It’s been 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. transformed the United States by bringing the promise of the Constitution and the civil liberties it secures to millions of Americans.
The progress since then is undeniable. Indeed, perhaps the best view of how far we’ve come is from a chair in the Oval Office. The challenges that remain in the African-American community, however, are equally undeniable.
Incarceration rates for African-Americans, largely due to socioeconomic disadvantages and structural inequities in the justice system, are as many as five times that of white Americans and the death penalty is handed down more than half the time to people of color. Economic disparities are just as striking. Poverty rates for African-Americans are double those of whites; average income levels are two-thirds those of whites; and college attendance rates are about half those of whites.
The intersection of race and politics also continues to produce disturbing results.
There has been almost no meaningful conversation about race in Election 2012. That’s why the ACLU Liberty Watch 2012 campaign just released an update to its candidate report card with a focus on two issues central to racial equality: racial profiling and voter suppression.
The report card, which can be viewed at here, shows that most of the major GOP candidates, including Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, earn zero out of four possible “torches” on both issues, with only Ron Paul earning two torches in the racial profiling category.
President Obama earns four torches for his efforts against voter suppression but two torches in the racial profiling category. Libertarian Gary Johnson earns four torches in the racial profiling category and Buddy Roemer earned four torches for his views against voter suppression.
Just as alarming as the report card results, we also continue to hear rhetoric that appeals to our very worst instincts and seems to be a continuation of the GOP’s notorious “southern strategy.”
Martin Luther King Jr. said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” For too many of the presidential candidates, the arc is broken.
Snerd
Despite the republicans stonewalling President Obama has accomplished a lot in 3 years.
This statement is inherently racist and, yet, it is coming from the mouth of Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Irony has never been so fully manifested in reality. Mr. Romero is saying, in essence, that African-Americans are merely victims of socioeconomic conditions they find themselves in and are incapable of making moral decisions as a result. It reduces the African-American community to the level of children who are not quite responsible for their actions. This is absolutely shocking and disgusting behavior on the part of Mr. Romero.
Crime doesn't happen without the cooperation of law enforcement which is not beyond engaging in criminality ostensibly to stop crime or enforce the law, as it were. Crime has always flourished where people are most exploitable. Every community has and has had its hero outlaws and bad guy outlaws. There are enough crime novels around alone to convince anyone of that.
"Due process and fundamental fairness" (of the 5th and 14th amendments) isn't that difficult to understand. My Constitutional Law Professor; so conservative that he disagreed with the early Supreme Court's decision in Marbury v Madison (that the power of the court allows for holding acts of Congress unconstitutional), provided a good, working definition of those terms. Basically, it was something within the human heart that we knew was right and fair. You know, Professor, I think civilized nation could live within the bounds of that definition of "due process and fundamental fairness."
Certainly reasonable people may differ. But as a child; watching TV when the Federalized National Guard escort my peers into a Little Rock, Arkansas public school, I asked my grandfather: "Why are they treating those little kids like that?" Intellectual and supposedly "principled" arguments about "States Rights" notwithstanding, our heart will tell us what the definition of justice is. We need not wait until our personal ox is gored, waiting wait for the arc of history to bend.
You sound like a gossip in a beauty shop.
In the last 2 months alone, there have been two rightist white folks [a House Speaker for Kansas and a failed TParty member] who have wished for the death of our President. There have been racist signs and slogans held aloft by people at TParty rallies. The Republican Congress continues to block anything Obama tries to accomplish with their help, and has openly admitted to doing so as to make him a 'one term President'. I doubt very much that it has to do with him being a Democrat; it has to do with him being black.
Obama being our first African-American President has exposed racism in America, and most, if not all of it, comes from the right (which comes as no surprise to me, as they are the ones who spread the most hatred, and then go to church).
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" ... A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war,”This way of settling differences is not just.” America, the richest and most powerful nation in the word, can
well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to schoolteachers, social workers, and other servants of the public to ensure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker. laundry worker, maid, or day laborer. There is nothing except short- sightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum - and liveable - income to every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remodeling a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into brotherhood." (From “Where do we go from here?”)
The GOP platform is the exact opposite of the concept of economic justice that Martin Luther died trying to promote.
The term has been tossed around so much that it is meaningless.