I. Glossary of Terms
Race – A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. The term was first used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations. By the 17th century the term began to refer to physical traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. However, all human beings in the world today are classified as Homo sapiens. Scientists today admit that, biologically, there really is only one race of humans. For instance, a scientist at the Advancement of Science Convention in Atlanta stated, “Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.” This person went on to say, “Curiously enough, the idea comes very close to being of American manufacture.”
Racism – Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.
The Myth of Darwinian Racism – In 1859, pseudo-genetic scientists, such as Charles Darwin, improperly used to reinforce racial stereotypes. The full title of Darwin’s most famous work included some stark words: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin wasn’t the first to propose biological arguments for racism, but his works fueled the most ugly and deadly racism. Hitler believed that people were engaged in a constant struggle for survival. The climax of history would be the survival of the fittest race—which he believed to be the “Aryan race.” Darwin’s theory, upon which those tyrants based their actions, was wrong. Darwin demonstrated how he believed evolution shaped man in his subsequent book The Descent of Man. In it, he theorized that man, having evolved from apes, had continued evolving as various races, with some races more developed than others. Darwin classified his own white race as more advanced than those “lower organisms” such as pygmies, and he called different people groups “savage,” “low,” and “degraded.” Darwinian evolution was (and still is) inherently a racist philosophy, teaching that different groups or “races” of people evolved at different times and rates, so some groups are more like their apelike ancestors than others. Darwin wasn’t the first to propose biological arguments for racism, but his works fueled the most ugly and deadly racism. Even evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory”. The Australian Aborigines, for instance, were considered the missing links between the apelike ancestor and the rest of mankind. This resulted in terrible prejudices and injustices towards the Australian Aborigines. Ernst Haeckel, famous for popularizing the now-discredited idea that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” stated:
At the lowest stage of human mental development are the Australians, some tribes of the Polynesians, and the Bushmen, Hottentots, and some of the Negro tribes. Nothing, however, is perhaps more remarkable in this respect, than that some of the wildest tribes in southern Asia and eastern Africa have no trace whatever of the first foundations of all human civilization, of family life, and marriage. They live together in herds, like apes.
Racist attitudes fueled by evolutionary thinking were largely responsible for an African pygmy being displayed, along with an orangutan, in a cage in the Bronx zoo. (Read the story of Ota Benga) Darwin’s error was later exposed through the field of genetics. What Darwin didn’t know was that people have the same brown-colored skin pigment called melanin. A person’s genetic makeup determines his potential to produce a certain level of melanin. That’s why we see a range of skin shades in people from light to middle brown to dark. Our differences are only skin deep.
Biblical View of Race – Through an understanding of biblical history and genetics, we see that variations in human skin pigmentation are the result of reshuffling the genetic potential of Adam and Eve and later the eight people aboard the Ark. After the scattering at the Tower of Babel, groups of people became more isolated, allowing for concentration of certain variations within those groups. Thus, the development of lighter or darker skin in certain demographic groups has nothing to do with molecules-to-man evolution, but only the decreased genetic potential for variation in isolated populations. The Bible does not even use the word race in reference to people, but it does describe all human beings as being of “one blood” (Acts 17:26). This of course emphasizes that we are all related, as all humans are descendants of the first man, Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), who was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27). The Last Adam, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45) also became a descendant of Adam. Any descendant of Adam can be saved because our mutual relative by blood (Jesus) died and rose again. This is why the gospel can (and should) be preached to all tribes and nations.
Slavery – Slavery in the ancient world, from the earliest known recorded evidence in Sumer civilization to the pre-medieval Antiquity Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war. Masters could free slaves, and in many cases such freedmen went on to rise to positions of power. Slaves who were able to save enough money could buy their freedom by paying their masters an agreed sum. We also know of slaves employed in the army who were granted their freedom as a reward for their service. At Delphi, many inscriptions displaying the names of slaves who bought their freedom have been found. Notice that slavery was either an economic matter, criminal matter or politico-military matter, but was never based upon race. Slaves were regarded as human beings whose servitude deprived them of citizenship rights.
