July 27, 2020 – 4:30 pm ET
By Rich Weissman, Palm Springs, California
(www.richweissman.com)
BACKGROUND
The enslavement
of African people was part of our nation’s beginnings, starting in 1619 in Point
Comfort, Virginia with the arrival of the first 20 African slaves brought onto
the shores of this continent. Indeed, this nation was built on the backbreaking
work of enslaved black people for the following 250 years, and many of the nation’s
founders and writers of the Declaration of Independence and subsequent U.S. Constitution
were themselves slave holders, unwilling to recognize the horrors of slavery
and the institutional persecution of black people, and they baked racial
inequality into the Constitution. Racism has always played a fundamental role
in the nation since its inception. By the 1860 U.S. Census, there were 4
million black slaves in the U.S. just prior to Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863, and the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 following
the end of the Civil War (1861-1865). Eleven southern states initially created
the Confederate States of America in 1860 and began the Civil War. The
Confederacy existed for less than five years until 1865. And the Confederate
(aka rebel) flag was created in 1863 and lasted less than two years. These
states declared themselves to be independent of the United States after Lincoln
was elected, so as to form a separate nation with highly limited central
government and with the institution of black slavery at its core. Although based on centuries of brutal slavery and racism,
the Confederacy was defeated in those five years, thus ending hundreds of years
of the horrific institution of black slavery in the U.S. The Confederacy
itself, and the flag to which it pledged allegiance, represented an ugly and
short period in which an enemy of American democracy, rejecting the
Constitution, emerged and was vanquished. There is no reason to celebrate it or
its flag other than to continue to promote racism and treason. The end of the
Confederacy should have marked the beginning of the inclusion of black
Americans into the concept of “we the people.”
But, institutionalized and systemic racism did not end with
the Civil War and was not, and is not, restricted to the southern states.
Slavery may have been abolished, but the disdain and cruelty towards black
people immediately exploded following the passage of the 13th
Amendment, with the formation of the KKK in 1865 in Tennessee, and years of continued
riots of white people against black people, starting with those in New Orleans
and Memphis in 1866. The following year, the Jim Crow laws era emerged and
lasted 100 years until 1965, where denial of civil rights and horrific acts
against black people, including mob lynchings and destruction of black homes
and businesses, were the norm. As a part of it, came the destruction and
massacre of vibrant black communities throughout the nation, including Greenwood,
Tulsa (OK) in 1921 and Rosewood (FL) in 1923, to name just a few. Throughout
the U.S., segregation, inferior housing and schools, lynching, redlining and
ghettoization, economic subjugation, denial to medical access, political oppression
through poll taxes and other forms of denying black people access to vote, and
a deep-rooted cultural bias against black people and their ability to be free
and equal remained and continues to be a part of the American experience. The modern
civil rights movement of the 1960’s pushed the issue front-and-center and moved
it forward. We saw black leaders being fire hosed and even murdered, including Medgar
Evans (1963), Malcom X (1965) and MLK (1968). We saw children being attacked
for going to school, and ordinary people being beaten or killed simply because
they wanted black people to be treated not as lowly and dispensable, but as
full human beings. And we saw the rise (and ultimate defeat) of Alabama
Governor George Wallace as a serious national Democratic and then 3rd
party presidential candidate, running on a segregationist platform. Although
advances were made, the 1960’s civil rights movement did not eradicate the
multi-faceted institutional and systemic racism that remains part of the
American psyche. Certainly, a part of the Trumpian display of white supremacy
and other racist beliefs are a reaction to having had an educated, eloquent,
dignified and admired President Obama. And now, we see the ugly face of racism
alive in our culture with the support of the current administration, with the
increase in privatization of prisons and federal policing, and in the full
support from its enablers in the U.S. Senate and in other government bodies throughout
the nation.
As white people,
we need to think ... Imagine growing up and being reminded daily that your life
is not important to the larger white society. Image being viewed as an object
to be used, with no intrinsic human value. As a close black friend said to me, the
worst of aIl is being perceived as sub-human, as innately inferior to white
people, as an animal or anything but a human being. Imagine how that feels to
have white people look at you and not see a human being. And image the anger it
engenders each and every day as black people confront a merciless white world
that is unable to see or correct its racism at its core.
Imagine being
subjected to racism at every turn, often having to live in poverty and inferior
housing, attend poorly funded and often segregated schools, offered only menial
jobs, and be denied access to so many parts of society that are somehow
designated for whites only. And, imagine being disproportionately arrested and imprisoned,
facing rigged policing, court and other practices which perpetuate racial inequality,
through the racially biased systems of arrest, bail, court-appointed legal
support, inequitable sentencing and incarceration, and post-incarceration fees.
Imagine having your life or your life’s future extinguished because of a
racially biased policing and criminal justice system practices.
And imagine
being afraid to walk outside in your neighborhood or in a local park. Imagine
being afraid to drive your car or to go shopping in a store. Imagine being
afraid of the doorbell as it might mean danger. Imagine being afraid to send
your children to school or to worry about your spouse going to work. Imagine
living like this every day. Imagine being at the mercy of white people and
having to explain it all to your children so that they understand the dangers. I'm
not talking about overcoming hardships or difficult circumstances which many
people face. I'm talking about being black in America and having to overcome
challenges that only black people face, and then living one's life afraid, making each day an anxious and potentially deadly one.
