Do Apologies Matter?

by John Burl Smith

Turnout 75%: Looking victims and family members in the face in a Dade County Florida courtroom last week, tobacco company executives admitted, perjury before Congress and lying to the American people for years. Michael Szymanczyk, president of Philip Morris Inc., told a packed courtroom, "Tobacco is indeed harmful. Smoking is bad for your health." Following him to the stand Nicholas G. Brooks, Chairman of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., made an equally damming admission, "Cigarettes are addictive and make people dreadfully sick." After 22 years with B&W, sporting a crisp British accent, the $1.5 million man said, "I regret denying that tobacco is harmful and failing to adopt anti-smoking initiatives more rapidly and sincerely." Although admitting "tobacco is addictive and kills approximately 335,000 smokers every year," tobacco executives defended their refusal to end aggressive marketing campaigns to teens, insisting that "smokers know the risks and have the right to smoke."

Putting a very fine point on a very dull subject, the architect of Clinton/Gore trade policy, William Daley exhibits the tobacco executives' mindset. Using blacks in Chicago like smokers, Daley lied to Congress about the impact of administration efforts (HB1) to import 500,000 foreign teachers from Europe a year to teach in urban schools. Daley admits Clinton/Gore knew of this impending labor shortage as early as 1992 but did absolutely nothing to prepare blacks to fill these jobs. Instead of championing this approach to filling labor shortages also in the high tech industry and for college professor and researchers, Daley should have used affirmative action and training to prepare blacks to take advantage of these job opportunities. The "Don of NAFTA" and point man for China trade, Daley makes it perfectly clear where Clinton/Gore stands. Using Hispanics from below, sandwiching slaves' descendants between Europeans, whites are locking young blacks into the permanent criminal class.

Tobacco executives apologizing for their crimes show what it would be like, if American politicians and executives were brought before the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide against slaves' descendants. They would apologize profusely for what the forefathers did to enslave blacks. However, they would not take responsibility for their daily actions, which support systemic racism. Reflecting the tobacco executive's mindset, which as we speak sanctions the addiction of new smokers among the very young in foreign countries, America's importation of European whites to bolster their control continues unabated. This logic justified the 3/5ths Compromise of Article 1 Section 2 of the United States Constitution, while Americans proclaimed to hold that "all men are created equal."

Organized labor in America is in the same position as it was in Russia and Germany when Stalin and Hitler assumed the reigns of power. The controlling influence of money in politics reduced labor to bit players, no matter who it supported. Labor's trap is that it will not openly oppose Clinton/Gore's effort to marginalize blacks with legislation like HB1. In the 1940s and '50s, labor winked and nodded at this Dixiecrat strategy to support segregation. Like smokers, organized labor must decide, whose side it is on, what it represents and where it will find growth in the future? If labor's fate is going to be different than in Germany and Russia, this time it must fight on the side of those fighting for it.

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