The Atlantic slave trade was very different. Slaves were either kidnapped from their countries, usually sub-Saharan Africa, or were prisoners sold by the African captors as spoils of war. Principally, the enslaved were stripped of their humanity and regarded as chattel property, the same as any other stock, such as poultry, cattle or horses. The slaves were stripped of their identity, language, culture and every vestige of humanity. They were no longer regarded as Africans nor identified with their tribes. They were merely “negroes”, or “nigras” in the Southern dialect, or “niggers” when lazier pronunciation was colloquialized.
Negro – In the English language, Negro (plural Negroes) is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of so-called Negroid heritage, anthropologically. The term can be construed as offensive, inoffensive, or completely neutral, largely depending on the region or country where it is used. The term essentially refers to peoples traditionally classified as the Negro race, especially those who originate in sub-Saharan Africa. It is derived from the Spanish term meaning “black”. The New York World under date of January 15, 1923, published a statement of Drs. Clark Wissler and Franz Boaz (the latter a professor of anthropology at Columbia University), confirming the statement of the French that Moroccan and Algerian troops used in the invasion of Germany were not to be classified as Negroes, because they were not of that race. The term itself is an inherent misperception. We know the Negro being translated means “black”, a color. But that’s all it is, and, when applied to a so-called race of people, there nothing in the word negro that attaches it to humanity. We know this because color alone does not, in and of itself, identify any aspect of a group who are also human beings. But in order to make American slavery work, this first characteristic that the slave-owner/maker had the dispense with was the enslaved group’s humanity. The evidence of this fact was demonstrated by a conscious and deliberate erasing of the slaves’ connection as human beings and encouraging a view that the enslaved people is either sub-human or not human at all. For example, there is no such country or geographic nation by the name “Negro”.
More importantly, neither Negro nor nigger identifies the people as African, but that’s who they are in a world in which PEOPLE are identified by national or geopolitical origin. The Italian people, or in earlier times, the Romans, where identified with that piece of real estate called Italy, a land mass, a peninsula, jutting out into the northern Mediterranean Sea and surrounded by smaller seas. It is a location, a nation, a culture, a language and all of the characteristics that tie it to history, human history. Negro doesn’t do that for the kidnapped African, carried off into captivity to give service to a dominant culture. An African is somebody we can identify in the same manner as we did the Italian. Africa is more than a nation, it’s an entire continent. African history and culture go all the way back to the earliest periods of human history, during which entire civilizations were born. We know who an African is, no one knows who a Negro is, except for one thing, a slave in America, who was stripped of all humanity and identity, separated by color, language and called a race, the Negro race.
Moors – Moor, in English usage, a Moroccan or, formerly, a member of the Muslim population of al-Andalus, now Spain and Portugal. Of mixed Arab, Spanish, and Amazigh (Berber) origins, the Moors created the Arab Andalusian civilization and subsequently settled as refugees in the Maghreb (in the region of North Africa) between the 11th and 17th centuries. By extension (corresponding to the Spanish moro), the term occasionally denotes any Muslim in general, as in the case of the “Moors” of Sri Lanka or of the Philippines. The word derives from the Latin term Maurus, first used by the Romans to denote an inhabitant of the Roman province of Mauretania, comprising the western portion of present-day Algeria and the northeastern portion of present-day Morocco. The term is of little use in describing the ethnic characteristics of any groups, ancient or modern. From the Middle Ages to the 17th century, however, Europeans depicted Moors as being black, “swarthy,” or “tawny” in skin color. Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that “The term ‘Moors’ has no real ethnological value.”
