Jubilation in the streets greeted the victory of Barack Obama in the presidential election last week, not only in the U.S. but throughout Africa and the world.
As Uhuru Movement leader Omali Yeshitela has summed up, African and oppressed peoples everywhere exuberantly see themselves in this victory. It is a validation of the power and brilliance of the African identity that has so long been linked to the notion of the “slave” and colonial subject by this white power system.
After all, capitalism and the United States itself were built on the hideous enslavement of African people, on genocide of the Indigenous people and the indescribable atrocities of colonialism.
For half a millennium “white” has been associated with “good,” while “black” was evil, philosophically justifying a relationship that gives some of the benefits of the stolen loot of the colonial system to the general white population.
That’s why we have two Americas and two worlds, despite Obama’s myth of a “post-racial America.” As much as we all want to believe that, a look at reality tells us it just ain’t true.
There’s the affluent white “first world,” versus the misery of the black, brown and “others,” whose lives, values and cultures were assigned little value by white power. Their stolen labor, land, oil, diamonds, minerals and scientific understandings, however, have always had tremendous worth for capitalism.
This is the basis for the financial and political crisis of imperialism being felt so sharply inside the U.S. and worldwide at this time: people everywhere are just saying “no” to the greedy hands of white power. They will keep their resources to feed their own children, thank you.
They are tired of subsisting on 50 cents a day while the white world has got a diamond on every ring finger and plenty of gas to fuel massive SUVs. From Venezuela, to Nigeria, to Iraq and Russia, people are prepared to fight the parasitic U.S. and imperialist military and economic stanglehold.
So white power has to prop up an Obama or Mandela or Mobutu or Shah of Iran to do its bidding for it. The white face has got a real bad reputation to deal with.
Barack Obama is a figurehead for a new image being carefully crafted by the powers-that-be to attempt to save an imperialist system deep in crisis. This is called neocolonialism.
As psychologically gratifying as his victory may be for African people and even for those of us from the white community who want change, Obama cannot bring us anything new.
There was similar jubilation throughout South Africa, the African continent and the world when Nelson Mandela was made president in 1994. Today the conditions for the average working class African in South Africa are far worse than they were under direct apartheid.
Like Mandela, Obama is a neocolonial puppet of the ruling and owning class of capitalism.
Obama has an uncanny ability to make everyone believe that the new president will carry out the people’s aspirations—whatever they may be. But what did Obama really promise us?
His staff, advisors and financial backers clue us in to his true program. Rahm Emanuel, recently named as Chief of Staff, is a virulent Zionist Democratic neo-con who profiteered from the subprime mortgage scam and fights for free trade.
Obama’s transition teams are made up of the same old usual suspects of banksters, crooks, corporate exploiters and counterinsurgency experts.
With Democratic party majorities in the house and senate Obama could do anything he wants.
But will he take real measures to stem the economic crisis that will benefit the African community and other working people?
Will he stop the epidemic of police murders of young African men or end the laws that justify the discriminatory imprisonment of millions of African people?
Will Obama help African victims of the subprime scam facing foreclosure or will the government aid only go to well-to-do white people?
Will he rescind the USA Patriot Act?
Will Obama really withdraw from Iraq?
Of course not. Just as you and I know there is no “post-racial America,” we know he will not do any of this.
As Omali Yeshitela noted, the only thing that is going to bring about change is the “audacity of struggle,” a mass movement to force Obama to carry out the progressive agenda that many mistakenly believe he represents.
Showing posts with label neocolonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neocolonialism. Show all posts
Monday, November 10, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
What about the black community? Obama’s “post-racial America” is very far from reality
Obama Facts
Two Americas - Conditions in the African community
Uhuru organizer speaks out on why the struggle with Obama
When Diop Olugbala, along with others from the Uhuru Movement, protested Barack Obama at a town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, FL on August 1, the movement’s bold challenge was heard around the world.
“What about the black community?” is rapidly becoming the new mantra, targeting not just Obama but all the candidates large and small who are vying to lead the United States of America.
While Obama counts much of the African community in this country among his most enthusiastic supporters he has had no problem avoiding the pressing issues and ever-worsening conditions facing African people in America today.
African men are being shot down by police and rounded up for life long sentences in the prison system in epidemic proportions. The high school where Obama was speaking in St. Petersburg was attended by 17 year old Javon Dawson who was murdered by the St. Petersburg police in early June. Officer and Iraq war veteran Terrence Nemeth shot the unarmed Dawson twice in the back during a graduation party.
