counting of bank dr inv tment in th
o lott ry doll
and out 0 Lansin into th
Unle lawrnak are hit on th h d with th f of
di inv tment we know x tly what th ir re tion will
be th y tour our turf: "Tho e peopl t ar up th ir own
neighborhoods. "
For lawmakers to plan th rebuildin of th citi th y
must what led to th d mi e of th itie in t fi t
place. That will take some tudy and orne insight. The
lawmakers need more than a bus trip th Y n ed th f
Q hi
oratory, t amazing power of his
convi tions in the fac of dversity
and hi extraordinary fai th in the ca
p ity of th people of wage and win
f worth, dignity
civil rigb cat uJt artin
Luther . n into n tiona! and glob
promin nee.
To . d th Dr. Kin h d d ep
idin . th in the promi 0
rican ream. He w in the
tee BI American who
w it . duty to
p rfect American union i
to BI people aM t opp
thi n Cion.
The first ph e of his wor a
cia) reformer w devoted to eradi
cating the blatant indigniti 0 the
partheid sy tern in the outbern part
of the U.S. .
Emb cing the philo ophy am
t tics of his beloved Mohandas Ma
hatma Gbandi of India, Dr. IGng in
itiated a massive ault on the
b tions of egregation t ughout
t South using non-violent direct
tion.
The white only igns on buses,
lunch counters, hotels, water foun
tairs, toilets, beaches and cemeteries
f 11 b ore the onslaught of army of
non-violent warriors for social jus
tice. By the time of the historic
March on Washington in 1963, King
d emerged as the symbol of a civil
Q.
revolution that w c ing
o tion.
treets.
The Selma March in Alabama
w the critical tuming point in thi
truggle, ultimately prodding the
Congres of the U.S. t1> pess the Vot
ing Righ Act of 1�5; th most
comprehensive measure adopted to
protect the voting rights of African
Am rieans since Reconstruction,
The third phase ofth wor of Dr.
King is the phase few people talk
about It is characterized by an in
creasing awaren of and indict
ment of the institutional and
systemic character of racism, mill ta
ri m and poverty in the U.S.
No doubt this phase of his work
was deeply influenced by the urban
RO
DA IELS
VANTAGE
POI T
rebellions and call to. Blac Po er
that rocked th nation at th v ry
h ight of the civil righ revolution.
Th urban rev 0 I along with
SCLC' v nture into the northern
gh tto , p rsuaded Dr. Kin that
omething more than civil rights leg
i lation was required to cop with th
taggering problem of poverty, un
employment, inferior housing and
inadequate education affecting the
m es of the BI poor.
THEW
Viet am which
was drainin away t nation's re
sources, "like some domoniacal de
stru tive suction tub ," was the final
event that transformed Dr. King from
SeeMLK, B3
-Con ervative Black
delude them elve
Tho e Blacks who call themselves "conservatives" hould know that
their hoped-for "special treatment" and imagined cozin with rich,
white bigwig conservatives is not and never been rea! or sincere.
The ever-present barrier of hidden but active race prej udice i a b ic
part of American political conservati m.
Latest evidence of "conservative" Blacks' rejection concerns the
cruel go ip now in circulation among white fernal aid to be repub-
lican bigwigs centered in Cincinnati and preading.
The Victims are Claren Thorn ,the Black turncoat Supreme Court
Justice, and his white wife.
Reports attribut d to the e politically active women are that Thomas .
wife perf rmed in porno raphi movie and has be n of hi hly qu -
tionable moral tanding. Clarence Thorn i defirutely not one of my
favorite persons, but I lieve thi report 1 nothin more than vicious
. gossip.
The FBI made uppo edly thorough background checks on the
Thomas family, and if this allegation were true, certainly It would have
been rai � during th Thomas hearing in 1991. But Conservative
whites now perpetuate this lander.
I B LI HI . report was fabricated and circulated by women
that advocate the idea that a r peetable white woman would never
marry a BI ck man and that only a white woman who had been rejected.
by white men would" toop" to marry a Bl k man. That notion reflects
typical conservative philo ophy.
Another report concemin Thomas i that his mentor and political
sponsor, Mi ouri Sen. John Danforth, i 0 di appointed nd embar
rassed by Thomas' poor performance and unpopularity that he plans to
retire and 1 ave the Senate next year. ew papers report that he wants
to spend more time with hi family. '
The fact is that this liberal Republican, Danforth if on the Supreme
Court would have been mu h tter for Black people than Clarence
Thoma who evidently remains convin ed that he must lick Rea an'
boots and ki Bush' feet:
Another conservatives' affront com rom Reed Irvine chairman
of ACCUracy in Media Inc., a white group that blam the national
networks for last year's riots in Los An ele and for the civil rights trial
of the four officers accused of beatin R dney King.
This roup has run full-page adverti semen in the ew York Time ,
Washington Po t and more than 4 other large new papers ..
Ads g for money and attack the national new networks, aying.:
in part: "We're mad as HELL at TV new." They continue, "We're
angry at the way you endl Iy howed a video tap 0 Los Angeles
police offi rs beating Rodney King but edited out the [I t part of where
Rodney King atta ked the police ... and DID OT TELL what ctually
happen that 'caused the jury to find the of Ice OT GUILTY.
W D M TIll di honest attempt to portray whit police
officers beating a BI k man without cause. We lieve it hel din ite
the rio in Los Angel."
T urnony given in court in March, 1993, prov fal e these ailega
tions of Irvine and his right-wing, anti-Bl k conservatives.