White vs. Caucasian – Generally though, a “White” person is considered to be someone of European ethnicity. “Caucasian” is more technical term. It is certainly not limited to western Europeans, as the Caucasus region (from whence the term came) is located mostly in Asia. White people are the ones who have a skin color that is white, whereas Caucasian people are the people who do not have same skin color and can be white. White people have been considered the most superior ones over the years whereas the Caucasians are the ones that are general group and does not necessarily describe the people based on their skin color. It is, in fact, the one that uses for denoting people that are living in a particular area and do not belong to some skin tone. This phrase can include individuals who are from the regions such as Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Western Asia, Middle East, Central Asia and Central Africa, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and the United Arab Emirates.
Colorism – In the United States, colorism has roots in slavery, because slave owners typically gave preferential treatment to slaves with fairer complexions. While dark-skinned slaves toiled outdoors in the fields, their light-skinned counterparts usually worked indoors at far less grueling domestic tasks. Colorism has driven black American beauty standards for centuries (for example, the “brown paper bag test”) and has also been found to be a determinant of life chances in larger society: individuals with lighter skin tones have a higher socioeconomic status, have shorter prison sentences, are less likely to be punished in school.
Police – The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and the use of force legitimized by the state via the monopoly on violence. The term is most commonly associated with the police forces of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.
Law and Order – The orderly arrangement of society in which people follow laws and are not disruptive; The strict enforcement of laws, especially by police action. The construct raises obvious the question of which law and at whose order? Notice that the construct never includes justice. In modern usage, it means strict control of crime and repression of violence, sometimes involving the possible restriction of civil rights. Maintaining law and order implies firm dealing with occurrences of theft, violence, and disturbance of peace, and rapid enforcement of penalties imposed under criminal law. What is loss in this process are civil rights of due process and the presumption of innocence, except when the policeman/woman is the law-breaker.
Due Process – This raises the question of what process is due by whom to whom? The 14th Amendment codified this principle into the U.S. Constitution: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state 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. Thus, the answer to the by whom question is the State (and those acting on behalf of the State). The answer to the to whom question all citizens, natural-born or naturalized, in the United States and of the State in which they reside, including former slaves. The due process prohibition was that no State or anyone acting on behalf of the State or federal government could deprive any citizen of life, liberty or property and the equal protection provision was intended to apply the former slaves, inasmuch as white people already enjoyed such protection as a matter of course and codified in the Bill of Rights. Over time the equal protection clause has been applied to segregation, abortion, federal elections and same-sex marriage.
Treason – In law, treason is criminal disloyalty, typically to the state. It is a crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one’s nation or sovereign. This usually includes things such as participating in a war against one’s native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor. In United States law, treason is the crime of a citizen of the United States betraying his or her country. The crime of treason is often described as giving “aid and comfort” to enemies either on U.S. or foreign soil; it is an act punishable by death.
Treason is defined in Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” This was codified in 18 U. S. Code, Chapter 115, §2381: Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
We have heard this term used frequently by Donald Trump, in reference to a range of his grievances, from disagreeing with him or doing anything to embarrass him all to way to alleged spying on his 2016 campaign. Of course, none of this activity, even if proven by uncontroverted facts, would constitute “treason” as defined under federal law. However, what the Confederacy did in starting the Civil War and engaging in it throughout the conflict until surrender, was the clearest example of TREASON as defined in the U. S. Code.
II. Historical Perspective
THE CIVIL WAR
The War Between the States was a natural progression. Consider the factors: In the mid-19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and southern regions. In the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and agriculture was mostly limited to small-scale farms, while the South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the free labor of kidnapped African enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco. Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the 1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America—and thus the backbone of their economy—was being threatened.
In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict. Pro- and anti-slavery forces struggled violently in “Bleeding Kansas,” while opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories, the abolitionist in 1859 convinced more and more southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar institution” that sustained them. Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 was the final straw, and within three months seven southern states–South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had seceded from the United States.
Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter’s commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after less than two days of bombardment, leaving the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Four more southern states–Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee–joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among their citizens.
