Volume 4 Issue 34…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…August 31, 2001

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 © 2001

by Current, Williams & Freidel

The 23^rd Amendment (1961) gave citizens in the District of Columbia the right to vote in national elections. Home rule for Washington, D.C., which had the highest percentage of Negroes of any U.S. city at that time, continued to be withheld by Congress.

The 24^th Amendment (1964) gave symbolic, if not much practical, aid to Negro voters by providing that the right to vote in any primary or other federal election should not be abridged for failing to pay a poll tax. Most states in the Deep South were using methods other than the poll tax to disfranchise Negroes.

Although the Tennessee state constitution called for reapportionment every ten years, none had taken place since 1901, which resulted in rural dominance in the legislature. Moore County, with a population of 3,454, sent one legislator; Shelby County (Memphis), with a population of 627,019 residents, sent three. A vote in Moore County was worth over six times as much as a vote in Shelby County. By a 6-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962) gave the federal district court a mandate to order reapportionment, if it found a constitutional violation.

Similar inequities existed in other states; in all but six states, fewer than 40 percent of the population elected a majority of the legislatures. As a result of the Tennessee decision, many states quickly made some reapportionment of their legislative districts, either as a result of court actions or as a means of forestalling it.

An even more important Supreme Court decision, Reynold v. Sims, 1964, held that congressional districts within a state also must be substantially equal in population. The case before the court involved the congressional district containing the city of Atlanta, Georgia, a district that had a population of 820,000 as compared with the population of 270,000 in another Georgia district. Several state legislatures quietly initiated a counteraction by endorsing a constitutional amendment, which would negate federally enforced reapportionment. Within a few years, thirty-three legislatures had approved it. If one more should act, Congress would be required, according to the Constitution, to call a national convention to consider submitting the proposal to the states for their ratification. The movement lost its chief congressional sponsor, however, when Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois died in 1969.

Comments from the Bat Cave

Dark Knight/Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is experiencing another metamorphosis. Confused about his identity, when his sidekick Ty claimed, "I am Jet Li!" the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro exclaimed, "No you can't be, that's me!

Disgruntled wants to know: The richest peanut farmer in Georgia is former President Jimmy Carter. Off to China to monitor local elections, Carter receives government subsidies. President Bush signed the annual bailout for grain and cotton farmers recently to compensate them for low prices. These and other governmental actions raise serious questions about American market capitalism. How do the forces of supply and demand operate when the government bails out big business enterprises and routinely provides corporate welfare to others?

Disgruntled says: The business of government is big business. Our elected representatives in Congress will deliver the best legislation money can purchase. Resident Bush is committed to helping in every way he can to enrich his family, friends and big money contributors.

Disgruntled feels: Dissed! Blacks in South DeKalb County can count on being disrespected by everybody, even those people we vote into office. In the hood, we call it being dissed! In this corner of the 'dirty' South, it is expected, but it still hurts, and we are pissed!

United States' Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) announced his retirement at the end of this term, which expires in 2002. Democrats and Republicans praised Helms, the man of principle. Their comments sounded like the lie hypocrites tell at funerals. The truth is so ugly it would cause more pain for a grieving family, unless of course they know the truth and are rejoicing.

Helms is an unreconstructed racist. He supports the 3/5 Compromise of Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution. Unlike George Wallace, who faked a change for appearance's sake because he needed black votes to win the elective offices he sought, Helms does not see blacks as citizens, worthy of the vote and certainly not as his equals. Moreover, he does not care who knows he believes in white supremacy.

In his youth, America's not too distant past, men ran for public office on a white supremacy platform, arguing for racial separation and upholding the law. Helms has never been bashful about his views. Yet, the media tiptoed around the racist positions Helms has held throughout his public career. If he does not apologize for them, why does the media bend over backwards to make him appear something other than a devout racist?

But then, Helms is admired by certain Americans, not so much for his honesty and integrity, but his willingness to be a racist in public and his support for the first law. After all, until America changes it, white supremacy is the white man's constitutional right guaranteed by the founding fathers! To keep that right, white supremacists need a spokesman, preferably someone in high office. Helms was willing; North Carolina rewarded him by sending him to the Senate.

