Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 September 1995 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2,1995 Legacy of racial hatred still alive and well

We’ve become a nation of Pontius Pilates In the last few days, we have seen a series of events which have led many of us to question where we are going in this society. We’ve seen the conclusion of the Kofi Ajabu murder trial. Ajabu’s sentencing will end this phase of one of the most tragic events in recent years. In one night, the lives of six young people were destroyed. Three young people were murdered and three young people will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison. Behind all of the media attention are five families whose existence has been altered forever. There are fathers and mothers who never imagined such a fate for their children. None of them could have ever conceived of such days as they took care of these children and watched them grow and loved them as surely as decent parents love their children. It is a case in which the victims did nothing to deserve such a tragic fate; a case in which the perpetrators of the crime seemed more like misguided young men than robbers and killers. In another crime with staggering emotional impact, a couple of children have been charged with the murder of a little boy. Again, several families have been devastated by the events and the two children charged with the crime face the prospect of life in prison, at the minimum. In these cases, it is easy to affix blame on parents or on the individuals themselves and let it go at that. In fact, that is what is most comfortable for most people and it is, in fact, the easy way out. People are certainly responsible for their own individual actions, but we cannot ignore the fact that we all share some of the blame. Unless, of course, Pontius Pilate was right. How do we share in such tragedy, you ask? We decide that education, and all it means, is somewhere at the bottom of our list as it relates to tax money. We decide it is more important t<J build prisons at $60,000 a cell while we refuse to allow teachers a decent raise. Teachers, on the other hand, too often, do not go that extra mile with a child who is troubled and the ones who try to do this are seen as foolish by too many of their peers. Too many teachers spend too much time complaining about parents, instead of doing an excellent job at all costs. But it is a job that has to be done well, if we are to have a decent future. We refuse to spend money on youth programs which help young people to leam how to make good decisions. Parents naively act as if their children will be OK after having been raised on television shows, video games and movies that glorify violence, guns and killing. We allow politicians to cut spending in areas which provide help for young people while we glory in retaining pork-barrel jobs that need to be cut. Too many of our churches have mostly turned inward and have all but turned their backs on programs and projects aimed at saving children in trouble. We can avoid the kinds of problems we have been seeing, if we choose to work at it. If we stay on the course we’re now on, we’re going to see so many stories like the ones aforementioned. We, as a nation, will become a foreign country — that is, a country that is foreign to much that has been touted as good in America. We won’t be able to wash our hands and walk away because there won’t be anywhere to go.

INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER DIRECTORY

Oaors* P. Mawart Faundar-Edftor-

Marcua C. Stawart Sr. Edllor-PuMishar 1925-1983

Eunlca Trottar Editor-<n-Chla< Publlahar 1969-1990

William G. Maya Pubtlahar 1990-praaant

Praa./Ganaral Manager Char lea Blair Eaacuttve Aaaiatant KeW R Lester Art Director John L. Hurst Jr AeaMw* Art Director Jeffery Sailers CraaHva Director Martin Raaheem X ArVProducSon Terr an James Managing Editor Connie Gaines Hayes Copy Editor Stephan Thomas Am 6 EntartainmstWJAWS ShondaMcClam Annette L. Anderson Stephen B. Johnson CtauMion Manager Doug Robinson

General Sales Manager Mike Harden Classified Advertising Sharon L. Maxey Religious Advertising Sonovia Robinson Local Display Advertising Louis Brown Karen Russell Terri Suggs Controller EricMullin Business Office Sundra Tate Crystal Dalton Jo Ann Hunter Vivian Waddell Recorder Charities Jim Nelson