Though on the surface the Civil War may have seemed a lopsided conflict, with the 23 states of the Union enjoying an enormous advantage in population, manufacturing (including arms production) and railroad construction, the Confederates had a strong military tradition, along with some of the best soldiers and commanders in the nation. They also had a cause they believed in: preserving their long-held traditions and institutions, chief among these being slavery. In 1863, following Lincoln’s Executive Order, the Emancipation Proclamation, some 186,000 Black Civil War soldiers would join the Union Army by the time the war ended in 1865, and 38,000 lost their lives. During the course of slavery, many estimated that between one and two million slaves died on the crossing, leaving many corpses in the bowel of the ship to rot. However, 10% of slaves would die on the ships and up to 30% if it was a bad voyage. Accordingly, the estimate is wrong. 20 million embarked on the voyage and about half made it. This represents nothing less than genocide accomplished by the “Middle Passage”. One last point, Lincoln is falsely credited with freeing the slaves. But the Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. It was addressed to “… all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free …” Of course, the war raged on for another two years. Therefore, no slaves actually were freed by the Proclamations until after the war was won, because until the war was won, the United States government could not enforce the Proclamation.
RECONSTRUCTION
Immediately following the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9,1865, a 12 year (through 1877), short-lived era was ushered in that gave the African ex-slave a reason for hope. During that period, attempts were made to redress the consequences of slavery and its politi8cal, social, and economic legacy and also to address the problems arising from readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded from the Union. Blacks began to vote and hold office, while, under the Pres. U. S. Grant, the KKK was virtually shut down and remnants groups scattered. The presence of federal troops in the former Confederate states, enforced laws granting civil rights and political access to ex-slaves. This progress ended abruptly with the election of Rutherford Hayes as President, whose first act was the withdraw federal troops from the southern states and allow the former Confederacy self-determination. Slavery was replaced by share-cropping and segregation in all aspects of society and social became the rule and law of the period, as well as a fact of life, for the next ninety years. White supremacy was the dominant and intolerant paradigm of the south and quietly accepted in the north. By the 1920’s, the KKK was revived and honored as the protector of white supremacy, the establisher of white privilege and the principal agent of black suppression and terrorism for nearly a century. Every attempt by African Americans to progress and prosper was reacted to by angry white mobs, destroying black business and killing black citizens with complete impunity, such as that which took place in Tulsa, Okla. (Black Wallstreet), or the only violent American coup d’état that occurred in Wilmington, N. C. in 1896.
III. Shifting Paradigms
BLACK LIVES MATTER – ALL LIVES MATTER
Black Lives Matter is a new political construct, a new paradigm, just as race is a political construct. The statement, All Lives Matter, is a disingenuous reply to the real fruit of Black enslavement. The Founding Fathers made the decision to call this country America, the United States of America, a Democratic Republic, a union of 13 former British colonies, founded on the principle of unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It was during the course of defining their own identity and severing ties with the British people, and distinguishable from Britain, that land mass across the Atlantic. Black Lives Matter is a response to systemic killing of unarmed, and often innocent, Black people by police, in the custody of police, or by white vigilantes. It encompasses the legitimate grievance that Black express over the taking of LIFE by those acting under color of law or white privilege. This grievance has been expressed by a variety of methods, most recently in protest marches, demonstrations and other forms of “peaceful assembly to petition the government for redress of grievances”. This is a 1st Amendment Constitutional right seeking redress of the grievance challenging the unlawful taking of life simple because the victim is Black. All Lives Matter misses the point entirely, beyond a statement of the obvious. Trump went further to comment that white people are being killed by police as well. But white people are not being killed by police or dying in police custody because they are WHITE. The point of the Black Lives Matter Movement is simple: Inasmuch as this happened to George Floyd and many others, it could happen to ANY of us and it could happen to ALL of us. That it happened to any of us, was one too many, and it must STOP!
