changing face of racism: New strategies needed for the new century, The

New Crisis, The, Mar/Apr 2001 by Strickland, Bill

"White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the world what it is today." ---Charles Mills, The Racial Contract

Once upon a time, indeed throughout nearly all of our history, black people knew what they were fighting against-and for; knew what freedom meant. In simpler times, black people knew that they were fighting against slavery and that they had either to escape it or abolish it for ever from our soil.

After slavery, when, through amendments to the Constitution, Congress proclaimed African Americans citizens of the land, the new citizens reveled in their new freedom, rejoiced in democracy's promise, and tried to make a new way where there once had been no way. When these newly gained political rights became impediments to the reconciliation of the white North and the white South, the nation indifferently and murderously cast blacks aside. Later, when federal troops, which had been their protectors, were pulled out to satisfy an election promise, blacks launched a continuous struggle to regain their rights that culminated in the Civil Rights Movement.

For nearly a century that struggle defined black people. It was a struggle against Jim Crow, and a struggle against lynching. It was a struggle for the right to vote and a struggle to hold body and soul-and kin-together.

Oftentimes it was a struggle just to be, and to try to be somebody. Black people were affirmative and resigned, hopeful and resisting. Black people were implacable, anchored in faith, and raised their young to understand that "they had to be twice as good" to make it in a world that did not intend that they should; black people sang in their churches about an "old rugged cross" and took comfort in the belief that "trouble don't last always." They were a people who, from the depth of their souls, called upon Him for direction: "0 my Lord, 0 my Lord, what shall I do?"

After World War II, which was supposed to have been the second war to make the world "safe for democracy," His direction and ours seemed compellingly clear both to a community in Montgomery that rose up in His name and to a generation of people (young and old) who confronted America with sit-ins and freedom rides and marches and demonstrations-and their own blood sacrifice. It was a revolution in the courts, in the streets, in the hearts and minds of men and women. This movement that began in the South went on to startle and shake the nation. And, outside of these shores, it stirred and inspired much of the world.

That time is past, and we need now a new theoretical and strategic struggle to fight the racism of the new century. There is now a generation of African Americans that has never seen a Jim Crow sign. Now there are black presidential candidates and black Cabinet officers and many, many black millionaires. There are black functionaries in high economic places. In fact, there are young African Americans, and even some adults, who seem to believe that it has always been this way.

It is fashionable in some circles, and mandatory in others, to insist that racism is a dead issue in America and that only "special interest pleaders" and practitioners of "victimology" prattle on about it. Cammile Cosby doesn't think that. She made a myth-- shattering observation in regard to the murderer of her son, Ennis. In June 1998, Cosby purchased an ad in USA Today-one which the New York Times declined to run. The ad reflects upon her son's killer, Mikhail Markhasev.

"Presumably," she wrote, "he did not learn to hate black people in his native country, the Ukraine, where the black population was near zero. Nor was he likely to see America's intolerable, stereotypical movies and television programs about Blacks, which were not shown in the Soviet Union before he and his family moved to America in the late 1980s." No, Cammile concluded: "America taught my son's killer to hate Blacks."

Cammile Cosby raised the uncomfortable question with which we and the nation must deal if we are ever to attain true racial equality. That question is this: How and why does America reproduce racism generation after generation? After all, the slave masters are dead and gone; legal segregation is ostensibly outlawed.

The time-honored defense of racism to protect white women from black brutes is pass. Interracial romances abound. White and black lovers and spouses-in circles straight and gay-have brought a new meaning to the coalition of rainbows. Yet racism persists. And its essence, its immutable law, is a racial double standard that is intractable.

Consider this:

- There is racial profiling on our streets, highways and in shopping malls. Along with Hispanic youth, black persons are treated more severely than white teenagers at every step of the juvenile justice system. According to last spring's report by the Youth Law Center, blacks are six times more likely than whites to be sent to prison by juvenile courts, and demonstrably more likely to be tried as adults, and, of course, more likely to receive the death penalty.