Newspaper Page Text
JULY 3,1997 - AUGUSTA FOCUS
8A
National Commentary
TO BE EQUAL By Hugh B. Price
Driving while black
resident Clinton had barely fin
ished his much-awaited speech
on race relations before cynics
began questioning his motives.
Is he real on this issue, they
asked?
Or is this just a belated attempt to com
mandeer another “hot button” issue?
Is he genuinely concerned about his
legacy, or just looking for a lift in the polls?
Ido think the speech was genuine. I
think it sprang from a deep reservoir of
personal experience and ~ommitment to
these issues.
But we need not ruminate endlessly
about the motives behind Mr. Clinton’s
speech.
Instead, we should get to work on the
hard challenges he’s put before us.
For one thing, we should focus on the
President’s discussion of the demographic
changes which are already substantially
transforming American society. He re
minded us that what Hawaii looks like
today, and what California will look like in
three years is what all of America will look
like in twenty to fifty.
The President challenged us to accept
that a vibrant multi-ethnic society truly is
America’s future, and went on to express
strong support for affirmative action. His
correct point was that we’ve got to make
certain that all of the so-called opportunity
structures of the society — higher educa
tion, employment and businesses, and so
‘on — are open to everyone.
President Clinton also touched on one of
the most difficult issues along the racial
front: the recurring tension between law
enforcement agencies and the civilians
‘they’re sworn to serve.
There are many sources stoking that
tension. But certainly one issue drawing
more and more concern — and anger —
within the Black America are the arbi
trary police stops of cars driven by black
™otorists. (Hispanic motorists are also
subjected to this)
As a growing number of reports — from
newspaper stories, to reports of civil rights
groups, to scholarly articles in law reviews
—havedocumented, this outrageous prac
tice has mushroomed across the country.
It has subjected thousands of law-abiding
African American and Hispanic American
motorists to inconvenience, humiliation,
and, it must be said, the threat of police
violence.
Consider the practice of the Sheriff’s
Office of Volusia County in central Florida,
which had jurisdiction over a stretch of I
-95, several years ago. It was their routine
policy to stop black and Hispanic motor
ists, almost literally on sight.
The Orlando Sentinel exhaustively ex
amined the records of some 3,800 traffic
stops and 500 searches of motorists by
deputy sheriffs there. It found that, al
though blacks and Hispanics made up just
five percent of the drivers on that stretch
of road, they accounted for seventy per
cent of all the drivers stopped. (Statewide
blacks and Hispanics make up 12 percent
and 15 percent of Florida drivers.)
Similar horror stories can be told about
such practices by state police and sheriffs’
AugustalfF O CUS
Since 1981
A Walker Group Publication
1143 Laney Walker Blvd. |
Augusta Focus
is a
Walker Group
Publication
President Clinton also
touched on one of the
most difficult issues
along the racial front: the
recurring tension between
law enforcement agencies
and the civilians they’re
sworn to serve.
There are many sources
stoking that tension.
But certainly one issue
drawing more and more
concern — and anger —
within the Black America
are the arbitrary police
stops of cars driven by
black motorists.
officesin Maryland, Illinois, Pennsylvania
and other states.
Policeofficials claim they’rebeing “race
neutral.” They're just trying to catch
miscreants, especially drug traffickers or
couriers, and are merely stopping motor
ists who in some way provoke their suspi
cions.
But David A. Harris, a law professor at
the University of Toledo, who’s written a
brilliant exploration of the issue, says Af
rican Americans who’ve been subjected to
these offensive acts put it another way.
They say their crime was, as Prof. Harris
claimed for his article’s title “‘Driving
While Black’ And (All) Other Traffic Of
fenses: the Supreme Court and Pretextual
Traffic Stops.”
The reference is a play on words, but as
Prof. Harris forcefully shows, the situa
tion is despicable. . s :
He shows that a recent Supreme Court
decision enormously expanding the dis
cretion police have to stop motorists, not
on reasonable cause, but solely on “suspi
cion,” is “a clear step ... toward
authoritarianism, toward racist policing,
and toward a view of minorities as crimi
nals, rather than citizens.”
Although blacks and whites differ
sharply on numerous racial issues, that
gap narrows when it comes to the matter
of how the police interact with African
Americans.
