by Radio Raheem

G21 Staff Writer

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, copy and paste the complete URL ("http://www.g21.net/radio25.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.

an oasis
for dreamers

g21 #353: NOTHING COMPARES G21 AFRICA G21 ASIA G21 Digital Internet Postcards JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. You'll be glad you did. Jokes, updates, the whole she-bang goes straight to your e-mail box. Be part of the In-Crowd! G21 E-MAIL NEWSLETTER G21 EUROPE G21 MIDEAST G21 NEWS GLOBAL*BEAT HOT LINKS LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA MY GLASS HOUSE NEW YORK STATE POWERSSOUND RADIOACTIVE RDR TABLOID HART THE SEX COLUMN VOX POPULI Search our Site: sitemap RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES

OAKLAND, CA, USA - My wife Tanya works for a "local" bank that has its headquarters in Japan. Even though Oaktown was once called the "Chocolate City" because we have the highest percentage of Black residents in northern Cali, most of her co-workers are white, almost all of the managers are Asian. The only time she and her co-workers "socialize" is when the company throws its holiday parties. Other than that, she knows little or nothing about these people really. Talking about this with her over dinner the other night, I got to thinking about the flavor of apartheid in America.

As most of you people who read this column over the years know, I supervise a container warehouse at the Port of Oakland. We's a mixed bag out here, as you'd expect. A lot of the guys in my posse are longshoreman. You probably read in your newspapers that, during the recent Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Oakland cops fired on a protest out here. They was only rubber bullets they used, so it wasn't no Kent State; they just meant to break a few bones, destroy this one woman's larynx, break another woman's jaw, leave some bruises that folks who didn't believe we should give our blood for oil wouldn't forget.

One upshot of that little police action was that a couple of my bros who were longshoremen, happened to get shot, too. These guys, like me, were just workin' stiffs. They was on their way to the job. The cops claim they were just protecting private property - and, as we all know, people are less important than property - so it was just too damned bad that the brothers were in the wrong place at the wrong time: on their way to work.

But that ain't what this article is about. I'm sure our Editor or someone else here can talk about the inevitable fact that "collateral damage" happens here when people don't agree with government policies that are draggin' this country down the drain. That ain't my thang. I talk about life on the streets. This time I want to talk about how we worship, party and socialize in this country; I want to talk about how the idea of a "melting pot" is a damned lie. I want to talk about the new American apartheid.

Tanya comes from a church-going family. Her people are African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) and so we make the rounds on holidays and such, even though I don't have a lot a patience with the church, any church. I bring this up because I want you, if you go to church, Homes, to think about the last time you was there. You see people of a difference racial background in any significant numbers? If you are like most Americans I know, I don't think you did.

Think about the last time you was invited to somebody's house, other than a family member's. Wasn't the person who invited you to the dinner party, the card game, the cocktail party, the potluck or barbecue the same race as you - and wasn't all of their friends? I thought so.

That's not to say that you won't find any other-race people at these social gatherings, but most of the time there are only one or two token friend(s)-of-a-friend who just got dragged along.

Why is this? Because, in spite of what we hype ourselves to the world about, all that "open and tolerant" okey-doke, America is still a highly racially conscious country and no damned "melting" to speak of is going on. We have to work together, by law, and some of our neighborhoods have a multi-ethnic mix, some, mind you - and, again, by law. But there's a reason white folks move into gated communities, or to Idaho and Montana and Grass Valley, California. Just ask them. And there's a reason you don't see many Black folks in White churches, or Asians in Black churches, et cetera. We don't "mix" when we don't have to in this country. We just don't. That's the flavor of apartheid in the year of our Lord 2003.

Nobody wants to call it apartheid, but, let's face it, that's what it is. Employers here in America try to tell temporary agencies not to send them people with "accents". This is code for not only not sending recent immigrants but also people who "sound" Black. You know it and I know it, the temp agencies and the employers know it. It's a way of sneaking under the anti-discrimination in employment laws. So we're all aware that people only hire certain people (and we know who we are) in certain jobs because the law makes them do it. That's the flavor of apartheid in the year of our Lord 2003.

The President of the United States (if you don't consider the voice of the voters in the last election) went on national TV this year to say that the academic enrollment policies at the University of Michigan weren't right because they used "quotas". Anybody in his or her right minds knew that that was a damned lie. Anybody in their right minds knew that Attorney General Ashcroft's Justice Department was fighting the University of Michigan in the Supreme Court to keep that institution of higher learning from trying to admit more Black students. You know and I know it. Mr. Bush used the term "quotas" because it's a racially-charged term which neo-conservatives use to imply that Black people are getting an advantage that they don't deserve. You know it and I know it. That's the flavor of apartheid in the year of our Lord 2003.

Now I realize that by this time in your reading of this column, particularly if you are a White "Liberal" who has one or two Black friends, or Jewish friends, or Asian friends, you are squirming in your seat and tryin' to think of something to write in to G21 about how "Raheem is divisive" or "Raheem is a racist". I've seen enough of that kind of mail on the "Vox Populi" page over the years to be used to that. That's why I got our Editor to call this here column "Radioactive". Don't come close unless you can handle the heat.

