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O PINION
Martin We Are Called in Aftermath of Charleston
Honoring
Cleaning our dream of
equality for all
Service
M ARIAN W RIGHT E DELMAN
I am a native South
Carolinian. Charles-
ton is my maternal
ancestral home. My
great
grandmother
was born during slav-
ery. My great grand-
father I have been
told was a plantation
overseer. Never have I been more
proud and more ashamed of my
dueling ancestral heritages than
in the aftermath of the terroristic
murders of nine black Christians
engaged in Bible study at Charles-
ton’s historic Mother Emanuel Af-
rican Methodist Episcopal Church
by a young white man infected by
what Dr. King called, after Pres-
ident Kennedy’s assassination, “a
morally inclement climate.”
He came with a troubled spirit
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supremacist website. He was en-
abled to become a mass killer by
readily accessible and largely un-
regulated guns – over 310 million
in citizen hands and only 4 million
in America’s law enforcement and
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military hands. But his dastardly
deeds were bathed in an amazing
spirit of forgiveness among the
victims’ families.
I hope this latest chapter in
America’s pervasive history of
domestic terrors against millions
of
o black citizens vic-
timized
by slavery and
ti
Jim
J Crow terrorism, de-
nied
full citizen rights
n
throughout
our history,
th
relegated
to subhuman
r
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Constitution
and treated
C
like
li beasts of burden to
fuel our unjust economic system
can be squarely confronted.
Until the United States sees
and cures its profoundly evil birth
defects of slavery, Native Ameri-
can genocide, and the exclusion
of all women and non-propertied
men of all colors from our elec-
toral process, these birth defects
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tiple guises to threaten our black
community’s and everyone’s safe-
ty, our nation’s future, and render
hollow our professed but still in-
adequate commitment to ensuring
equality for all.
Slavery was followed by thou-
sands of lynchings and racially
instigated terrorism through hate
groups like the KKK during the
Jim Crow era. And it continues
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boys and men by law enforcement
agents and a mass incarceration
system.
Millions of African American
and Latino children and people
of color are trapped in a cradle to
prison pipeline lodged at the inter-
section of race and poverty. That
black children are the poorest,
most mis-educated, most incarcer-
ated, most unemployed, and most
demonized of any group of chil-
dren in America is a continuing
legacy of slavery and Jim Crow
that must end now.
Let’s seize this latest tragic ra-
cial terrorist act to confront our
history and how we teach our his-
tory. And we must all act together
to reject our present day racism in
all its structural, cultural and hid-
den manifestations with urgency
and persistence. We must pass on
to our children and grandchildren
a more honest and just nation and
a future free of the violence of rac-
ism, poverty and guns.
I believe we are called in the
aftermath of the Charleston mas-
sacre, the latest in a long and
egregious history of unjust black
deaths, to confront the realities
of our true history so that a new
generation of white youths does
not carry forth the poison of racial
supremacy and white privilege.
We also must act so that millions
of African American, Native Amer-
ican and Latino children, soon to
be the majority of our country’s
children in a majority nonwhite
world, do not have to continue to
struggle against overt and covert
culturally ingrained racism.
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bols glorifying slavery and hatred
that divide us. We must reject all
efforts to subvert fair and demo-
cratic election processes includ-
ing the precious right to vote. We
must end mass incarceration and
ensure equal justice under the law
for all. We must confront massive
inequality of wealth and income
and end poverty, beginning with
child poverty now.
It is time to commit America to
become America and to close the
gap between creed and deed. Let’s
send a ray of hope throughout our
nation and world that we are com-
mitted to honoring our dream of
equality for all. What an amazing
grace moment we have been given
to help our nation move forward
together.
Marian Wright Edelman is
President of the Children’s De-
fense Fund
A Musty Artifact of a Defeated Insurrection
Taking down the
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K WAME S. S ALTER
Flags are imbued
with the values, senti-
ments and aspirations
of the nations, states,
cities, organizations
or groups that honor
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hoisted high above throngs of
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a visible and material reminder of
what a particular group stands for
or values.
Flags can evoke passionate
emotions of love, hate or fear.
Flags carry a very loud, non-ver-
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message. In the USA, the Ameri-
can Flag carries the message that
we stand for truth, justice and
democracy. However, in other
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unfortunately, carries the mes-
sage that we are there to impose
our way of life and values on the
indigenous population whether
they like it or not. Flags are not
value neutral. Flags say what they
mean and mean what they say.
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surprising because we
all know what it stood
for and still stands for
today. No, it does not
represent
youthful
rebelliousness; nor,
does it truly repre-
sent the heritage of a
particular region of
these United States of
America; and, most importantly,
it does not represent truth, justice
and freedom.
Put simply, it is the musty ar-
tifact of a defeated insurrection
against our government. What the
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attempted perpetual dominion of
one group of human beings over
another group. In other words, the
cry of the secessionist southern
states preceded George Wallace’s
“Segregation now, segregation
forever.” Instead, the rallying cry
of the boys in grey was Slavery
Now. Slavery Forever.’
Prior to the Great Migration
of the 1940s, the majority of
African-Americans had toiled,
been lynched, dehumanized
and marginalized in the South.
And, while their experience dif-
fered markedly from whites in
the South, southern blacks have
as much of a claim to Southern
heritage as their more privileged
white brethren.
So, the argument that the
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Southern Heritage is tantamount
to saying that the Nazi Swasti-
ka represented German heritage.
Lest we forget, Jewish people
in Germany were Germans. So,
clearly both the Swastika and
the Confederate Flag represent a
failed attempt to either eliminate
a group of people or, in the case
of blacks, to keep them as chattel
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reminders of man’s inhumanity to
man.
For over 150 years, the vic-
torious North has mollycoddled
and enabled the defeated white
South. Our central government
allowed the wholesale disenfran-
chisement of black southerners,
thus allowing white southern
racists to control the most pow-
erful committees in our national
Congress.
We permitted the construction
of statues lining the streets of
Richmond, Virginia, Charleston,
South Carolina and other south-
ern cities paying homage to “war
heroes’ intent on keeping my peo-
ple in bondage. And, every day of
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must be reminded of those very
men who sought to keep them as
work animals. Again, it would be
akin to having statues of Hitler
and his generals lining the boule-
vards of Berlin.
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not the symbol real rebels should
adorn their homes and clothes
with to assert their independence.
Instead, how about hoisting the
American Flag, the real rebel
ÀDJ
While not always perfect in
living up to it, the genesis of our
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truths to be self-evident, that all
Men are created equal. Endowed
by the creator with certain un-
alienable Rights, that among
these are life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness...”
Kwame S. Salter is President of
The Salter Group and the author
of two books, including Striving
While Black.