Posted by on April 18, 2001 at 13:28:41:
The flag vote in Missisippi, the riots in Cinncinati and recent racist anti-Asian graffiti at American colleges serve as a wake-up call that race is still a major issue in Turtle Island.
Black Electorate
April 16, 2001
A Deeper Look
Cincinnati: A Continuum Not An Incident
By Cedric Muhammad
Although many speak of the civil unrest in Cincinnati as an
isolated incident based upon tense relations between the
city's 43% Black population and its police department we
don't agree. Cincinnati is only a microcosm of the racial
divide in this country that was written of most poignantly
in the famous Kerner Commission Report that stated that
there were two Americas, unequal, - one Black and one White.
What is happening in Cincinnati today is only possible
because the truths that the Kerner Commission reported have
not been effectively addressed and because Black leadership
and the American political establishment have not been able
to produce and maintain community and economic development
in any of America's inner cities.
Black leaders who are attempting to make everything underway
in the troubled Ohio city about racial profiling and the
lack of 'police sensitivity', are doing a bit of a
disservice to the Black community, although many such
leaders are sincerely motivated. The 'riots' that occurred
in Cincinnati, have their genesis in the dissatisfaction of
human beings - which is far greater than a problem with
local police departments. In that sense, Cincinnati is no
different than L.A. in 1992, Brooklyn in the late1980s and
Newark and numerous cities in America 1968.When burning,
looting and civil disobedience break out, it always is in
response to one event but it never is because of that one
event. It is the result of human beings reaching a point of
dissatisfaction that is so great that they believe that the
state does not value their lives enough to give them
justice. It also is a result of the frustration that mounts
inside of human beings when they are denied the full
expression of their inner selves - in society and in the
marketplace. Quite often this frustration is a result of
improper development, cultivation and nurturing inside of
the oppressed community, largely the result of improper
shepherding from the oppressed communities' leadership.
When people believe that they are not a tangible factor of
power in their community and in the eyes of the state, they
rebel in order to get the attention of those in power and in
an effort to realign society's power pyramid. If they are
not granted a hearing they will eventually seek to destroy
the very social, economic and political arrangement that
takes them for granted, ignores them and which, in too many
cases, has even taken their lives.
The perception that their lives have been devalued is not
only a reflection, in the minds of Blacks that they are
being racially profiled by police officers, and more easily
murdered as a result of that profile, but it also is a
reflection and byproduct of the reality in Black America,
that Blacks were once legally considered three-fifths of a
human being, were enslaved without wages, freed without
compensation, denied the right to vote, discriminated in
every sphere of life for over 100 years after slavery ended,
and who today, are the sickest of the sick and the poorest
of the poor inside of the wealthiest nation in the world.
Racial profiling and the disturbances in Cincinnati are a
continuum of this experience and help to compound the
perception(s) that America's racial divide have helped to
produce. As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun
- in this case, the sun over American soil.
But by solely focusing on the issue of racial profiling and
police brutality and not on community development and
self-improvement and even the need for community policing
performed by Black Christians, Muslims and grassroots
organizations, Black leaders allow politicians to use
rhetoric, studies and new rulings to substitute for real
change in the living conditions of impoverished Blacks. It
treats a symptom and not the cause. Such an approach also
prevents Blacks from moving beyond the one-issue agenda
fallacy, which takes the 'flavor of the month' approach to
political mobilization and organizing of the Black
electorate.
It is this failed approach to leadership that causes Black
America to attempt to react its way to freedom. It just does
not work. Racial profiling should not now replace election
reform as 'the' issue. Just like election reform should have
never replaced racial profiling/police brutality and
reparations as 'the' dominant issues of 2000. And whatever
happened to the fight to protect affirmative action as 'the'
most important issue of our time? This compartmentalization
of and spasmodic approach to Black issues, is one of the
biggest of crises in Black leadership - particularly the
Black civil rights and political establishment which
literally acts as if it is incapable of fighting for more
than one issue at a time.
The Black electorate suffers as a result.
Blacks on the street do not separate what happened in
Cincinnati from what happened in Florida. It all adds up to
the same thing - the devaluation of Black life and the
denial of freedom, justice and equality.
And for many Whites, Cincinnati is also just like Florida -
Blacks misperceiving events and seeing racism where it does
not exist. Even many liberal Whites who are the supposed
allies of Blacks in various coalitions hold on to the belief
that Black people view events too frequently in terms of
Black and White.
And then there are the different perceptions between the
races on significant events. There was the major difference
of opinion in Black and White America over the reelection of
Mayor Berry in Washington D.C., the O.J. Simpson trial, the
Million Man March, the impeachment of President Bill
Clinton, the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, the execution of
Shakah Sankofa (Gary Graham), and last year's presidential
election.
And of course, there is the difference of opinion between
Blacks and Whites over police with many Whites believing
they represent the most moral and just of Americans while
many Blacks see them as a lawless 'gang' who finish the work
that the Ku Klux Klan started.
Even Black conservatives like Rep. J.C. Watts and Ohio
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who belong to a party,
which does not consider racial profiling to be a major
issue, are on record speaking of the legitimate concerns
that Blacks have with police departments. Rep. Watts has
even said that he has been a victim of racial profiling.
But again, racial profiling is not what Cincinnati is about.
It is about the reality that Blacks are dissatisfied with
the horrible living conditions that surround them - those
which were originally created by Whites, maintained today,
to an extent, by Whites but also perpetuated internally by
Blacks themselves.
But Blacks cannot obtain their dignity solely by protesting
against White oppression, mistreatment and oppression at the
hand of police. Blacks cannot revalue their lives by a focus
trained primarily on injustices at the hands of Whites. The
reclaiming of an identity, the improvement of living
conditions in the Black community and even an end to police
brutality will only come when Blacks unite, develop and
discipline one another in their own communities. While the
impulse of dissatisfaction is to strike at an external
enemy, too often that impulse ignores more damaging internal
enemies of envy, jealousy, ignorance, self-hatred which
contribute to the disunity that an external force can seize
upon.
'Cincinnati' can have a long-term positive effect if it
results in a change in the approach and methods of Black
politics, mobilization and organization - from protests and
social unrest to dialogue, discussion and internal unity as
a precursor to external activity.
However, because the power of the state, at its highest
levels and to a lesser extent, at the local level, has been
and still is in White hands, the brunt of the
dissatisfaction that Blacks voice and react to will be
directed at Whites - in power - in government and in
society.
With a President in power that 93% of Blacks did not vote
for, the chief law enforcement officer of the state - an
attorney general - in office that Black and liberal
leadership depicted as racially insensitive, inner cities
more segregated today than 30 years ago, the possibility
looming that blackouts will hit cities in California and the
east coast including New York City, and with Black
unemployment rapidly climbing and promising to skyrocket for
black teenagers we are confident that 'Cincinnati' stands a
good chance of being repeated this summer, across the
country.
The question that exists today is the same one that existed
over 30 years ago: How will Black leadership handle it?
Hopefully Black leadership will pass the test today that it
has failed during our entire sojourn in America.
Copyright (c) 2001 BlackElectorate.com. All Rights Reserved.