Senegal Is A Sign Of Progress. It Should Be Portrayed As So

This weekend, democratic elections take place in Senegal. The incumbent, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade, is expected to win a second term in office. Not an unusual thing in Africa, owing to the fact that most nations are dictatorships.

But that is one of two factors which set Senegal apart from the rest of the continent. This is democracy. And a strong one. In 2000, elections passed off peacefully, and Mr. Wade won fairly after a good campaign. The second factor concerns religion. To many under the gaze of the Western media, 'Muslim' translates as 'undemocratic'. Many newspapers here in Britain (mentioning no names, Daily Mail) would like to have us believe that no nation where a large majority of the population was Muslim could possibly be a dictatorship. But in this respect also, Senegal is doing wonders. It is a nation that is proving Islam is compatible with democracy. (With respect to physically voting, Senegal is ahead of us here in Great Britain, as they trial a new electronic voting method this weekend.)

I'm a bit annoyed that there is not much coverage of these elections in the West. Granted, Senegal is not a major country when it comes to global politics, but it would be good to see the same newspapers that constantly report all the bad things in Iran, reporting some fair democratic elections in the heart of Africa. This election could be as exiting as the next election in the United States. As I stated earlier, the incumbent and octogenarian Abdoulaye Wade is expected to win a fresh term, but he is running against 14 other candidates in the first round of voting. With so many candidates, anything could happen.

Media coverage of the incumbents campaign has focused predominantly on rising unemployment, which has resulted in thousands of young men fleeing to Europe in search of well-paid work. Furthermore, Wade's campaign has made a lot of his attempts to improve the nation's transport infrastructure. He has promised a new airport and better sea links for the country, as well as commencing with building new highways for Senegal.

But, like most countries, Senegal has its fair share of terrorism.

The region of Casamance has seen more and more violence in recent months, as the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has stepped up attacks on innocent civilians. As he came to power in 2000, President Wade promised to end the insurgency in hist first 100 days. Seven years later, the violence continues. The MFDC is one of Africa's oldest rebel groups, and was unlikely to be split in just 100 days. After so many years under the rule of Wade, nothing had changed. Abdoulaye Wade has made little mention of the insurgency in his campaign for a second term.

But Senegalese politics aside, it important to look at the broader perspective. Democracy is a mainstay of Senegal. Other Muslim nations should look to it as an example of forward-thinking. Though it is not a financially rich country, it has placed its faith in democracy and has been rewarded with good ties to the United States, the United Kingdom, France &c. and continues to develop.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

Black History Is US History

As Black History Month draws to a close, I have reproduced the following article I originally read on one of my favourite blogs, Booker Rising (http://bookerrising.blogspot.com/). It raises interesting, thought-provoking points.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Tracy Mack, a black copy editor for the Chicago Tribune, on retiring Black History Month: "It has been said before, but it bears repeating: Black history is American history. The same could be said for all of this country's ethnic groups. These histories have intertwined to make America unique, and they deserve equal respect. To reduce these groups' contributions to just one month of stories about 'trailblazers' is ludicrous. As grateful as I am to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Harriet Tubman, their stories have become obligatory sagas of Black History Month. Unlike many of the blacks in recent years who have called for an end to Black History Month, I am not a mouthpiece for conservative Republicans. And although actor Morgan Freeman has been quoted as saying that he, too, believes the month should end, I disagree with his suggestion that racism will end if we stop talking about race."

Ms. Mack continues her commentary: "Most depressing is that the majority of American students are woefully deficient in the knowledge of their history, education assessment exams have shown. In 2002, only 57 percent of 4th graders knew that differences over slavery in the North and South were one of the primary causes of the Civil War, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. If the goal is for Americans to have a lasting understanding of blacks' contributions to this great country, then neither Black History Month nor the current school curriculum seems to be working. It's time for a change. I don't pretend to know the complexities of setting school curricula. But I do know that black history has to be part of a larger, more thorough approach to history. If left on its own, black history might not seem important to some, and therefore, students might not enroll in the program.....At first I thought my idea to end Black History Month was unique. Carter G. Woodson had the wrong idea when he started Negro History Week in 1926, I thought. But I discovered that Woodson never intended for the week, which was renamed and turned into a monthlong celebration in 1976, to be a permanent fixture. He thought black history should be included in American history and that a month is not enough time to learn one group's significant contributions."My response: It is not an either/or situation.

