Contrary Notions

by Michael Parenti

  “The equal rights of the Negro”—a long vicious war was being waged against that notion. For several decades before the New Orleans riots, racist violence had rampaged throughout the South, sometimes directed rather precisely against the remnants of Reconstruction. Instigated and led by big planters, mill owners, the railroads, and White supremacists, these racist forces were determined to shatter the coalitions of abolitionists, Republicans, and Populists whose ranks consisted mostly of African Americans and some poor White farmers and small businesspeople.3 Racist supremacy was enlisted to “keep the South safe for the White race”—which usually meant safe for the White moneyed and landed interests, a point the more impoverished lynch mob participants never seemed able to grasp.

  A complicit role in the tragic events of 1900 in New Orleans was played by the White-owned press. Some of the 1900 news reports do actually offer an occasionally critical comment about the horrors perpetrated against innocent hardworking African Americans. But for the most part, the press went about its business of blaming the victims, glorifying the police, and demonizing those who fought back.

  What does this sordid racist history tell us about the present? In the 1970s during a Senate committee hearing, I heard South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond impatiently exclaim, “No one’s made more progress in this country than the Nigra people.” He was not really praising African Americans for the way they had struggled upward against all odds. If anything, he was voicing his annoyance at their not being grateful for all the improvements they already enjoyed. His message was: count your blessings, you’ve come a long way, stop being ingrates and stop griping.

  In reaction to the likes of Thurmond, there are some who would claim that nothing has changed, that things today for African Americans are just as bad as they were under slavery and just as bad as during the post-Reconstruction days described by Wells-Barnett when racist mob rule was the order of the day and any Black was fair game. Since the gains won by minorities are used by racists like Thurmond as an excuse to thwart further progress, the understandable reaction of some militants is to deny that real gains have been won, and to aver that improvements can be found more in the window dressing than in the substance of things; that for every African American appointed to a high profile post in government or wherever, there are dozens of less fortunate and less visible ones being roughed up by police on streets or in jail cells, sometimes with fatal results.

  But to argue that no meaningful progress has been made is to claim that history is exclusively in the hands of oppressors who are more or less omnipotent. In fact, one has to argue both sides of the street on this, in a seemingly back-and-forth manner.

  First, it is important to realize that vital democratic gains have been achieved by the champions of civil rights. With incredible courage and persistence, African Americans along with some Whites have fought back and made gains against lynch-mob terrorism, segregation, sharecropper servitude, disenfranchisement, job and housing discrimination, police brutality, and every other kind of institutionalized racism.

  Second, having said that advances have been made, we need to remain alert to the terrible ethno-class inequalities and oppressions that still persist within U.S. society, and the concerted assault being perpetrated by reactionaries upon the gains won by all working and middle-class people over the past century, an assault that has cost the African-American community dearly in rollbacks and cutbacks.

  So we go back and forth on this issue because sometimes the gains seem important and substantive, and sometimes they indeed seem like mere tokenism or under threat of being obliterated. Old oppressions have a way of reappearing in modern dress, even if not quite as viciously and blatantly as in bygone times. When Wells-Barnett wrote in 1900, “It is now, even as it was in the days of slavery, an unpardonable sin for a Negro to resist a White man no matter how unjust or unprovoked the White man’s attack may be,” we might say that this still can be the case in certain situations and locales—especially if the White man is dressed in a blue uniform and wears a badge. Nowadays, too often the police commit the racist murders and beatings that the untrammeled mob used to perpetrate.4

  Just recently, in 2005, two New Orleans police beat an unarmed 64-year-old African-American man, a retired school teacher who had been made homeless by Hurricane Katrina, an incident that leaves one with the feeling that indeed not much has changed. But we then have to reverse field and point out that the two cops were fired and charged with criminal battery.5 In 1900, in contrast, disciplinary and legal action against police for such a crime would have been unimaginable. In fact, the police assault would probably not have even been perceived as a crime by New Orleans authorities.

  It should be added that even today these officers were disciplined not because the authorities took it upon themselves to be fair-minded and tougher toward racist White cops. The officials acted because of the spotlight that was brought to bear on the incident and the pressure put upon the New Orleans police department by organized civil rights groups. And such pressure emerged and was effective because of the century of struggle against racism and the resultantly stronger egalitarian climate of opinion that obtains today.

  The ruling interests of yesteryear used racism much as they do today. Racism is a way of directing the anger of exploited Whites toward irrelevant enemies, making them feel victimized by African Americans who supposedly are expecting and getting special (equal) treatment. Racism blurs and buries economic grievances. Whites are less likely to act against their bosses, being themselves too busy trying to keep African Americans down. Thus the working populace is divided against itself, making it difficult for White and Black workers to act in unison against the moneyed class.

  Racism also depresses wages for all by creating super-exploited categories of workers (Blacks, women, immigrants) who toil for less because of the very limited employment choices they are accorded.