A Joint Center for Political and Eco
nomic Studies found that 81 percent of
blacks, 83 percen. of Latinos, and 56 per
cent of whites believe that police “are
much more likely to harass and discrimi
nate against blacks than against whites.”
And citizens and legal immigrants of
Hispanicdescent endure many of the same
problems with the police.
President Clinton’s sought-after na
tional dialogue on race must place this
issue high on its agenda.
More than that, he must do something
about it if he’s serious about leading a
national effort to improve race relations.
Charles W. Walker
Publisher
Frederick Benjamin
Managing Editor
Dot T. Ealy
Marketing Director
Sarena James .
News Correspondent
Miranda Gastiaburo
Advertising Production
Sheila Jones
Office Manager
Lillian Wan
Layout Artist
Loretta LaGrone
Classified Ad Manager
Opinion
G
< ONES FOR
B €
s Ly
ga. caleit 0\ %
T S ) :
{g‘fi/' 7 G 2 R
F L@ ; ’
& @“m&’w B VI : W
oo R s %o A
ol YRR AL :
e < d .
P a ‘}93..\., | | B \
e SRR :”w”"‘;?’ X 3 \ :
PRI e R N
o Eati® ] H%s%o;’ R AT R
5 30504 WM .‘Z}f g DY v vy
-8 po 1 P E :
L SR R R R i &. N R
IRYB I S g
pr o PR ‘,3;l‘;;(«_#' KT N o ,\ 2
=e XK e o
i Y T ek ¢ @ F: = = - A
/%‘ff’g&';"; XN i _. R-\
AR ) s*{\' P T R - o P o
g™ LBDA N S m,\
,m/ A R N
o 2 e Aot W’% B e b R
B R W r o g o k 3
) S st R e 7 e ™
S oo e .v». sot R x«:,.}-. Tod = R o
By TN B e . N\
o o
oab e s A NG
P A’i‘;&,g@a«s?*‘ e &
i J spieniat :
SU3| g)‘m‘;ofi% D e %
ooy R RG R
BY BORGMAN FOR THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL By Bernice Powell Jackson
Betty Shabazz - a post mortem
he epitomized the old saying,
“behind everygood man...” She
epitomized the new saying, “be
side every good man ...” Then,
she epitomized what istoo often
a reality, showing the world that strong
and proud black women are sometimes
forced to continue on when their man is
gone. Now she taught usabout trustin the
Creator, about the power deeply resident
inside herself and about life itself.
Betty Shabazz had never been a run-of
the-mill ordinary kind of person. If she
had been, she would never have married
Malcolm X and he would never have mar
ried her. She would never have been dble
to go through all of the negative outcomes
of having a highly-public “radical” hus
band —the firebombings, the threats on
her family, the dangers of the power struc
ture which saw him as a threat against the
status quo. She would never have been
able to go through all the positive out
comes of having a husband who was one of
the most brilliant and outspoken leaders
in the history of black America —the
constant public attention, the public ado
ration and theunrelentingrespect of many
in the black community. Betty Shabazz
THIS WAY FOR BLACK EMPOWERMENT By Dr. Lenora Fulani
Getting beyond racism and race
recently had the pleasure of
having Dr. Kwame Anthony
Appiah on my weekly cable TV
show. Dr. Appiah is professor of
African American Studies and
Philosophy at Harvard University.
His recent works include: In My
Father’s House: Africa in the Phi
losophy of Culture, The Dictionary of
Global Culture written with Henry
Lewis Gates, and Color Conscious:
The Political Morality of Race, co
authored with Amy Gutman.
Like many other scholars, Dr.
Appiah argues there is no such thing
as race. Going beyond showing that
there i no biological evidence for
racial differences, he claims that race
is not cultural either. The move to
identify racial differences as cultural,
he says, falsely suggests that people
in one cultural grouping are the same
as each other and different from
people in other cultural groupings.
Racism is then understood as stem
ming from cultural misunderstand
ings. But, Dr. Appiah points out
(and I agree with him), Black and
white Americans understand each
other just fine. Racismisn’t a matter
of cultural differences and misun
derstandings; it’s a matter of politi
cal power.
