated the 14^th Amendment.

Currently, reverse discrimination lawsuits involving state universities in Georgia, Michigan, Washington, etc. revolve around these same issues. Brown v. Board of Education established blacks' rights to "equal protection" and states were mandated to use "all deliberate speed" making up for their 165 years of legally denying blacks access to state institutions.

However, as in Bush v. Gore, the Court, in affirming Bakke, made a radical departure from its previous rulings. Outlawing race as a standard in fashioning remedies for pass racial discrimination, the Court removed the standard on which segregation was based. It reversed the burden from showing blacks were discriminated against to proving that any remedy to correct racial discrimination will not harm a single white person, even though whites claiming "reverse discrimination" were the beneficiaries of segregation.

Ruling in Bush's favor, the Court said "equal protection" is a compelling federal interest, so much so, it must be pursued without deference to states. It set a precedent of demanding strict standards based on possible harm and halting any state process that does not provide standards to protect against such possible harm. Becoming President as a result of "equal protection," Bush and the Court must now support it for slave descendants. John 2000

Justice Roger B. Taney

Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia and Florida circuit court Judge N. Sanders Sauls are compared to Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney. Chief Justice Taney wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott slavery case, which is the earliest known test of Article I Section 2 of the Constitution. A strict construction of the law, Taney's opinion is infamous because it affirmed slavery. He basically ruled that "Negroes have no rights white men are bound to respect," clearly reflecting the thinking of that time which made slavery -an American institution- the law of the land.

Sauls, Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist showed how strict construction makes the bedrock of the Constitution (Article I) viable today. Philosophically allied to the plaintiff, these men contorted the rule of law to suit their narrow political purposes. Like Roger Taney's ruling in the Dred Scott case, the Rehnquist majority opinion in Bush v. Gore will live in infamy.

At http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us, Kawain Miller does an excellent bio sketch of the famous Mississippi writer Lerone Bennett, Jr. For more about him, consult that site. Author of Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1966, The Negro Mood, What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr., Confrontation: Black and White, Black Power U.S.A., The Human Side of Reconstruction 1867-1877, Pioneers in Protest, The Challenge of Blackness, et al., Bennett's most recent work is Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream.

Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream makes three noteworthy claims about Abraham Lincoln which are contrary to beliefs held by many Americans, especially African Americans, about Lincoln. First, his Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves. In fact, Lincoln favored colonization or deportation of slaves back to Africa, Jamaica or somewhere out of America. More important, Lincoln did not oppose slavery per se; he argued for a gradual approach to ending the American institution.

Lincoln signed the Proclamation to bring slaves into the war as Union soldiers and to aid agitation for freedom in southern slave states. Forced into Glory debunks the myths about Lincoln and puts him within the context of the times in which he lived. In Lincoln's time and before, American leaders, like Thomas Jefferson, had no problem reconciling slavery with a belief in freedom and democracy, hence Jefferson's illicit relationship with his slave Sally Heming.

by John Burl Smith

C-SPAN televised a symposium featuring Dr. Lerone Bennett, Jr., author of Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, and several scholars; it illuminated the "equal protection" paradox revisited in Bush v. Gore. Dr. Bennett ranks among my greatest teachers- a group that includes Prof. Nat D. Williams, Madam Mary McLeod Bethune, my great grandfather, Rev. Burl Lee, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and my father Otis Gray. I claimed particular kinship with Dr. Bennett while editing my first community newsletter to organize participants during the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. Desperate for knowledge and lacking formal skills, I plagiarized his research whole cloth.

The key point in the symposium came when an elderly black woman, who said she learned to read as she picked cotton, asked about the connection between the 3/5ths Compromise and votes not counted in Florida. Dismissing her question by calling the 3/5ths Compromise "inoperable" as a result of the Civil War and passage of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments, one of Lincoln's apologists did what whites always do. His refusal to accept obvious realities, even when presented with supporting facts, made Dr. Bennett's point about the racial blinders worn by white historians.

A case in point: In 1997, Dot M. Smith published in T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution by Yohannes Sharriff Smith the definitive statement on the 3/5ths Compromise. Smith's research shows the relatively stable difference in median family incomes of blacks and whites has persisted since slavery. The chasm occurs along the interval of .5 to .65, which reflects the 3/5ths value of slaves in the Constitution.

