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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2002
Black/Red View
Blacks don't buy war
by John Alan Many Americans know that Barbara Lee, an African- American
member of Congress from Oakland, California, took a courageous stand in October
2001 when she was the lone voice of opposition in the House of Representatives
voting against a use-of-force resolution that gave President Bush the go-ahead
to bomb Afghanistan (see Nov. 2001 NEWS & LETTERS). However, not as many
people may know that now the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) announced that it
"oppose[s] a unilateral first-strike action by the United States without a
clearly demonstrated and imminent threat of attack on the United States." The CBC's statement also read: "A unilateral
first-strike would undermine the moral authority of the United States, result in
substantial loss of life, destabilize the Mideast region and undermine the
ability of our nation to address unmet domestic priorities." OPPOSITION TO BUSH This Congressional political opposition to President Bush's
pre-emptive war doctrine by the CBC and other members of Congress has helped
force Bush to tone down some of his bellicosity, without stopping his
preparations both in the political and military areas to invade and occupy Iraq
or any other nation that fits his description of a potential enemy. The Bush Administration has asked Congress to raise the
military budget by 45 billion dollars a year by 2003. This money would be used
to create new weapons of destruction and train soldiers to fight a high-tech and
aggressive war everywhere in the world. Of course, the enormous cost of this new
kind of war, as the CBC has alluded to, would mean the end of "unmet
domestic priorities." In other words, all things necessary for a good human
life will be used up and destroyed by a highly technological war simply because
the Bush administration declares another nation a potential enemy. A recent survey of African-American opinion by Black
Entertainment Television found that many African Americans didn't buy Bush's
war. BET came to this conclusion by interviewing African Americans in a large
barbershop, in the heart of Miami's Black community as well as churchgoers and
students at the University of Maryland-College Park. This survey may not be
totally scientific but it does indicate that there isn't any great enthusiasm
for Bush's war among African Americans. Nor did BET's survey show that there was
any support for Saddam Hussein. WAR AND RACISM In all major wars this nation has fought, African Americans
have discovered a contradiction between the war's aims and their actual
condition in this country. Thus, we find that the War of Independence was fought
when African Americans were an enslaved people and there was no intention to
free them. The original goal of the Civil War was to preserve the
Union and not to liberate African Americans from slavery. It took the pressure
of the abolitionists and a general strike of British workers to convince the
Lincoln administration that the intrinsic purpose of bloody Civil War was not to
save the Union but end slavery. African Americans opposed U.S. adventurism in the
Philippines in 1899, calling attention to the fact that a nation practicing such
rabid racism should not be spreading its system to other countries. They founded
the original Anti-Imperialist League, which a year later also opposed the U.S.'s
use of troops against the Boxer Rebellion in China. When the U.S. went to war under the banner of "four
freedoms" to save Europe from the horrors of Hitler's Nazism, it ignored
the lynchings, disenfranchisement, and segregation of African Americans here.
The initiative to change these horrible conditions did not come from President
Franklin Roosevelt's administration but the African-American masses who
organized a "double V" movement, victory against Hitler and victory
against racism in America. HARD PATH TO FREEDOM Yes, America is much freer from racism than it was decades
ago. This is largely due to the massive Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,
which uprooted the practice of legal race segregation and discrimination in
public places, housing, schools and in hiring. However, there is nothing absolute about the end of legal
racism. For example, the September-October issue of the NAACP's CRISIS carried
an article on the firemen in New York City who, even after September 11, 2001,
are still fighting for a meaningful recruitment of African Americans. In a city
of 11.5 million with 12,000 firefighters, only 300 are African Americans, far
less than in the '70s or '80s. Despite Bush's mantra that "everything has
changed" since September 11, 2001, racism persists. It is not unusual,
though it seems to baffle some reporters, to see calls to stop police abuse
amidst the anti-war demonstrators. In fact, the protest against Bush's
appearance in Cincinnati on Oct. 8, saw over a thousand participants (organizers
said 5000), many of whom had been organizing since Timothy Thomas was murdered
by Cincinnati police in April 2001. Racism, like classism and warmongering, cannot be purged from a capitalist society. A new social order has to be created, which would transcend race and capitalism. The way to get there leads through the contradictions experienced by African Americans. |
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