Why not both?

Big Money Bonuses Don't Benifit Society -- At The Moment

The bonuses handed out to corporate chiefs in the City made the headlines again this week. The amount of money some of them earn is truly staggering, and socialist MP Peter Hain is right in saying that two thirds of them should be donated to charity.

City bosses live more comfortably than most of us. I do not dispute that the vast majority of them have worked exceedingly hard to get to where they are today, and to earn the level of pay that they do. But large corporations have a social and moral responsibility to benefit the community as a whole. At the moment, the focus seems to be on making the rich, richer. They argue that the Government benefits from such large payouts via tax. This is not disputable, but what happens to the tax? Where does that money go? No one can really say for sure.

Large companies should give these bonuses to charity. They should not have to be forced into doing so. I would ideally prefer it to happen without regulation. Corporate responsibility does not seem like a very big theme in the City at the moment.

Peter Hain is only speaking out against such a gross injustice as the race for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party intensifies. But I do not mind about that. As long as corporate fat cats are in the news and are shown up for being the greedy people they are, I do not mind.

Executives now earn 175 times more than what the standard employee earns. Steeling from the rich and giving to the poor is second choice behind executives freely giving away their bonuses voluntarily, but I would happily settle for that.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

The Genocide Men Walk Free

Thirteen years after hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered, the Rwandan genocide is back in the news.

Rwanda releases 8,000 genocide prisoners, shouts Reuters. Similar headlines occur in the Los Angeles Times, The Australian, JURIST and on the BBC website. Rwanda’s wounds are still deep. 800,000 Tutsis were killed. Like September 11, it is the sort of event that will stay with the country long after my generation has died.

The prisons in Rwanda are overflowing. Some of the inmates have been convicted of crimes, while others are awaiting trial. Those released are, according to Rwanda’s Chief Prosecutor, are not the key masterminds of the genocide. It is important to understand that many of the men who killed thousands of Tutsis did so through fear; fear of being killed themselves by the Hutu extremists. Yet the fact remains that they did kill a great many human beings.

I guess it all boils down to two humane qualities: forgiveness and remorse. The Tutsis can only begin to consider forgiveness once the Hutus show some remorse. While the world is still in shock about what happened, no big, bold gesture of sorrow has been made. Tutsi men, women and child who somehow escaped being killed by their fellow Hutu villagers, their former neighbours, their old colleagues, -- they have to live out the rest of their lives in the knowledge that most (if not all) of their relatives were killed by people who intended to kill them as well.

Forgiveness is a long way away at the present time as the Tutsis still live in fear. Hundreds of the 60,000 genocide suspects who have already been released have been re-arrested for trying to reignite the slaughter or trying to destroy evidence linking them to the genocide. Pressure groups claim many of the people released still harbour a genocide ideology. This is probably true. The way I imagine it, once you have killed one person, you feel guilt. As you go one to kill more and more human beings, this guilt cannot be multiplied because you already harbour evil in your soul. Evil is already a part of you and has already consumed you. You are no longer human. The ideology is not only part of your mind, but also part of your existence. As the guilt cannot multiply, the horror can. To kill one person is inhumane. But to kill more is utterly inhumane, regardless of what transcendentalist theory says.

Angela Winters, a black moderate blogger, points out the obvious underlying fact: “If there is any excuse to keep someone in prison it is participation in the killing of over 800, 000 people.” Those who survived against all the odds still need our help. Thirteen years after they watched their loved ones perish at the hands of savages, they still need our help. We can begin by remembering.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Poverty Is A Poor Excuse For Violence

Poverty in Great Britain is not the same as poverty on a global scale. Relative poverty is not that bad: houses and flats in Peckham, Clapham, and South London, though not luxurious, are habitable. Regeneration is needed in these areas, but only because of the wealth of the surrounding areas. These areas are made to stand out because of the prosperity of the areas around them.

