Wealth gap between Black, white has nearly doubled


This article was originally posted on LiberationNews.org 07/05/12

The wealth gap between white and Black people in the U.S. has nearly doubled over the duration of the current crisis in global capitalism, according to data released by the Census Bureau.

Black households had a median net worth of $4,995—a stark contrast with the $110,729 claimed by white households. The median net worth for Latino and Asian households fell as well—with Black, Latino and Asian households seeing their median net worth fall by 60 percent between 2005 and 2010. By comparison, white households lost 23 percent of their net worth.

In every crisis of capitalism, vast amounts of wealth are shifted between and within classes. When small or middling businesses collapse, more powerful capitalists are able to absorb their holdings and grow larger. Millions of working-class families have lost their homes and life savings in the latest crisis. Under capitalism, an increased concentration of wealth and power over time is the norm. People from oppressed communities are especially vulnerable to expropriation and economic hard times.

Households of color often lack significant safety nets to see them through tough times due to their status as super-exploited workers. Blacks and Latinos have historically suffered because of the racist nature of American society, having lower incomes, rates of literacy and life expectancy and inferior education, and higher rates of unemployment, imprisonment and health problems.

Racism is advantageous to the capitalist system. In addition to dividing the working class, super-exploitation—exploitation of labor over and above the “normal” exploitation that is the basis of capitalist profits—of oppressed nationalities produces astronomical profits for capitalists.

Historically, this has been been the experience of people of color in the U.S., from enslavement, as visited upon African and Indigenous peoples, or other forms of coerced labor as experienced by the Mexican and Chinese workers who built much of the American West, the myth of the hardy white frontiersman notwithstanding. Without revolutionary changes, any reform efforts are only band-aids on a larger wound, short-term gains always in danger of being rolled back when they become inconvenient for the ruling class.

Racism in Israel

Critics of Israel have long argued that the methods and policies used in its occupation of Palestinian land constitute a racist system of apartheid, as in South Africa or the American South.  Defenders of Israel of course deny this, usually responding that Arabs in Israel can vote and are members of the Israeli government, (of course, there were many nonwhites within the apartheid South African government as well, but never mind) among other things.  More fundamental criticisms of Israel's nature as a settler state invite accusations of anti-semitism.

Recently, however, members of the Israeli government have been much more open and forthright in their racism - this time against the Sudanese and Eritrean refugees and migrant workers.  Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu has described African migrants in Israel as "illegal infiltrators" that threaten "our existence as a Jewish and democratic state."  Knesset member Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party, described refugees as "a cancer in our body" while addressing a mass rally that would shortly devolve into a riot targeting an African neighborhood in Tel Aviv.

Interior minister Eli Yishai was even more open during an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv.  Speaking about the African migrants, Yishai said "Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man."  Most of the African migrants in Israel originate from Sudan and Eritrea.

Following this interview, some right-wing media organizations in Israel frantically attempted to spin Yishai's words, claiming that they had been mistranslated by Haaretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers.  They claimed that the full context of the quote had not been given.  

However, Yishai's other comments on African migrants are telling.  He has referred to South Tel Aviv, an area with a considerable African population, as "the garbage can of the country", and has repeatedly claimed that refugees and migrants are behind a massive crime wave, including rapes of Israeli women.  This is not borne out by data from the Association of Rape Crisis Center in Israel or the Israeli police.  Perhaps to explain this discrepancy, Yishai said that Israeli women who have been raped by migrant workers choose not to report the crimes "our of fear of being stigmatized as having contracted AIDS."  In response, William Tall, the representative in Israel of the UN High Commission for Refugees reminded Yishai that there was no AIDS epidemic in the African migrant population of Israel.

In the past, Yishai has lambasted the UN for failing to solve Africa's problems, and forcing Israel to shoulder the burden instead.  In making such a claim, Yishai either ignores or has forgotten Israel's long-running involvement in Africa, involvement that includes interests in African "blood diamonds" to interventions in Somalia.  