Instead of standing with African people Obama has taken every opportunity to use his campaign to attack them. These attacks include his disowning of Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his pastor and Obama’s Father’s Day presentation slamming black men with children.
Behind his slogans for “hope and change” Obama represents the forefront of imperialism’s strategy for neocolonialism, defined by the Uhuru Movement as “white power in black face.” In the U.S. and around the world African and oppressed representatives are hand picked by imperialist powers to carry out their bidding.
Obama’s campaign is portrayed as “populist,” representing the interests of “Main Street” America. But as an August 6 New York Times article revealed, a third of Obama’s $340 million raised for his campaign so far has come from donations of $1,000 or over. Obama has more than 500 “bundlers,” professional fundraisers, most of whom are lobbyists for big corporations.
After 8 years representing the 13th District of Chicago, the most impoverished area of the city, living conditions there are reportedly far worse for black people than before. Obama’s district was home to the infamous Jon Burge, the Chicago police captain exposed for torturing African men, women and children for more than 20 years. Obama has yet to denounce Burge.
This country is built on the enslavement of African people, along with the genocide of the Indigenous people and theft of their land. The oppression of African people, as well as the theft of the labor, land and resources of oppressed peoples around the world make up the economic and political pedestal on which the white population of America and Europe sit.
The history of slavery, genocide and colonialism does not just go away or morph into a post racial America. This history is the basis for every contradiction festering in this country today, from the reality of two Americas – systemic poverty of African communities in the face of U.S. prosperity, to the fact that more young black men are sent to prison than go to college.
Some of us in the white population are beginning to feel pangs of the current U.S. economic crisis. But no one is talking about the long standing economic devastation of African communities where U.S. government imposed illegal drugs, foreclosed homes, gentrification, martial law and policies of police containment feed the multi billion dollar prison industry that has fed the failing U.S. economy for the past 35 years.
The Uhuru Movement understands that Africans are one people inside this country and around the world. The movement is working for the liberation of Africa and all its resources as the birthright of every African person anywhere in the world. This is only just.
The crisis of imperialism is deepening daily because of the resistance of African and oppressed peoples worldwide who are fighting to regain control of their resources, land and self-determination. They are determined to feed their children and build a future for themselves.
It has never been more obvious that the white world is in a crisis because it cannot function without oil, minerals and resources commandeered from others. Today the capitalist legacy of slavery, genocide and colonial extraction that fueled our world for hundreds of years is collapsing.
In the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, we are white people who believe that the future of the planet and the well-being of all peoples will be found in the movement to answer the question, “What about the black community?”
To really bring about hope and change we have to organize under the leadership of African workers struggling for liberation and justice. They are the ones transforming and changing the world from the ground up. Join us – be part of creating a future that all people can believe in. Uhuru!
Two Americas - Conditions in the African community
Uhuru organizer speaks out on why the struggle with Obama
When Diop Olugbala, along with others from the Uhuru Movement, protested Barack Obama at a town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, FL on August 1, the movement’s bold challenge was heard around the world.
“What about the black community?” is rapidly becoming the new mantra, targeting not just Obama but all the candidates large and small who are vying to lead the United States of America.
While Obama counts much of the African community in this country among his most enthusiastic supporters he has had no problem avoiding the pressing issues and ever-worsening conditions facing African people in America today.
African men are being shot down by police and rounded up for life long sentences in the prison system in epidemic proportions. The high school where Obama was speaking in St. Petersburg was attended by 17 year old Javon Dawson who was murdered by the St. Petersburg police in early June. Officer and Iraq war veteran Terrence Nemeth shot the unarmed Dawson twice in the back during a graduation party.
Instead of standing with African people Obama has taken every opportunity to use his campaign to attack them. These attacks include his disowning of Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his pastor and Obama’s Father’s Day presentation slamming black men with children.
Behind his slogans for “hope and change” Obama represents the forefront of imperialism’s strategy for neocolonialism, defined by the Uhuru Movement as “white power in black face.” In the U.S. and around the world African and oppressed representatives are hand picked by imperialist powers to carry out their bidding.
Obama’s campaign is portrayed as “populist,” representing the interests of “Main Street” America. But as an August 6 New York Times article revealed, a third of Obama’s $340 million raised for his campaign so far has come from donations of $1,000 or over. Obama has more than 500 “bundlers,” professional fundraisers, most of whom are lobbyists for big corporations.
