We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Seeing bias but supporting the architect of bias: We have a long way yet to go
In this essay the author looks at racism as suggested by the title: it is the structure or organization of society that fosters racism. Racism is just another way to divide workers from each other because the One Percents know that together workers present a formidable foe. In North America racism has been used as a prominent feature of class war because of the early history of European invasions on indigenous lands on this continent followed by the tremendous need for workers to transform the natural wealth that existed into commodities, and then into monetary wealth appropriated by the new capitalist class.
Thus, African-Americans played a huge role in the economic development of North America, and likewise in US political developments by their crucial role in the Civil War: the Lincoln administration was forced to emancipate and recruit African-Americans to fight against the slave-holding southern aristocracy in order to prevent the country from being split in two.