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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
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OPINION |
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Racial Battleground or Economic Common Ground? By Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
On Nov. 7, the North Charleston police shot and killed Ashberry Wylder. Wylder, a mentally ill man, was arrested for stealing sliced ham from a local store. He swung a knife at the policeman who arrested him. He was then shot to death, with witnesses saying that the final shot came after he was handcuffed. We will march again in Charleston as moral witnesses, calling on the officials of the school, the city, and the state to remedy a pattern of excessive police violence against African Americans. Police need better training and better pay. Action is needed to stop the violence. These outrages that feed racial fears distract us from finding the economic common ground so vital to the new South. In the new South, we have learned to play ball together and to fight wars together. In the football stands, our cheers for the teams are based on the color of their jerseys, not the color of their skins. In the wars, we march together under one flag. Yet, too often, racial fears can still be used to frustrate the ability of working and poor people to find economic common ground. In South Carolina, one in eight people have no health insurance, and one in every four goes without insurance at some point in the year. In South Carolina, more than 60,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last three years, and now Georgetown Steel is closing. The textile jobs are going to China. Unemployment hit a nine-year high this summer. Wages are down; benefits are down. The budget crisis is also forcing cuts in police, schools, and other vital services. The economy of the new South was a direct product of the civil rights movement. For decades, segregation not only locked out Blacks; it helped impoverish the South. When you focus on keeping someone down in a ditch, you have to stay down there with him. It was only after Dr. King and the end of segregation that the new South was possible. German investors built auto plants; Northern capital invested in high-tech work. Textile plants were modernized. But the limits of that change are apparent. South Carolina has too many people who work for low wages, with no benefits and no security. Its “right-to-work” laws frustrate the ability of workers to organize. Economic inequality grows worse, even as good jobs head abroad. South Carolina, like much of the South, is still dominated by racial politics. The Republican Party built itself as the party of White sanctuary, playing the race card, embracing the Confederate flag, and offering protection against pushy minorities. But working families in South Carolina — White, Black, and Latino — don’t need protection from each other. They need to come together to gain protection from the special interests that benefit from their divisions. They need to elect representatives who will demand fair taxes, so that vital services aren’t cut so millionaires can get tax breaks. They need representatives who will end the tax dodges and incentives that encourage companies to take jobs from here and move them abroad. They need representatives who will change the trade policies that are draining good jobs from this country. They need greater investment in education for their children, in health care for their families, in clean air and clean water for their health. Racial fears still exist. The recent actions of the police only feed them. The marches for dignity will be met with hostility. So the challenge for the new South is whether we can find economic common ground, even as we continue to struggle against racial fears and for racial justice. The great battles over segregation took place almost 40 years ago. Across the South, we’ve learned to work together, play ball together, and fight together. We go to separate churches for the most part, but we are more religious, more conservative in moral values than the secular North. And now, for the vast majority of the South, the challenge is whether we can register together, vote together, and act together to empower workers across lines of race. The results of this historic struggle will surely define the future of the new South and of the nation. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. is founder and president of the Chicago-based Rainbow/Push Coalition.
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On
Nov. 5 at Stratford High School, the largest school in Berkeley
County, S. C., police launched a raid with their guns drawn.
They handcuffed a dozen or more of some 100 students while unleashing
dogs to sniff the students’ backpacks. They found no drugs;
they made no arrests. Parents across the city were, not surprisingly,
outraged and terrified for their children. 