Black Man Murdered by neo-Nazi's in Cold Blood

In 2009, it is not uncommon to hear the mantra of "racism is gone" uttered as whites reminisce and reflect upon "those days, back then" and pat themselves on the back for having so benevolently and altruistically changed their ways and "stopped being racist". It's also not uncommon to hear African-Americans complement those truths so worth celebrating saying, "things haven't been racist since Dr. King died" and other such sagacious, thoughtful statements.

Unfortunately, anyone who feels that racism has been eradicated is either uneducated, blind, mentally retarted, or perhaps a combination of the three, because everyday life in America demonstrates to us that racism is as alive and well as it has ever been. Furthermore, one must understand that eradicating racism isn't about ensuring that people don't go around calling others "niggers" on account of their skin color and cultural affiliation. It's about restructuring the government, economy, and social attitudes of the United States which were all originally constructed and desgined to benefit white people the expense of other races, especially black people, and still unfairly benefit white people today.

The improvements and strides made since the Civil Rights movements are largely superficial and really don't have a lot of depth as far as efficaciously and effectively solving the problem of racism in the United States. We may have elected Barack Obama, but seeing as Barack Obama's campaign was funded by white Americans who sought to employ someone who would advance their white power agenda and was supported by a media that also advances this white power agenda and always depicts blacks as miscreants, social deviants, and social parasites, we cannot cite the election of a mixed-race President whose policies and approaches only serve to further advance this white supremacist power strucuture as evidence that the beast that is racism has been slayed.

Anyway, on a more superficial level blacks still have to worry about white Americans attacking them and murdering them on account of both their aesthetic and cultural qualities. In October of 2009, Anthony Rice was a victim of intentional vehicular homicide when neo-Nazi skinheads affiliated with the City Nights strip club tasered him and his brother, threw stones at him, and capped off their racist assault by hopping in a truck, driving after him, and brutally running him over.

Being a 98% African-American jurisdiction, East St. Louis wouldn't be the most likely of places to harbor a white-only strip club. City Nights defies that assumption. Further, considering that the city has legislation in the books barring "sexually-explicit businesses" from holding liquor licenses, it's a wonder how City Nights managed to defy two legal obstacles.

Anthony was out with his brother, Aubrey, celebrating the birthday of the latter when they were enticed by neon-signs flashing, "Beer" and "Hot Girls". They didn't observe any "White Only" signs and henceforth had no cognizance of the threat that loomed ahead:


"The Rice brothers were turned away at the door and taunted with racial comments by the manager at City Nights and club bouncers who attacked them with tasers." The son of Woodrow and Gail Allen, owners of the club, was a Nazi skinhead, featuring a tattoo on his neck, who then, Taser in hand, chased the brothers from the front of the club and proceeded to get inside of his truck and barbarically run Anthony Rice over.

East St. Louis mayor Alvin Parks Jr. did move to close the bar on the same night that the murder occured but would not definitively state that the murder was an act of racial prejudice. Its evident that his adminstration and his poor leadership permitted this travesty of law to take place at all. Obviously Mayor Parks did not enforce his law and did not thoroughly examine all "sexually-explicit" institutions to make their their operations were in accordance with legislation. Poor black leadership yet again.

The occurrence of this situation demonstrates that a black man can still be a victim of racial violence anywhere in the United States. Even in such a municipality where nearly 100% of the residents are black people, whites will still find a way to inflitrate and express their bitter animus through violent mediums. Blacks, guilty of nothing, demonstrating no hatred or hostility, and having never found themselves resorting to violence against whites to vent their frustrations, which are many, are still killed in cold blood, ran over, because of who they are. Two African-American males, having absolutely no clue as to what they were getting themselves into, got themselves into a whole lot of trouble although they transgressed against no one and did no injustice to anyone, and one of them paid the price with their life. That's the price of being black in America.

Sounds like the history of America.

The Significance of Fortifying the Educational System in Black Communities

The states of enervation witnessed in other facets of black society, including in areas of business, familial development, etc, are critically congruent with the state of enervation witnessed in education system. The education system in the black community has been renowned for its inefficacy and its inability to inculcate into the black child and adolescent the proper values and enlightenment essential to developing and sustaining an empowered community. This broken educational system that has been entrusted with the duty of edifying our youth with the proper knowledge essential to black empowerment has failed miserably, as witnessed with the low college enrollment rates, graduation rates, and graduate school admissions rates. A system unable to enrich the future generations will breed children bereft of a sense of collective belonging to an ethnic group and henceforth fosters the growth of adults who will possess no grasp of the significance of economic empowerment, intraracial exclusivity and consonance, and general understanding of the magnitude of the contemporary black plight and means of remedying this plight.

