So called Slavery Days are over and we’re no longer faced with Jim Crow laws or separate but unequal facilities but don’t kid yourself, racism is alive and well!
If you’re a teenager or a young adult you may not have experienced colored only drinking fountains and colored only waiting rooms. You probably have never been forced to sit only in the back of the bus, had to order food from the back door of a restaurant or use the bathroom on the side of the road on lengthy car rides.
But I have vivid memories of all those things.
In 2012, racism has a different twist. Today, racism is defined by the perpetrator and not by the victims of racism.
If network news shows, newspapers and internet bloggers say there is no more racism because the President of the United States has African ancestry, They are wrong. I say the media and the government are primary facilitators of modern day ethnic bias.
When you have well known and highly paid media personalities like Geraldo Rivera saying NFL football coaches and corporate CEOs that wear hoodies look like coaches and businessmen but Black teenagers that wear hoodies look like “thugs” Rivera’s comment, to me has racial connotations.
When Bill Cosby says Hispanics can speak Spanish, Haitians can speak Creole and other ethnic groups can communicate in languages and dialects unique to their community but Blacks can and should only speak in the language of their exploiters and oppressors to be considered a worthwhile communicator, to me, that is a racist perspective.
In government, if your Governor, or your President, says that tax payers should finance vacations when they want to take a trip to Europe, Asia or the Caribbean and disguise them as trade missions but at the same time refuse to consider trade missions and other economic efforts in America’s inner cities and rural neighborhoods, to me it is economic development activities that have racial motivations. You tell me, what is the difference between government sponsorship of a trade mission a million miles away and a business conference in a minority or disadvantaged community? Answer, the color of the participants and the beneficiaries!
I know some that will read this column love their exploiters more than they love themselves, consider themselves inferior in every way and will never attempt to do for themselves or their own kind. Some would rather hold and join hands with the devil rather hold the hands of their own sisters and brothers.
And, they accept whatever happens to them or are satisfied no matter how much they are denied or rejected because of their race.
But some in America will not fall for the racial okey doke!
We know you can’t prove you’re not a racist by merely saying, “I’m not a racist because I have Negro friends” or “I’m not a racist because I have a Beyonce song in my CD player”!
You can also not convince me you don’t have racial ill will just because you allowed the maid to eat at the dinner table with you at Thanksgiving dinner or because you gave a paper cup full of faucet water to the garbage man.
If racism doesn’t exist in America why can’t a Black man avoid jail after murdering a white man by simply stating he was standing his ground?
That can’t and won’t ever be done because rules and laws are considered and based on the skin color or ethnicity of the persons involved in the activities at hand.
If civil disturbances, riots, melees and other such stuff makes the summer of 2012 a long hot summer, if you know what I mean, it might be because equality and justice is often doled out based on race!
If there is no racial justice and racial equality there will never be racial peace!
(Buy Gantt’s book “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” at any major bookstore and contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net)
