A Christmas Message

 
    It is the Christmas season, everyone is sending and receiving cards wishing for peace and goodwill to all men and women. But for most people this is just something they say. They do not  really mean it. They do not know, nor do they care,  how our government contributes to spreading the murder and abuse of innocent civilians by means of its military assistance programs.

    During  all this Christmas Season, as much as during the remainder of the year, our government gives away taxpayer money to the militaries of different countries which are well-known to torture and kill  civilians with complete impunity. Our government,  required by law not to give the weapons systems to countries that practice torture, simply ignores the law and continues to finance military establishments that disregard human rights every day.

    Here are a few examples:

    Israel receives the largest amount of military subsidies, more or less $3 billion a year. Their military harass Palestinians with random checkpoints, uprooting olive groves, and, according to some, maltreating children in their prisons.

    In our hemisphere, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia all receive generous military aid. According to Amnesty International " torture, massacres, disappearances  and killings of non-combatants are widespread [in Colombia] and collusion between the armed forces and paramilitary groups continues to this day." The situation in Colombia is so bad that Amnesty International has urged the US government to suspend military aid to the country. Our government has not responded to that suggestion.

    About Mexico, Amnesty International has this to say: "Federal, state, and municipal police forces also continue to commit serious human rights violations in several states. Women experience high levels of gender-based violence with little access to justice. Irregular migrants are at high risk of abduction and murder  by criminal gangs and abuse and extortion by corrupt Mexican officials. Women migrants are often raped. Journalists and human rights defenders are killed, harassed or face fabricated criminal charges. . . . Defending human rights can be a life-threatening job in Mexico. Scores of activists have suffered death threats, intimidation, and harassment in the last few years. Some of them have been killed for doing their job."  
 
    In Honduras the Clinton State Department supported a military coup that deposed a duly elected presidential candidate and replaced him with a right-wing candidate sponsored by the CIA. The police are accused of killing legitimate demonstrators with live ammunition or rubber bullets. Violence against women on the part of police is widespread and well known; rape by police officials is common.    

    Similar reports come in from other Latin American countries where the military and police forces, generously financed by the Department of State and the Department of Defense of the United States, abuse and murder civilians with complete impunity.

    Observers all around the world report on death and harassment of civilians paid for by US taxpayers.

    Before you send out one more " Peace to the World and Goodwill to Men" card, go and inform yourself on the Amnesty International website about the many ways in which our government brings war and brutality to many countries by generously giving weapons to police and the military.

 Once you see the facts, join those of us who protest these policies.

Why does racism persist?

One of the genuine accomplishments of 2015 was bringing the persistent presence of anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman emotions and attitudes into the open where it is there for everyone to see. Another encouraging fact  is that many whites, and many men have taken to the streets to demonstrate their opposition to racism and sexism.

But do we understand what the problem is? Why are racism and sexism apparently ineradicable? We have seen significant changes. We have a black president. We have many eminent African-Americans in positions of authority. We have made changes that will allow the American Society to benefit from the work of many extremely talented  women and persons of color.

 But the bulk of all persons of color and women are still second-rate citizens in different respects--with respect to their earnings, with respect to the positions they are allowed to fill. Young black men are the predominant victims of police shootings. They are disproportionately unemployed, incarcerated, or under supervision of the criminal system.
Why does that not change?

The most common answer is that many Americans are prejudiced. They hold negative beliefs about persons of color or about women. These are beliefs which are demonstrably false but that does not affect the many people still adhering to those beliefs. In other words, to put this very bluntly, we believe that a large proportion of the American citizenry are not very intelligent and wildly irrational. Facts do not impress them. But  their beliefs are highly emotional, motivated by fear, by distrust of strangers, by uncritical echoing of the beliefs of their neighbors.

While that may be true in some cases and in some situations, it is not the complete explanation. It is important to see that the economic system--capitalism--which many of us are so proud of for producing clever electronic devices at prices that many people can afford, is at the same time consistently encouraging racist and sexist distinctions and divisions.

Our economic system is unable to create full employment except under abnormal conditions such as a World War. What is more, unemployment is in the interest of employers for when jobs are scarce, workers are willing to work for less because it is better to have a poorly paying job than no job at all. A significant number of the unemployed are people of color--people widely believed to be lazy, to be unskilled and unemployable. This racist mythology conceals the failure of capitalism to create jobs.

At the same time, racist distinctions allow employers to pay people of color less than whites. Women in many locations earn significantly less than men. Women of color, earn significantly less than white women. Men of color, if they work at all, get the worst jobs.
Racist and sexist distinctions are in the interest of the business owners.  This does not imply that the owners of enterprises approve of the murder of young black men or the many brutalities of racism and sexism. They do not approve of family violence, especially if it ends in murder. But they are sufficiently interested in racist and sexist distinctions that they are willing to support various police organizations. So far there seem to be no business organizations dedicated to combat racism and sexism.

Today many big city police departments appear to be at war with Black communities, aided and abetted by the criminal justice systems, the public prosecutors, and grand juries. But it is useful to remember that as long as workers have organized to better their condition at work, the police, as well as the state militias, the National Guard, have been deployed to suppress workers’ efforts to organize themselves. The history of American Labor records many bloody attacks on labor by police and the state militias.

The motto of police is often ” To Protect and to Serve.” Considering the history of Labor it is clear that it is the interest of the big employers, the capitalists, that determines who is to be protected and who is to be served. It has always been the employers, the rich, the economically powerful men in any given community.

What was true then, is true today.

The lesson is clear: Our society is corroded by racist and sexist prejudice. Anti-racist and anti-sexist training for police and criminal justice personel may well open the eyes of some and may, in doing that, be useful. But the scourges of racism and sexism will not disappear as long as the groups with greatest power in the society--the banks, Wall Street, business enterprises large or small--derive tangible profit from race and gender denigration.