"If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander."
Mary McLeod Bethune
The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is observed annually on 21 March. On that day, in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the apartheid "pass laws". Proclaiming the Day in 1966, the General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is alive and permeating the global community. As an Black citizen in the United States of America, I am concerned with how this nation is upholding, advocating, and supporting racial equality and eradicating racial injustice within our socioecnomic sytem. A review of the United Nations assessment on America's progress in this area reveals that this nation is not yet brave enough to take the steps necessary to create a nation that is truly the land of the free. Read and review for yourself at United Nations web site.
Racism in America is not resolved because we as a nation refuse to come to the table and look at the historic development and present sustainment of racism. An honest dialogue cannot be had when the terms are pre-defined and the outcome pre-determined. We must be willing to remove all vestiges and verbage of discrimination. We cannot hold ancient documents more precious than human dignity. America needs to form a Racial Repentance and Resolution Forurm. This body would begin the endeavor of creating a more perfect union by having founding documents of colonialism and racism removed and call for the drafting of documents that create a society that is not built on racism or patriarchy.
The uplift of women is, next to the problem of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. When, now, two of these movements-woman and color-- combine in one, the combination has deep meaning. WEB DuBois
Continuing to add to documents that were wretchedly and patently discriminatory in their creation does not transform those documents to egalitarian. We cannot recreate using the same pathetically flawed reason and expected to reach conclusions that will be reasonable and right. In America in the new millenium Blacks experience disparity is social and physical ills. Our generations suffer from Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, and Racism Denial Disorder to the point that even some Blacks have begun to believe the delusions fed to them by mainstream media and society. Sadly, some of us have become so desensitized to the vernacular of racist code that we do not recognize or translate the meaning.
For example, the encouragement for Blacks and other minorities to adopt and adapt to 'American Values' = Assimilate. There is also a faction of Blacks refusing to assimilate who are just as toxic because they want to hold the community of Blacks hostage to the past and demand that we as a race stagnate. These confused souls want us to hold on to the dear and departed leaders and their practices as if there is no possibility of new generations bringing forth dynamic, intelligent, and focused leaders for the present. We honor the past; however, we must embrace, uplift, support, and respect those rising from our communities to lead our community beyond the point that Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin left off -- far too early.
Our children are more likely to experience incarceration than education, our health is impeded by capitalistic system that denies health insurance by sending our jobs overseas or refusing to create jobs with living wages and benefits in our own nation. Our communities suffer economically and ecologically as businesses flee the urban core leaving huge plants and waste in our neighborhoods and our people unemployed.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. What will we be doing forty-five years later...August 28, 2008?
The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, "We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, nor the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands, and create a great source of power, outside of any national structure that could and would assure us victory." For those who have said, "Be patient and wait!" we must say, "Patience is a dirty and nasty word." We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence. Martin Luther King 8-28-63
