Posts Tagged ‘NAACP’
Right to vote abridged in the USA, France…?
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 13, 2011
Right to vote abridged in the USA, France…?
Apparently, the right to vote to citizens are being restricted in many “advanced” democratic States such as USA, France…
Fourteen States in the USA have passed a total of 25 measures that will unfairly restrict the right to vote, among black and Hispanic voters in particular. The new measures are focused in States with the fastest growing black populations (Florida, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina) and Latino populations (South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee). The NAACP sees this as a cynical backlash to a surge in ethnic minority voting evident in 2008.
It is of no surprise if ethnic minority groups are not the only sections of society at risk of losing their voting rights. The Brennan Center warns that young voters and students, older voters and poor income groups are also vulnerable.
The same trend is evolving in France, targeting the northern African citizens of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It seems that the new awakening of the minority groups of their power in the voting booth is throwing the “majority” (read religious affiliations and color of skin…) off-balance. The political structures abhor situations where serious changes and reforms are needed for newer evolving societies.
During WWI, France and England had promised the people in their colonies to obtaining citizenship if they participated in the war efforts, mainly being recruited as soldiers in front lines. Actually, the colonial powers forced many to enlist in various manners, and the promise for citizenship was a bait to reducing the resistance to joining the war…
About 940 soldiers from Senegal died of pneumonia and new diseases in the French military and training camp of Courneau (near Bordeaux) for lack of sanitary facilities. Hundred of thousand of African soldiers died in the front lines.
It turned out that what France meant by citizenship was of the apartheid-kind: Limited voting rights, the system of fines and punishment was a collective system, and these “citizens” retained the status of indigenous Africans…
In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to vote. Anyway, in Saudi Arabia there are no elected institutions in the first place to exercise this luxury right. Women are not permitted to drive or to move outside city-limit without being accompanied by a male from the family…
In Israel, the last decade witnessed series of laws that restrict the meaning, right of citizenships, and voting rights for non-Jews. Lately, Hilary Clinton, US State Department, criticised in a private meeting the new trend in Israel of segregating women from men in public transport…Israel is definitely shedding-off the external image of the only democracy in the Middle-East and moving steadily toward an apartheid and bigoted State.
For example, after over 60 years, hundred of thousands of Palestinians have retained their refugee status in almost all Arabic States: Only the few who were initially rich, with particular religious affiliations, and with professions managed to obtain citizenship. All the remaining refugees never received the right to vote on anything.
In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are prohibited to work in 100 jobs, particularly professional jobs such as physicians, lawyers, engineers…outside their restricted camps…
What’s going on in Harlem?
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 5, 2010
What’s going on in Harlem? (Mar. 6, 2010)
“In Manhattan, there is the largest Black agglomeration in the world. Harlem of the 1920’s witnessed the convergence of all kinds of Black people: workers, peasants, students, businessmen, professionals, artists, poets, intellectuals, musicians, adventurers, preachers, criminals, exploiters, and pariahs. Blacks from north and south USA, from the Caribbean islands, and from Africa flocked to Harlem. Each Black person arrived with his objectives, purposes, needs, and dreams; for all, the essential was this mutual meeting so that prejudices and proscriptions were thrown together within a sphere of contacts and interactions.
This sympathy of race and union generated a fusion of profound feelings and common experiences. In Harlem of the 20’s Black life discovered its first chances of collective expressions and auto-determination. Very recently, we had no idea of who we were, much less who were the “others”: We were real problems to ourselves. Thus, we had to get to work and recognize our dignity and recapture confidence for a new dynamic phase of community Black life. For every external pressure and challenge an appropriate internal response was demanded. Blacks migrating from suburbs and small villages to Harlem crossed with a single leap several generations of experiences.
What is happening in Harlem may not be unique in the world: It was an inevitable reaction. It is significant and prophetic: a new psychology is transforming Black masses and getting them on the move; they are leading the Black leaders. This new spirit of confidence is repudiating social dependence; the Negros are healing their hypersensitivities and breaking away of their social disillusionment; they are collaborating toward the joint community by taking on their responsibilities. It is now up to the White majority to change race domination attitudes and begins cultural exchange and the diffusion of brighter lights for integration.” (The new Negro: An interpretation, 1925)
Alain Locke (1885-1954) is a Black philosopher and intellectual; he was one of the main activists who launched “Harlem Renaissance” movement. Although Locke studied in Harvard, Oxford, Berlin, and College de France he could not teach but in Black universities when he returned to the USA. Joining forces with WEB Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson (1893-1956) he established the association of defense for Blacks (NAACP) and issued magazines such as Crisis, Opportunity, and The Negro World. This Harlem Renaissance influenced the founders of French “Negritude” intellectuals and authors in Paris of the 30’s; many US Black students and intellectuals flocked to Paris in the 50’s.
Alain Locke assembled reproductions of Black arts, partitions, bibliographies, and discography; Locks’ anthology offered a formidable balance sheet of Blacks productions in art, music, literature and intellectual works of Black issues and problems around the world: Black thinking and feeling was being disseminated. It was a productive reaction of minorities to the segregationist pressures of the White majority.
Adversity generated solidarity and initiatives to re-enforce self confidence and increased dignity to overcoming inferiority complexes of many generations of slavery and humiliation. Locke’s activist and work produced the Black movements of the 50’s and 60’s demanding political civil rights.
Did a dog on two feet taken a bite off your kid? (Feb. 17, 2010)
“Every black man who teaches another black person to extend the other cheek when attacked is robbing the newly freed Negro of his natural rights to defend his moral and intelligence rights. Why everyone in nature has the rights to defend his life save the American blacks?
Everytime a dog on two feet bites your wives and children, if anyone among you stands up for leader to compromise with this rabid dog for a job in the city then, I say this leader is faked. A Negro has to rely on his inner strength, will, and education to get ahead and be someone of value.
Integration is but an astute gimmick of white people to shock blacks into lethargy; making him believes that white folks can change. White people in America have sawn crimes against humanity for centuries; it is time for them to reap our thunder.
Why is it that Jews are presidents of black organization such as NAACP? Did they ever consider any black to head B’nai B’rith or any of their associations? When we prove that Jews in the USA are exploiting black people in the ghettoes in the northern cities (90% of Jewish trades are targeting blacks) then they shout “anti-Semite”. Deep in their soul Jews know they are hiding their culpability; they have this sensibility to believe they are targeted when exploitation is mentioned. They are right to feel that way because they preferred to exploit blacks’ hard earning rather than taking them for slaves.” (Extract of an interview by Malcolm X, 1963)
Malcolm Little, known as Malcolm X (1925-65), did prison term (1946-52) and then got engaged with Nation of Islam. His highly valued oratory skills made Elijah Muhammad apprehensive that Malcolm X was quickly usurping his authority within the Black Moslems brotherhood. Thus, by 1963, Malcolm took his distances and started his own black organization. Elijah Muhammad backed by the FBI assassinated Malcolm X in 1965.
Malcolm X was an influential leader among the young generations in the northern US cities; he went on pilgrimage to Mecca and visited many African States that recently acquired their independence from colonial powers. Malcolm X program was to establishing an independent black state in the southern part of the USA before re-immigrating to Africa, the homeland of the black slaves.
The Black Panthers, headed by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, as well as Black Power, headed by Stokeley Carmichael, echo Malcolm X positions for organizing black people into auto-defense institutions.
Note: I opened a new category “Black culture/ Creole”.
Adonis Diaries 