Smith concludes American blacks reside in the chasm of inequality because that is the outcome dictated in the marketplace for goods and services by the law of the land. Statistically, Smith's research supports the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; it proves that slavery and segregation have measurable residual impacts on slave descendants today. Moreover, that impact can be measured using data collected by state and federal agencies. Historians and academicians cannot refute Smith's research, so they refuse to acknowledge her findings. White historians continue to teach 19^th century stereotypes, which blame this gap on variables other than institutionalized racism.

Under the current Supreme Court, "equal protection" is like the shifting Sahara sand; its rulings depend on whether you are George W. Bush, Jr., stealing an election, or blacks trying to get an education, job, health care or facing the death penalty. The 14^th Amendment was passed to insure blacks are protected; the Court outlawed race in determining the need for protection. The DISH is gratified Dr. Bennett is participating in the dialogue on race. A theme from T.H.I.N.C., A Work in Progress (AWIP), leads the effort to educate Americans about their true history. We hope more prominent Americans will join the debate and address the great paradox: the 3/5ths Compromise. John 2000

So, you got tired of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal? You ain't seen nothing yet! Remember how the radical Republicans hounded Bill Clinton for some speck of dirt? Any asinine trivia would suffice to boot him out of office and overturn an election. That is the radical element that controls Dubya. God bless America! Granted, he calls himself a compassionate conservative, but we know better. Dubya is controlled by the same elements that controlled George H., his father. Dubya does not like Connie Rice or Colin Powell; his handlers made a strategic decision in these racial selections. It is a calculated attempt to appease black people into thinking it is okay not to count their votes, in effect, steal an election in which they voted for the opposition. Old political hacks from his father's administration do not impress black Americans. For the majority of us, Rice and Powell are on par with the deadly silent Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Bush may as well unmask his Ku Klux Klan buddies Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Tom DeLay and hug them. It is only a matter of time before they show the bloody hands that made him president.

Let it be known far and wide, the Lewinsky affair was a walk in the park compared to stealing a national election. Had America been a democracy, black votes would count. No court could trump their rights so cavalierly. More important than airing Clinton's dirty laundry, we will not grow tired of trying to secure one-person one-vote to make America the true democracy it claims to be.

Email: truthisonepathsaremany@hotmail.com Seven Ithaca College students held a sit-in at the college's admissions office. Their demand is that Ithaca College terminates its contract with Sodexho-Marriott. Sodexho is linked to the prison industrial complex and private prisons.

48% of Sodexho-Marriott is owned by the French multinational Sodexho Alliance, which is the largest investor in Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison corporation. In recent years, expenditures on prisons shot up while those on schools went down. People deprived of an education will likely end up in prison. This policy of building prisons instead of schools is self-perpetuating. The United States has 25% percent of the global prison population, but no where near that percentage of total population. And, while violent crime is down, incarceration rates have climbed. Something is wrong here. The prison industry is the fastest growing sector in the economy, all this amidst unprecedented American prosperity. We are throwing more and more people into jail, and most of them are going to jail for nonviolent offences.

If you are interested in helping us out, please send Peggy Williams, President of Ithaca College an email announcing your support and solidarity with those participating in the sit-in. President@ithaca.edu Thank you so much for your assistance. "What man can make, man can unmake" Frederick Douglas.

Email dmm46@earthlink.net Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist and leader, has been falsely imprisoned for 23 years. Despite years of legal appeals and mountains of evidence detailing the injustices of his case, Leonard has not been granted his freedom through the courts. An appeal for executive clemency awaits action from Bill Clinton. It is critically important that the White House hear from 100's of thousands of people supporting executive clemency for Peltier. Please call the White House - every day, if you can - to express your support for Leonard Peltier. The number is 202.456.1111. Press "0" to bypass the recorded message. For more information, go to http://www.freepeltier.org

Like the Shadow Convention, the January 20, 2001 Counter-Inaugural demonstration in Washington, DC. brings together the Free Mumia, end the death penalty and other forces for a massive demonstration. Bring the message to "Stop the Death Machine" to the new administration. Demands include: new trial for Mumia, abolish the death penalty, money for education and jobs, not prisons, stop police brutality and racial profiling, no military intervention and aid to Colombia, end bombing of Vieques, support Palestinian self-determination, etc. Bus tickets from Atlanta -$70. Leave Friday night, January 19, 2000 and return following the demonstration on Saturday. If you can help distribute leaflets about Jan. 20 or want to make a reservation for the bus or wish to donate funds for the bus expenses, please call 770.989.2536. Contributions can be mailed to Millions for Mumia, PO Box 424, Atlanta, Ga. 30301.

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