  But just as there can be such a thing as “surplus repression” (overkill that becomes counterproductive in maintaining class control), so there can be such a thing as “surplus racism” which damages the community’s image and limits its economic opportunities. Wells-Barnett mentioned that once the local rich White folks of New Orleans realized that mob violence was hurting investments in the region, they began to stir themselves against the race riots, not for the sake of racial justice but for the purpose of saving the city’s investment credit.

  Today, racism remains a handy ruling-class card to play, even while a great show is made of appointing small numbers of (relatively conservative) African Americans and other ethnic minorities to White House cabinet posts and the federal courts. Reactionary leaders cannot get away with openly inciting Caucasians against African Americans. They dare not utter racist epithets today, at least not to public audiences. But they have other buzz words and coded terms: “welfare queens,” “quotas,” “special interests,” “inner-city residents,” “criminal elements,” and the like. So the plutocrats direct the legitimate grievances of the middle Americans toward innocent foes, and in return the middle Americans vote for the plutocrats thinking they are thereby defending their own precarious socio-economic interests. Thus do reactionaries continue to play off White against Black. Divide and rule—it worked back then and still does to some extent today.

  All the more reason to look for ways of uniting Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and all people of color in common struggle. The road to racial justice continues to be long and hard, and sometimes it feels as if we are losing our way. Thinking about the ugly side of New Orleans in 1900 gives us a perspective on how bad things were, how bad they can get, how many gains have been made, and how important it is to continue the fight.

  13 CUSTOM AGAINST WOMEN

  If we uncritically immerse ourselves in the cultural context of any society, seeing it only as it sees itself, then we are embracing the self-serving illusions and hypocrisies it has of itself. Perceiving a society “purely on its own terms” usually means seeing it thr
ough the eyes of dominant groups that exercise a preponderant influence in shaping its beliefs and practices.

  Furthermore, the dominant culture frequently rests on standards that are not shared by everyone within the society itself. So we come upon a key question: whose culture is it anyway? Too often what passes for the established culture of a society is for the most part the preserve of the privileged, a weapon used against more vulnerable elements.

  This is seen no more clearly than in the wrongdoing perpetrated against women. A United Nations report found that prejudice and violence against women “remain firmly rooted in cultures around the world.”6 In many countries, including the United States, women endure discrimination in wages, occupational training, and job promotion. According to a New York Times report, in most of sub-Saharan Africa women cannot inherit or own land—even though they cultivate it and grow 80 percent of the continent’s food.7

  It is no secret that women are still denied control over their own reproductive activity. Throughout the world about eighty-million pregnancies a year are thought to be unwanted or ill-timed. And some twenty million unsafe, illegal abortions are performed annually, resulting in the deaths of some 78,000 women yearly, with millions more sustaining serious injury.8 In China and other Asian countries where daughters are seen as a liability, millions of infant females are missing, having been aborted or killed at birth or done in by neglect and underfeeding.9

  An estimated hundred million girls in Africa and the Middle East have been genitally mutilated by clitoridectomy (excision of the clitoris) or infibulation (excision of the clitoris, labia minora, and inner walls of the labia majora, with the vulva sewed almost completely shut, allowing an opening about the circumference of a pencil). The purpose of such mutilation is to drastically diminish a woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure, insuring that she remains her husband’s compliant possession. Some girls perish in the excision process (usually performed with no anesthetic, no sterilization procedures, and by an older female with no medical training). Long-term consequences of infibulation include obstructed menstrual flow, chronic infection, hurtful coitus, and complicated childbirth.

  In much of the Middle East, women have no right to drive cars or to appear in public unaccompanied by a male relative. They have no right to initiate divorce proceedings but can be divorced at the husband’s will.

  In Latin American and Islamic countries, men sometimes go unpunished for defending their “honor” by killing their allegedly unfaithful wives or girlfriends. In fundamentalist Islamic Iran, the law explicitly allows for the execution of adulterous women by stoning, burning, or being thrown off a cliff. In countries such as Bangladesh and India, women are murdered so that husbands can remarry for a better dowry. An average of five women a day are burned in dowry-related disputes in India, and many more cases go unreported.10

  In Bihar, India, women found guilty of witchcraft are still burned to death. In modern-day Ghana, there exist prison camps for females accused of being witches. In contrast, male fetish priests in Ghana have free reign with their magic practices. These priests often procure young girls from poor families that are said to owe an ancestral debt to the priest’s forebears. The girls serve as the priests’ sex slaves. The ones who manage to escape are not taken back by their fearful families. To survive, they must either return to the priest’s shrine or go to town and become prostitutes.11

  Millions of young females drawn from all parts of the world are pressed into sexual slavery, in what amounts to an estimated $7 billion annual business. More than a million girls and boys, many as young as five and six, are conscripted into prostitution in Asia, and perhaps an equal number in the rest of the world. Pedophiles from the United States and other countries fuel the Asian traffic. Enjoying anonymity and impunity abroad, these “sex tourists” are inclined to treat their acts of child rape as legal and culturally acceptable.12

