PAGE 6
IT'S NOT JUST BREEDING
tremendous legal and firepower of the whites they are generally
unable to strike back without horrendous consequences.
Before Sartre branded the U.S. war against Vietnam as
genocide he cautioned that the word must be used sparingly and
precisely or it loses its meaning and power (which it has partially
because Sartre freed its use). Genocide is defined as the delib
erate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural
group. Genocide can be overtly applied through war or by estab
lishing death camps. It can also be carried out more subtly, over
a long period through political and social attrition.
The prevailing white attitude toward blacks was summed
up by Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger Taney in
1857, when speaking for the majority in Dred Scott he stated that
Negroes were considered "so far inferior that they had no rights
which the white man was bound to respect."
BY MICHAEL McCUSKER
"That blackness is most black, brothers, most
black."
-RALPH ELLISON ('INVISIBLE MAN')
July 4th might be reduced to Honky Independence
Day if 'Juneteenth' becomes a national holiday. The day
represents June 19, 1865 when a Union Army general told
Texas slaves that Union victory in the Civil War just ended
freed them. Juneteenth is celebrated in black communities
all over the USA, and a petition before Congress (which
has languished for years) seeks to make it National African
American Independence Day.
The story of the United States is struggle between white
and black, which was at the core of the Civil War 140 years ago.
(The three century genocide against Native Americans is a third
leg of the racial triangle.) Social programs, even those whose
success has resisted the racist demolishment of social spending,
are of little help until the nation as a whole resolves the bitter
enmity between American blacks and whites.
A few years ago a TV personality gaffed himself in an
interview with a reporter from a gay magazine, who quoted him
as saying, "Most people are bom with equal intelligence, but
blacks have watered down their genes because the less intel
ligent ones are the ones that have the most children." (He later
defended himself: "I said the least fit are proliferating, and I didn't
say blacks.") The subsequent imbroglio caused by this champion
of breeding only by people of breeding aside, he pointed out
an increasing problem about the world population explosion.
Humanity is more prolific than rats: as Abraham Lincoln said,
"God must love poor people because he made so many of
them." Most of the world's children are poor and hungry with little
chance of education or sustaining employment. It is myopic as
well as deceptive to attribute the problem of breeding solely to
the people begetting the children. After all, rich or poor, educated
or illiterate, black, white or etc., humanity's single, compelling
and insensate purpose is to breed, to instinctively and virtually
mindlessly perpetuate the species whether it is a good idea or
not.
The implication is that intelligent folk are losing genetic
headway because they aren't multiplying as rapidly as mentally
deficient folk. Yet given that for millions of years adolescence
has been the prime breeding time for human beings (despite
modern society's disapproval), perhaps an unwed teenaged
mother from the inner city has a better chance of producing
healthier stock than upscale 30-somethings who establish
careers before children.
The idea that the least fit are proliferating does not
probe the circumstances that might qualify some people less
fit to reproduce than others — and if it does indeed target blacks,
it is actually on the mark, though for quite opposite reasons than
implied.
Impoverishment, malnutrition, chronic unemployment,
lack of education or the opportunity for education are major
factors toward dissolving the potency of a community, a nation,
a race. They are not the result of inferior genes but of defective
BASTILLE DAY
Bastille Day, July 14, is French Independence
Day and is generally regarded as the beginning of
the French Revolution in 1789.
The hated symbol of kings and arbitrary rule,
the French rebels were determined to attack and
destroy the prison. They were joined by the Garde
Française, which had been sent to stop them. When
the Bastille defenders refused to surrender, the mob
stormed the prison and destroyed it.
“That the Bastille was attacked with an
enthusiasm of heroism, such as only the highest
animation of liberty could inspire,” wrote Thomas
Paine in The Rights of Man. “As it is not difficult to
perceive, from the enlightened state of mankind, the
hereditary Governments are verging to their decline,
and that Revolutions on the broad basis of national
sovereignty and Government by representation, are
making their way in Europe, it would be an act of
wisdom to anticipate their approach, and produce
Revolution by reason and accommodation, rather
than commit them to the issue of convulsions. From
what we now see, nothing of reform in the political
world ought to be held improbable. It is an age of
Revolutions, in which everything may be looked for.”
social and political policies that might rightfully, though cautious
ly, be called genocide.