CONFERATE SYMBOLS and the KKK
For the Africans remaining in the South, once Reconstruction ended, terror began. The Confederacy lost the war, but won the peace. Across the Southern United States, associations were founded after the Civil War, chiefly by women, to organize burials of Confederate soldiers, establish and care for permanent cemeteries, organize commemorative ceremonies, and sponsor impressive monuments as a permanent way of remembering the Confederate cause and tradition. These groups eventually merged into the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Nashville Tennessee, 1894, and was “strikingly successful at raising money to build monuments, lobbying legislatures and Congress for the reburial of Confederate dead, and working to shape the content of history textbooks. “They also raised money to care for the widows and children of the Confederate dead. Most of these memorial associations gradually merged into the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which grew from 17,000 total members in 1900 to nearly 100,000 by World War I
UDC textbooks rewrote Civil War history and redefined treason, rebellion and sedition against the United States as a noble, “Lost Cause”. The United States of America, the Union, was re-cast as the aggressor hell bent on destroying the Southern “way of life” (slavery) and undermining “States Rights”. Formal UDC guidelines were adopted by school boards throughout the South and eventually all other states throughout the US, becoming part of school board policy. As part of that policy, textbooks could not be purchased by school districts if they did not meet the DOC guidelines. To this day, these textbooks are used nationwide to perpetuate the “white-washing of the Civil War. The Confederate battle flag was established as a symbol for this new paradigm, the so-called Cause. The fact that the root cause of the war was slavery, was eliminated from this revisionist history. A new political construct was invented to prevent these African “coloreds” from being assimilated into the dominant white culture: Segregation. Laws were passed in most of the southern states that precluded and prevented Blacks from voting, holding public office, intermarriage, being unemployed (vagrancy), and from any form of economic self-determination. They relied upon pseudo-science to reinforce former stereo-types that Africans were sub-human. This new paradigm was reinforced by the Ku Klux Klan, a re-emergent terrorist group that included law enforcement personnel who were once slave-catchers and supported by the southern Church, mostly white Evangelicals. Therefore, it should be clear that racism was institutionalized from the very beginning, first in Slavery itself, then later in Segregation, upheld by “Jim Crow” legislation, and completed the revival of white supremacy that continues through 2020.
SEGREGATION vs. CIVIL RIGHTS
Slavery ended, at the cost of an estimated 620,000 lives, North and South, white and black, slave and free. After the Civil War, once freedom from slavery (13th Amendment, 1865) was bestowed upon the kidnapped African ex-slave, the next question was whether or not this African ex-slave was also going to receive citizenship, full and complete citizenship, as well as equal protection of the laws that bound this nation together as American people. That was promised in the 14th Amendment. In order to exercise such citizenship, the right to vote is essential and was promised in the 15th Amendment. This was the beginning for “freed-men” set forth in the Reconstruction paradigm. However, in order to achieve this completely, amending the Constitution, although a worthy start, was wholly inadequate. For the freed African, ending slavery restored human rights to a degree, but DID NOT the restore his/her humanity, stolen from the kidnapped on the shores of West Africa, and extinguished during the distance of the “Middle Passage”.
Moreover, nothing restored African identity, culture or languages. The ex-slave’s language became English, his/her culture became American, but his/her identity remained Negro, or when politely spoken of, Colored. Only racism defines an entire group of former African ex-slaves as a color, not a people. Institutionalized racism embedded the paradigm into the entire fabric and structure of American life. Therefore, institutionalized racism is a system of power used to oppress and marginalize certain groups of people based on defined characteristics (real or imagined), rather than those characteristics themselves. Such structured racism also provides certain group socio-economic privilege which has been aptly described as “ill-gotten gain masquerading as rights without responsibility.” Those who resisted these institutions were, demonized, criminalized, and marginalized. Many others, innocent of any resistance, were lynched. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution cited an extensive study by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) that has cataloged case after case of mob attacks before and after the Civil War. “EJI has now documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in America between 1865 and 1950. Thousands more Black people have been killed by white mob lynching whose deaths may never be discovered,” said the report. A third of those lynched were whites who assisted blacks.
