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It’s not hard to defeat racism, if only you try

E. Ablorh-Odjidja


The George Zimmerman trial has brought racism to the fore. And again, the cry of racism has seized the front pages. But are parades and placards the solution?


This is not to move away from compassion for Trayvon Martin and the fact of the loss of a precious young life. To provide a better fight against racism, we need to move closer to the import of the image left in court by Rachel Jeantel, the main witness for the prosecution and Trayvon’s friend.


Jeantel presence on the witness stand should leave suspicion about the prosecution’s intent. Was the prosecution’s choice an intentional profiling to produce an ineffective result? If so, we have a problem that can manifest itself in many instances.


Years of experience as a black man in America have shaped my understanding of racism and how it works. Its nature is hard to uproot and it is systemic. But that does not mean it can’t be fought against and effectively rendered less potent.


However, are we using the right tool and approach?


I liken racism to a trampoline act. The trampoline, in this sense, is also the society at large. A bounce is given anytime you step on it. The bounce the fibers produce induces a bias that has historically favored racism.


As Blacks, and being part of this society, we form a component of its fabric. To defeat racism is not to require a modification of the nature of who we are but how we weave ourselves into this lager fabric.


There is a need to point out, with this imagery of the trampoline, how to reduce the effects of racism. The solution is not to produce the same strands of fibers that generate or favor the same bias against us. It is to produce safe strands that, should even neutrality fail, would still produce a lesser bias. And that approach is by not ignoring the responsibilities within our own communities.


That brings us to the education of our ‘Jeantels’, long before they show up in our courtrooms. If needed, bring them in better educated.


Writing about the impact of Rachel Jeantel in the Zimmerman trial, Dr. Walter Williams, currently the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, stated that, “Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy.”
 

And that tragedy was created by the likes of “educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school... who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma.”


A better-educated Jeantel could have been a crucial and more effective witness in the trial.


The case was decided on the basis of self-defense, a defense based on the Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law. The core of this law justifies killing, should the defendant have any fear of losing his life.


Jeantel could have brought to the trial the cultural memory of fear of whites in the black community and as such in the mindset of Martin - the lynchings, the Emmett Tills and the like - to blunt the point of the argument of the defense.
Jeantel” according to Prof. Williams, could not read “a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin's mother... she doesn't read cursive.”


Prof. Williams continued, “Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. … Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic.


“In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level.”


The tragedy is Jeantel’s school is within a black community. Some would claim that there are also such schools in poor white communities. Regardless, to proffer a better approach is to state unequivocally that Jeantel’s school is our responsibility.


Instead, black political leadership wait only to seize on the outcome of the bad schools to rail against the system. The issue of poor community schools is not where you see mostly the placards. It is when a case like the Zimmerman trial happens that black leadership political profile and power are raised. Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton never had a bad day doing that.


Black leaders lead the march in the streets crying “what do we want?....We want change… What do we need? ... Justice!”


It is time to see these parades as photo ops for power and other agendas unrelated to upholding the black cause. The parades have been done and others have hijacked the benefits.


It is time to call for a change, a change that is not propelled only by marches.

 
At the NAACP convention, May 17, 2004, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic ‘Brown vs. Board of Education’ verdict, Bill Cosby pointed to the problem and its solution.


He said “People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around…. Brown or Black education is no longer the white person’s problem. We have to take the neighborhood back”


Some attacked Cosby for the speech. They even gave him the usual name – Uncle Tom - for daring to speak that way on the subject.


I agree with Cosby on the subject of education - pushing responsibility for our community schools as a solution.


If half the effort attributed to the marches were devoted to supporting community schools, there would have been improvement in overall community life; school dropouts, poor grades, crime, and the prison population would be reduced.


More important, the prosecution in Martin’s honor would have had a better witness in Rachel Jeantel.


E. Ablorh-Odjidja, publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, July 19, 2013

Permission to publish: Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited. If posted at a website, email a copy of the web page to publisher@ghanadot.com . Or don't publish at all.



 

 

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