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Volume 6 Issue 32…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…August 15, 2003
From Harlem Gallery
By Melvin B. Tolson
Strange but true is the story
of the sea-turtle and the shark-
the instinctive drive of the weak to survive
in the oceanic dark.
Driven
riven by hunger
from abyss to shoal,
sometimes the shark swallows
the sea-turtle whole.
"The sly reptilian marine
withdraws,
into the shell
of his undersea craft,
his leathery head and the rapacious claws
that can rip
a rhinoceros' hide
or strip
a crocodile to fare-thee-well;
now,
inside the shark,
the sea-turtle begins the churning seesaws
of his descent into pelagic hell;
then . . . then,
with ravenous jaws
that can cut sheet steel scrap,
the sea-turtle gnaws
. . . and gnaws . . . and gnaws . . .
his way in a way that appalls-
his way to freedom,
beyond the vomiting dark,
beyond the stomach walls
of the shark."
About Me: Robert Hayden (Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negroes Poets, 1967), wrote, "His poetry often strikes one as being too intricate, erudite and obscure." Yet, the metaphor of above is crystal clear. Tolson understood survival in the belly of the beast and what it meant to be a black man in America. Born in 1900, he was educated at Fisk, Lincoln and Colombia Universities. After teaching several decades at Langston University in Oklahoma, Tolson was Writer in Residence at Tuskegee Institute when he died (1966). He wrote Rendezvous with America (1944), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953) and Harlem Gallery (1965).
Defeat Connerly: Commemorate 1963 March
On August 23, several groups will commemorate the 1963 March on Washington. Marchers will assemble 12 Noon at Howard University, 2400 Georgia Avenue, NW, and proceed to the Lincoln Monument.
In addition to commemorating the 1963 march, weekend conferences at Howard University will discuss ways to defeat the anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives being sponsored in several states. Ward Connerly, considered a black sellout, is spearheading the anti-civil rights effort. His initiative in California seeks to end the collection of race specific economic data.
In addition to the march and the defeat Connerly sessions, the new civil rights movement will set strategy for next year, plan the fight to overturn California' anti-affirmative action Proposition 209, renew the struggle to realize the promise of Brown v. Board of Education as its 50-year anniversary approaches, and save historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Everyone serious about the civil rights movement should plan to attend. Contact BAMN for more information via email at letters@bamn.com or telephone 313-438-3748. For updated information on the weekend events, see http://www.bamn/august23.asp.
The Point of Legacy
Media talking heads are pushing a new poll that indicates 7 in 10 US citizens believe 25 years is long enough for race to be used in college admissions. The leap then is to say affirmative action is no longer necessary. Proponents allude to the court's acceptance of "reverse discrimination" as a justifiable white claim, i.e., Bakkie v University of California (1978), as the point when blacks were supposed to have begun overcoming. Moreover, they intimate that at some undocumented point, blacks made a great lurch forward in knowledge. The metaphor is, blacks pulled themselves out of ignorance by their bootstraps. In just about as long as it takes to acquire the education and skills of a medical doctor, blacks are expected to have overcome their legacy of slavery and segregation to level the playing field where whites have enjoyed a legacy based on total freedom over the same period.
The dual black/white education legacies began when whites realized that reading and writing are powerful keys to knowledge. Forbidden to learn to read or write under the penalty of death, generations of slaves and their descendants witnessed the lynching of blacks that dared defy their masters. When blacks were allowed to learn, they attended segregated institutions. Blacks and whites were taught from different books. Black schools were poorly funded. The Jim Crow economic system rewarded docile poorly educated blacks. So, for about 360 years, whites used every conceivable tactic to intimidate blacks so that they would avoid learning.
After overlooking all these facts, judges, like Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, ignore the years between Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and Bakkie (1978). Over this period, whites used the power of state and local governments and endless litigation to fight the implementation of Brown with "all deliberate speed," busing and minority to majority (M to M) transfer schemes, which tried to provide equal access to education for black children. Traumatized black children were totally victimized in formerly all white schools still run by the same white teachers and administrators that swore "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Proponents of segregation, white teachers saw black students as inferior. Black students were forced to acquire knowledge from teachers who believed they were incapable of learning.