White people like me need to begin to try to comprehend white
privilege and black oppression. We'll never experience the oppression; we'll
never fully understand it on a visceral basis. But we need to try to empathize
and get on board and fight for change, because black lives do matter and black
people should not have to live lives unfairly and in fear. No child, no adult should
feel that their lives are of lesser value because they are black. And racism is
a white problem and we must unequivocally own it.
And we have a profound question to answer. Black people have
been raising these issues for decades and decades. We’ve seen the violence;
we’ve heard the most horrific stories of the pain the black community suffers. Why
have we the white community not listened to the black community and taken these
events and issues to heart? What have we been waiting for? So much of white
America has been at best indifferent and at worst complicit. For shame. But
it’s time for change.
So, what do we do? How does the current environment give us
reason to rise up and make a difference?
BLACK LIVES MATTER AND BLACK VOTES MATTER
Fighting police brutality against black people, demanding a
complete overhaul of the racist policing and judicial systems, and removing all
icons and vestiges of the atrocity of slavery, the Confederacy and the Jim Crow
brutality are clearly important. Black Lives Matter is a call to action we all
need to hear, embrace and support. It is, at its core, an issue that white
people (like me) need to own and correct with honesty, humility and an
understanding of history.
But it’s only a start. We need to fight more than systemic
and institutionalized racism in the policing and justice systems, and we need
to topple more than statues and flags. We also need to topple the foundations
of systemic and institutionalized political racism as another component to the
BLM movement, and get behind what I now call Black Votes Matter. Until every
black person has an equal vote, we will not make serious change in removing
racism in the nation. Much of the direction our nation takes is a result of the
ballot box, and we need to ensure that black voices are equally heard in every
election in the nation.
What does Black Votes Matter mean to me? Three things …
1) Eliminate the electoral college which denies black people
equal footing. Let’s be clear, it was created in 1787 and is embedded into our
Constitution so as to give greater power to the slave states through the
“three-fifths compromise” in which black slaves would be counted as
three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating representatives and
electoral college votes, but would have no rights to vote themselves. Even with
the granting of voting rights to black people, the electoral college remains a
mechanism by which the former slave states and other often conservative states throughout
the nation now retain greater power. They receive disproportionate votes for
electing the U.S. President and Vice President. It is a vestige of slavery that
needs to be abolished.
2) Eliminate voter suppression which denies black people
equal access to the voting booth and end the vestiges of the Jim Crow era. The
inability for black people to vote on equal footing minimizes their voting
impact in elections, through barriers to register and remain registered, requiring
fees and petitioning for those with previous criminal records, inadequate
polling locations for black communities, barriers to vote-by-mail, barriers for
expanded voting periods and other insidious tools utilized by those who wish to
suppress black votes.
3) Eliminate gerrymandering which, among other goals, disempowers
and disenfranchises black people through racially designed districts to
diminish black representation. Gerrymandering is a pernicious method of
creating districts that often disproportionately takes power away from black
communities. Mind you, it has been used for a host of other reasons to provide
the majority party with greater power, and it must end, particularly because it
devalues the power of the black vote.
These three structural forms of political racism must be
toppled along with ending the racist police and judicial activities, and the
racist icons of slavery and the Jim Crow era. If black votes are worth less
than white votes, then we are not a democracy and we cannot effectuate true
change. To fight racism at its core, we need to embrace Black Votes Matter and
fight for changes in these three destructive forms of systemic and
institutionalized racism, and I’m starting to think that America may be on the
cusp of being ready to finally face the inequality in our political system and
ready to fight for genuine equal voting rights. Black America deserves to have
these racially and deceitfully designed activities put into the history books
so that black Americans can become equal participants in the political process.
Here’s how we start …
1) Ensure that Trump and the GOP are soundly defeated in
November. This is a beginning point to allow for the start of Black Votes
Matter. We need an administration, Congress and other government bodies
throughout the nation to reject Trumpism and its basis in white supremacy. We
need to work hard and financially support Biden and Democratic candidates at
all levels and not assume that it will be an easy election.
2) Fight against voter suppression and support the
organization that Stacey Abrams has put in place to work towards ending voter
suppression (fairfight.com). We must ensure that black people have equal
opportunity to vote, and Abrams is on the right track, taking the lead on this
critical issue. We must support her organization’s efforts.
3) Start a serious effort towards the elimination of
gerrymandering and the electoral college (which will be difficult and require a
change to the Constitution) once Biden is in office. These two vestiges of slavery and racism need
to end, and we must make Black Votes Matter a top priority in the new
administration and Congress.
Black Lives Matter isn’t just a slogan. It’s not simply a
social media posting. It’s a call to action, and we need to act and include
Black Votes Matter as an important component. Why? Because America cannot be a
free nation without the 43 million black Americans having equal freedoms, and
not until every black vote equally counts. It’s important that we fight all
forms of racism, including justice system, economic, housing, education,
employment, healthcare and other avenues of systemic and institutionalized
racism. Black Lives Matter and Black Votes Matter has handed white America a
long list of issues to tackle and we must be prepared to take them on. No
excuses.