Most relevant to a discussion of racism in Israel are the many years of Israeli-South African cooperation during the apartheid period.  The two nations were so close that Israel offered to sell nuclear weaponry to South Africa - while many Israeli weapons were produced with uranium from South Africa.  The Israeli government has tried to obscure and deny these connections in recent years, but the documentary evidence remains.

Looking at Israel today, what can we see?  We see a state with a segregated system of roads.  We see a state whose Ministry of Education creates civics lessons discouraging any relations between Jewish girls and Arab boys.  We see a state where public remembrance of past crimes is criminalized.  We see a state engaging in globally-condemned de facto annexation of territory acquired by conquest.  We see a state where dissenters are threatened with death and told they deserve to be raped.  We see a racist society that is growing less doubtful about its defects by the year.

Of course, some people see the only democracy in the Middle East.

Free Cece McDonald!


This article was originally posted on LiberationNews.org 07/04/12

On June 5, 2011, Chrishaun “Cece” McDonald and several friends were walking past the Schooner Tavern in Minneapolis, heading to a grocery store, when a group of strangers standing outside the bar began insulting and threatening them. When McDonald asked the group to stop, one of the strangers smashed a glass into her face, injuring her severely. As McDonald tried to escape, her attackers pursued her. In the fight that followed, one of the attackers—an older man bearing a swastika tattoo—was fatally stabbed with a pair of scissors belonging to McDonald.

The facts of the case are not in question. McDonald and her friends were attacked, and they defended themselves. At least one of the attackers was a neo-Nazi. The only person to be arrested that night, however, was McDonald, who was charged with second-degree murder. (Her first attacker, Molly Flaherty, was not arrested until May 11 of the following year.) One year later, McDonald was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay $6,410. How is it that such a clear case of self-defense could result in murder charges against McDonald, much less end with a sentence like that?

The unspoken answer is that McDonald and the friends she was with when she was attacked are Black. Their attackers were white. McDonald and her friends were all either gay, transgender or LGBT-friendly, and McDonald herself is a transgender woman. The insults that her attackers were shouting were racist, homophobic and trans-phobic slurs.

In a capitalist state, self-defense on the part of oppressed people and the poor is criminalized. The police, courts and penal system are part of this systematic terrorism, aimed at preserving the racist, sexist, capitalist status quo.

McDonald's treatment by police after her arrest is another example of this terrorism. She was denied medical treatment for the injuries sustained when she was attacked—a punctured cheek and lacerated salivary gland—and placed in solitary confinement after being interrogated for hours.

In the weeks and months following the initial charges, thousands of people signed a petition to the Democratic district attorney of Hennepin County, Michael Freeman, urging him to drop the charges against McDonald as he has done in three other cases involving accidental deaths during self-defense. He refused to drop the charges. That Freeman was operating under a double standard of justice is obvious when one considers that those who had their charges dropped were white and not transgendered.

The double standard was also evident during McDonald's trial, as the criminal past of her attacker and witnesses testifying against her were deemed inadmissible by the court, but a bad check written by McDonald was allowed as evidence of her dishonesty.

Throughout the entire process, the court and media has mis-gendered McDonald, repeatedly referring to her as male and holding her in a men's jail for much of the past year. Since her sentencing, McDonald has been held in a men's prison, mostly in solitary confinement. According to the Trans Youth Support Network, of trans women in prison, "statistics say that 38% are harassed, 15% are physically assaulted, and 7% are sexually assaulted while incarcerated—and these numbers are likely actually much higher, because collecting statistics on trans people in prisons and jails is extremely difficult."

Even though Cece McDonald has been sentenced, organization and struggle against the racist judicial system is still necessary to help McDonald and others who have been and will be its victims. More information on the case can be found at supportcece.wordpress.com. All progressive and revolutionary people should join in saying, "Free Cece!"