Frank T. Williams

 Racism is Still Alive

It is as if, our schools do not have enough troubles, now racism is unmasked by David Horowitz, the president of Center of Popular Culture, based in Los Angeles, Ca. Horowitz view is that reparation for African Americans, is a hustle. Horowitz also stated that African Americans was paid back through welfare.
 
Historians say that slavery began and ended 1450-1850. Jim Crow continued until the1960's. The Civil Right Act was signed in 1964, and Dr. Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. Africans and African Americans continued to endure racial turmoil till the 1970's. Nowadays racism is hidden in different raiment. But racism is alive, and it keeps hate alive. The situation with David Horowitz is only a vehicle that promotes what has been in place for centuries. 

Racism is alive, and will always be alive. Historically, South Carolina promoted the harshest treatment of slaves in the 1700's, as they prospered from their rice plantations. Slaves’ body parts were amputated if they ran away. South Carolina's torture of slaves was adopted by the other colonies to put fear into their slaves. Even today, a racial flag flies high in that state as a constant reminder to the African Americans of their past, and their past oppressors. 

It should be remembered that Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley saying, "Dear Sir: I have not meant to leave any one in doubt...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it..." (Uprooting Racism, Paul Kivel, pp122).

Racism is alive, and will always be alive. Today, the focus is taken off the powerful, and is placed on people of color, the poor, and disfranchised as cause of America’s problem. But, the US institutions, organizations, and societies will continue to contribute to oppression.   

It was not long ago that Africans and their descendents were not considered  human beings by America’s uneducated Whites. It was not long ago, that Africans were shipped by the millions (over twenty millions from West Africa alone) exploited by the England (1698, England was the largest slave traffickers in the world). The English, British, Portuguese, French, Dutch--Christians, Jews, Protestants, and Muslims--all participated in the enslavement of Africans for profit. So, maybe, they all should make reparations to the Africans and their descendants of America for this African holocaust. 

It was not that long ago that African Americans were butchered, maimed, tortured, raped, kidnapped, castrated, etc. In Virginia, during the 1600's, children of slaves would be inherited as the estate of their mothers—not only were we brutalized, but we were considered as property to be inherited and passed down.

History will attest to the fact that most, if not all, nations have had slavery. The uniqueness of American slavery was its brutality and White America’s dehumanizing of the slave so that anything could be done to him/her and the slave owner could still feel that he was moral creature. So they concocted a fiction that only the shallowest mind could accept—slaves were not human beings and they had no souls. But, because of this uniqueness and brutality that has effects almost into perpetuity, even until today, our wombs are still fresh, and when Horowitz makes an inflammatory statement as he has been making in his advertisement for his book, viz., that African Americans have been on welfare in such great numbers that welfare should be reparations enough, our passions are ignited.

Racism is still alive today. One of the first laws dealing with runaway slaves, occurred in Virginia, 1690. Three men broke their contracts, one Scotsman, one Dutch man, and one Black. The two non-blacks received three year of hard labor, and the Black man was given a life sentence for his escape. Today, in Florida, a judge refused to sentence a white male, a two-time felon, to prison because he might get raped! After this concern for the White felon, other Florida judges sentenced two minority youths to life terms without the same concern for the safety of personal dignity of these 13 and 14-year youths. How can this be rationally explained without the fact that racism is still alive?

Not long ago, an African named Amadou Diallo was killed in the streets of New York, and the US Justice system said that his (Diallo) civil right were not violated. In 1741, in New York, African Americans were put in jail, sixteen years and older and burned at the stakes because of xenophobia. The parallels of history are so striking because they are the same.

The rivers, the swamps, the seas, the cemeteries, the soils, and the earth of America are filled with the blood and decayed bodies of Africans and African Americans. Reparation is due and has been long overdue because it wasn't that long ago that the American economy depended on African slavery. The African American has endured massive hatred by many in America, but we have survived racism’s ugliness. 

Maybe, because African Americans are a most forgiving people that racism wants to deny them reparations and apologies. But we thank David Horowitz for sharing his views, for demonstrating his ignorance and his fears. [] 
Frank Thomas Williams
4/9/01