After 8 years representing the 13th District of Chicago, the most impoverished area of the city, living conditions there are reportedly far worse for black people than before. Obama’s district was home to the infamous Jon Burge, the Chicago police captain exposed for torturing African men, women and children for more than 20 years. Obama has yet to denounce Burge.
This country is built on the enslavement of African people, along with the genocide of the Indigenous people and theft of their land. The oppression of African people, as well as the theft of the labor, land and resources of oppressed peoples around the world make up the economic and political pedestal on which the white population of America and Europe sit.
The history of slavery, genocide and colonialism does not just go away or morph into a post racial America. This history is the basis for every contradiction festering in this country today, from the reality of two Americas – systemic poverty of African communities in the face of U.S. prosperity, to the fact that more young black men are sent to prison than go to college.
Some of us in the white population are beginning to feel pangs of the current U.S. economic crisis. But no one is talking about the long standing economic devastation of African communities where U.S. government imposed illegal drugs, foreclosed homes, gentrification, martial law and policies of police containment feed the multi billion dollar prison industry that has fed the failing U.S. economy for the past 35 years.
The Uhuru Movement understands that Africans are one people inside this country and around the world. The movement is working for the liberation of Africa and all its resources as the birthright of every African person anywhere in the world. This is only just.
The crisis of imperialism is deepening daily because of the resistance of African and oppressed peoples worldwide who are fighting to regain control of their resources, land and self-determination. They are determined to feed their children and build a future for themselves.
It has never been more obvious that the white world is in a crisis because it cannot function without oil, minerals and resources commandeered from others. Today the capitalist legacy of slavery, genocide and colonial extraction that fueled our world for hundreds of years is collapsing.
In the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, we are white people who believe that the future of the planet and the well-being of all peoples will be found in the movement to answer the question, “What about the black community?”
To really bring about hope and change we have to organize under the leadership of African workers struggling for liberation and justice. They are the ones transforming and changing the world from the ground up. Join us – be part of creating a future that all people can believe in. Uhuru!
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Subprime on Backs of Africans
Africans bear brunt of subprime crisis in U.S. economy built on slavery and genocide
The subprime mortgage mess is making headlines, but what the media barely mentions is that the African community is bearing the brunt of it.
Once again, bankers, brokers, lenders and even regular white working America have profited mightily and are bailed out by the government when their strategy fails. The African community is used, bled dry, and then criminalized and blamed for the problem.
You have to dig to find out that, for instance, more African borrowers making upwards of $100,000 a year were given subprime mortgages than were whites making under $40,000. African communities were targeted for subprime and adjustable rate mortgages as a very lucrative new market for loan sharks.
Cities with large African populations tell the story: Atlanta (map), Cleveland (map), Detroit, Brooklyn (map), to name a few.
Early in this decade the government and the Fed began lowering interest rates. Housing prices skyrocketed and millions of Americans began tapping into their home equity, fueling a “wealth effect,” and massive spending.
The lower rates sparked the speculative housing market and gentrification, as lower income white people could suddenly become homeowners by buying in an African community. Or they could become entrepreneurs by buying up “ugly houses” to flip.
TV channels were spawned by gentrification and a whole economy centered on Lowe’s, Home Depot, Restoration Hardware, Starbucks, art galleries and cute restaurants. Houses of Africans, including the elderly, were taken from under them as white people demanded that code violations be enforced for their benefit.
As housing prices in African neighborhoods skyrocketed, the culture of the community was criminalized and police presence intensified to protect the white “pioneers” from the surrounding impoverished population. African people were dispersed further and further into decaying suburbs, crunched in with other family members or sent to government-sponsored prison housing.
None of this is new, however. It’s the same story that has played out for more than half a millennium.
Since African human beings were first abducted at gunpoint from Africa, turned into a commodity and transported to America as well-insured cargo, stacked on pallets in the holds of ships, the Western world has gotten its economic stimulus from the oppression of others.
More than anything, America sits on the backs of Africans.
Today we talk about oil prices and fluctuations in the stock market, but there were whole centuries when the price of an African was the most important topic at businessmen’s lunches in New York and London. The Wall Street stock exchange sits on the site of New York auction blocks and slave ship docks.
The African cemetery found under a high rise building on Wall Street is the perfect metaphor for this country: America’s wealth resting literally on the bodies of African people.
As Omali Yeshitela proves in his books Omali Yeshitela Speaks and One Africa! One Nation!, Europe was a cold, barren, impoverished and war-like place in the Middle Ages. It was characterized by oppression, plague and feudal serfdom when it set out to rescue itself by ravaging Africa.