Two other white nservativ who bear watching are R h Lim
baugh, the darling of mu white Suprem ci ts and Geor Will, the
columru t and Sunday morning tclevi ion mmentator who fi
somethm Implicitly or explicitly ne anve to ay ab ut Bl k P ople
whenev 'r the opporturuty urs.
Havin I t the 1992 pr idennal election alon with hundrc 0
tate and loc 1 p litical ont ts.fhc moneyed white conservative arc
poi oning the wate of pu he information y d liberately distortm
the public 1·.1 eo 11 Bla k p ople.
I do not .nderstand h re: on bly int Ihgent Bla k peopl can
align th m v with th C othc h value Bla k p pl nly for the
help BI Ie vm upp!y in rem orcin reatin and pcrpetuatin tho e
con ep , pro ams and onoltl ns that ar de igocd nd intended to
perp tua an In enor and u rdi n te. tat for Bra k Americans.
HARRIS
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Throughout the twentieth cen
tury there has been a long tradition
in Ameri an and western European
politics of eparating "politics" from
questions of "morality" or "morals."
Part of this separation temmed
from the nee ary and progressive
divi ion of church and tate, which i
expres ed in the American Constitu
tion. There was al 0 the neces i ty in
an ethnically pluralistic ociety to
create a framework for tolerance of
divergent religious and piritual be
liefs and valu .
Leaders of conservative move-
ments and parti have frequently
cri ticized what th y termed th
"moral-r Iativi mil f liberal .
Reactionary poll ticians uch
Patrick Buchanan and R naId Rea- '
gan argued that th former viet
Union was the "Evil mpire" and
that the truggle a nst mmu
III m w in reality a moral c nfli t
against "evil."
, conserva-
at the 1992 Republican a
ti n Convention d lared war
against Americans favoring freedom
of choice on the i ue of abortion,
gay rights and mul ncul tural educa
tion characterizin th e debates in
go d v . evil tenninologie .
We must reject and d nounce th
narrow-minded int leran f th
Am ri an Right and irsi t upon a
defini ti n of d m racy which i
broadly plurali tic, p n to t con
tributIOns fall pcopl With different
reltgions ra ial heritages, lan
guages and exual orientatio .
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But I believe that we must reex
amine the liberal tendency to tum all
political discussions away from :
moral and ethical contexts.
Traditionally, theologians and re
ligious leaders have used the concept
of "evil" to describe a force beyond
human origins which motivates indi
viduals and groups to commit de-
tructive and terrible actions.
BUT VIL I BITT R under
stood in politics as deliberate, calcu
lated actions which are designed to
destroy human potential, activity and
aspiration .
After li tening to one of my lec
tures on the social and economic de-
tructiven s of the Reagan-BUSh
admini trations-s-tbe doubling of the
numb r of horneles people in the
1980s, attacks on affirmative action,
the slashin of fund for public edu
cation, etc.-one student exclaimed:
"The real problem with these Reagan
conservatives i thatthey are not only
'poli tically incorrect', they're also
evil."
Does "evil" exist in politics? I see
evil in the angry, hate-filled faces of
homophobic gang who surround
and beat lesbians and gay men be
cause of their exual orientation.
That "evil" i absorbed into the
poli tical behavior and as urnptions
of "mainstream America," and i
manif ted in the widespread oppo-
ition to the end of discriminatory
r trictions on gays and I bians in
t� military.
In electoral politiCS, that arne evil
was a factor behind the passage of
Colorado's anti-gay amendment last
year.
THE WA EVIL in the ma-
lignant decisions of Reagan admini
stration bureaucrats, who once rede
fined catsup and relish as "vegeta
bles" for federally-funded chool
lunches. For poor children, uch a
decision. weakens the nutritional
value of their only decent meal dur
ing the day.
There i evil in the arguments of
those well-to-do Americans who in
sist that thi ociety cannot afford a
national health care ystem.
In effect, the thirty even million
Americans who lack heal thcare cov
erage, or the half-million who were
turned away from emergen y clinics
in 1 2 clcly because they had no
insurance or money are bein told
that quality h al th i n't a human
right.
Shouldn't we as ou elves, h w
many thousands of children will die
thi years, because their parents liv
ing in poverty or unemployment
I acked the fund to take their ill
daughters or ons to th ho pital?
I N
me ion of t cri i in h al th care,
w may never convinc a majority 0
Americans to break from a profit
driven ystem of health ervic .
There i evil in the "new raci m"
of the 1 . We no longer have the
crude egregation of the "white" and
"colored" igns at h tel, chool and
restaurants, or the oaring police
dogs attacking unanned nonviolent
v
DR.
MANNING
MARABLE
ALONG
THE
COLOR UNE
protestors.
But the new evil i the pcrv ive
system of inequality, the deteriorat
ing income of famili ,th traffick
ing of crack in our nei hb rh ds,
and th undcrrni rung f h pe and op
portuni ty for an entire generation of
youn Latino and African-Ameri
cans.
Martin Luth r King ob
erved,"the trand of prejudice to-
ward egro are tightly wound
around the' Am ric n charact r."
• To uproot "the br ader dirnen
ions of the "evil" will require th
examination of "th full ext nt of th
disease." Ther 1 "evil" .in raci m,
exism poverty, and h mophobia,
and we must understand that to fight
for human righ i to ight f r th
human pirit.
Dr. Manning Marable is Profes-
or of Political Scienc and History,
Univ r icy of Colorado, Bould r.
"ALong the Color Line" appear in
over 2 0 pap s and is broad
cast by more than 60 radio cations
throughout N orthAmerica, England,
the Caribbean and India.