BUT - if you look at what I've said so far, you know and I know that I haven't said anything that isn't a fact of life on the street in this country. We may work together, we may live in the same damned neighborhoods or buildings, but we don't eat together when we don't have to, we don't party together, and sure as shinola don't go to the same churches with the exception maybe of places like Glide Memorial in San Francisco where the white folks want to get their Liberal credentials and rub shoulders with Whoopie Goldberg now and again.

Former President Clinton, who writer Toni Morrison (stupidly, I say) called the "first Black President of the United" (demeaning every Black person in America, I say) made it a point of showing up in Black churches. He used to rock those congregations like Elvis rocked Las Vegas. I'm surprised he didn't break out his saxophone after doin' his sermonette. BUT THINK ABOUT THIS: Mr. Clinton wooed and used the Black vote time and again. He was a master politician. And even he knew that if he was going to find Black folks, he couldn't just go to just any church - he had to go to a Black church. What I'm sayin' is, we use the term "Black church" because WE ALL KNOW you won't find many black folks in a White/Hispanic/Asian church. Now for my Irony Moment: nobody ever says White church or Latin church, do they? It's just a church, in your cases, but race doesn't matter in America anymore. That's the flavor of apartheid in the year of our Lord 2003.

There are some people who've gotten this far in the article, but who don't want to agree with me yet, for visceral reasons, who will write in and say, "Raheem, using the word 'apartheid' is extreme and provocative. It's like using the word 'Nazi' for someone who's merely conservative. There are no Bantustans in America." I get crap like that all the time from people who don't understand the use of rhetoric, but eat it up with a fork when Bush I or Bush II call some tinpot dictator like Saddam Hussein the new Hitler. I laugh first. Then I come back strong.

Since you don't understand rhetoric, I'll give it to you straight:

1. America has the largest gulag system in the world after mainland China and the majority of the people held by that system are Black.
2. Because of the use of DNA evidence in recent years, we now know irrefutably that many of the inmates on death row were wrongly convicted, nonetheless we have a sitting President who sent the first federal death row inmate to death and sent more people to death in Texas than any former governor of that state. Again, the majority of the people on death row in America "just happen to be" Black.
3. In a report from the United States government cited here in a recent column, I noted that America's schools are (again!) functionally segregated. We all knew this already. Brown - v. - Board of Education is thus invalidated in fact.
4. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission (think about that, Homes, "Liberal" San Francisco) reported on the 25th Anniversary of its institution, that its data showed that the City of San Francisco had been practicing institutional racism, stern to stem, in both its hiring and housing policies and that San Francisco-based corporations were complicitous in this practice. The conclusion of the report was that San Francisco, public and private, was using practices meant to encourage Black citizens not to remain in the city.

   Oddly enough, the Black population in San Francisco has been on the decline.

   If supposedly "tolerant" San Francisco is like that, documentedly so, what can we say about Peoria?

5. We all now know that former Vice-President Albert Gore won the last election in this country by 500,000 votes. I've seen columnists in other publications - and particularly Internet publications - report on that fact. What I have not seen (and I'm gonnah beat this horse until it dies) is much made of the fact that Black voters in Florida and Georgia were excluded from even voting in that election by state officials like Florida's Harris by fraudulently being removed from the voting rolls because they were claimed to be convicted felons. As it turns out, most were not. But the election went on without them. They were effectively denied the right to vote by dint of their skin color.

   It is now documented fact that in some Black precincts in Florida police officials refused Blacks to even go near the polls - even before checking their identities.

   The United Nations elections monitoring board have been denied the right to even look at the procedures of this country's elections, the first time that has happened in U.S. history, by order of Mr. Bush.

That's the flavor of apartheid in the year of our Lord 2003.

St. Paul said, when I was a child, I thought as a child, but now that I am a man I think upon manly things. St. Paul had been around, even before he was blinded on the road to Damascus. When they took him to court in Rome, he knew what was what. I'm getting of an age when I'm beginning to see what is what, too. What I see is that we are going- by law-suited and legislated acts of our government, by being Balkanized by our corporate and educational systems - down the road of renewed racial inequality. Folks don't want to talk about it, because of the economic and social implications, even though it is staring us right in the face. But apartheid is alive and well in America. In the year of our Lord 2003, one year before our next possible national election, we need to look at some of the reasons why racism and classism are thriving. The first place to look is the White House. The second place to look is the (so-called) Department of Justice. We can't wait for the whores in the Congress to ask the questions needed and the "embedded" press has already been bought off. It is now our responsibility as citizens to "do the right thing". And we can. You and I can speak up about the new flavor of apartheid in our country and we can do something about it.

Tanya and I are gonnah have a barbecue at our crib next Sunday: White folks, Asians, Latinos, are encouraged to drop by.

COMMENTS? QUESTIONS? Why not e-mail Raheem?