Notes on African-American History Since 1900
African-Americans and Globalization: The New Stage of Capitalism
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| African-Americans and Globalization: The New Stage of Capitalism
Nations and nation states still exist but the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation state is rendered subservient to the strata of trans (multi) national capital of the capitalist class. The hegemonic nation-state of transnational capital becomes one of global empire or a transnational state. The nation state of the hegemonic transnational capitalist power in the present era of globalization often comes in conflict/contradiction with the national aspirations of the people (working/underclass) of the nation including capitalists who are not big enough to reap benefits from globalization. Therefore, there is a basis in the core countries and especially in the hegemonic center of a broad united front against trans (multi) national capital, capitalist class and the ruining effects of globalization. As Samir Amin has often stated, the goals of the transnational capitalists is to lower the working wages of American and other core country workers to the level of Third World (developing) countries. This gradual deterioration of a livable working wage with guaranteed health benefits and social security represents the waning power of the U.S. hegemonic section of the transnational capitalist class. It can no longer or is no longer willing to concede "fringe material" benefits to U.S. workers for supporting imperialism. The struggle for hegemony over the world (global empire) economy by U.S. transnational capital is a tedious one; one in which the U.S. has sought and fought to maintain since 1945. Dominance over a global empire is one which the U.S. inherited since 1990 (with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Socialist bloc) and one which has severe contradictions. The U.S. workforce in 2004 was 131.5 million with 24.2 million of it being part-time employees.968 About a tenth of Toyota Motor Corps U.S. production labor force is temporary workers.969 In 2003 there were 111,278,000 households in the United States. One percent of the households, 1,112,780 households, control 40% of the wealth in the U.S. As of 2003, African-American men made the median income of 73% of that of white men. African-American women made 92% of white women's median income and 86% of white men's median income.970 So the racial and economic hierarchy in terms of wages is: White males White females African-American female African-American male This change of racial economic apartheid has occurred in the last twenty-five years. This is significant because African-American females are paid less for equal work of white males or white females; because wages are based on male wages. According to the Congressional Black Caucus Agenda for the 109th (2005) Congress, focusing on employment and economic security, unemployment rates for African-Americans are consistently almost double the rates for white (Caucasian) Americans; the median weekly earnings of full time African-American workers is consistently over $130.00 dollars less than white workers who are similarly educated and situated; the poverty rate for African- Americans is almost double the national poverty rate (24% vs. 12.5%) and more than triple (33% vs. 9.8%) for children under the age of 18. The average African-American household has 7% of the wealth of the average white household.971
20% of Northeast Ohio's employment base is devoted to making parts for cars and trucks. In 10 years the auto supply industry will probably toss 20 to 25% of its jobs...most of the downsizing will result from productivity improvements. (Cybernation and automation);...parts account for 70% of a vehicle's cost.976 Since the end of World War II approximately five to six million or over thirty percent of the African-American labor force became concentrated in the industrial core center of the American labor process. By the 1980's there were three million African-American union members. Among the industrial core of the American working class, African-Americans represented the most militant sector. The policy of the Global-multinational (Transnational) capitalists to concentrate on a homogeneous "WASP" industrial core concentration labor force is the deliberate policy to dislocate African-Americans from industrial concentration. This declasses and lumpenizes African-American workers especially male youths who are unskilled or semi-skilled and limits African-American social dislocation power or the ability to halt the economic system through a general strike. The building of a homogeneous "WASP" labor force maintains the racist white skin privilege of the white workers, stratifies, splits the working class on racial lines and keeps the most backward sectors of the American working class loyal to the interests of the Global-multi-national (Transnational) capitalists. This leads to accelerated development in white America and continuous underdevelopment of minority communities leading to unequal development as long as capitalism exists. There are approximately 2.5 million African-American trade unionists in 2005. Barbara Ransby in her article, "US: The Black Poor and the Politics