Turning to crime or gang/gun violence is the easy option for the youth who grow up these deprived areas. What is needed is to make the youth of these areas see that there are other options, and that turning to criminal activities (though the easiest option) is not the most sensible choice. Lashing out at the world because "my Dad left my Mum" or because "I never knew my Dad" is simply not acceptable. The conventional viewpoint maintains that a breakdown in the family structure results in the child becoming violent. This is not necessarily so!

July, 1981. Merseyside is gripped by fear as hundreds of black youths riot in Toxteth. For nine days, they burn down shops, attack innocent passers-by and fight with the police. More than 1,000 officers are injured as they battled against petrol bombs and paving stones.

In 1981, Toxteth was the most poverty-ridden area of Liverpool. It still is. It also happens to be 'the Black area' of Liverpool. Although it is still a rundown area, a lot has changed since the riots of 1981. The changes concern education. Educational initiatives have sprung up all over Liverpool, including the regeneration of Liverpool Community College, the creation of Toxteth TV, and more coloured students than ever before attending Liverpool John Moores University. Education is the key. Education is not impossible in poverty-scarred areas. It does not cost anything to read a book.

(It is perhaps necessary to address the notion of the ghetto at this point. There was in 1981, as there still is now, a desire to see these areas turned into fully-blown ghettos, where the gang leaders have the final say on issues of justice, what is right and wrong &c. in an area which is no longer policed by the authorities.)

What is described above is the hard option. After 1981, many of Toxteth's youth turned their back on violence for equality. They turned their back on the easy option of self-pitying drug dealing and gun crime. Toxteth is an example which should be learned from by those in Peckham and Clapham.

Hip hop needs to be looked at objectively. It is true that most rappers are rags-to-riches stories through this black artform, but their childhoods really were in ghettos. The inner city areas of Nottingham, Toxteth in Liverpool, Peckham in London -- these areas are not as bad as Compton, CA., or South Central Los Angeles, CA. We should be thankful Britain is not that bad. Rap has good qualities. It encourages black empowerment. My advice would be to take the energy from hip hop but shed the violence; use the energy constructively to assert oneself academically, and escape those who are less well educated -- escape those who are the violent ones.

Some take hip hop literally. This is illustrated by all the recent shootings in Peckham. The media suspects links to gang culture. They are probably right. But if Booker T. Washington can go from being born a slave to being one of Americas foremost black representatives in an era of strong white assertion, why can not the Peckham gang members go get a proper education, a decent job and a good family life in what is an era of racial equality relative to Booker T. Washington's day?

I'm not saying every Black Briton should adopt Booker T. Washington's conservative views; I am saying every Black Briton should do like he did so they can better assert liberal pro-black viewpoints and make a difference to the wider community (as well as make the community a richer one), rather than just going around killing each other in violence shrouded behind a veil of poverty.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

The Scramble For News Is Getting Easier

I went onto Google this morning and decided to make a personalised home page. I created two tabs: one called news, the other called sport.

On the news tab, I tried to put as wider ranging content as I possibly could, in terms of covering as much of the planet as possible. It wasn't hard.

On this blog, three elements to world news are easily accessible down the left hand side: the purely Western viewpoint is supplied by the Washington Post; the BBC gives the moderate, impartial, Western stance; and Al Jazeera supplies the experienced coverage of the Middle East / Arabic world so lacking in Western news coverage.

Being "in the know" has always been a primal desire of Man. Back in the dawn of civilisation, Man did not need to know on a day-to-day basis what was going on, other than what immediately effected his dwelling and his source of food.

By the start of the last century, the newspaper (certainly in Great Britain and the United States) was king when it came to supplying news to the people. Since then, the mastheads of seemingly well established publications (the New York Herald, the Morning Herald &c.) have disappeared from newsstands, never to be seen again.

Television news soon came in, not long after radio broadcasts (from the Home Service here in Britain) meant citizens no longer had to wait for the next days paper to find out about world affairs. News reels meant citizens could visually comprehend the news. It became more real. Television news could soon be watched in the comfort of the living room, and at set times: 12:00, 18:00 and either 21:00 or 22:00.

But people still had to wait. The development of multi-channel television brought with it twenty-four hour news, whenever people wanted it. Not only was news now on-demand, but it was global. Fox News -- in the United Kingdom! BBC News 24 -- wherever you may be! Al Jazeera -- outside the Muslim sphere! And recently, Russia Today -- in English!