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a story about the town of Noblesville, Ind. It seems a trunk was recently found in a Noblesville bar. Inside the trunk was a listing of many of the town’s most prominent citizens of the 1920s, all of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Also packed in the trunk were hoods, sashes and crosses, the Klan’s well-known paraphernalia. The discovery of the Klan list in Noblesville has had different effects on its citizens. Many don’t want to talk about this part of their history at all. Indeed, the local historical society, which now holds the Klan list, has voted to restrict access to it and has required researchers to gain the consent of all descendants. Some try to explain away the awful Klan activity, insisting it was more of a social group than anything else. Try telling that to James Cameron. In 1930, two Blacks were lynched in Marion, Ind., after being dragged from their jail cells by a mob. The mob had planned to lynch Cameron that day, but decided at the last moment to let him go. Cameron clearly remembers the Klan’s involvement in his almost-lynching. He started, and now runs, the Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, which tells the stories of the lynching of African Americans across the country. Try telling that to the family of Vernon Dahmer Sr. in Hattiesburg, Miss. Dahmer, an NAACP leader and store owner, was killed in 1966, the day after he announced that Blacks could pay their poll taxes at his store so that they could vote. Dahmer’s accused killer was Imperial . Wizard Sam Bowers, who was also linked to the killings of Michael Schwemer, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. Bowers was acquitted by an all-white male jury and the Dahmer family is still trying to have the case retried. Klanswatch, the project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the activities of white supremacist groups, found that even in the 1980s, the Ku Klux Klan was active in Texas where it operated paramilitary camps and attacked Vietnamese fishermen in Galveston. Klanswatch now warns that while the number of KKK groups today seems relatively constant — and there is disarray in the Klan groups, with the largest one fracturing in 1994 — white supremacy groups are still active across the nation. Modern KKK clones might not wear white robes and bum crosses and they don’t just live in the South. For example, Pennsylvania state officials say that state now has the largest growth of white supremacist activity in the nation. And white supremacists are alive and well in skinhead groups and, increasingly, in the militia movement. Of the nation’s ISO militia groups now operating in 22 states, at least 36 have ties to the white supremacist movement, according

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accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh have been references to his white supremacist beliefs. Skinheads, most of whom are young, are

also a growing racist movement. A recent National Public Radio story focused on skinhead a youth in Allentown, Pa. who boasted of beating up gay people and attacking police. In that story, Pennsylvania Human Rights Commissioner Ann Van Dyke says that middle Ar.v-ricans want to believe that organized hate groups are disconnected from the mainstream.

But Van Dyke warns that skinheads exist because middle America creates an environment in which bigotry can take hold and that they feed off the resentment of everyday people. Skinheads, she says, say publicly what others say

privately.

Just as the people of Noblesville, Ind. have been forced to examine their own beliefs, as they confront the racism of their ancestors, so must all of America, if white supremacy is ever to be

eliminated.

White supremacy is not just a belief of the past. America cannot afford for it to be a belief of the future.

American hero lost in an economic chasm

PHONE (317) 924-5143

The genius of the American economic and political system has been our collective determination to make it work for average Americans, not only for the elites. That’s what has set us apart from other industrialized nations. Americans were on the “up” economic escalator. The working man was the American hero. Not an American hero, mind you, but the hero. We designed our tax systems and labor politics to make sure they worked for Americans. When Jim Crow was defeated, we African Americans figured it was our chance, at long last, to jump on that escalator. But things soon turned sour for those of us who were destined to work in factories. For these blue-collar workers of all complexions, the citybased manufacturing economy started moving to the suburbs and eventually overseas. Amazingly enough, politicians haven’t seemed terribly concerned about what has happened to working people. According to Peter Drucker, the noted management guru, no class of people in history has ever risen faster than the American blue-collar worker. Nor has any class ever fallen faster. The result is that, much to our

disgrace, America has the widest income and wealth gap between haves and have-nots in the entire Western world. What’s even worse, according to economist Peter Gottschalk of Boston College^ your chances of escaping the bottom have gotten no better, while conditions at the bottom have gotten much worse. Now, I’m not into conspiracy theory. But the June issue of Harpers contains an article by Michael Lind that provides unsettling food for thought. It’s entitled “To Have and Have Not.” Lind argues that those who make society’s economic rules — he calls the overclass — have steadily stacked the deck against everyone else, including even the middle class. According to Lind, “Not only do the comfortable members of the overclass single out the weakest and least influential of their citizens as

the cause of all their sorrows, but they routinely and preposterously, treat the genuine pathologies of the ghettp — high levels of violence and illegitimacy — as the major problems facing a country with uncontrollable trade and fiscal deficits, a low savings rate, an obsolete military strategy, an anachronistic and corrupt electoral system, the worst system of primary education in the First World, and the bulk of its population facing long-term economic decline.” This widening economic gulf

and scapegoating isn’t socially healthy or politically sustainable. The growing alienation of inner-city youngsters, angry and anxious white males, and those weekend militia warriors are byproducts of the economic nationalization of working people, who believe “the system” has abandoned them. But the American economic and political system can work for the average American, not just the elites. America doesn’t need any more lost heroes.

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