It is the unstated goal of those agents of the white supremacist power structure to assert that the cause for such common academic underperformance amongst blacks is attributable innate ineptitude. In 2005, the mean composite mathematic and critical reading score on the Scholastic Apititude Test for African-Americans was just 864, compared with 930 for Hispanics, 1068 for white Americans, and 1091 for Asian Americans. In context of both the historical de jure and de facto denial of education to African-Americans (which today exists in the ongoing denial of access to equal educational opportunities, witnessed in underdeveloped educational systems in black communities) the reason for black underperformance can be understood. While it is critical to identify the cause of such far-reaching predicaments, simple identification of the problem is insufficient and is not a means for excusing oneself from seeking a solution to the existing problem. The legacy of racism intrinsic to Euro-American culture has ensured the continuation of black underdevelopment and social retardation. Anyone who calls themself a devotee to the cause of black self-empowerment should have this quotation engraved upon their grey matter structures. Still, while the white power structure may stand as the culprit in the cause of black educational impoverishment the black community cannot expect the white power structure to, at least not single-handedly (and on its own initiative), eradicate this problem. One cannot expect the white to actively lobby on behalf of the socially atrophied black community because, in their eyes, it would be to undermine their hegemonic establishment. It is the duty of the black to mobilize and formulate a solution to this societal deficiency.

One of the first and foremost reasons for the inefficacy of the Western educational system (for all practical purposes we will, from this point forward, reference the educational system in the black community as the "Western educational system" since the philosophies, techinques, and information taught are all Western in perspective and only "black" in the sense that they are rendered inchoate for distribution in the black community) is its being "Western" and Eurocentric in perspective. The children of the black community are educated in a system established, operated, and influenced (in terms of development of text books, methods of academic administration, and educational resources) almost exclusively by white Americans---the same ethnic group largely responsible for the plight we are in today. Given the lack of regard historically expressed by such a culture it cannot be expected that such a system will have the best interest of the oppressed group at heart. It does not take strong reasoning to figure this. To effect change in the Western educational system of black America will require a concentrated effort on the part of black Americans to 1) utlize government to enact legislation that will support equal distribution of tax dollars to ALL public schools as opposed to the current racist, conservative system that allows wealthy white communities to retain their tax dollars and forces poor black communities to scrape for change to keep schools open, 2) petition schoolboards, textbook publishers, and those involved in the education system to jettison the current Eurocentric cirriculum taught in black communities and incorporate knowledge of black civlizations, languages, and contributions to society AND the instruction of their ideas, and 3) develop independent community-oriented programs to act as a secondary supplement to educational instruction (in the form of afterschool and daycare programs) AS WELL AS programs designed to free current instructors of indoctrination and edify these beacons of knowledge as to the proper and effective ways of educating young black students, encouraging them to have pride in their blackness and Africanness, and encouraging them to pledge devotion to the value of building and maintaining the black community.

The goal of the contemporary American educational system is to sustain white hegemonic control over the United States, the remainder of the Western world, and the remainder of the "third world". The effort of white Americans, particularly conservatives, to oppose "socializing" America is nothing more than an effort at sustaining racial control over black Americans, who they seek to prevent from obtaining any benefits from social programs whatsoever. As difficult and arduous a journey as it has been to enact healthcare reform for the better good of black people (and poorer Americans) it would be even more challenging to nationalize educational standards and equally allocate tax dollars to poorer black communities as well as wealthier white communities. The impoverishment witnessed in the black community has been attributed to the unjust denial of myriad rights---employment, suffrage, housing, economic establishment (such as the ability to buy/sell land and real estate), and education---and yet for blacks to empower themselves and their communities, this most critical area that requires drastic restructuring and reform cannot be improved because blacks, denizens of a society that has been collectively disadvantaged by an oppressive white society and henceforth unable to accrue wealth to create those critical tax dollars for black public schools, receive so little funding to support the proper and efficicent operation of those educational systems. A curcuitous pattern exists---a system that cannot train professionals to acquire wealth cannot put forth the tax dollars to establish or sustain a progressive community. A system that cannot train teachers and indoctrinate them with imperative values pertinent to those individuals that they teach will never inculcate the community with understanding and cultural strength. It is an ongoing cycle that MUST be broken.

Structural racism rendered the black community unable to see the value of educaton. The Western education system traditionally never afforded the proper opportunties to blacks and henceforth to bother pursuing those opportunities was seen as a lost cause. In 1930, an African-American with a Harvard degree had almost no better a chance at success than a black without a high school degree. Times have changed and so must the black collective attitude towards education. Blacks must now begin to understand that education is indeed valuable but we must not act as individualists and simply acquire college degrees and only to assimilate into the white world. Educated black professionals must use their educational skills to support and fortify the black community.

The conscious black must be a pragmatist. We must apply practical means towards solving our community problems. We must take tangible and corporeal means towards effecting change in our community. As members of a mostly democratic government we must voice our concerns, we must stand up, we must let our cries be heard to the powers that be. They must know that we will not stand for injustice and inequality anymore. It is no longer tolerable for blacks, at the end of 2009, to still be so far behind other races who seek to conquer us and determine our fate. We cannot expect others to help us! They never have. They never will. WE are the only ones who can bring about the change that will save our people and Africa.