Dr. Appiah speaks of the need to
had never been ordinary.
Betty Shabazz had understood for de
cades the symbol she has become. She
understood that as the wife of Malcolm X.
She understood that in the midst of her
husband’s assassination and itsaftermath.
Sheunderstood that asacommunity leader
and educator and powerful publicspeaker.
But Betty Shabazz had alwaysbeen more
than a public figure, more than the wife
and then the widow of Malcolm X. She has
been the mother of six daughters — chil
dren who, like herself, had seen their fa
ther murdered before their eyes. Children
who needed not only nurturing and love
and attentionanddirection, but alsoneeded
to work through their father’s murder.
It was Betty Shabazz, the mother, who
stood with her daughter months ago when
this child, who had never been able to put
her father’s assassination behind her, was
accused of trying to have Louis Farrakhan,
whom she believed to have ordered her
father’s death, murdered. It was Betty
Shabazz, the mother and grandmother,
who then brought her grandson, the child
of the troubled mother, to live with her.
Betty Shabazz had also been a quiet, but
powerful keeper of the legacy of Malcolm X
get beyond what the French philoso
pher Jean-Paul Sartre identified as
anti-racist racism — as exemplified,
for example, in Black pride and Pan-
Africanism. The establishment of
this kind of racial identity, Dr. Appiah
says, is a stage in a people’s demand
to be recognized. But there are prob
lems with identity: it becomes cat
egorical; it becomes defining and
rigid, signaling association with par
ticular political or social agendas and
particular beliefs. Dr. Appiah writes
persuasively of the destructive ef
fects of identity politics, as identity
defined interest groups compete with
each other for legislative initiatives
and social policy on the basis of pre
sumed shared characteristics and on
their own behalf. Dr. Appiah recom
mends that we engage in “identity
play” — that we step back from our
identities, see that they are not al
ways that important, and not all of
who we are — and move on to
postracial identities. he describes
this “moving on” as “the ... imagina
tive work of constructing collective
identities for a democratic nation in
a world of democratic nations, work
that must go hand in hand with cul
tivating democracy here and encour
aging it everywhere.”
While I agree with much of what
FOCUS on a great gift! Get gift
certificates from BL’'s Restaurant at
1117 Laney-Walker Blvd.
through the decades since his death. Afri
can American New Yorkers knew they
could count on her to support community
efforts, to participatein programs foryoung
people, to be present in economic and
political empowerment programs for her
people. A mentor and role model to stu
dents at the community college named for
her husband and Martin Luther King Jr.,
she had also been a supporter of women'’s
empowerment and a friend to many —the
politically powerful and just ordinary
people. So, it was no wonder that hun
dreds stood in line to donate blood to Betty
Shabazz after the horrible fire which took
her life. o ;
It is no wonder that millions of people
throughout the world — of all races, all
faiths, all ages and classes — had joined
together in prayer for this remarkable
woman. She had touched so many of usih
the past and she touches so many of us
now. !
Her incredible will to live inspired us.
Her personal power awed us. Bett{
Shabazz taught us the value of life itself.
And so we pray for Betty Shabazz and for
her family, especially for her grandson,
Malcolm, named after his grandfather.
Dr. Appiah says, I do take issue with
his view that the establishment of
racial identity (and thereby, identity
politics) is a necessary stage in the
process of challenging identity, and
his claim that first we have to estab
lish our identity and then we can
challenge it. I see nothing natural or
inevitable about this. In fact, that
this is what has happened histori
cally is more an issue of a mistaken
political tactic -- identity politics «-
than the proof for an abstract stagist
theory of human history. In my work
as both a developmental psychologist
and a political activist, I have come
to believe that the African-American
community must challenge both the
theoretical and tactical frameworks
that are based on racial identity in
order to truly deal with the issue 0
racism and political power. '
Lenora B. Fulani twice ran so
President of the U.S. as an indepen
dent, making history in 1988 whe
she became the first woman and Afri
can American to get on the ballot i
all fifty states. Dr. Fulani is cur
rently a leading activist in the Re
form Party and chairs the Committ
for a Unified Independent Party. S
can be reached at 800-288-3201 or a
http://lwww.Fulani.org. :