REV. BARBER
WHY THE GOP DISMISSES
THAT SYSTEMIC RACISM
EXISTS
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
Why do Black Republicans like NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, agree with prominent white Republicans, that systemic racism does not exist today?
“Does racism exist?,” Robinson asked rhetorically back in February. “Of course. Has racism been “systemic” at points in our nation’s past? It has. Is our current system of government racist? No it is not!”
Unfortunately, in an effort to tow the Republican Party line, Robinson ended up later contradicting himself.
"I do not believe that we live in a systemically racist nation, nor have we ever lived in a systemically racist nation,” Robinson is quoted as saying while opposing a change in North Carolina’s social studies curricula.
The verbose Black Republican is in lock step with his party’s leadership like Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and of course, former President Donald Trump - all of whom have denounced systemic racism as the product of liberal Democratic imaginations.
“Hear me clearly,” Sen. Scott, the U.S. Senate’s only Black Republican, said during his rebuttal last week to Pres. Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress where he denounced white supremacy and racist police brutality.
“America is not a racist country.” Scott declared.
First one needs to ask, “What is systemic/systematic racism, and did it, contrary to Lt. Gov. Robinson’s confused opinion, ever exist in this country?’
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, systemic racism is defined as “…policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race.”
Without question, the historic existence and perpetuation of Black human bondage on these shores since 1619 - more commonly known as slavery, America’s “original sin” - and the subsequent rules and laws that maintained its inherent injustice in this society, is the most pronounced evidence of systemic racism.
Legislation requiring racial segregation of public facilities and services; empowerment of racial discrimination in private discourse; and ignoring racial injustice to the citizenship of nonwhites, was the manifestation of systemic racism starting in the mid-1860s.
“The practice of America was built on racism,” preached civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton Monday during the funeral for police shooting victim Andrew Brown, Jr. in Elizabeth City.
“Since African Americans have been in this country, racism has been embedded within the Constitution, statutory laws, social conventions and in the rules and regulations of every major institution in which people of color are involved, engaged or impacted,” says Atty. Irving Joyner, law professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law. “That racial animus is further enforced by the many individuals who govern, interpret and manage the dominant institutions in this country and the individual states.”
In other words, while many of the obvious manifestations of past systemic racism have died on the vine through aggressive civil rights and legislative actions like boycotts, freedom marches, and landmark voting rights legislation, there is increasing evidence of the clock being “turned back” today on many of the same issues activists thought had been resolved forty and fifty years ago.
“Systemic racism is choking the life out of American democracy,” Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach, preached just last year after the police murder of North Carolina native, George Floyd.
Thus, the revolving civil rights challenges of this time, based on how Republican-led state legislatures are working feverishly to limit voting rights; the call for reimagining the behavior of public safety based on the continuing and disturbing pattern of police brutality towards African-Americans; the inequality of this nation’s educational system; the unequal quality of it’s health care system; and the continued lack of opportunity when it comes to employment and small business development for African-Americans, is systemic racism; activists and observers say.
And yet, with evidence of current systemic racism undeniable, Republican leaders - both Black and White - continue to denounce it’s very existence, and move decisively to disallow any unapproved teaching of it’s torrid history in the nation’s public schools, which is why Republicans are so adamantly against any dissemination of the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize award-winning 1619 Project.
The acclaimed project documents that “…one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery, ” Project editor Nicole Hannah-Jones wrote.
Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a recent letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, want the 1619 Project removed from American History and Civics Programs, however, because the Project , “…has become infamous for putting ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy [and has] many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution.”
“The reason so many conservatives are threatened by the 1619 Project is that the story the authors tell is prophetic,” wrote Nancy LeTourneau in the August 22, 2019 online edition of The Washington Monthly.
“It challenges the totalism on which [conservatives]entire world view has been constructed. It is their mindset, which monopolizes imagination and stifles alternatives, that lays the groundwork for authoritarianism.”
In other words, it is vitally important for Republicans and conservatives to control the narrative of how Americans, particularly White Americans, think of themselves, in order to further promote their agenda.
For evidence of this, look no further than Republican/conservative behavior/reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, the public health restrictions mandated by the medical community, and now the Republican/conservative singular resistance to available vaccinations.
If scientific facts run contrary to their worldview, the history and existence of systemic racism certainly don’t stand a chance.
Thus, falsely claiming that Pres. Trump actually won the 2020 election; that Democrats are evil threats to the country, and that the founders of this nation did not have a racist bone in their bodies, actually poll well among among Republicans/conservatives as accepted “realities.”
Giving pride and agency to the false beliefs that America can do no wrong, and never has, no matter what it’s documented history shows, is the Republican banner.
