Posted on 04/07/2003 6:20:46 AM PDT by jordan8
April 7 2003
The war in Iraq is illuminating a racial divide in America, a profound rift in thinking between blacks and whites. Different histories and different experiences are bringing many people to different conclusions.
Among black Americans, just 29 per cent support the war, while 78 per cent of white Americans do, according to a March 28 Gallup poll.
Many blacks see wrongs in the conflict that white Americans often cannot discern, African American scholars and analysts say.
For one thing, many black people say their history makes them especially sensitive to the spectacle of a dominant entity asserting its will over a weaker minority.
Then, too, the US policy of pre-emption - attacking Iraq without provocation - smacks of a kind of harassment with which many blacks say they are all too familiar.
Finally, there is US President George Bush himself, excoriated by many blacks as the victor in a contested election in which black votes reportedly went uncounted; as the former Texas governor who executed many black convicts; as an allegedly insensitive leader who used Martin Luther King's birthday as the time to express his opposition to affirmative action - an issue coincidentally being taken up by the US Supreme Court as fighting rages in Iraq.
"If anything," says University of Pennsylvania sociologist Elijah Anderson, "Bush puts forth an agenda seen by black people as antagonistic. That accounts for a huge amount of alienation in the black community. That makes so many blacks turned off by this war. These days, blacks have an especially critical eye on Washington."
Many blacks find themselves in a quandary - opposing a war in which a disproportionate number of those in the military are black. Though they are 12 per cent of the general population, blacks make up 21 per cent of the US military.
This has created a conflict for black families who want to support dear ones in the killing zone but cannot condone the war.
Black America is hardly a monolith, and those blacks who do support the war have no problem standing up for their beliefs in the rightness of the mission.
"I really do believe Saddam Hussein is a dangerous man," said Tracy Price-Thompson, 39, a retired Army lieutenant who lives in Fort Dix, New Jersey, with her army husband. She is the author of Black Coffee, a novel about blacks in the Army.
"I've heard black people say, 'This is not our war.' If you look at this as an American, then this is your war."
For some blacks, there's an additional complication in all this - what National Public Radio's Tavis Smiley calls the "tricky conversation" regarding Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, blacks who are among the Bush administration's most visible players in the war.
The polls demonstrate that, among black Americans, much anti-war sentiment is directed toward the President - and that the enmity is widely held.
"Bush is more of an immediate threat to me," says Quintel Harcum, a 21-year-old philosophy student at Lincoln University, one of America's oldest black universities, tucked into southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. "He's against affirmative action."
It is not lost on many blacks that the war is raging at the precise moment the US Supreme Court is contemplating the future of affirmative action.
"Nobody minds us fighting and dying," says William Spriggs, executive director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality in Washington. "But everyone is up in arms about our going to college." He was referring to those opposed to affirmative action at the University of Michigan, whose entrance policy is part of the Supreme Court case.
At a more basic level, many blacks still question the legitimacy of Mr Bush's presidency. Citing the reported disenfranchisement of numerous black voters in Florida during the 2000 election, Mr Anderson said the disputed vote "still sticks in the throat. It's caused huge African-American alienation toward Bush".
Beyond Mr Bush, the sight of American treasure being expended to fund a war rankles with people who see where the money could be better spent.
"We have war going on in our neighbourhoods," says Stephane Coney, 39, of Camden, Pennsylvania, founder of the National Stop the Violence Alliance, a grass-roots anti-violence group. "We have war going on in our schools."
Brandon Bigelow, a 20-year-old Lincoln University student, agrees. "What I'm against is the US saying it's taking care of all these countries when there are things to be fixed at home."
The US decision to attack Iraq pre-emptively, without proof that Saddam possesses weapons of mass destruction, reminds some black people of hostile police behaviour.
"It rings of the experience of cops' saying, 'I thought I saw a gun' to justify the shooting of an unarmed black suspect," says Mr Spriggs.
"You gotta give us more evidence than, 'I thought I saw a gun'."
I didn't expect any decent comments in this article. Nice.
This president has done more to reach out to blacks than any Republican since Lincoln, yet some still consider him "more of a threat" than Saddam Hussein?
Now try reversing the sentence: "Many whites see what's right in the conflict, which black Americans often cannot discern."
For one thing, many black people say their history makes them especially sensitive to the spectacle of a dominant entity asserting its will over a weaker minority.
Like Saddam gassing the Kurds?
Again with the misuse of the word "minority". Asians are about 5% of the US population -- but they are not a minority. Women are 51% of the US population -- but they are a minority. Now, entire foreign countries are "weaker minorities". Ummm, were the Confederate States of America an oppressed minority? Who decides these things?
Then, too, the US policy of pre-emption - attacking Iraq without provocation - smacks of a kind of harassment with which many blacks say they are all too familiar.
Yeah, this whole War on Terrorism is a lot like being arrested for Driving While Black. Uh huh.
When 90 - 95% vote the same way, I'd say that is pretty monolithic.
How exactly does affirmative action work at black universities? Does that mean a white guy can get a break?
What's wrong Quintel?
Can't make it on your own?
So9
I hope someone does a statistical analysis of Coalition soldiers killed and wounded in the fighting after this is all over, then we'll see who is "over-represented." I doubt it will support arguments of discrimination against minorities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.