[Peace-discuss] Racism follow-up

[David Green]

Just to clarify, institutionalized racism is a serious problem in this country, 
and of course closely tied to capitalism and class warfare, always has been. The 
NAACP was founded (1909) primarily with the goal of challenging the legal 
manifestations of institutionalized racism--legalized (southern) segregation, 
etc. Obviously, this approach was integral to the success of the southern Civil 
Rights Movement, while less so in the north, where discrimination had always 
been institutionalized in a different, more structurally complicated manner. 
Thus, the past 40 years has the evolution of racism by other means, as the 
recently-published "New Jim Crow" attests to--centrally, the school-to-prison 
pipeline and the prison-industrial complex, etc.

A series of informative essays addresses these issues in Elijah Anderson and 
Douglas Massey (eds.) "Problem of the Century" (2001). 


The NAACP has seen its day, as Prof. Sundiata Cha-Jua was honest enough to say 
in the presence of a local NAACP official, a two weeks ago in the Friday night 
meeting addressing local issues, Kiwane Carrington, etc. And the fact that they 
resort to ADL-style publicity in relation to Tea Party/Obama is entirely 
consistent with that. Disdain for the NAACP is politically incorrect and long 
overdue; ironically, a black President and his defenders has forced it out of my 
(now almost empty) closet.

DG


      
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