No doubt, Helms and the racists he serves make America a hostile environment for blacks. In general, blacks are glad to see him go, particularly those in North Carolina. But, one reader pointed out "Replacing this racist with someone more politically correct will make it far more difficult to recognize the enemy? Helms hates us and makes sure we know it."

by Dot

In 1978 and 1983, the United States boycotted the United Nations' World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, Racial Discrimination, and Related Intolerance (WCAR). Resident George W. Bush declared the United States, the world leader and foremost defender of human rights, will not participate in the third WCAR, if language equating Zionism with racism and reparations for slavery are included among the agenda items. His decision makes the United States a three-peater on WCAR.

The US official position puts WCAR out of bounds for Secretary of State Colin Powell, an African American. Since no official US delegation will attend the conference, the State Department website at www.state.gov, shows Powell has no travel plans posted for Durban, South Africa, where the conference will be held August 31 - September 7, 2001.

Ironically, Powell will participate in a Special General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Lima, Peru September 10-11. "This meeting of foreign ministers will adopt the Inter-American Democratic Charter, a major Summit of the Americas' initiative that incorporates the Summit's democracy clause into the OAS and the inter-American system. The proposed Democratic Charter sets democracy as the only legitimate political system for OAS member states, links democracy and human rights, establishes preventive measures to assist democracies in crisis, and refines the OAS' ability to address nascent and subtle threats to democracy in the region." How Powell reconciles his absence at WCAR with his presence among regional diplomats discussing democracy for this republic screams hypocrisy. But, as we noted about Madeline Albright, "It takes a real hypocrite to be an effective US diplomat!"

In three-peating WCAR, Powell will have some big-time explaining to do, because he has let down the black human rights struggle in his home country. With the US unwilling to discuss slavery and the need for reparations at the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), how, when and where will slave descendants discuss the institutionalized racism that defines our contemporary socioeconomic and political condition in this country? That is a question for Colin Powell, the African American that helped America three-peat WCAR.

On August 31, 2001, be part of IDARR, an International Day of Action Against Racism, wherever you are. In DeKalb County, Georgia, schools are closed for half a day, so working parents may as well schedule the day off! Do IDAAR by doing nothing on Friday, August 31, the first day of WCAR! Spend quality time at home with family and friends. If you must venture out, speak out against racism and other intolerance.

Betty Ann Bowser, reporting for the PBS News Hour, profiled Libby, Montana, a small town struggling with the aftermath of exposure to asbestos. Called Toxic Town, the report on what "the federal government says could be the most severe exposure to a hazardous material in American history" can be accessed at www.pbs.org/newshour. At the center of the town's health problem is the mining of vermiculite, which contained veins of tremolite asbestos, a commercially useless, cancer-causing waste product. The process of separating the vermiculite, which is used in home insulation and potting soil, "created big plumes of thick, white dust that spewed 5,000 pounds of fibers into the air each day." It covered everything in Libby.

Unlike in DeKalb County, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry screened Libby residents. According to Bowser, 18 percent of those tested showed signs of lung abnormalities, which is at least nine times what surveys have shown when conducted in non-contaminated areas of the country.

W.R. Grace owned the mine from 1963 until it was sold in 1994. Critics charge W.R. Grace knew for years of the dangers. Much like the tobacco companies, internal memos show Grace knew as early as 1964 there could be health risks associated with their vermiculite mining. Today, W.R. Grace, besieged with lawsuits from miners and others with asbestos-related diseases, has filed bankruptcy proceedings.

Grace promised medical assistance for those harmed by its mining operations. Libby is skeptical. Grace blames a lack of knowledge for this disaster. Even the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1960s did not understand the danger. As with slavery, the slave owners are dead; no one at Grace today knew asbestos was harmful, so no one can be held accountable.

By Dot

THINC-WCAR is the position paper we submitted to U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have vowed to make their voices heard at WCAR. THINC-WCAR is a scientific argument for reparations. However, there is a problem with one formula. For those of you who read it and were confused, the formula should be x+z = y. Unfortunately, we had x-z = y. No one mentioned the error. We provided McKinney's office with the correct formulation.

As a scientific argument, THINC-WCAR leaves America speechless. How do you argue against proof based on law, economics and statistics? All America can do is boycott the truth. Rather than look foolish defending the indefensible, media Uncle Toms, like Juan Williams, are dragged out to say, "I don't want no check massa." This is basically what Williams, a black man, says in his Frontpage Magazine article Get A Check? No, Thanks http://www.frontpagemag.com/guestcolumnists/williams08-27-01.htm. Now, rather than Helms and other white racists desperately trying to make the case that 'slavery was a good thing for black Americans' and 'there is no need for America to pay reparations,' dumb-ass niggers are doing it for them. Like Williams, they sound stupid!

