Relieved that there were no mass riots after the racist verdict in the murder of Trayvon Martin US capitalism are wiping their brow and launching a new offensive to blame black people. In the Wall Street Journal today there are 17 items of worldwide news on the long column the regularly have down their front page. These cover the news in the US also. Yesterday these included at the top the news of the racist verdict. Today there is not a mention of it. The only mention of the case in the entire paper is a single column inside the back page which blames black people. Believe it or not this quotes Martin Luther King. Of course not where he says that there is something wrong with capitalism in the US and the country must move to democratic socialism.
This columnist who blames black people makes a lot of use of figures on crime. Of course he does not mention the criminality of the ruling class which keeps the system loaded against the working class and the poor and the majority of the black and Hispanic population. For this capitalist mouthpiece crime is okay as long as it is carried out by the bankers, the corporate class and their bribed politicians. For this capitalist mouthpiece it is okay to leave out how living in poverty and coming out of a history of centuries of repression can and does affect all of us.
But to go back to the arguments this mouthpiece makes about crime in black neighborhoods. For over 300 years black people were forced to work for no pay in this country. Their children were taken from them and sold. They were whipped and murdered and raped and lynched and their bodies burnt. Then when slavery was ended they were and still are forced to work for less wages than the rest of the working class. They were kept out of the skilled trades. This is the reality that exists for black people. The fact that the black revolt scared the capitalist class and saw it promote and bribe a few black politicians to hold down the black working class as a whole does not change this fundamental reality. Obama in the White House does not change the fact that the overwhelming majority of black people still live in poverty and at a lower standard than other workers and under the vicious racist repression of this racist state. Obama is a fraud for black workers and youth. He says of the racist verdict on Trayvon Martin that "We are a nation of laws" and calls on all to accept this racist verdict. I wonder when we became a nation of laws. Is the firing of drones to kill children in other countries the actions of a nation of laws. Is the torture in Guantanamo bay and the solitary confinement of thousands of prisoners a sign of a nation of laws.
It is hard to think of a more racist society in the advanced capitalist world than the US. It is hard to think of a more censored mass media in the advanced capitalist world than the US. And it is impossible to think of any society in the advanced capitalist world that is more racist and sexist. The most important leaders of black America in the past 50 years, Malcolm X, the Panthers, Martin Luther King all came to the conclusion that US capitalism had to be overthrown and a socialist society established. They were correct.
Sean.
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