Henry the Navigator of Portugal sent ships out to the coast of West Africa around 1420, and by the year 1500 Europe had already extracted 81,000 African people and 700 tons of gold from Africa.
Around the same time Columbus began the process of massive genocide of the Indigenous people of the Americas and the theft of their land and resources.
We are taught ridiculous myths that somehow Europe worked hard, saved its money and thus became the dominant economic and military power in the world. But an honest look at history shows that the development of wealth and power in Europe parallels its assault on Africa and other peoples every step of the way.
In the 1500s the Spanish government monopolized the trade in African human beings, even as the governments of Holland, England and France were waiting in the wings. They would all go to war for a piece of this most valuable commodity, just as oil wars are being fought today.
Independent businessmen also wanted some of this loot, financing their own ships as pirates or “privateers” under the banner of “free trade.” Entrepreneurs like Jean Lafitte raided the state-owned slave ships laden with human cargo and made a fortune selling Africans off the coast of New Orleans at discount rates.
As Yeshitela, again points out, the trade in African people did far more than make southern plantation owners wealthy. The plantations are long gone but the wealth of African enslavement has been compounded in the overall economy of America a million times over.
What part of Europe’s and America’s economy did not get started on the human trade? Banking, insurance, ship building, industry, universities, tourism, railroads, housing, hotels, law firms, the garment industry, retail sales, Wall Street itself were all spawned by African enslavement.
We’re taught that Africans became “free” after the official enslavement ended in 1865 in the U.S. In reality other forms of African exploitation were found to be more lucrative for the Western economy.
In Africa Europe imposed direct colonialism. There was no word for “genocide” when Europe and America were slaughtering millions of African people on the continent as they ripped out diamonds, rubber, ivory, gold, and other precious resources that further consolidated Western wealth and power.
Rarely discussed, but extremely important to America’s wealth, is the system of convict leasing. For more than 70 years thousands of African people were rounded up under Jim Crow laws, kept in work camps and leased out by state governments to plantations, limestone and phosphorus mines, road gangs and logging teams.
The brutal system of convict leasing rebuilt the economy of the southern states following the Civil War. In the late 19th century more than 80 percent of the revenue of Alabama came from convict leasing. I have read that Hitler modeled work camps on the convict leasing system, which was known to be worse than slavery. The white people’s motto was, “One dies, get another.”
European immigrants coming to America were pretty clear that American “opportunities” came to them because of African enslavement and the genocide against the Indigenous people.
Throughout most of the 19th century street gangs made up of white workers in northern cities functioned as a terrorist force against African people who had escaped to the north.
Lynching was the popular pastime of white America for a hundred years. These chilling festivals of violence had the avid participation of the whole white family. Children were dressed up and posed for photographs in front of the lifeless bodies of African people. This public torture and murder of African people was accompanied by music, dancing and food vendors.
White people terrorized Africans who were prospering in independent economic communities. Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida are only the most famous examples of this. All over the country Africans banded together, buying land and setting up collective economic ventures that were quite successful, but these were destroyed one after another. White people would never allow Africans to become more prosperous than they.
Similarly, the media tell us the reason Africa is poor today is because its leaders are “corrupt.” But every time an African leader rises up, demanding that the resources of his country benefit the people, the leader has been assassinated or overthrown by America or Europe—from Patrice Lumumba to Kwame Nkrumah to Thomas Sankara.
It’s not corruption; it’s the U.S. policy of neocolonialism, which ensures that Africa’s resources stay in the pocket of Western powers. I have read that more than 80 percent of all the mineral resources the U.S. needs to function are in Africa. This is the basis for the U.S. militarization of Africa under AFRICOM.
In this country, after the leaders of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s were assassinated or imprisoned by the government, the U.S. began flooding African communities with drugs: heroin and later crack cocaine. This is well-documented from many sources.
We cannot underestimate the importance of this illegal drug trade to the U.S. economy. Said by the United Nations to be worth more than $500 billion a year, illegal drugs constitute the third largest commodity in the world, behind oil and arms.
Clearly those billions of narco-dollars are not floating around in African communities, but rather buy the cars, mansions and private jets of the Wall Street elite. They also benefit white society as a whole. Since the late 70s drug money has funded real estate, car dealerships, jewelry stores, restaurants and more.
