Wayne Brown's series "In Miami Immigration" which ended in the Sunday Observer of August 21 was a masterpiece, reminiscent of C L R James and Claude McKay. The articles evoked topics concerning the USA on which Jamaicans should educate themselves. These include hostility to foreigners, the Neo-Nazi powers of the Patriot Act, racial profiling, and dangerous levels of white racism, now raging under the Bush II administration.

US racism runs deeper than the defunct South African apartheid. Grounded in greed and moulded by murders, it included genocide of Indian aborigines and inhumane treatment of African slaves.

Massacres and forced labour expanded the wealth that American society designed to be enjoyed by whites only. The American Constitution once designated blacks as three-fifths of a person at the same time that its hypocritical Declaration of Independence said "all men are created equal". The pledge of allegiance boasts "liberty and justice for all", but the Constitution abased blacks and women and it took a bloody Civil War to end slavery.

American racism is alive and well because each anti-racist move was countered by racist efforts to reverse any gains made. Jim Crow laws stymied the XIV Amendment, Brown v Board of Education was undermined by politicised education reforms, including the Bush II No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and affirmative action was dealt death blows by the Bakke and Banneker cases. American racism is deathly sinister because it is mixed with religiosity and tinted with paternalism. Christianity was virtually hijacked by racist Americans and made a tool of their shameful crimes against peoples of colour. Ku Klux Klan white supremacists use Onward Christian Soldiers as their theme song and battle cry. KKK, fascist and Neo-Nazi websites feature the Bible, the cross and other Christian symbols. WWW.KKK.COM boasts: "Our Entire Group of Sites are Family and Christian Friendly."
That website announced its objective as bringing hope to white, Christian America.

Links between Christianity and American racism become clear during any worthwhile Bible College or seminary studies. Church history exposes the "Christianisation" of American racism. In American Baptist history, black Baptist ministers formed their own fraternity after the white frat voted to exclude blacks, lest they tried to marry their white daughters. While campaigning, Bush II praised Bob Jones University, infamous for banning interracial dating among its students and faculty, based on Jones' biblical hermeneutics. Some were abolitionists, but the majority of white American preachers used Scripture to justify slavery and segregation.
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, addressed this in his famed "Letter From A Birmingham Jail". Some white televangelists like Pat Robertson dispense daily doses of bigotry. Only recently Robertson called for US assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez for criticising America. The late Rev W A Criswell once said on TV that he built separate churches for his black and white members.

America's Christianised racism is international and linked to the Vatican. Helen Ellerbe documented The Dark Side of Christian History, showing the Vatican's role in slavery, the Inquisition, and other crimes against humanity. The late Pope John Paul II apologised for some of those atrocities. The current Pope Benedict XVI, supporting the Bush II cooked-up terror war, seems less repentant. Benedict himself has a not-so-secret Nazi past. Historically, American perpetrators of racism were white males from England. Thus the Bush-Benedict-Blair triad is a terrible omen for mankind.

Mr Brown's immigration woes remind us that predominantly white countries will target black West Indians for racist harassment. Racial profiling was used against black Americans for centuries and was recently dubbed "driving while black". It is now raised to highest levels following the Bush II Neo-Nazi Patriot Act, and exported worldwide with the terror war ploy. Why would Hispanic agents in the US harass black visitors? It gives them relief from their own pains of bigotry suffered from whites. The Republican party is also turning Hispanics against blacks as they divide to conquer.
White American hatred of blacks stems from fear and envy.
African history, properly studied, shows the greatness of the black race (Hamish ethnicity). Whites know any "superior lifestyles" they flaunt they owe to blacks whose resources they took by force or trickery. White Americans once excluded blacks from literacy, politics, and other life experiences because they feared exposure of their false teachings of black inferiority. However, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Mae Jemison, Thurgood Marshall, Michael Jackson and other great Americans have debunked the black inferiority myth. But that figment of white imagination persists, especially in American education. The mess there has not changed much since Dr Carter Woodson penned The Mis-education of the Negro, in 1933. Dr Frances Cress Welsing in The Isis Papers superbly analysed the real reasons behind white racism.

The 9/11 events led to quantum leaps in the level of American racism but the surge started with the Reagan presidency and swelled with the Republican takeover of Congress by people like Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms.
Racism rose exponentially under Bush I and Bush II. The latter has encouraged white Christians to crawl from under their racist religious rocks. America is now dominated by racist ideologies of Republicans, KKKs, and right-wing Christian fundamentalists. Racism flows from the White House, to Congress, to statehouses, and to practically every nook and cranny of American life. Events of 9/11 gave American racists excuses to peddle their bigotry from sea to shining sea. America's land, sea and air ports now provide lessons in racism 101. Jamaicans should therefore expect to be harassed and manhandled the way Wayne Brown was.
White racists everywhere will fear Jamaicans. After all, Jamaican novelist Claude McKay led the Harlem Renaissance. Jamaican Marcus Garvey taught American blacks to get up and stand up for their rights. Bob Marley hit racism with music on nearly every continent, as he trod through life like a Buffalo Soldier. Jamaicans tackle racism peacefully as seen in McKay, Marcus and Marley. But the British learned through their entanglement with Nanny and the Maroons that Jamaicans knew how to defend themselves against racist invaders by any means necessary. Mr Brown displayed exemplary deportment during his Miami ordeal. He knew that despite its racist agenda, America still provides ways to fight racism. Brown will talk to his attorney and take steps necessary to educate his Hispanic harasser and others who violated him. But neither Brown nor any other Jamaican should refrain from coming to America. The reasons why Jamaicans, Haitians, Africans, and other people of colour should be in America are numerous but the main one may be summarised in the words of Prophet Bob Marley: "I and I build the cabin; I and I plant the corn. Didn't my people before me slave for this country? Now you look me with a scorn, While you eat up all my corn."

Rev Mervin Stoddart is a freelance writer out of Florida.
INMerv@hotmail.com

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