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Poll Finds
Blacks Least Likely
To Back War Against Iraq
NEW YORK (AP) - President Bush's push toward war
with Iraq has found less support
among blacks than among whites and Hispanics, reflecting what
some say are economic fears and long-standing resentments over
past mistreatment. "The black community realizes that war is not good for
us - not good for our economic situation now, and not good for
the many of us who are going to
be in the war," said Nicholas Wiggins, 21, a college
student from East Stroudsburg, Pa.
A Pew Research Center poll found 44 percent of blacks support
a war with Iraq, the lowest level of any group surveyed.
Overall, 66 percent of Americans
favored military force, with support at 73 percent among whites
and 67 percent among Hispanics. The February survey of 1,254
adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage
points, and slightly larger for the subgroups. Democrats, women and college-educated Americans are also less
likely to support a war than the overall population, according
to the Feb. 20 poll.
The lagging support among blacks found in the survey and in
earlier polls is coupled with strong opposition to war from
organizations such as the Congressional Black Caucus and the
NAACP. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said many blacks believe the
conflict can be resolved short of war, and they worry that war
could sour the nation's already sagging economy. "What some communities might feel as a mild cold during
war time, will really be pneumonia in black and brown
communities economically," he said.
Mfume said blacks' stance against the war should not be
viewed as unpatriotic. "We have fought in every war and
defended a democracy that we never fully enjoyed and to protect
liberties that were often not afforded to ourselves," he
said. Analysts said blacks' support for war in Iraq reflects a
partisan view of Bush, who drew only 9 percent of the black vote
in the 2000 election.
They also cited the role the black church has played in
previous anti-war movements, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s stand against the Vietnam War, and mistreatment of black
veterans after previous wars. "We believe it is anti-American to go to war
prematurely," said Democratic presidential hopeful Rev. Al
Sharpton, who is among the most vocal opponents of military
action against Iraq. "I'm a disciple of the Rev. Martin Luther King,"
said Faye Williams, a lawyer from Washington who opposes the
war. Williams noted a decades-long tradition among black
ministers of preaching nonviolence, and said, "There are a
lot of people today, too, who are listening to these
ministers."
Blacks are also less likely to perceive Saddam Hussein as the
same type of direct threat as al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, said
Joseph Jordan, director of the Sonya Haynes Stone Center for
Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina.
He said many blacks believe the drive toward war has come at the
expense of domestic concerns. "They draw some relationship between retreats on
domestic issues like affirmative action and assistance programs
for the poor and the escalation of these hostilities," he
said.
Conservative
commentator Armstrong Williams, who supports military action
against Iraq, said blacks' views are shaped as much by
historical and economic concerns as they are by partisan issues. "They have seen how we were treated in World War II and
how black veterans were treated," Williams said. "It's
just something that has been passed down from their grandparents
and parents."
Copyright © 2002 AP Online 02/24/2003 12:01 AM EDT Join BlackAmericaWeb.com This site is great! It's got news, sports, features, book
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Panther Baby
A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention
By Jamal Joseph
In the 1960s he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today he’s chair of their School of the Arts film division. Jamal Joseph’s personal odyssey—from the streets of Harlem to Riker’s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia—is as gripping as it is inspiring. Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. But this was the late 1960s in Bronx’s black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Island—charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties. When exonerated, Eddie—now called Jamal—became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers’ New York chapter. He joined the “revolutionary underground,” later landing back in prison. Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned three degrees there and found a new calling. He is now chair of Columbia University’s School of the Arts film division. . . . In raw, powerful prose, Jamal Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement. . . . |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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