Like a nagging sickness, tragedies continually arise to remind Americans that their history of racial segregation is not really in the past. Despite the law, despite civil rights, despite a black man’s ascension to the highest political position — the biracial son of an African father and a white American mother — despite the economic and social success of numerous African-Americans, a series of current events (police brutality toward young African-Americans, the justice system’s favoritism toward incompetent white police officers) explains why the black community in the United States mistrusts the police and the justice system.
These issues, which must not be generalized, are nevertheless a symptom. The social climate that they reveal calls for concern and action from the country’s authorities. Already, different interpretations of particular events, depending on whether one is white or black, indicate that the gulf has not yet been bridged in people’s minds. White citizens believe that the violence is not linked to skin color, but to social problems, poverty and to the isolation felt by populations relegated to underprivileged neighborhoods. On the other hand, African-Americans believe that the security and criminal justice forces have a true attitude of discrimination and assumption of delinquency that puts a young black person at greater risk of being inspected, suspected and harassed than a young white person.
“My God, it takes a long time to make a man,”* as the song goes. To overcome prejudice, fear and reciprocal discrimination between people of different origins, cultures and religions — my God, it takes a long time, even in a country built around successive waves of immigration, where immigrant history is cultivated with pride.
Nevertheless, at the heart of the protests taking place in multiple cities in the United States to demand impartial justice, one finds white and black activists side by side; they are the sign that it is possible to overcome indifference.
*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.
As a citizen of the United States and a democratic Socialist I have no problem understanding the special problems of different ethnic groups here. In the final analysis, all forms of oppression and exploitation are explained by CLASS inequality. The ruling class tactic in dealing with a tense crisis of any aroused group is DIVIDE and CONQUER. But what a vile trick to get white working class people to imagine they have more in common with our ONE PERCENT WASP plutocracy than with the black and latino immigrant masses.
The Jews here as a whole have no special claim for exploitation or oppression. Many of them are progressive liberals, a few still dedicated socialists. I suspect the ruling class will rediscover their usefulness as scapegoats as the economic crisis of capitalisms-this endless Great Recession- festers.
I myself hope for New Deal type programs of reform. But I am beginning to suspect that our ruling class is now ” incurably greedy ” ( as Lenin thought ) or incurably decadent as some religious people think.
What a day of drama it will be when you WATCHING AMERICA folks learn that our Old Regime is crumbling. No, History has not ended. It does not culminate in the FREE MARKET and Ayn Rand-the crackpot queen of pro-capitalist godlessness.
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