of Expendability" stated that 30% of the manufacturing jobs eliminated by downsizing in 1990 and 1991 were jobs held by “African-Americans."977 African-American unemployment remains stagnant at 10.8% while white unemployment dropped to 4.7%, making African-American unemployment more than twice that of whites."978 The move to the right politically of the United States ruling class has led to the criminalization of African-American males particularly, due to the lumpenization caused by semi-skilled jobs in industry exported overseas which is the economic cause of many inner city males to participate in the drug traffic. Also with the industrialist policy of retaining few older African-American workers extracting greater surplus value from their labor through speed ups often due to robotics (increased labor productivity) and the conscious policy of hiring few young African-American male workers is making the African-American male an endangered species. The criminalization of African-American males will continue to increase the longer monopoly capitalism exists. As this form of genocide takes place a conscious policy of mis-education by the capitalist media structure is being waged against working class communities of color in particular. The media warfare is to dis-orientate the African-American and Third World proletariat inside the United States from its national, class and social tasks of carrying the struggle for democracy through to a socialist revolution. In the descending line of development of United States monopoly capitalism when the major area of expansion at the base (electronics, technological, micro-chip) is reproducing less real value and the class contradictions are increasing and the rate of expansion is contracting, the superstructure (government social programs); the politico-ideological takes on greater importance of interjecting false class consciousness into the working and oppressed masses of the American empire. The dis-education process helps continue and increase black on black self hate that takes the form blacks killing blacks usually over control of the drug traffic. This becomes a form of self destruct genocide. Downsizing (de industrialization) and outsourcing symptoms of globalization grossly affect the African-American community because it eliminates a living wage for unskilled, non-college African-American males in particular who have no alternative but to participate in the drug traffic which leads to criminalization and neo-slavery by the prison-industrial complex. According to Robert L. Allen, ...Equally ominous was the rise in the 1980's of the prison-industrial complex and with it the wholesale criminalization and incarceration of African-Americans especially young black males. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world, currently over two million prisoners. With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of the world's prisoners. Some 50% of U.S. prisoners are African-American.979 There are 2.2 million prisoners in U.S. prisons and 7 million in the criminal justice system. African-Americans are three times more likely to become prisoners once arrested and an African-American's average jail sentence is six months longer than a white person for the same crime: 39 months versus 33 months.980 In ten southern states conviction and imprisonment for a felony results in disenfranchisement. It was estimated that as of 1998, 1.4 million African-Americans (including nearly 13% of all black males) had been barred from voting. (New York Times, 10/23/98) Currently 3.9 million Americans are disenfranchised. In 32 states felons on parole aren't allowed to vote; in 29 states your right don't change, someone on probation isn't allowed to vote and in 10 states (mostly southern) impose a lifetime ban on convicted felons.981 Thirty one percent of African-American males of voting age in the state of Alabama have lost their right to vote and 31 percent also in the state of Florida.982 In 2005, the number of African-American males who have lost their right to vote was 15 percent. Due to globalization and the failure of the Northeast manufacturers to compete with overseas cheap labor, unemployment in Cuyahoga County and Cleveland was gross. Cuyahoga County unemployment rose to 6.6% in January, from 5.7% in December. Cleveland's climbed to 8.7% from 7.6%...In January 2005 Ohio State lost 8,200 non-farm jobs. January's decline followed losses of 7,500 jobs, in December, 2,500, in November and 6,600 in October (of 2004).16983 Excess production capacity (a tendency of capitalists to flood or over saturate the market) creates falling profits for corporations which produces a glut of commodities on the world market from under-consumption due to downsizing, increased part-time labor, unproductive service labor with reduced wages in most western post-industrial nations and unequal development of workers in third world countries (Africa, Asia and Latin America); who don't make enough wages to consume the products they now manufacture from the raw materials extracted from their nations. The global glut of commodities makes reliance of consumption of commodities (consumer market) the basis to the stability of the world economy. The world uses about 80 million barrels of oil a day...U.S. consumption alone