Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 17 April 1997 — Page 11

The Muncie Times, April 17,1997, Page 11

► CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL New South Africa stands for hope, peace

‘Btrnice TozueCC Jackson

Bernice Powell Jackson is executive director of the United Church of Christ Commission of Racial Justice.

I first went to South Africa in 1982,1 think. I remember getting off the plane and seeing a solider at the foot of the steps with an M-2 rifle on his shoulder. I remember visiting the homeland, where millions of black South Africans had been forcibly removed. I remember the Pass Courts, where millions of blacks were convicted and jailed for visiting their families without the government’s permission. I remember talking with school children and domestic workers and church folks who were trying to survive in an almost unsurvivable situation. I remember the constant knot in the pit of my stomach, which was there from the moment I landed until the moment I took off. I remember the old South Africa. But when I visited the new South Africa in February, I saw something different--and I felt something different as well. I saw that nation’s Parliament at work—a new interracial, representative government, whose speaker is an Indian woman and whose deputy is a black woman. I saw black immigration officers at the airport—and blacks sitting in restaurants and hotel lobbies.

The new South Africa feels different as well. Gone is the sense of the military state. Gone is the prison at Robben Island. In its place is a new tourist attraction. Gone is the feeling of evil in the air—a physical feeling that I often had there—that I was in the presence of evil, that I could touch it like static electricity. Gone is the demeanor of subservience, which most blacks had been forced to adopt. There’s a new straightening of the black and a new kind of step in the walk. It’s a new day in a new South Africa. But it is a new South Africa, which is still forced to deal with some of the old problems: old problems such as crimes of the apartheid regime, including false arrests, police brutality,

torture, even murder. And problems such as the millions of black South Africans still living in shacks, still without plumbing or electricity or the millions still unemployed. Then there is the new problem of crime. During the apartheid regime, street crimes were few, due to the presence of the military force on the streets and the fact that movements of people were tightly constrained by law. The new South Africa finds, however, that it is facing the crime problems of many large cities of the world where there is high unemployment, but in a context where the police are inadequately trained for dealing with street crime. Or there is the new problem of how to adequately educate and train

millions who have been educated in a system whose foundation was built upon the belief that blacks should only be educated to be servants or mine workers or mail room attendants. Or how to train the millions of unemployed in skills in which can lead to viable jobs in the electronic age in which we live. There is a new spirit in the new South Africa. There is a sense that reconciliation can be achieved by repentance and forgiveness. There is a sense that Sough Africa will be a country of justice and peace. There is a sense that all South Africans will have adequate housing and food and education and flourishing communities. There is a sense and a commitment that South African whites and blacks and Coloreds and Indians can all live together—and live well. But the clash of the old and the new means that those of us on the outside cannot abandon South Africa now. Those of us who worked so hard to see the new South Africa be born cannot abandon the baby now. We must find ways to help them provide housing. We must find ways to help them provide education. We even must find ways to help them fight street crime.

Urban League conference to focus on economic power

New York-Declaring that African Americans are “still on the frontier” in their quest for full inclusion into the American mainstream, Hugh B. price, president of the National Urban League said that the league’s 1997 conference in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 3 to 6 would focus on ways to “intensify (black America’s) efforts to gain economic strength.” Price said that African Americans’ “journey to a place of security and safety is just as challenging today as it was in the early and middle decades of this century” when blacks were fighting for fundamental civil rights. He attributed that in large measure to “that

remarkable phenomenon called globalization,” which is exerting great economic pressure on nations, businesses, ethnic groups, and individuals alike. “The world is on the march economically,” he said, referring to the energetic commitment to capitalist enterprises now evident in many parts of the world,” and those who do not march in step with it are more than likely going to be run over and left in the dust.” To “prepare ourselves and our children to navigate” this new, more economically, challenging environment, Mr. Price said African Americans

must embrace and pass along the “acute sense of economic awareness and entrepreneurial energy” that produced an extraordinary growth of blackowned businesses in America from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s. “Despite the barriers (to black achievement) which still exist,” he said. ‘We must make that zest for economic achievement soar. And we must do so across many sectors of the society.” Price’s comments signaled the league’s intention to focus more strongly on the economic empowerment of African Americans in the coming year and marry that to

its goal of improving educational opportunity for and the academic performance of African American youth. Price said the two issues are inextricably intertwined: African American youth must have the skills and the inspiration necessary to compete at a world-class level if African Americans as a group are to build up their economic strength and security. Founded in 1910, and with 115 affiliates in 34 cities across the country, the National Urban League is America’s premier civil rights and social service organization.