“The Fight Is for Control”

The passage of the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation brought the illusion of freedom and inclusion for African-Americans. It didn’t bring the reality. While changes in technology that would be impossible to even dream of 25 years ago has happened, there hasn’t been the kind of change in uplifting humanity in the world that we did dream of.

After the end of the Civil War, and the so-called freeing of African Americans from the master’s hand but not from his control, the South won states’ rights and the Federal troops retreated to the North. The war that ended slavery had just ended. Yet black people in the South were again at the mercy of angry white males. African Americans, from that day to this one, continue to live in a system that can only be described as legalized apartheid. And now history seems to be repeating itself.

While prison activism in the 60’s and 70’s brought some needed changes for incarcerated citizens, those gains have been totally overtaken by the increase in African Americans and other people of color going to prison. At this point, 1.9 million African-Americans are in prisons, another 2 million are disenfranchised by their felon status, and there is a 400% increase in the locking up women of color, leaving 10-12 million children motherless.

At the same time, the system has created a wedge issue in our communities by training low income women of color as prison guards over men of color by offering them the best pay and benefits they have ever had. How can we as a community ask women to turn down these jobs?

What are the rallying cries for many white male Southerners and other white males in power? End affirmative action, cries of reverse discrimination, demonize black youth, reinvent government, and the endless cry that we get government out of our lives — an ominous echo vibrating from the genesis of diseased minds bent on acting out hatred toward African Americans and other people of color. The fight is for control. They want states’ rights without any interference from the Federal Government.

The right wing has moved to take back every gain we won in the decades leading up to the 80’s. Their success has created a climate that allows hate crimes to flourish, church burnings to occur, schools and other services to be threatened by privatization and the entire political system to move farther to the right.

What was considered mainstream in the mid-seventies is considered left now. We are in the midst of a fight for economic and political justice that is even more difficult than what we faced in the 70’s.

What do we need to do?

We need to educate and organize our base. We need for white people to stand up and challenge racism in their own social groups and communities. We need to intervene when we see injustice happening. We need to remember that, in reality, the African-American community has only been allowed to vote within the last 30 years. We need government and leadership intervention to ensure that the human rights of all people are protected. And, in the African-American community, we need to make sure that we choose leaders who are not self-serving, but who will act in what is in the best interest of the whole community.