McKinney's office is not sure she will attend WCAR. The Georgia legislature is in the middle of congressional redistricting. To ensure she has a district to run in for reelection to Congress, McKinney will remain in Atlanta to monitor this reapportionment. We THINC it is all a deliberate ploy to keep us silent at WCAR.

Atlanta Vibe

Back by popular demand, The Block, written and directed by poets Yohannes Sharriff and Aqiyl Thomas, elevates community-theater to a new level. Fusing poetic muse with the everyday fabric of life, The Block reminds us of the slender threads holding our individual worlds' together. Tapping into the shared subconscious emotional reality we recognize but turn aside before it hits us squarely in the face, The Block cracks the curtain, forcing us to look at the ugly we ignore. The Block confounds and inspires. Catch the next show at Davage Auditorium on the Clark-Atlanta University Campus, September 28, 2001. For ticket information, call 404-241-5942.

I enjoy reading The DISH. Thank you for sharing. Usually, your reporting is accurate.

Born and reared in Memphis, I worked in the then Department of Public Welfare following graduation from college. Black families were not denied welfare. The racist system made it harder for them to become eligible. Providing birth certificates of children with the names they had given them, as opposed to what some doctor, nurse, or ward clerk reported, i.e. vagina, uterus, etc., as a child's name was nearly impossible.

With Black employment, things changed, but it was not easy. I am certain that not all of these deliberate insults were caught, but those few of us who worked there made a difference by getting the names changed, but also complaining about this gross injustice to a group of uneducated Black women. This happened not only to me but also to others. I haven't forgotten the mean-spirited nature of fostering medical names of body parts on uneducated people. Most of these mothers delivered their babies at John Gaston Hospital; the only place they could go for medical service. It was wrong!! Again, thank you for sharing your writings. (Dr. A.E. Johnson is author of "A History of My People" http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/bew_aej.htm)

by John Burl Smith

Living most of my life in Mississippi and Tennessee, I cannot speak specifically to welfare practices across the "dirty South," but segregation was based on Plessy v. Ferguson's separate-but-equal. Based on the Great or 3/5 Compromise, every aspect of American black life was controlled by legal discrimination. The rabid racial discrimination against blacks shapes their lives today. Segregation was not some quaint custom or evil acts committed by a few bad white people, who did not like blacks. Segregation was the law, a system of government that maintained white supremacy, just as apartheid did in South Africa. It achieved the same socioeconomic and political goals.

As a function of government, social welfare programs were reserved for whites. In Mississippi, these programs did not serve blacks, particularly before Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Any government assistance poor sharecropping families received, such as "transfer payments," went to the white landowners. Poor black families survived through individual efforts, in spite of being robbed of their crops by white landowners.

Memphis, TN was no different because most of the whites came from Northern Mississippi. Blacks without jobs were considered lazy, no account and belonged in jail. Consequently, giving black families welfare was ridiculous because it encouraged laziness.

Like George W. Bush's "faith-based initiative," Boss E. H. Crump during the 1940s built a political machine on black votes in Memphis through churches and a very limited use of welfare as his reward system. This was the status quo until President Lyndon B. Johnson's "unconditional war on poverty" and sit-in demonstrations came to Tennessee, expanding welfare under the "Great Society." The Memphis "sanitation strike" drew the state into the national spotlight, which forced it to give striking workers food stamps, eliminating segregation's final barriers blocking black families' access to public assistance. Though blacks paid taxes that funded welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), segregation barred them from receiving benefits.

A little over twenty years, after blacks begin receiving public assistance in the "dirty South" President Bill Clinton ended "welfare as we knew it" by signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (Welfare Reform Act) on August 22, 1996. Clinton ended welfare entitlements and replaced it with block grants providing $16.5 billion per year to states. Eligibility for the new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is limited to pregnant women and families with children. Beyond this requirement, states have broad discretion in how they spend federal grants. As long as it served whites exclusively, welfare was a program for the needy. Once blacks started receiving welfare, whites called it, "a give-away to lazy people, who did not want to work." Critics portrayed welfare as a program for blacks, even though the proportion of blacks receiving it never exceeded 25 % of all recipients. Today, money that went to poor families buys missile defense, a bigger military, tax cuts for rich people and more corporate welfare. American businesses receive more in corporate welfare, such as business bailouts, grants, subsidies and tax credits in one year than black families received in aid to dependent children from 1965 to 1996. However, the impact on black families resulting from years of paying taxes while being denied welfare based on segregation cannot be calculated. John 2001

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