Blacks in America have always been a suppressed
people Slaves or free, their arduous, tragic and unequal role
in building and defending the nation has always been devalued
and generally ignored. Just as the word history seems to imply
only male endeavor (his story), so does it also insinuate West-
ern/European/white(male) dominance and supremacy over
world affairs. Yet the black struggle for civic and social equality,
particularly in the civil rights movement, has been the most
inspiring and closest to the revolution of the Enlightenment that
gave birth to this nation than any other. This struggle is a contin
uation of what Washington, Jefferson, Adams, et al, started but
denied "people of color" who were regarded as property rather
than persons "born equal" and certainly not "born free."
The renewed and vengeful backlash of prejudice and
oppression against American blacks for having dared challenge
white supremacy is revealed as more insidious than mere
colonialism or neo-apartheid if it is realized that the underlying
intent is forthem to indeed breed themselves into helpless
oblivion without any means of support for survival and in turn
dissolve the will and capacity forthem to continue as a people
as well as persons. With few exceptions American blacks are
contained and isolated in urban ghettos in much the manner
Nazis forced Jews into European ghettos. They are denied
adequate education, employment, housing or health care,
forced to subsist on deleterious doles stingily appropriated
(which are exploited as examples of the need for abolishing
welfare altogether). Their rage is forced inward against them
selves. The barely constrained contempt whites hold for blacks
is probably equally felt toward whites by blacks who are victims
of the antipathy, but outnumbered ten to one and without the
Not all whites are supremacists, though most are racist
— if not intentionally, usually on impact. Separate standards are
prevalent: it is okay for a white to be armed but dangerous if a
black carries a weapon. The KKK can be, if not forgiven, at least
explained. Black power is, however, a threat. The fact that most
drug addicts are white is dismissed as a personal flaw of each.
Black addiction is thought to be a racial disorder.
Whites have fought for and some have died for civil
rights for blacks. An unlikely supporter of black liberation was
Lyndon Johnson. When he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
he said:
Three and half centuries ago, the first Negroes arrived.
They came in darkness and in chains. The story of our nation
and of the American Negro are like two rivers (that) flow through
the centuries along divided channels. When the Liberty Bell rang
out in Philadelphia, it did not toll for the Negro. When Andrew
Jackson threw open the doors of democracy, they did not open
for the Negro. It was only at Appomattox, a century ago, that an
American victory was also a Negro victory. And the two rivers,
one shining with promise, the other dark-stained with oppres
sion, began to move toward one another.
But rivers of blood course between them. That same
year of 1965 the Watts riot in Los Angeles erupted, and ten
years ago the worst domestic riot in U.S. history occurred in
the same place because white police who savagely beat a
black man senseless were acquitted by an all white jury. The
riot in early May 1992 replaced its predecessor insurrection and
those in Detroit and Liberty City (Florida) as the 20th century's
worst; all of which flared as a result of treatment by police. White
dominated police forces act in black communities as if they were
foreign occupying armies. Most of the time, as Jefferson under
stood in the Declaration of Independence, people patiently suffer
the iron heel, but an excessive act (such as the acquittal of cops
for beating Rodney King) can be the final indignity that erupts in
thermonuclear reaction.
Racism will only end when children of every race are
taught early that the color of skin is of far less concern than the
quality of hearts and minds. That will not be easy. No less than
the essential education system of the USA must be uprooted and
rewired to reflect the common struggle of both races to build and
survive in this country. Then perhaps Lyndon Johnson's two
rivers might converge.
One of Voltaire's friends said there would never be
justice, equality or freedom in the world until the last king was
strangled with the intestines of the last priest. He might have
included dispatching racial supremacists. Not only do they cause
much of the world's troubles, they also substantiate the general
theory of genetic defectability. Skinheads, as a friend of mine
says, have more hair than brains.
THE BAKER
wanted me to know
that
underneath the cheese
sausage bits
and
and
pepperoni slices and
beneath the onions
and mushrooms, and
green pepper dices
anchovies and ham
through the beef, pineapple and
olives
through the spices and sauce
the only thing that
counted was the dough
-UZO UBA
Uzo Uba won a first place award from the Oregon State
Poetry Association Student Contest in April. He has just
graduated from the 8th grade at Five Oaks Middle School
in Beaverton.
-MICHAEL McCUSKER
storia Real Estate
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