US abuse of black men a prelude to scandal (Boston Globe Puke Level Alpha

DEFENSE Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the abuse of Iraqi soldiers by American soldiers was "inconsistent with the values of our nation. It is inconsistent with the teachings of the military to the men and women of the armed forces, and it was certainly fundamentally un-American." In his Rose Garden press appearance with King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Bush said he told the king: "I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.

"I assured him Americans, like me, didn't appreciate what we saw, that it made us sick to our stomachs. I also made it clear to His Majesty that the troops we have in Iraq, who are there for security and peace and freedom, are the finest of the fine, fantastic United States citizens, who represent the very best qualities of America: courage, love of freedom, compassion, and decency."

Of course, all of the apologizing over un-American behavior comes only after the global equivalent of the Rodney King tape.

What happened in Iraq is a natural extension of the humiliation that has gone on for two decades in this country. Whether Americans' behavior in Iraq is due to racial, religious, or other cultural feelings of superiority -- or a numbed acceptance of government sponsored violence -- the abusing soldiers and the commanders who let it happen assumed that they were dealing with people who had no voice. So thought the Los Angeles police who clubbed King in 1991 -- until the videotape.

Bush lately is fond of saying, "Freedom is the Almighty's gift to each man and woman in this world." Yet for tan Muslims in Iraq and black men in the United States, the gift is too often incarceration and worse. In the midst of the soldier scandal, it is critical to consider a recent report by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice think tank.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional, the Sentencing Project says there are nine times more African-American men in prison or jail today than in 1954. There are now 884,500 African-American men incarcerated compared with 98,000 at the time of Brown.

In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren said: "Education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. . . . It is doubtful that any child may be reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education." In the 1980s and 1990s, prison building accelerated as Americans chose to scapegoat African-Americans for a national drug problem. African-Americans represent 13 percent of monthly drug users, the same as their percentage of the national population. Yet African-Americans make up 32.5 percent of people arrested for drugs. While white youth snorted unseen behind fences and gates, police swept nonviolent black drug offenders off stoops and corners.

This humiliation, it should be clear, grew under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Federal drug laws that treated black offenders far more harshly than white offenders began during the Reagan and elder Bush years, but President Clinton did little to change the laws in his eight years. No one even talks about black prisoners under the younger Bush.

African-American prisoners, it turns out, were a prelude to Iraq. Congress and the White House said they needed to wage a war on drugs, the weapon of mass destruction in inner cities. After lots of hard police work and community activism, violence in the streets has been significantly "pacified" on the surface. But how long the streets stay peaceful is unknown as the nation continues, through its wild spending on defense and tax cuts to the rich, to turn its back on education for working-class and low-income communities. All it does is throw mandatory tests at ill-prepared, easily discouraged youth.

Black men are criminalized to the point where one out of every three African-American boys faces the prospect of jail at some point in his life. Black men can't even drive without facing a significantly higher chance of being stopped by police. Black men can count on innocent people being periodically brutalized. Who can forget the 41 bullets New York police pumped into the unarmed Amadou Diallo? Or the retired black minister, Accelyne Williams, who was literally scared to death by Boston police in a botched drug raid? Or the New York police sodomizing of Abner Louima? Or the shootings, beatings, and stranglings that barely make the papers and end up as justifiable homicides?

The Iraq abuse scandal shows how America keeps forgetting its mistakes at home. Rumsfeld says the abuse was un-American. African-American men remain the proof that abuse is an American pastime.

Whether Americans' behavior in Iraq is due to racial, religious, or other cultural feelings of superiority -- or a numbed acceptance of government sponsored violence -- the abusing soldiers and the commanders who let it happen assumed that they were dealing with people who had no voice. So thought the Los Angeles police who clubbed King in 1991 -- until the videotape.

Rodney King? I hate to say it, but we have found out what kind of man Rodney King is since his videotaped beating. He is a scumbag, just like the guy at the Abu Ghirab prison.

In the 1980s and 1990s, prison building accelerated as Americans chose to scapegoat African-Americans for a national drug problem. African-Americans represent 13 percent of monthly drug users, the same as their percentage of the national population. Yet African-Americans make up 32.5 percent of people arrested for drugs.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact, that they are the ones committing the crimes Derrick.

I ask all freepers to email this half wit and tell him what you think of his chronic victimhood and asinine comaparisons.

Lance,
First, I can't read this post because I detest Derrick "the 'Z' stands for Hate Whitey" Jackson, who forever turned me off the Globe.

But I applaud your stronger stomach and superior constitution for being able to read him without arterial blood hemmorhaging out of your eye sockets.

We may have "spoken" about this before, but Jackson will likely not respond to email. If he does, I hope the response(s) are shared here at FR.

All I can say is thank God we have freedom of the press. Where even trash like this can be published in a major newspaper

In 95% of the rest of the world this racist would be out of a job and in jail for writing such bile

Same tune, different band. In the end, to morons like Mr. Jackson everything comes back to race because they have nothing else either constructive or intelligent to say.

I wonder just what would happen to the Mr. Jackson's of this world if, in the unlikely event, John Kerry became President and we had a First Lady in Ter-AYYYY-Za: A white woman, who by virtue of her place of birth is more African than Mr. Jackson and his battalion of whiners. Do you think their heads might explode?

If so, would would it be possible to have someone televise the event on Pay-per-view? I'd pay top dollar for it.

Mr. Jackson can continue to believe that American blacks have the short end of the stick but if I were him, I'd get down on my knees and thank whatever I hold holy that my slower, dumber and less-warlike ancestors were captured and shipped off, so that 400 years later I could live in freedom in a place like the United States. A place where I could get paid good money to write nonsense and generally act like an ass and get taken somewhat seriously.

Jackson is the kind of liberal who desperately does NOT!! want to see any progress made in "race" (I don't believe in the concept of race) relations. Any kind of progress would destroy the twisted world that they have made for themselves of demon whites and "heroic" civil-rights crusaders like himself. Jackson would have no reason to exist if he couldn't agitate and race-bait. His brain can't get past the sixties. Since humans are very imperfect, he will always have something to complain about. His type of complaining was made irrelevant forty years ago.

Another 'race pimp'...with a vested interest in the war going on...with himself at the center of it all...the great hero...riding to the rescue...

He's like an arsonist-fireman wanting attention for being the hero...while never wanting to be exposed for the villian he truly is...

Light up a terrorist' life with "Cayalume"...and...they are dishwasher safe...

Wombat,
You're forgetting the minor s--tstorm a few years ago when TeRAYzuh said she was African-American. Which, by any reasonable definition of that term, she must be.

But it turns out that only certain Americans can decide whether they are or are not "African-Americans". White people who were actually BORN there cannot be.

Simple huh?

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