is expected to grow nearly 50% in the next 20 years.984 Oil tankers transport nearly forty billion gallons of oil the world consumes on a daily basis. Because of the global competition for oil between the U.S., Western Europe, Canada, Britain, Japan and China with a short supply ready for refinement the price of oil increases. Gerald Horne in "Imperial Intrigues", says, The scramble for oil and other resources and the collapsing dollar are the major economic weaknesses of the U.S.985 Horne goes on to say that "oil is the glue that is binding Cuba-China-Venezuela and Brazil." Simultaneously a "major new alliance is emerging between Iran and China," according to the Washington Post of November 17, 2004. The two allies Signed a preliminary accord worth $70 billion to $100 billion by which China will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border. Earlier this year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in liquified natural gas from Iran over a quarter century... in turn China has become a major exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including computer systems, household appliances and cars.986 China is the world's fastest growing economy and is buying raw materials, such as oil, natural gas and other materials at a phenomenal rate. For instance, China as of October 10, 2004 was consuming 40% of the world's cement supply.987 There are approximately 200 million cars in America. 1 2 million cars are sold in the United States every month.988 High gas (oil) prices hit the U.S. consumption rate, which is 2/3's of the perpetual accumulation of capital globally because people living in the suburbs have long ways to travel going back and forth to work and to malls and their homes. What produces the world glut? Cybernation (a complete automated production process) and automation in the workplace worldwide (through new technology) takes fewer workers to produce more commodities (increased productivity). In the drive to increase profits, the capitalists establish plants and invest wherever there is the cheapest labor (low wages-third world, particularly China) and reduce wages in post-industrial western countries subjecting them to become high-tech service workers of a global world economy thus rendering those societies into non-productive labor economies. Unions are smashed and benefits are lost for many workers in the U.S. who now work two or more non-unionized part-time jobs with no benefits or job securities. As a result, those part-time workers go further into debt and cannot consume at the rate they did before. Americans are $663 billion in consumer debt. Because U.S. consumers make up two-thirds of the profit of the world economy when they can no longer consume at the rate they did before, the global capitalist system enters into a major structural crisis as it now is teetering on a worldwide (concentrated in the U.S.) depression. 2006 The Jena 6 In late August 2006, in the small Louisiana town of Jena, which is 85% white; the beginning of a major case of racial injustice developed. African American student, Kenneth Purvis asked the principal of Jena High School, which is 15% African American, if he could sit under a tree in the school’s courtyard; a tree where white students traditionally congregated. He was told by the principal that, “he could sit wherever he liked because it’s a free country.” After the African American students sat under the tree (now cut down), white students hung three nooses from the tree. Three white students admitted to hanging the nooses, but they insisted they had intended nothing sinister; the nooses, they said, had been inspired by watching a frontier justice scene from Lonesome Dove. LaSalle Parish school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt recommended to a disciplinary committee that a few days of in-school suspension was adequate punishment for what he termed a juvenile prank.989 African American parents, outraged by this decision, gathered at a local Baptist Church to demand that white students be expelled for their racial act. The LaSalle Parish District Attorney said later that his inaction was because there was no state law for ‘hate’ crimes. The next day during lunch hour, a small group of African American athletes decided to sit under the tree en-masse. Within a few minutes every African American student at the school had joined them. Many white students took offense and the situation became very tense. The school’s principal called an emergency assembly that afternoon. The white students sat on one side of the auditorium and the African American students on the other, in accordance with custom. Every police officer in Jena, in full uniform, was asked to attend as well. District Attorney Reed Walters told the students that the unrest at the high school had to stop. Turning his attention to the Black side of the auditorium, Walters said, “I can be your best friend, or I can be your worst enemy.” Then he pulled a pen from his suit pocket and waved it with a dramatic flourish. “I want you to understand,” he said, “that with a stroke of my pen I can make your lives disappear!”990 White students responsible for the hanging of the nooses were overjoyed by the lenient discipline they received and by the district attorney’s less than subtle threat.
