Vol. 50 No. 10
June 27, 2019 - July 3, 2019
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or words or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Black Leaders Push for Fair 2020 Census Count
Publisher’s Corner Email: sbamericannews@gmail.com Clifton Harris Editor in Chief Publisher of The San Bernardino AMERICAN News
Lynching In America By: Equal Justice Institute
By James Wright
Leaders of numerous African American organizations recently convened in the District to deal with the upcoming 2020 census that could affect available resources and the political representation of Blacks in the century’s third decade. Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP) and the convener of the Black Women’s Roundtable, had the leaders and representatives of key African American and civil rights organizations meet on June 18 at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill to talk about the 2020 Census and its importance to Blacks. “The 2020 Decennial Census will be the most critical census count of our lifetime,” Campbell said. “In 2010, African Americans and Black immigrants were undercounted by more than 800,000, leaving our communities with a shortage of government resources. We cannot let this happen again. “Further, the 2020 presidential election is also taking place next year,” she said. “For that reason, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and our Unity Diaspora partners are strategizing, organizing and mobilizing to make sure our people be fully counted and vote to build power for the next generation. Our
future depends on it.” Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to conduct a count of all within the borders of the United States every 10 years, with the year ending in a “0”. The data collected from the census count will be used to decide how many representatives will serve individual states in the U.S. House of Representatives. Plus, non-states such as the District and U.S. territories and possessions base their legislative bodies on those numbers. Business and nonprofit organizations use census data to determine whether to expand or decrease operations and services. In addition, billions of federal dollars are allocated based on census data. Leaders and representatives of organizations such as National Urban League, the National Action Network, the NAACP and the National Council of Negro Women participated in the summit, themed “Be Counted to Build Power for the Next Generation.” Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said prisoner gerrymandering, the practice of counting offenders where they are serving time instead of their hometown, and a dubious citizenship question are tools being used by those
who don’t want people of color to be counted properly. “There are two million incarcerated Americans and many of them are African American,” Clay said. “We want them to be counted as residents of their home, not the institution they are serving time in.” Clay has a bill, Correct the Census Count Act of 2019, that would remedy that situation. On the citizenship question that could appear on census forms that the U.S. Commerce Department leaders requested the Supreme Court to rule on based on validity, Clay called it “idiotic.” “The purpose of the citizenship question is to disenfranchise and intimidate non-White Americans by having people answer this question,” he said. Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said Black communities need to be prepared for the census “in light of so many Black children were missing in the 2010 census.” “We will hold nationwide town hall meetings in the fall and the spring to inform people about the importance of the census,” he said. South Carolina Rep. Gilda CobbHunter (D-Orangeburg), president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, stressed that state officials draw congres-
sional and in-state legislative districts based on census data. “We want to make sure all communities are represented,” she said. “In the process of doing that, we will need to have hard conversations about the makeup of our districts.” Cobb-Hunter also railed against “packing,” the practice of putting Blacks in one district that produces neighboring predominantly White —and, in many cases, conservative Republican — districts. She said putting some Blacks in a neighboring White district could produce a White Democrat who would be more sensitive to African American concerns. Cobb-Hunter said many states such as South Carolina and Mississippi have large numbers of Blacks in state legislatures who have little power because they are outnumbered by White Republicans. Tamika Mallory, co-chair of the Women’s March, said Black leaders need to talk in plain language to African Americans about filling out census forms. “Sometimes we as Black leaders become elitist and use big words to explain things,” Mallory said. “Black people need someone they can relate to explaining why the census is important.” This article originally appeared in the Washington Informer.
Reparations: Racism vs Reality Jerome Horton | Special to California Black Media Partners Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s senior United States Senator and Senate Majority Leader, said he does not support reparations for descendants of slaves, concluding “none of us currently living are responsible” for slavery. Senator Tim Scott, who is Black, quickly co-signed McConnell’s casual dismissal of nearly 250 brutal years of bondage, violence, legalized free labor and the economic boom it generated for the United States and the colonies that preceded it. Scott is the U.S. Senator from South Carolina, the only Black Republican legislator in the United States Congress and one of only three African Americans serving in the Senate. "There is no question that slavery is a scourge on the history of America," said Scott. "The question is, are reparations a realistic path forward? The answer
is no. The fact is if you just try to unscramble that egg to figure out who are we compensating, who's actually paying for it and who was here in 1865?" In one sense, Senators McConnell and Scott are right. Paying reparations is not the responsibility of White Americans or any individual living today. It is the responsibility of the government. It was the government, which enacted and condoned the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of people of African descent in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was also the United States Government at the federal, state and local levels – as enshrined in the 10th ammendment of the Constitution – that inherited, enforced and supported slavery – as well as benefitted from the rewards of it.
As representatives of the U.S. Government, the senators have chosen to deny, ignore and maintain the legislative, systemic and institutional inequities that were forged under and resulted from slavery. Though harmless taken on face value, the senators’ comments, by default, also reduce the humanity and memory of the nearly 4 million people – and their descendants - who were enslaved, tortured, raped, beaten and sold as commodities in the United States and were considered, by the United States constitution, threefifths of a human being. As Americans, we have entrusted leaders like McConnell and Scott with the authority to thoughtfully, delicately and honestly answer the hard questions they are rightfully raising in their reactions to the case for repara-
tions. But finding solutions to divisive and difficult questions shouldn’t begin with cynicism and defeat. It should be approached with an optimistic way of thinking that focuses on what best to do with the “scrambled egg” rather than reaching immediately for the most unreasonable and far-fetched solution: unscrambling the egg. By their refusal to act, or even approach the subject of reparations thoughtfully, McConnell and Scott must assume responsibility for the social, political and economic legacies stemming from slavery and the ongoing emotional, economic, and psychological burdens African Americans carry till this day. In their responses Scott calls slavery a “scourge” on American history and McConnell said it (continued on page 8)
Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents EJI’s multi-year investigation into lynching in twelve Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II. EJI researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynching’s of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 – at least 800 more lynching’s of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date. In 2017, EJI supplemented this research by documenting racial terror lynching’s in other states, and found these acts of violence were most common in eight states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Lynching in America makes the case that lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynching’s were violent and public events that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. This was not “frontier justice” carried out by a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists. Instead, many African Americans who were never accused of any crime were tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens) for bumping into a white person, or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person. People who
participated in lynching’s were celebrated and acted with impunity. The report explores the ways in which lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the contemporary geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans. Most importantly, lynching reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality that is readily apparent in our criminal justice system today. Mass incarceration, racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were shaped by the terror era. No prominent public memorial or monument commemorates the thousands of African Americans who were lynched in America. Lynching in America argues that is a powerful statement about our failure to value the black lives lost in this brutal campaign of racial violence. Research on mass violence, trauma, and transitional justice underscores the urgent need to engage in public conversations about racial history that begin a process of truth and reconciliation in this country. “We cannot heal the deep wounds inflicted during the era of racial terrorism until we tell the truth about it,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson. “The geographic, political, economic, and social consequences of decades of terror lynching’s can still be seen in many communities today and the damage created by lynching needs to be confronted and discussed. Only then can we meaningfully address the contemporary problems that are lynching’s legacy.
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