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Nonviolence USA Special Feature
Anti-Racism
An Archaeology of Analysis and Action
Because we need cannot over look the role of white power in a New World Order
- The Smearing of Bustamante: The Far Right and Anti-Mexican Racism
Jorge Mariscal (Aug. 30, 2003) Counterpunch
When student activists created the MEChA organization in April of 1969 at a conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara, it was in the context of educational reform. Numerous Chicano student organizations had already appeared as part of an emerging political consciousness among Mexican youth in the United States. Issues of access to higher education, racism, sexism, economic injustice, Cesar Chavez and the farm workers's struggle, and the war in Southeast Asia contributed to the increase in activism.
- Diversity over Justice
Eric Foner (June 26, 2003) The Nation
O'Connor's opinion suggests that she was strongly influenced by briefs on behalf of affirmative action filed by major corporate executives and retired military officers. They argued that the United States cannot compete in today's global economy, or maintain an effective military, without racially diverse business and military leaders. This argument has a historical precedent. Half a century ago, when Brown v. Board of Education was before the Court, the Eisenhower Administration urged the Justices to consider segregation's effect on the world standing of the United States in the cold war. People of other nations, it declared, "cannot understand how such a practice can exist in a country which professes to be a staunch supporter of freedom, justice, and democracy."
Once again, the international interests of the United States have prompted steps toward greater racial equality at home. The result should be applauded. But we should not lose sight of the fact that corporate globalization has had a devastating impact on the black working class by hastening deindustrialization, and that military service offers many nonwhites the opportunity to advance socially only by taking part in wars abroad. It is a sign of the times that it required an appeal to the demands of globalization and an imperial foreign policy to persuade the Court to uphold affirmative action in higher education.
- Far From Heaven [Book reviews on interracial marriage by R. Kennedy & R. Romano]
Michael Lind (June 16, 2003) The Nation
Racial optimists tend to emphasize class differences rather than bigotry as the chief barrier to an even higher rate of racial amalgamation in the United States. The importance of social equality as a precondition for intermarriage is illustrated by the fact that personnel in the US military, an artificially egalitarian and meritocratic subculture, have a higher rate of interracial marriage than the rest of society. White male soldiers are three times more likely than white male civilians, and white female soldiers seven times more likely than white female civilians, to take black marriage partners.
According to Kennedy: "The extent to which racial minorities are conspicuously encumbered by poverty, unemployment, lesser educational opportunities, and like deprivations is the minimum extent to which they will continue to be marginalized in the common market for companionship." Romano agrees that the major barrier to racial amalgamation is no longer caste but class: "Income inequality and school and residential segregation not only act as barriers preventing blacks and whites from meeting in situations that might lead to dating, but also continue the racial disadvantages that make blacks less attractive as marital partners.... Marriage between blacks and whites will not become commonplace until race is no longer a marker of privilege or disadvantage."
- Jim Crow Revived in Cyberspace
MLK III & Greg Palast (May 8, 2003) Baltimore Sun
At the heart of the ethnic purge of voting rights was the creation of a central voter file for Florida placed in the hands of an elected, and therefore partisan, official. Computerization and a 1998 "reform" law meant to prevent voter fraud allowed for a politically and racially biased purge of thousands of registered voters on the flimsiest of grounds....
Four decades ago, the opposition to the civil right to vote was easy to identify: night riders wearing white sheets and burning crosses. Today, the threat comes from partisan politicians wearing pinstripe suits and clutching laptops.
- Goals & Points of Unity
summary (May 5, 2003) Operation Homeland Resistance
We believe that the role of progressive anti-racist white allies should be to educate and organize white people within their communities, and to work in alliance with communities of color by supporting and promoting people of color-led efforts.
- Racism and Ecology [in special issue on race and racism]
Joel Kovel (Spring 2003?) Socialism & Democracy
One of the remarkable findings about the ecological crisis is that race and ethnicity are more reliable predictors of environmental pollution than class and income. Thus a relatively more affluent black community is more likely to suffer a toxic waste site than is its poorer white counterpart.1 This is consistent with the startling fact that some sixty percent of the communities of color in the United States contain at least one toxic waste site within their boundaries.
- Unreality television: Friends has its first non-white character, but US TV shows remain deeply racially segregated
Gary Younge (Apr. 16, 2003) Guardian
The next most segregated hour is 8pm on any weekday, when the clock strikes prime time and the nation observes its second favourite religion - watching television.
- White Supremacy, Manifest Destiny, and Contemporary Militarisms
Steve Martinot (@Apr. 10, 2003) via email
There are three thematics I would like to outline in the context
of the present assault on Iraq, address the cultural foundations of US
militarism. First, the structure of this assault has been homologous to
the structure of white racialized identity, and repeats the dynamic of
white supremacy as a social structure. Second, it forms the latest
moment in a sequence of attacks that were designed to transform
international relations juridically in a manner that reiterates the
structures of racialization. Third, it reveals a peculiar type of
impunity that is culturally familiar, not as symptomatic of the
arrogation of racialized power, but as a cultural engine that drives
that power. In other words, while eocnomic interest may be interwoven
in the fabric of power in the US, or in the assault on Iraq, it is not
what drives its virulent militarism, nor the everydayness of its
hyper-violence.
- Anti-Racism Workshops for White Anti-War Activists
Ingrid (Mar. 30, 2003) ActAgainstWar
This is a workshop geared towards white anti-war activists, where we can begin to look at these issues and formulate tools and strategies to deal with them so we can respectfully join in an effort to build effective multiracial movements for radical social change.
- New Yorkers' Sharp Divisions Fall Roughly on Racial Lines
Randy Kennedy and Diane Cardwell (Mar. 27, 2003) NY Times
For example, 78 percent of white respondents to the poll said they approved of how Mr. Bush was handling the situation, while just 37 percent of blacks agreed with that position. At the same time, 59 percent of blacks said they disapproved of the president's handling of the war, while only 17 percent of whites said the same thing.
- An Open Letter To Activists Concerning Racism In The Anti-War Movement
Steve Bloom, etal. (Feb. 13, 2003) email via CCMEP
The problem of racism in anti-war activism is not new. For many years, people of color and their white allies have cited its debilitating effects, to no avail. A new era of activism presents us with the opportunity to come to grips with the issues of race and anti-racism in our movement, instead of continuing to ignore them. We believe that such an accounting is crucial to the success of coalition-building among the anti-war sectors of New York City, and we offer this letter as a means of getting started.
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