The passage of the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s began a slow process of legislative and judicial remedies for African Americans. Beginning with the Brown v. Bd. of Education (1954) Supreme Court decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation to be enacted in decades, which sought to protect the voting rights of African Americans. Later, Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which further addressed the voting rights of black Americans and established penalties for those who tried to prevent people from voting. Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, and racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. One would think that the 15th Amendment should have been sufficient. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is a federal law that prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing. It is also known as the Fair Housing Act. The Act was passed as an effort to impose a comprehensive solution to the problem of unlawful discrimination in housing based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. The Act enables persons in the protected classes to rent or own residential property in areas that were previously segregated. As a phenomenon, racism evolved as a White people’s problem and a Black people’s burden.
RACIAL EQUALITY vs. WHITE PRIVILEGE
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, was inaccurately described as the “struggle for racial equality”. Racial equality is not something you “struggle” for; either it exists or it doesn’t. Fundamentally, racial equality has always existed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776) The only struggle connected to racial equality was the struggle to get white people to recognize it. While Civil Rights legislation and judicial decisions slowly chipped away at the structure and institutions of racism, these legal remedies accomplished very little to tear down racism’s cultural strongholds imbedded in the paradigm of White Privilege and undergirded by the paradigm of White Supremacy.
Accordingly, the equality phrase authored by Jefferson, who owned 200 slaves at the time he wrote it, demanded application, because it certainly didn’t apply to his slaves. To most Americans, equality is a word that has been more expansively defined since its appearance in the Declaration. For Jefferson and his contemporaries, the phrase really meant that “all free, property-owning males are created equal”. “Equality is hard to define because its meaning keeps changing. Jefferson’s restrictive definition, that ‘people are of equal moral worth, and as such deserve equal treatment under the law’, made distinctions for free men vs. slaves, men vs. women, property owners vs. debtors, et cetera.” (Thomas Patterson, The American Democracy, 2003)
Legal equality can be legislated or decreed by judicial mandates. Actual equality will only be recognized when racial bias, prejudice and negative racial attitudes no longer permeate American culture and society at large, and white people specifically. We observe this quite clearly in the myth of a post-racial society supposedly achieved by the Presidential election of Barack Obama. The myth was exploded by the emergence of the “Tea Party”, angry white declarations of “I want my country back!”, the election of Donald Trump, all expressions of White Backlash. The Trump administration unleashed the fury of his electoral base of substantial numbers of white supremacists, neo-nazis, and race-haters upon anyone and everyone who was perceived as non-white and upon their white sympathizers. Therefore, racial equality is not only non-existent in America today, but white privilege has become the predominant response in almost every aspect of American life. “Make America Great Again” is code for MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.
In a study of white privilege, and its broader field of whiteness studies, academic perspectives such as critical race theory use the concept to analyze how racism and racialized societies affect the lives of white or white-skinned people. For example, Peggy McIntosh describes the advantages that whites in Western societies enjoy and non-whites do not experience, as “an invisible package of unearned assets”. White privilege denotes both obvious and less obvious passive advantages that white people may not recognize they have, which distinguishes it from overt bias or prejudice. These include cultural affirmations of one’s own worth; presumed greater social status; and freedom to move, buy, work, play, and speak freely. The effects can be seen in professional, educational, and personal contexts. The concept of white privilege also implies the right to assume the universality of one’s own experiences, marking others as different or exceptional while perceiving oneself as normal.
White privilege in America is the result of cultural conditioning by which white people have been conditioned to believe that white is superior and black is inferior. Then the manifestation of that conditioning is that Black people are under-valued, under-estimated, and marginalized. White privilege is most clearly observable in the interactions with police. There are numerous instances of white women calling the police on black and brown men entering the apartment in which they live, having a BBQ in the park; Black girls selling bottled water in their own neighbor; black men cutting the grass of the lawn in front of the house he owns; a black man in UPS brown uniform, delivering packages from a UPS truck; a black man bird watching the NYC’s Central Park who reminded a white that her dog was supposed to be leashed. In each instance, the white women claimed, among other things, that she felt “threatened” by the black man, woman or child.
