It’s a little-known fact that the current vice president
of the United States, Dick “freedom and democracy”
Cheney, was an active supporter of the prolonged incarceration of
Nelson Mandela. The great South African freedom fighter ““
often compared to Martin Luther King Jr. himself ““ spent 27
years behind bars for opposing the sickening racism of the
apartheid system.
Yet Cheney, that paragon of virtue, while in the House of
Representatives in 1986, voted against a resolution calling for
Mandela’s release and, apparently, has no regrets.
His trite explanation: The African National Congress that
supported Mandela was “viewed as a terrorist
organization.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The Republican rhetoric of today has, demonstrably, not moved on
from the 1980s, and many of the shady characters that made up the
Reagan administration have actually been recycled into the Bush II
coterie. But while the purveyors of power have stayed nauseatingly
familiar, many of the race battles across the world against
reactionaries like Cheney have been ferociously fought and won by
ordinary people.
The apartheid system in South Africa is no more; legalized
segregation in the United States is a distant memory; the battle
against European anti-Semitism has been partly won. The list is
literally endless, and serves as a testament to humanity’s
continued social evolution.
But with MLK Day and the ongoing festivities at UCLA, it should
not only be a time to celebrate the life of this great man and
marvel at the advances made up to now. The fact that people like
Cheney are still at the center of power shows that there remains a
lot of work to be done.
I’m sure King would have wanted his death to be used to
push forward the struggle for genuine racial equality, not just a
day of remembrance. But this calls first for acceptance that the
racial hierarchy in the United States was not wholly corrected by
the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The Columbia Encyclopedia defines “denial” as
“a defense mechanism that operates unconsciously to resolve
emotional conflict, and to allay anxiety by refusing to perceive
the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.”
Large swaths of white middle-class America ““ admittedly
the most maligned of species ““ continue to live in a warm,
comforting bath called “racial equality.”
It is based on the assumption that racial inequality and
discrimination was dealt a mortal blow by the progressive race
legislation passed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. And when
““ just occasionally ““ this belief is shaken, they reach
for the soap.
They scrub themselves down with the argument that everyone,
regardless of color, is equal in America. In fact, the potency of
Johnson’s panacea is not supported in the slightest by the
“unpleasant aspects of external reality.”
The Civil Rights Bill, which officially ended legalized
segregation, was brought before Congress in 1963. In a June 11,
1963 television address, its sponsor, John F. Kennedy, pointed out,
“The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the
section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as
much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the
same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing
college … twice as much chance of becoming unemployed … a life
expectancy which is seven years shorter, and the prospects of
earning only half as much.”
That was 1963. But do we have the right to look back with a
haughty nostalgia, bless the skies and say, “I”˜m glad
all that is over with”? The answer is a categorical no, both
in America and in my home country of England.
If someone were to make a speech like Kennedy’s today, it
would resonate with some uncomfortable echoes of the original
one.
According to the most recent figures, the nationwide college
graduation rate for black students is an appalling 39 percent,
compared to 60 percent for white students. The black unemployment
rate has fallen to an all-time low, but is still more than twice
the unemployment rate for whites (the same as Kennedy’s
statistic.)
Black family income is at an all-time high, but it is still less
than 70 percent of the average white family. And the average
lifespan of a black person in 2001 was five and a half years
shorter than the average white lifespan (an improvement of one year
in just under four decades, according to Kennedy’s
statistics).
Is this “the promised land”?
It is counter-intuitive to say the civil rights movement has
died. According to these statistics, it should be just as alive as
ever.
On Thursday, UCLA will hold the 17th Annual Martin Luther King
Oratorical Contest, and it is about time that some leaders of real
dignity and inspiration be discovered. They are needed desperately
to articulate these truths.
Alice Walker, veteran civil rights activist and author of the
bestselling novel “The Color Purple,” witnessed
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington in
1963. She later wrote that “my life, like that of millions of
black young Southerners, seemed to find its beginning and purpose
at the precise moment I first heard him speak.”
Can you imagine feeling this invigorated after a speech by
Michael Moore or any of the other demagogues in popular culture?
Didn’t think so.
Then again, how much talent does an orator truly need to make it
look scandalous that UCLA’s entering freshman class only
contained 22 black males without sports scholarships? The drab
Cheney would do, although I have a feeling he won’t be first
in line.
If you think you’re the next Martin Luther King Jr.,
e-mail Kennard at mkennard@media.ucla.edu.