No one has ever identified a period in which blacks had free and open access to the same educational opportunities as whites. While blacks faced a litany of discrimination and denial of rights, white acquired a legacy of privilege protected behind the color line. They never had to compete against blacks. Whites attended segregated universities funded with tax dollars denied black schools. Today, white descendants receive legacy points to gain admissions to institutions of higher learning, such as the University of Georgia. In just 25 years, whites insist blacks should have accomplished an equal footing, when it took them 3 generations of segregation to build their legacy.
Food Additives and Contaminants
In June, 48 scientists from 17 countries convened the 61st meeting of the Joint Expert Committee for Food Additives and Contaminants (JECFA) in Rome, Italy. Established in 1956 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the Committee regularly meets to provide safety and risk assessment advice to countries and to the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), which recommends international food safety and quality standards, as well as codes of practice and guidelines.
The experts re-evaluated JECFA risk assessments for cadmium and methylmercury, which are largely unavoidable food contaminants. In the case of cadmium, the Committee did not recommend a change in the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) of 7 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. Kidney disease, a serious health concern, is associated with excessive cadmium intake. In the case of methylmercury, the Committee recommended reducing the intake from 3.3 to 1.6 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per week in order to protect developing fetuses, which can be exposed through contaminated food consumed by pregnant women.
The experts noted that some fish species, such as swordfish and sharks, are the most significant source of methylmercury in food. In providing advice to consumers and setting limits for consumption, the experts stressed the need for public health authorities to keep in mind the important role fish play in meeting nutritional needs in many countries.
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. (1920 - 1999)
"...there is a new spirit among Negroes....People are learning that in a nonviolent war.... Jobs will be lost, mortgages will be foreclosed, loans will be denied, persons will be hurt, and some may die. This new spirit was expressed well by one Freedom Rider in the Mississippi state penitentiary at Parchman. The guards threatened repeatedly, as a reprisal for our insistence upon dignity, to take away our mattresses. "Come and get my mattress," he shouted. "I will keep my soul." (James L. Farmer, Jr., Progressive, November 1961)
American educator, administrator, civil rights activist and one of the founders of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), James Leonard Farmer, Jr. was born January 12, 1920 in Texas. A theologian and Old Testament scholar, his father, the son of slaves, received his Ph.D. from Boston University (1918). At that time, few black men held such degrees in the South. Dr. Farmer spent more than thirty years teaching in historically black colleges and universities.
An excellent student, Farmer entered Wiley College at age 14. Graduating in 1938, he entered Howard University's School of Religion, earning his divinity degree in 1941. Opposed to war and segregated armed forces, he applied for and received conscientious objector status when the US entered WWII.
Opposed to segregated congregations, Farmer worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), rather than become a Methodist minister. As FOR's secretary for race relations, he helped the Quaker organization craft responses for the social ills such as war, racism and poverty. He also began to formulate his own ideas of non-violent resistance and helped to found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Farmer was in the forefront of the Freedom Rides, which resulted in an order banning segregation in interstate bus travel. When CORE drifted away from its Gandhian roots, Farmer left the organization. He continued to lecture on civil rights and took a teaching position at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1968, he ran for U.S. Congress on the Republican Party ticket, losing to black Democrat Shirley Chisholm. Farmer served as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (1969-1970) in the Nixon Administration.
After retiring from politics in 1971, Farmer served on many organizational boards, including the Coalition of American Public Employees. He continued to teach and lecture widely. Farmer published his autobiography, Lay Bare the Heart (1985). In 1998, President Clinton awarded him the Congressional Medal of Freedom. He died July 9, 1999. (Sources: www.cets.sfasu.edu and Encyclopedia Britannica)
Disgruntled wants to know: When the U.S. House of Representatives, led by Bob Barr and Henry Hyde, impeached Bill Clinton because he lied about his extra-marital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, that all important rule of law prevailed. Clinton's lies under oath, suborning perjury and such, relative to this very private matter, were termed "high crimes and misdemeanors." Like many people worldwide, including renowned attorneys, I am mystified that public lies told to justify a war in which a young American dies almost everyday and an untold number of Iraqis have perished do not rise to the exacting standards set by the Republicans in impeaching Clinton. Whatever happened to that magical mystical rule of law so frequently cited by Hyde and Barr? Is this more US myth?
