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The American Code of Silence on Black Issues
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10709 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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1 / 1986 |
2,112 Words |
| Author
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Claudio Campuzano
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What if I told you this about Africa?
"NO amount of explanation can exonerate the continent from its own catalogue of miscalculation, misdeed, and sheer waste. Rarely in history has political leadership wreaked havoc as in Africa; rarely has poor management of everything from basic agricultural production to organized distribution of essentials, from infrastructural development to utilization of human skills, been witnessed on the scale and dimension of Africa."
Are you still with me? Or have you given me up as a hopeless white racist?
Just testing. Word for word, what you have read was written a few months ago by Njeru Gatabaki, publisher and editor-in-chief of Finance a journal in Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Gatabaki is black.
Now, I wouldn't blame you if your internal thought police had been already rushing through the corridors of your mind bent upon wrestling to the ground this "racial slur." The way we have been conditioned lately in America the question is not if a judgment involving blacks is valid but if it should be voiced.
Mr. Gatabaki is alive and well (and quite well-known) in Africa. If he happened to be white and writing here in the United States his opinion would be considered "without redeeming social value" and would be seen as an obscenity, fit only to be circulated surreptitiously through the mails in a plain brown wrapper.
But that's the good news.
The bad news is that any black who chose to be as outspoken here, as Mr. Gatabaki is in Africa, might become an outcast or be threatened with death, depending on whose black turf was invaded, Randall Robinson's, for example, or Louis Farrakhan's.
Mr. Robinson, kingpin of the movement against apartheid in South Africa, and his followers, have seen to it that any black who questions their views is labeled an Uncle Tom. Death is the punishment that Mr. Farrakhan--the shaker and mover of his own "apartheid" movement in the United States--thought appropriate for a black reporter who had honestly disclosed Jesse Jackson's lapse into anti-semitic statements.
It would appear that for most of us--black or white, who are not public militants in one cause or the other--the consequences are not that ominous. But they are. Because of their fear of being branded racists by the putative representatives of black opinion, both public figures and the media are increasingly depriving Americans of an open and frank debate whenever issues involving blacks are under consideration.
With most political leaders (of all stripes) and most of the media regularly avoiding frank discussion of issues in which blacks play a role, Americans have had to fend for themselves--and they aren't bad at it. They had no problem in placing Jesse Jackson far to the left in the political spectrum. Nor did they miss the connection between the white Democrats' thirst for government programs, and the reluctance of many black leaders to explore solutions other than these.
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