End political genocide of Black Americans
Everyone is outraged at the Charleston killings, but there is not the same outrage over the discrimination faced by African-Americans
Not unlike the four little girls killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, the US and the world are saddened and outraged at the hatred and senseless killing of nine African-Americans in the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in the US. Over three decades ago Operation Push — the organisation I founded in 1971 to improve the economic status of African-Americans — held its national convention in this church. And, not unlike the economic and political context of Birmingham, the nation and its leadership are still failing to see, understand and come to grips with the underlying economic and political circumstances that led to such a tragedy.
The shooting in Charleston is the result of institutionalised racism, centuries of dehumanisation and the current denial of economic and political equality of opportunity. Today everyone is outraged at the killings, but there is not the same outrage that African-Americans have the highest rates of infant mortality, unemployment, of being denied access to capital and bank loans, of imprisonment, segregated housing and home foreclosures, segregated and underfunded public schools, poverty, heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, mental health issues, HIV/Aids and more.
Americans ignore this institutionalised state of terror and the resulting racial fears at African-Americans’ peril.
Governor Nikki Haley appropriately asked South Carolinians to pray for the victims of these killings and their families and decried violence at religious institutions. But she denies poor people access to health care by refusing to accept Medicaid monies under the Affordable Care Act — which is jeopardising the economic viability of the state’s hospitals and costing South Carolinians thousands of jobs — and she still flies the Confederate flag on the Capitol grounds. But these injustices and indifferences are not limited to South Carolina. They’re national in scope.
African-Americans need a White House Conference on racial justice and urban policy to make sure no one else is being hurt because of economic, political and leadership indifference or lack of vision about what needs to be done. Racism deserves a remedy. African-Americans need the president, the Congress, the 50 governors and state legislatures to all put the same effort, resources and energy into ending the crime of racism, economic injustice and political denial throughout the nation. African-Americans have had enough Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Walter Scott killings. African-Americans have had enough infant mortality deaths. African-Americans have had enough unemployment — always at least twice the rate of white unemployment. African-Americans have had enough of segregated and inadequately funded educational opportunities. African-Americans have had enough of a lack of access to capital and health care. African-Americans have had enough of homelessness and home foreclosures. African-Americans need prayer and they need hope, but they also need a political commitment and a financial budget committed to ending this protracted political genocide. AfricanAmericans need leadership with a vision for racial justice. They need an investment for economic justice — the current rising tide hasn’t lifted all boats. And they need fairness in political representation. That’s what African-Americans need if they are ever going to put an end to the protracted “political genocide” of which African-Americans have been the victims for nearly 400 years in the US. African-Americans deserve equal economic and political opportunity. They deserve equal justice under the law.
Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, and one of America’s leading civil rights activists.
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