Eventually there was a fight in which a white student making racist comments at Black students was beaten. He was treated for a concussion and multiple bruises. Yet the student, Justin Barker, was well enough that evening to attend a school function.992 Six African American athletes between the ages of 15 and 17, Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Ray Purvis, Jesse Beard, Theo Shaw and Robert Bailey were arrested. Five of them were charged as adults for attempted murder and conspiracy. The sixth was charged as a juvenile. Mychal Bell pleaded innocent; was tried for “attempted murder” and convicted as an adult that carried the maximum sentence of twenty-two years in prison. The mass pressure has had an impact in the town and state. The Jena 6 finally got the proper legal representation, and the conviction of Mychal Bell for attempted murder as an adult was overturned; he was released on bail September 27. Bell and the other five youth now face charges as juveniles and a new trial. Significantly some whites in the town are visible and speaking out against the double standard.993 As the case received more grassroots support, 50,000 demonstrators marched on the town of Jena, Louisiana demanding “Free the Jena 6,” on the day that Mychal Bell was initially scheduled to be sentenced for his role in the beating of a white classmate. Bell was released on bail, but had his bail revoked for speaking out on a national tour. He is now serving time as a juvenile. The Jena 6 case has yet to be resolved as of press time. Hate crime: the torture of Megan Williams The Williams family, Black Lawyers for Justice and the Support Committee for Megan Williams, a 20 year-old, five-foot two-inch African American woman with disability needs, are demanding that federal “hate-crime” charges be brought against her abductors and torturers. Megan was lured into a Logan County, West Virginia trailer by her previous boyfriend, where she was repeatedly raped, choked, stabbed, forced to eat dog and rat feces by six white tormenters. They kept her for a week, berated her calling her ‘nigger’ incessantly, sodomized her with a stick and kept her with a noose tied around her neck for lengthy periods. Six white defendants, four men and two women, are charged in the attack, which included other gruesome acts of sadistic torture. Megan’s mother, Carmen Williams told the press that “we don’t know everything they did to her,” and her daughter has suffered severe trauma as a result. Democrats gained dominance in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Senator elect Barack Obama has emerged as a central progressive charismatic figure in the Democratic Party. If he can develop and consolidate a progressive bloc inside the Democratic Party it may stimulate young people to become politically involved “again and lead to another breakthrough. 2007 The year two thousand and seven will be recorded as an historical year. In this year there has become a public outcry against President George W. Bush’s war against the people of Iraq. Many Republican congress people sensing an aura of “defeat” are reluctantly beginning to urge Bush to de-escalate the imperialist war: The assumptions which the American people originally supported the invasion and overthrow of the Saddan Hussein regime was that he had “weapons of mass destruction” and connections to Ibn Laden. After four years of involvement now in an Iraqi civil war, no weapons of mass destruction have been found or connections to Al Quadi. While protest in the U. S. is not as great as it was during the Vietnam war due to the fact of no draft and a professional volunteer army; if the projected “surge” of U. S. troops doesn’t subdue the Iraqi resistance by late September 2007, there may be an upsurge of anti-war protest in the U. S. But with the recent U. S. Supreme Court rulings, it seems like “the people’s movement in the U. S. for human rights, democracy and justice has been setback. Part of the ultra right conservative agenda has been to reverse affirmative action and abortion rights. It sought this by seizing all three branches of government, congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court, which it succeeded in doing in the election of 2000 and consolidated in the election of 2004 with a majority conservative Supreme court; conservative Republicans were able to pull off the “Legal counter-revolution” of 2007. Linda Greenhouse reporting for the New York Times news service in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday July 1, 2007 said As a result, the court upheld a federal antiabortion law, cut back on the free speech rights of public school students, strictly enforced procedural requirements for bring and appeal cases, and limited school districts’ ability to use racially conscious measure to achieve or preserve integration. As a result, the young generation of the 21st century needs to become active in a new movement to reverse “the conservative” legal “counter revolution of 2007. As we go to press Senator Barack Obama has emerged as a the new progressive figure in the democratic presidential primary for 2008. Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of Democratic Party. The U. S. Senate Historical Office lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U. S. history and the only African American currently serving in the U. S. Senate. Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U. S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university lecturer, and civil rights lawyer, before entering politics. He served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 . launching his campaign for U. S. Senate in 2003. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Boosted by increased national standing, he went on to win election to the U. S. Senate in November 2004 with a landslide 70% of the vote in an election year marked by Republican gains. As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 994 Though his candidacy may not win, the new population demographics of a recent report of the census campaigns similar to his may fare better in the near future. According to the report one in three Americans belong to a minority group. Of the 300 million people living to the U. S., nearly 200 million are Whites; 40 million are African Americans and 44 million are Hispanics, the largest minority group Asians account for 14 million and Native Hawaiian and other pacific islanders make up 1 million. American Indian and Alaska Natives comprise 4 million of the population. Such a growth rate of people of color or minority combined with the shifts back to the center or left of center of the majority (200 million white Americans) could lead to the opportunity for a more equalitarian new America in the 21st Century. Directory: Documents -> Finder -> Black%20Liberation%20Disk -> Black%20Power! Documents -> The great global switch-off Documents -> Nonprofit grant application Documents -> The Truth about the Rwandan Genocide Documents -> Annual InStructional unit plan Documents -> Chaos equipment included Black%20Power! -> The Need (Importance) for Student Activism in the 21st Century Black%20Power! -> When and how I wrote toward black liberation part I and malcolm X and the black liberation movement Black%20Power! -> Notes on African-American History Since 1900 Download 3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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