Denying systemic racism actually exists allows those invested in what the right-wing dictates America is to propagate a false narrative that furthers their designs for power.
“American inequality, rooted in our original sin of race-based slavery, has gone on far too long.” Rev. Barber says. “Now is the time for radical reconstruction. We invite all Americans to stand together and say, "We won't be silent anymore."
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SMITH , BEASLEY SPEAK
OUT ON ANDREW BROWN CASE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The two African-American female candidates in the 2022 U.S. Senate race on the Democratic side have wasted little time taking to social media to address the issues surrounding the controversial April 21 fatal police shooting of Andrew Brown, Jr. in Elizabeth City.
Both former state Senator Erica D. Smith, and former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, have condemned the slaying, and called for greater transparency in the subsequent investigation.
‘Black men and women are being killed with impunity across the country,” Smith wrote via Twitter Monday, the day of Brown’s funeral. “We deserve and demand accountability. We deserve and demand justice. It’s for this case that we march, that we organize, and that we fight. #AndrewBrownJr. #ElizabethCity.”
“How long are we going to allow Black men and Black women to be shot down by the very people supposed to protect us?,” Smith wrote in a followup tweet. “We can’t wait another day.”
And finally, former Sen. Smith in another tweet, “RELEASE THE TAPE, THE WHOLE TAPE,” a reference to the police bodycam video that has been withheld from the family, public and press by a Superior Court judge, by request of the Pasquotank district attorney, until an SBI investigation has been completed.
Andrew Brown Jr.’s family and only one attorney were allowed to see only 20 seconds of the video from one of the five cameras recording. They were not allowed to retain any copies.
Cheri Beasley, who just entered the 2022 Senate last week, took to Facebook to express her dissatisfaction with the judge who denied the Brown family’s petition to release the tape.
This decision is an injustice to Andrew Brown’s family and the people of Elizabeth City,” Beasley wrote. “The full footage should be publicly released without delay.”
Beasley continued, “The federal investigation and the Governor’s call for a special prosecutor are urgently needed to ensure accountability and transparency, and prevent these tragedies from recurring.”
Ironically, it was a Republican candidate also in the 2022 U.S. Senate - former NC Gov. Pat McCrory - signed the bill into law that withheld police bodycam footage from the public, to be released only upon the order of a judge.
Brown, 46, was killed when Pasquotank County Sheriff’s deputies were reportedly serving him with a warrant at his home. At one point, Brown apparently attempted to get away from the deputies in a vehicle, and was shot in the process.
A private autopsy commissioned by Brown’s family revealed that he was shot four times in the arm, and once fatally to the back of his head.
His family and attorneys called Andrew Brown’s killing by sheriff’s deputies “an execution.”
He reportedly was unarmed at the time.
During Monday’s funeral service, in which Rev Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy and Rev. Dr. William Barber offered the Brown family worship of comfort, friends and family gathered to say goodbye, but also join in unity in a call for justice.
“The Holy Ghost is going to stand with you,” Rev. Barber told the family, “…until the truth comes out.”
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 05-06-21
LONG FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST CONCORD FOR FALSE ARREST
[DURHAM] A man recently released from prison after 44 years for a crime he did not commit, and paid $750,000 by the state of North Carolina to compensate for time served, has now sued the city of Concord for the false arrest, including police officials past and present. Ronnie Long, 65, filed his federal lawsuit Monday in Raleigh. Long is alleging “intentional and/or reckless misconduct.” Evidence exonerating him was withheld. Long was convicted of rape in 1976, and sentenced to 80 years in prison.
GOV. COOPER PARDONS DARRYL ANTHONY HOWARD
[DURHAM] After spending 25 years in prison for a double murder he did not commit, Darryl Anthony Howard was released from prison in 2016, and pardoned by Gov. Roy Cooper just last week. Thanks to the Innocence Project, it was determined that two different Durham district attorneys either withheld evidence or failed to fully investigate evidence pointing to another suspect. Howard is now eligible to receive $750,000 from the state for his false arrest and imprisonment.
THREE NC BLACK HISTORIC SITES TO BE ADDED BY THE STATE
[EDENTON] The NC Dept. of Cultural and Natural Resources is adding three African-American sites to it’s historic sites list for visitation.Soon tourists can visit the home of civil rights activist Golden Frinks in Edenton. Called the Golden and Ruth Frinks Freedom House, it will be restored as a museum. Frinks, known as “The Great Agitator,” was a 1960s activist and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who protested Jim Crow segregation in North Carolina and throughout the South. Then, the home of renowned 1800s furniture-maker Thomas Day in the small town of Milton, is being restored, with plans for a visitor’s center. And finally, expansion of the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum near Greensboro and Burlington. Founded in 1902, this was the only residential school for African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.
All three projects are receiving state and federal funding.
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