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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

When Blacks Turn Against Blacks

http://nigeriaworld.com/articles/2008/may/221.html

Excerpt:

Many people who have followed post-apartheid South African society will not be surprised at present and ongoing uprising of South African Blacks against Black migrants in Alexandra, Johannesburg. This was a crisis in the making. There are three fault lines that have developed since the end of apartheid and the introduction of Black majority rule in South Africa: The first is the internal crisis and conflict of identity among the Black South Africans themselves. Many young Black South Africans, especially those who were born in the late 60's and early 70's, never had an opportunity to develop their skills or attain any level of educational or professional competence. Most of them were sired in the revolutionary anti-apartheid movement of the 70's characterized by militancy and rebellion. With the end of apartheid, these young men were left in the broken lower rungs of social progress, stifled as persons in the choking economic dungeons of poverty and existential insouciance.

Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

What is to come?

South Africa got beyond Apartheid. But it apparently did not institute the sort of educational and social programs that Cuba did and that Venezuela is doing.

It is not enough for a country to be wealthy and to proclaim equality. The United States is wealthy and proclaims equality but we have homeless people everywhere, an enormous amount of violence, and more prisoners than any other country.

Cuba suffered because of the U.S. economic blockade, which all three presidential candidates have vowed to continue. Should Zimbabwe get a new leader, more friendly to the U.S., the wealthy elite there will become wealthier, but there is very little likelihood that anything much would be done for the desperately poor.

Industrialization alone does not grant literacy or abolish poverty. It often makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. But the causes of the problems are far away. The wealthy elites who own the corporations that exploit Africa and African resources, are not in the countries they are exploiting. And no matter who is in power, they will want to make deals with those corporate interests--deals that enrich them and devastate their country and its poor.

The poor Blacks of South Africa, of Zimbabwe, and of other African countries, were fooled by the same scam that most Americans fall for--that if you vote, you have a voice in government. When you vote, even if the election is honest and you elect someone who loves and cares about their people, they have to deal with the superpowers and the multinationals. And they have only their people and their resources to offer, so they cannot deal from a position of strength or even of equality. Even when they do not become totally corrupt, they will find themselves powerless to make real social improvements -- any attempt to do so will lead to punitive economic and military sanctions from the corporations and their superpower governments.

The U.S. was the richest country in the world, a developed country, an industrialized country, and we no longer have good-paying manufacturing jobs, our schools are deteriorating, social services are being cut, our life expectancy is decreasing rather than increasing, and the disparity between whites and people of color is also increasing instead of decreasing.

How can we blame blacks for blaming immigrants when Americans are being taught to do the same? Did a wealthy CEO outsource 20,000 jobs and close the only factory in your town last week? Blame undocumented workers for taking your jobs, even if your community doesn't have a single undocumented worker. Just because Africans, on the whole, have more melanin than Americans, is that supposed to make them smarter than we are? How can we blame them for succumbing to despotism and for falling for electoral illusions when we have done the same?

Yes, we can vote and black South Africans can vote. Even Zimbabweans can vote. But when our governments sign contracts with big multinational corporations, do we get to vote on the terms of the contract? Of course not. And if our leaders sell us out, we are told to blame each other or the most vulnerable among us, and never to turn on our leaders. Even if we did, they are just bureaucrats who do the bidding of the wealthy elites and the wealthy don't work in agricultural fields or poultry factories, and don't live in ghettos and slums. It is much easier to blame those worse off than we are than to blame those better off, those we admire and wish to emulate in their corruption and greed.

Heaven help us, people say. But if there was a heaven, would it deem us worthy of help?

Somebody bought me a subscription a few years ago to one of those positivist magazines. It focused on all the good things that people are doing all over the world. I never found out who got me the subscription, but I hated that magazine and I didn't renew the subscription. They sent it to me for another full year anyway. I always read it and then threw it in the garbage unless somebody else wanted it. Yes, there are people doing good things all over the world. But they are greatly outgunned and outnumbered by people who are doing bad things. To disregard the torture, the genocides, the hunger, the sickness, and the divisiveness, and focus only on the good things, is nothing but mental illness. You cannot disregard reality and still hope to be able to improve the world. As much as I admire those who treat the wounded, I would much rather that the violence stop and they be out of a job.

I know somebody who does treat the wounded and he would much rather be stopping those who are causing the violence. Unless somebody does, his job will never end.