Meanwhile, the African community is left with a government-imposed, penny-ante illegal drug economy that primarily serves to criminalize the entire African population. The imposed drug economy feeds the prison industry, another booming component of the U.S. economy.
More than half of the 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. today are African, the cornerstone of a $50 billion industry. Called the new gold rush, the prison industry has spawned countless spin-off businesses, including phone companies, clothing, construction, vending machines, instruments of suppression and more.
Most prisons are filled with urban Africans but located in rural white America, where prisons are the third largest industry, behind gambling and pig farming. Many states have a conscious strategy to use prisons as economic stimulus for rural counties, providing white high school graduates high paying jobs as guards.
Some people are predicting that the subprime collapse along with the low dollar and high oil prices could bring about the demise of the U.S. economy.
If so, it’s just the logical conclusion of an obese, parasitic economic system that has been sitting on a shaky foundation of enslavement and genocide for more than 500 years.
Penny Hess is author of Overturning the Culture of Violence and the chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee which is led by the African People’s Socialist Party. Her analysis is based on the understandings of Omali Yeshitela. She can be reached at info@apscuhuru.org.
The subprime mortgage mess is making headlines, but what the media barely mentions is that the African community is bearing the brunt of it.
Once again, bankers, brokers, lenders and even regular white working America have profited mightily and are bailed out by the government when their strategy fails. The African community is used, bled dry, and then criminalized and blamed for the problem.
You have to dig to find out that, for instance, more African borrowers making upwards of $100,000 a year were given subprime mortgages than were whites making under $40,000. African communities were targeted for subprime and adjustable rate mortgages as a very lucrative new market for loan sharks.
Cities with large African populations tell the story: Atlanta (map), Cleveland (map), Detroit, Brooklyn (map), to name a few.
Early in this decade the government and the Fed began lowering interest rates. Housing prices skyrocketed and millions of Americans began tapping into their home equity, fueling a “wealth effect,” and massive spending.
The lower rates sparked the speculative housing market and gentrification, as lower income white people could suddenly become homeowners by buying in an African community. Or they could become entrepreneurs by buying up “ugly houses” to flip.
TV channels were spawned by gentrification and a whole economy centered on Lowe’s, Home Depot, Restoration Hardware, Starbucks, art galleries and cute restaurants. Houses of Africans, including the elderly, were taken from under them as white people demanded that code violations be enforced for their benefit.
As housing prices in African neighborhoods skyrocketed, the culture of the community was criminalized and police presence intensified to protect the white “pioneers” from the surrounding impoverished population. African people were dispersed further and further into decaying suburbs, crunched in with other family members or sent to government-sponsored prison housing.
None of this is new, however. It’s the same story that has played out for more than half a millennium.
Since African human beings were first abducted at gunpoint from Africa, turned into a commodity and transported to America as well-insured cargo, stacked on pallets in the holds of ships, the Western world has gotten its economic stimulus from the oppression of others.
More than anything, America sits on the backs of Africans.
Today we talk about oil prices and fluctuations in the stock market, but there were whole centuries when the price of an African was the most important topic at businessmen’s lunches in New York and London. The Wall Street stock exchange sits on the site of New York auction blocks and slave ship docks.
The African cemetery found under a high rise building on Wall Street is the perfect metaphor for this country: America’s wealth resting literally on the bodies of African people.
As Omali Yeshitela proves in his books Omali Yeshitela Speaks and One Africa! One Nation!, Europe was a cold, barren, impoverished and war-like place in the Middle Ages. It was characterized by oppression, plague and feudal serfdom when it set out to rescue itself by ravaging Africa.
Henry the Navigator of Portugal sent ships out to the coast of West Africa around 1420, and by the year 1500 Europe had already extracted 81,000 African people and 700 tons of gold from Africa.
Around the same time Columbus began the process of massive genocide of the Indigenous people of the Americas and the theft of their land and resources.
We are taught ridiculous myths that somehow Europe worked hard, saved its money and thus became the dominant economic and military power in the world. But an honest look at history shows that the development of wealth and power in Europe parallels its assault on Africa and other peoples every step of the way.
In the 1500s the Spanish government monopolized the trade in African human beings, even as the governments of Holland, England and France were waiting in the wings. They would all go to war for a piece of this most valuable commodity, just as oil wars are being fought today.
Independent businessmen also wanted some of this loot, financing their own ships as pirates or “privateers” under the banner of “free trade.” Entrepreneurs like Jean Lafitte raided the state-owned slave ships laden with human cargo and made a fortune selling Africans off the coast of New Orleans at discount rates.