Consider this contrast, if a white person is suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, that person may be arrested and then investigated to determine if the suspect “knowingly” passed the bill, in order for the act to be considered a crime. That’s called “due process”, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, a white privilege and immunity. Notwithstanding, when George Floyd was suspected of the same act, he was summarily executed on the street by four police officers in broad daylight, broadcast on world-wide TV, exemplifying a complete lack of due process. The officers who killed George Floyd were fired, charged with homicide and will stand trial, the due process to which they are entitled, but which they denied Mr. Floyd—no life, no liberty, no pursuit of happiness, NO JUSTICE. However, in that instance, the whole world rose up in protest, demanding that this must stop.
“DEFUND THE POLICE”
This shift in paradigm is mostly misunderstood and demonized by opposition forces, simply due to a poor choice of words. Obviously, the expression does not literally mean complete defunding of police departments or abolishing the same. What it does mean is redirecting and reallocating that portion of police budgets that are used to militarize police and acquire weapons and instruments of warfare. Police funding is clearly not intended for local law enforcement, whose mission includes protecting the community from criminal behavior, but DOES NOT include conducting urban warfare against the citizens, particularly when the citizens are engaged in Constitutionally protected peaceful protests. Reallocating resources to enhance other agencies, such as fire fighters, EMT personnel, social workers and other crisis intervenors, funded by local and state governments, whose mission is to serve the community. Reallocation of resources is not some new, alien paradigm. It advocates for a market driven approach to tax payer money, the benefits of which should reduce police violence, police crime and misconduct, and apply those resources to meet the greatest community need. Data shows that 9 out of 10 calls for service are for nonviolent encounters. Accordingly, any use of force in such encounters is typically unnecessary, if approached with compassion, respect and professionalism. Law enforcement must understand that they are not at war with the community, a community who is NOT their enemy. Nevertheless, where many police officers approach every situation as if it is a nail and the only response is to behave like a hammer, we have a paradigm that requires major adjustment, in order to avoid needless escalation and often leading to tragic outcomes.
POLICE OFFICER vs. PUBLIC SAFETY PROFESSIONAL or PEACE OFFICER
A useful paradigm shift ought to be changing the labels applied to and the purpose of law enforcement. I propose that we cease using the term “police” which has increasingly taken on a negative connotation. Instead, why not call law enforcement personnel what they actually are or supposed to be: Public Safety Professional or maybe Peace Officers. To be sure, the over- whelming majority of law enforcement uphold their oath to “protect and serve”. However, too often they are thrust into situations in which law enforcement is not called for and those situations that go beyond the police officers’ training and skillset, such as crisis management. If the first response by a Peace Officer is respectful conversation, de-escalation technique and understanding that in many instances people are really crying out for help, and help should be tendered from the outset. If the focus is primarily to maintain peace and calm throughout the encounter, productive problem-solving can take place without a threat to either or the public.
IV. Critical Questions for Discussion
- Does racism still exist in America?
- Is racism discussed openly and regularly in non-denominational, multi-cultural churches?
- Is police brutality as much cultural as it is racist?
- Is White silence complicity?
- What responsibility, if any, is there for the Church to take a stand and be part the solution to racism? What can we do as children of God?
- Why haven’t African Americans progressed in the US to the same extent that other ethnic groups have, with respect to education, employment, housing and accumulating wealth? In other words, why haven’t African Americans lifted themselves up by their proverbial “bootstraps”?
- Why is no one complaining about Black on Black crime?
- Why does it appear that African Americans distrust/fear/hate the police, while embracing those who seem to be part of the criminal element?
- When was racism legalized in the US? How did it happen?
- When and how was segregation legalized?
- Is racism generational?
