After apartheid and Jim Crow: Still not equal
BY JESSE JACKSON
December 17, 2013
As Nelson Mandelas body is laid to rest, the leaders from across the world
who came to pay tribute to him leave with shared perspectives. They see the
fruits of the remarkable triumphs of Mandela and the African National
Congress the defeat of apartheid, the transition of power from the
oppressive minority to the newly empowered majority, the creation of a great
democracy. And they see the continued inequality that scars South Africa,
the gulf between the wealthy and the impoverished, still largely reflecting
a color line.
We see the same in this country. We celebrate, as we should, the remarkable
triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement: the end of
apartheid in the South, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the legal
prohibition of racial discrimination in employment and education.
Yet we also see the gulf between rich and poor, a gulf still often tracing a
color line in many of our cities and regions.
These parallels are not random or accidental. The reality was one people
enslaved on three continents North America, Europe and Africa. Racism is a
tool that was used to justify the brutality. Racism exploits the other
economically. It creates the illusion of one groups superiority and
anothers inferiority.
The attitude and the practice get rooted into institutions across the
society. In South Africa, Mandela and the ANC ended apartheid laws and won
the right to vote. In the US, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement did the
same.
But there is also engrained economic separation: clubs, businesses and
meetings that remain closed informally, even if they were no longer legally
separated. There is the discrimination of legacy: the young inheriting less,
having less access to elite schools, for their parents had been locked out.
There is the discrimination of property and neighborhood: people of color
left out of better neighborhoods, even after they could no longer be legally
excluded. There is the discrimination in education: poor urban schools cant
keep the best teachers nor offer the best equipment and supplies. There is
discrimination in the access to capital: minority businesses still find it
more difficult to raise capital, and rapacious mortgage bankers still prey
on minority homeowners.
Over time, a few from across the color line excel and break into the closed
clubs, but the majority still faces long odds. But the problem in South
Africa, where blacks are the majority, or the U.S., where people of color
are becoming the majority, is that the whole economy suffers from the
vestiges of entrenched discrimination.
In South Africa, an impoverished majority limits the ability of the country
to build a prosperous economy and stable society. In the U.S., the
government does less than in other industrial nations to lift the poor, a
legacy of the belief that these takers are those people. Even now the
right attacks the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, for allegedly raising
costs on the middle class in order to provide health care for those
people.
In reality, most poor people in the U.S. work every day that they can. They
take the early bus. They serve and prepare our food in fast food
restaurants. They staff the Wal-Marts where we buy our goods. And at the end
of the week, they are paid so little that they are forced to use food stamps
to be able to feed themselves. More poor people are white than black. They
are disproportionately young and female.
So as we celebrate the remarkable triumphs of Nelson Mandela and his
movement in South Africa, and of Dr. King and his movement in the U.S., we
realize that much more remains to be done. They freed their peoples but
could not win them equality. That remains the next chapter.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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