Disgruntled says: A young black woman posed a cogent question to an esteemed panel of successful black politicians, entrepreneurs, preachers, etc., during the national black youth forum organized by radio personality and author Tavis Smiley that went unanswered. Given some high profile examples to point to, we should all be able to answer the question: "What is a sellout?" Since Jesus Christ was double-crossed by Judas, a fellow Jew, oppressed people have had to contend with those among them who seek comfort in the belly of the beast, rather struggle for freedom.
Disgruntled feels: Outraged! In an address before the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice invoked the 3/5 Compromise only to dismiss its relevance in the lives of blacks today. This is her favorite way of ingratiating herself with the master she serves. Epitomizing Judas, whenever she speaks on issues of race, freedom and equality, her liar's gap seems to grow. To many of us, this shameless witch would, during the lawless days of the Wild West, be tarred and feathered to teach her a lesson. Outraged at her callousness, do not be surprised when she is booed at her next public appearance!
By John Burl Smith
Claims that the US Constitution guarantees "freedom, justice and equality for all" are myths. Only the Declaration of Independence contains such language. What is found in the US Constitution is the legalization of slavery, Article 1 Section 2 - the 3/5 Compromise. Parenthetically, this article established the socioeconomic and political value of human capital as blacks equal 3/5 whites. Consequently, slavery became the foundation of the US economy, legally binding blacks below whites in all positive welfare measures. Not a metaphor for the real life drama slaves and their descendants have endured since embarking on the "Middle Passage," the 3/5 Compromise can be illustrated using Dot M. Smith's chasm of inequality analysis (published in T.H.I.N.C. (Teaching Humanity In New Consciousness): The Chrysalis of Evolution by Yohannes Sharriff Smith).
Enslaved under Article 1 Section 2, the 3/5 Compromise codified white supremacy and made discrimination against blacks the law of the land. Unchanged by either the Civil War (1865), the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Voting Rights Act of 1965 or affirmative action, blacks in 2003 endure the same relative conditions as their fore parents.
Lynching forced blacks to accept their 3/5 Compromise existence. Although ropes thrown over tree branches and burning flesh are dominate images of lynching, blacks see the murders of individuals, like Amadou Diallo, Tyisha Miller and Timothy Thomas, as well as denials of justice, like military tribunals, mandatory minimum sentencing, racial profiling and prosecutions based on the types of drugs and the skin color of defendants as new millennium lynching.
Grotesquely reminding everyone, on May 28, 2003 in Belle Glade, Florida, Feraris "Ray" Golden was found hanging from a tree in his grandmother's backyard. His hands were tied behind his back. Rumors whirled that Golden was lynched because he was dating the white Palm Beach County Sheriff's daughter. No myth or metaphor, the people on the scene were afraid to testify at the official inquest. After an investigation by the US Commission on Civil Rights' Southern Regional Office, Director Bobby Doctor said, "They do not see the death as suicide. People are afraid to speak to the court without protection. The issue as we see it is beginning to mushroom beyond the hanging." Whites insist such incidents are no more than myths.
In 1946, George and May Murray Dorsey and Robert Malcolm and his pregnant wife Dorothy were lynched in Walton County, Georgia because they tried to stop white men from raping black women at will. Blacks remember the lynching of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and how law enforcement agents intimidated witnesses that came forward. Under the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, those willing to testify lost jobs, homes and lives. Today, at Lockheed Martin's Meridian, Mississippi plant, the federal government is covering up facts surrounding a Ku Klux Klansman's murder of 6 and wounding of 9 others employees in a racist rampage. Blacks in 2003 still live under the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) and Black Codes of the 1930s and '40s.
The myth is justice is meted out the same to blacks and whites. Yet, white men do not die in police custody like black men. The metaphor is, "America is a color blind society." But, juries do not sentence white men and women to prison with the same frequency or for as much time as blacks. The reality is, the 3/5 Compromise is still the law of the land.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes & Telephone Calls
Email soa@yahoogroups.com: MALCOLM X Reparations: "If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father's estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay. We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken or a bushel of wheat. All that money...is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out...like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn't here to pay. My father isn't here to collect. But, I'm here to collect and you're here to pay."
Email www.abanet.org Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in a speech at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association recommended scrapping mandatory minimum sentencing. Kennedy called on lawyers to consider the 2.1 million people behind bars and the fact that 40 percent of the prison population is black. In every criminal justice statistic, young black men are disproportionately represented.
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