  In Afghanistan under the Taliban, women were captives in their own homes, prohibited from seeking medical attention, working, or going to school. The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was hailed by President Bush Jr. as a liberation of Afghani women. In fact, most of that country remains under the control of warlords and resurgent Taliban fighters who oppose any move toward female emancipation. And the plight of rural women has become yet more desperate. Scores of young women have attempted self-immolation to escape family abuse and unwanted marriages. “During the Taliban we were living in a graveyard, but we were secure,” opined one female activist. “Now women are easy marks for rapists and armed marauders.”13

  In Iraq we find a similar pattern: the plight of women actually worsening because of a U.S. invasion. Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party created a despotic regime (fully backed by Washington during its most murderous period). But the Baathists did grant Iraqi women rights that were unparalleled in the Gulf region. Women could attend university, travel unaccompanied, and work alongside men in various professions. They could choose whom to marry or could refrain from getting married. With the growing insurgency against the U.S. occupation, however, females are now targeted by the ascendant Islamic extremists. Clerics have imposed new restrictions on them. Women are forced to wear the traditional head covering, and girls spend most of their days indoors confined to domestic chores. Most Iraqi women are now deprived of public education. Often the only thing left to read is the Koran.

  Many women fear they will never regain the freedom they enjoyed under the previous regime. As one Iraqi feminist noted, “The condition of women has been deteriorating. . . . This current situation, this fundamentalism, is not even traditional. It is desperate and reactionary.”14

  For all the dramatic advances made by women in the United States, they too endure daunting victimization. Tens of thousands of them either turn to prostitution because of economic need or are forced into it by a male exploiter, only to be kept there by acts of violence and intimidation. An estimated three out of four women in the United States are victims of a violent crime sometime during their lifetime. Every day, four women are murdered by men to whom they have been close. Murder is the second leading cause of death among young American women.

  In the United States domestic violence is the leading cause of injury among females of reproductive age. An estimated three million women are battered each year by their husbands or male partners, often repeatedly.

  Statistically, a woman’s home is her most dangerous place—if she has a man in it. This is true not only in the United States but in a number of other countries.15 Battered women usually lack the financial means to escape, especially if they have children. When they try, their male assailants are likely to come after them and inflict still worse retribution. Police usually are of little help. Arrest is the least frequent response to domestic violence. In most states, domestic beatings are classified as a misdemeanor.16

  In most parts of this country, if a man physically attacks another man on the street, leaving him battered and bloody, he can be charged with “felonious assault with intent to inflict serious bodily injury” and he might face five to ten years in the slammer, depending on the circumstances. But when this same man beats up his wife or female domestic partner, a whole different procedure and vocabulary is activated. For some reason the crime is reduced to a therapeutic problem. He is charged with “domestic abuse” and held overnight, if that long. And he has to agree to attend counseling sessions in which he supposedly will see the errors of his ways. If the chronic batterer knew that he would be facing five to ten years in prison, he might be more reliably deterred, as some batterers themselves have admitted.

  In contrast, the women who kill their longtime male abusers in desperate acts of self-defense usually end up serving lengthy prison sentences. In recent times, women’s organizations have had some success in providing havens for battered women and pressuring public authorities to move against male violence.

  To conclude, those who insist that outsiders show respect for their customs may have a legitimate claim in some h
istoric instances, or they may really be seeking license to continue oppressing the more vulnerable elements within their own society. There is nothing sacred about the status quo, and nothing sacred about culture as such. There may be longstanding practices in any culture, including our own, that are not worthy of respect. And there are basic rights that transcend all cultures, as even governments acknowledge when they outlaw certain horrific practices and sign international accords in support of human rights.17

  14 ARE HETEROSEXUALS WORTHY OF MARRIAGE?

  During 2003–2004, as heartland America gawked in horrified fascination, thousands of homosexual men married each other, as did thousands of lesbians, in San Francisco and several other obliging locales. A furious outcry was not long in coming from those who claimed to know what side of the Kulturkampf God is on. President Bush Jr. proposed an amendment to the Constitution making same-sex wedlock a federal offense. Heterosexual marriage, he declared, is “the most fundamental institution of civilization.”

  According to opinion polls in 2004, a majority of Americans believed that marriage should be strictly a man-woman affair. At least fourteen states had passed laws or amendments to their state constitutions banning gay marriage. Eight of these also outlawed civil unions and domestic partnerships, including heterosexual ones. It has to be man-woman marriage or no bonds at all.

  Opponents of same-sex wedlock do not offer a single concrete example of how it would damage society. Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the state of Massachusetts, and thus far it has neither impaired traditional marriage nor subverted civil order in those societies. In fact, the mentioned countries have less crime and social pathology than does the United States.