As Yeshitela, again points out, the trade in African people did far more than make southern plantation owners wealthy. The plantations are long gone but the wealth of African enslavement has been compounded in the overall economy of America a million times over.
What part of Europe’s and America’s economy did not get started on the human trade? Banking, insurance, ship building, industry, universities, tourism, railroads, housing, hotels, law firms, the garment industry, retail sales, Wall Street itself were all spawned by African enslavement.
We’re taught that Africans became “free” after the official enslavement ended in 1865 in the U.S. In reality other forms of African exploitation were found to be more lucrative for the Western economy.
In Africa Europe imposed direct colonialism. There was no word for “genocide” when Europe and America were slaughtering millions of African people on the continent as they ripped out diamonds, rubber, ivory, gold, and other precious resources that further consolidated Western wealth and power.
Rarely discussed, but extremely important to America’s wealth, is the system of convict leasing. For more than 70 years thousands of African people were rounded up under Jim Crow laws, kept in work camps and leased out by state governments to plantations, limestone and phosphorus mines, road gangs and logging teams.
The brutal system of convict leasing rebuilt the economy of the southern states following the Civil War. In the late 19th century more than 80 percent of the revenue of Alabama came from convict leasing. I have read that Hitler modeled work camps on the convict leasing system, which was known to be worse than slavery. The white people’s motto was, “One dies, get another.”
European immigrants coming to America were pretty clear that American “opportunities” came to them because of African enslavement and the genocide against the Indigenous people.
Throughout most of the 19th century street gangs made up of white workers in northern cities functioned as a terrorist force against African people who had escaped to the north.
Lynching was the popular pastime of white America for a hundred years. These chilling festivals of violence had the avid participation of the whole white family. Children were dressed up and posed for photographs in front of the lifeless bodies of African people. This public torture and murder of African people was accompanied by music, dancing and food vendors.
White people terrorized Africans who were prospering in independent economic communities. Tulsa, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida are only the most famous examples of this. All over the country Africans banded together, buying land and setting up collective economic ventures that were quite successful, but these were destroyed one after another. White people would never allow Africans to become more prosperous than they.
Similarly, the media tell us the reason Africa is poor today is because its leaders are “corrupt.” But every time an African leader rises up, demanding that the resources of his country benefit the people, the leader has been assassinated or overthrown by America or Europe—from Patrice Lumumba to Kwame Nkrumah to Thomas Sankara.
It’s not corruption; it’s the U.S. policy of neocolonialism, which ensures that Africa’s resources stay in the pocket of Western powers. I have read that more than 80 percent of all the mineral resources the U.S. needs to function are in Africa. This is the basis for the U.S. militarization of Africa under AFRICOM.
In this country, after the leaders of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s were assassinated or imprisoned by the government, the U.S. began flooding African communities with drugs: heroin and later crack cocaine. This is well-documented from many sources.
We cannot underestimate the importance of this illegal drug trade to the U.S. economy. Said by the United Nations to be worth more than $500 billion a year, illegal drugs constitute the third largest commodity in the world, behind oil and arms.
Clearly those billions of narco-dollars are not floating around in African communities, but rather buy the cars, mansions and private jets of the Wall Street elite. They also benefit white society as a whole. Since the late 70s drug money has funded real estate, car dealerships, jewelry stores, restaurants and more.
Meanwhile, the African community is left with a government-imposed, penny-ante illegal drug economy that primarily serves to criminalize the entire African population. The imposed drug economy feeds the prison industry, another booming component of the U.S. economy.
More than half of the 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. today are African, the cornerstone of a $50 billion industry. Called the new gold rush, the prison industry has spawned countless spin-off businesses, including phone companies, clothing, construction, vending machines, instruments of suppression and more.
Most prisons are filled with urban Africans but located in rural white America, where prisons are the third largest industry, behind gambling and pig farming. Many states have a conscious strategy to use prisons as economic stimulus for rural counties, providing white high school graduates high paying jobs as guards.
Some people are predicting that the subprime collapse along with the low dollar and high oil prices could bring about the demise of the U.S. economy.
If so, it’s just the logical conclusion of an obese, parasitic economic system that has been sitting on a shaky foundation of enslavement and genocide for more than 500 years.
Penny Hess is author of Overturning the Culture of Violence and the chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee which is led by the African People’s Socialist Party. Her analysis is based on the understandings of Omali Yeshitela. She can be reached at info@apscuhuru.org.
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