racism

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” That’s from Martin Luther King’s 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This is the King whose bust is in Obama’s Oval Office. This is the King the president paraphrases after bombing seven countries in as many years, which he did after a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in which he said as head of state, he could not follow King or Mahatma Gandhi alone.

Put simply, Donald Trump, once the Clown Prince of American politics has become the Most Important Person of American politics today. Outrageous as he might be, he is not just setting the cat among the pigeons. He is the cat among the pigeons. He is setting the agenda and everyone else gets to react to it. As testimony to that, the Republican Party’s leaders, while trying to distance the party from Trump’s outrageousness, are nervous about going the full distance. 

For years, civil rights groups have blamed the gaping disparities in school discipline on racism and said that they would challenge school officials nationally to find better ways to discipline black students instead of shoving them out of their school doors. Many education officials counter that factors other than race explain the disparities in suspensions. Though they don't spell out what those factors are, the disturbing implication is that black students are more prone to carry knives and guns, pick more fights, act unruly and engage in illicit conduct than whites at schools. 

Ebony Magazine stirred a mini-firestorm of rage when it dredged up an old photo shot of the TV Cosby show family, plopped it on its November cover, and then fractured the picture. The obvious point being that embattled comedian Bill Cosby not only disgraced his legacy but disgraced the hitherto near sacrosanct image and legacy of the celebrated Cosby TV show family, the Huxtables. The premise of the show was that there is fully intact, respectable, high-achieving, prim and proper black middle-class families. 

The count of black churches in the South that have been torched is not the six that have been burned since the massacre of nine blacks at Charleston's Emmanuel AME Church, but 37. The church burnings occurred in a period of not two weeks but over 18 months. That was only the tip of the church burning iceberg. In a six-year period between 1991 and 1996, the ATF investigated more than 150 churches that had been torched in both the South and the North. 

A year ago Romney, Bush, and Haley would not have dared say the flag must go. In fact, Haley vigorously defended the flag waving proudly at the state house during her reelection bid in 2014 and flatly stated before that the flag should stay. The hideous Charleston church massacre and the loud clamor again by civil rights activists and a wide swath of the public to dump the flag explains their sharp reversal. 

“I do believe this was a hate crime,” Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen told reporters. The comments were applauded by observers glad to see authorities not mincing words when talking about the mass shooting. The FBI and the Department of Justice quickly announced that they have opened up a hate crime investigation for the shooting. The only issue is: South Carolina is one of only five states in the nation that doesn’t have a hate crime law on its books.

It does not take long for an outsider visiting South Africa for the first time to observe the racial divide that still exists.  Many of the types of places created by the segregation of Apartheid—such as the townships consisting of makeshift residences constructed with corrugated tin—still exist, some only a short distance from the major urban centers of big cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town.  A trip to one of the upscale malls that are appearing all over the country is unlikely to paint an accurate picture of diversity for travelers.