School Security Guards Beat Teen over Cake Spill: Palmdale—It all started with a piece of birthday cake, but it ended up with a high school girl being beaten and expelled. The incident, which occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale, was caught on a cell phone camera. Michael Brownlee was live in Palmdale with what the girl and her mother plan to do now.

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Clearly, Injustice is not just in Jena—Cynthia McKinney

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I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves. . . . Again, there's no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.—Seymour Hersh, Interview Spiegel Online (28 September 2007

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In my opinion, this upsurge in police abuse of black teens is pointing to two historical trends rapidly intersecting or which have already converged:

a)      The return of the ever-present white racism in the American society, which was only temporarily suppressed by the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement; and

b)      Fascism (the denial of all rights to individuals in their relations with the state), most overtly demonstrated in the policies and practices of the currently political leadership of the American State—fully supported by the Democratic Party.

All of this, of course, is bound up with a deep crisis in the American economic system, here and abroad.

Fascism is a post WWI pattern, while white racism emerged after European capital decided to capture and hold Black People, as property for over 400 years, in order to appropriate our labor.

In a 1989 scholarly paper and later in a book (Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press), Fukuyama assured the American elites that this was “The End of History.”

He advised that, western civilization, western liberal democracy was now universalized—American capitalism has triumphed globally. Only friendly competition will occur, instead of wars, between the historically warring rival capitalist states in their quest to appropriate the world’s natural resources and the labor of its population.

Unfortunately for the previligentsia, represented by Fukuyama, and the big American capitalists, things did not turn out quite that Fukuyama thought that it would.

Here comes 911, socialist resurgence in Latin America and Russia; and rapid re-arming of Europe and Asia (including Japan) under the guise of diplomacy!

The American elites also regard us, black people, as a fifth column to American capitalism—we have endured it, we know it. We have resisted it culturally and politically for almost 500 years. By the burden of our history we cannot do otherwise, we must reject white racism and global capitalism which is not sustainable and in conflict with the social and economic character of global production. 

The outburst of American aggression abroad, fascism and racism at home are the reaction of the American capitalists to the rising threat to their hegemony.

LLOYD D. MCCARTHY
5224 Knightsbridge Way
Raleigh NC 27604
Tel: 919-539-4338
Email: mccarthyconsultg@aol.com
www.in-dependence.com

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do make it under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."

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Dear Rudy,

For me, one begins an explanation by considering that such attacks and the high incarceration rate for young black males and females under the age of 25 are part of a covert government program to criminalize young African Americans and eventually destablize one of the nation's minority populations (that is, minority in sheer body count).  It is a tactic used in promoting benign genocide. We have to explain social and moral retrogression on a national scale.

The story of each abuse of police power and/or criminal justice is always far more complex and historically rooted than is ever reported in the media, and we could waste time examining them individually.  It seems to me to be more effective to have databases on the frequency, geographical location, and outcomes of the incidents.  I do not know, for example, what is the outcome of a seven-year-old male's arrest and booking in Baltimore several months ago. These databases should be discussed on blogs and on radio programs in order to build a stronger consciousness and targets for meaningful action.  Much to our shame, we become very enthusiastic and emotional about individual cases, but we seem to be wanting and insufficiently cold-blooded in sustaining actions that deal with what is not individual but systemic.

David Walker knew very well in 1829 that consciousness and action are crucial if an oppressed population is ever to free itself from wretchedness.  We can not depend on the American criminal justice system for remedies, because the recent antics of the neo-con Supreme Court sanction anything and everything behind the twin disguises of judicial process and national security.  Like Walker, we must present the case of our plight in the courts of world, simply as a matter of record. Such a move would create a global environment for discussion, but the more meaningful work has to be done on site in Jena, LA and everywhere else by grassroots leaders and community people who are directly affected by police attacks.

As some of the Dillard students who participated in the Jena demonstration pointed out in their analysis of that activity, far too many people went for the ride and the photo opportunities.  These students want sustained action, and we elders in the audience advised them, in the immortal words of Margaret Walker, to be men and women and take control.  They must devise a future.

It is not just Obama who should be urged to wade in.  All the candidates for president must be challenged to wade in on domestic problems and to risk embarrassing the United States with some degree of honesty. I am not convinced that any of the candidates have the moral backbone to do so, for they understand that our national elections are no more than shams. I suspect that all of the candidates secretly want to become the American fascist dictator. Our current dictator is too stupid to hide his desires.

Peace, Jerry Ward

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Gulag of Racial Incarceration—America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.—Orlando Patterson

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Professor Patterson despite the facts of police repression and government neglect still insists on blaming the victims : "Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist" (Orlando Patterson).—Rudy

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posted 30 September 2007 / updated 28 March 2008