But the news was still mediated. The controller still decided what we saw and what we heard about. And to a certain extent, this still exists with the Internet, but to a lesser extent. The newspapers have gone 'digital'. They had to, or cease to exist. The editor is still in control, but the consumer has a choice of news sources like never before. A choice which can never matched by television. A choice which finally balances out the regulation of news sources.

This choice is compounded by what I am doing now. People can comment and have their say on topical issues. The comment page of the [London] Times still has a certain aura, a certain dignified respect, but now the ordinary citizen can write on his or her blog, can e-mail the websites and can text the twenty-four hour news channels.

Exactly how useful some of the content on the Internet is, is debatable. Mindless ranting on one blog about the turmoil in the Middle East is far less useful than the letter written to the editor of the Daily Telegraph by an aid worker who has spent 25 years in the Gaza Strip. But the ranting blog is still valuable; at least that person is actively thinking about current affairs issues and taking an interest.

There are more and more websites which let you choose your own content. The content you can choose usually repeats itself from site to site: The Washington Post, The NY Times, The BBC, Sky News, The Sydney Morning Herald, USA Today, La Gazetta Dello Sport, &c. &c. But this is good. It is easy for citizens to grow accustomed to a publication which originated on the other side of the world. I, for example, can now scan every major news publication in the world in seconds. I have greater freedom in what I read, and when.

And what also makes me smile is the fact that the full impact of the Internet is still yet to be felt. The Internet is a massive tool for democracy. The Internet makes segregated dictatorships unworkable in the twenty-first century. The Internet brings freedom to the most closed-off countries in the world.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Thin Is In: Why?!

This is Ana Carolina Reston. She was a Brazilian model, killed by a diet of apples and tomatoes. She weighed just 40kg (88lbs) when she died. More and more young girls will die unless they realise beauty does not come from having all your ribs on show.

As London Fashion Week roars on, so does the debate about being 'size zero'. The organisers of the event made the decision not to bad models under a certain size. From the television pictures of the event, a lot of the models appear to be of the slimmest possible nature. Quite why being that thin is so desirable to young girls is beyond me. Men do not lust for women of that size.

Now the media focus has shifted on to websites which promote anorexia, or 'thinspiration', as they call it. I just had a quick search on google for a few such sites as research for this post, and they do not seem shy in promoting anorexia as a way of attaining a 'desirable' figure. Some of the images are shocking. What devastates me the most, though, is why.

Why do people want to be this thin? Why do people want to be able to count their ribs when they breath in? Why is it desirable to be a 'size zero'? As someone who is naturally thin, I am even more baffled than the average person. For 19 years I have had to battle against being thin. I can do nothing to gain weight and I hate being this thin. I hate being able to see my ribs. I'm 19 and I can still count them clearly. The idea that someone could be reading this post and wishing they were as thin as I am is completely beyond me.

For me, being this thin is a curse -- a horrible horrible curse. If you are fat (and by that I mean 16/17 stones), then people around you are conscious that you probably do not like being that size. They refrain from making jokes around you, and they refrain from criticizing your eating habits. It is different for us thin people. Friends, co-workers and family are not so aware that you probably do not like being thin. They do not contain their comments. I am sick to death of one certain person telling me a few dumplings in a hot pot would 'see me right'. Why should I put up with this when the fat boy does not have to listen to 'a few slim fasts wouldn't do you any harm'?

The organisers of London Fashion Week are using models who are 'size zero'. This is both dangerous and wrong. Miss England was on the news channels today saying she was happy with being the size she was and that being a 'size zero' did not appeal to her. Women need to be convinced that beauty comes from within and being who you really are. It certainly does not come from having a non-existent waste. Being ultra-thin is not sexy and it is not beautiful.

Yours, wherever you may be,

Daniel C. Wright

Global Politics With A Nuclear Twist

The Americans have two warships in the Persian Gulf.

An Iranian website close to the Revolutionary Guard says Iran has drones capable of reaching American warships in the Persian Gulf.

The European Union is downbeat about how much enriched uranium Iran now has. They say Iran probably has enough to make a nuclear bomb.

The European Union also says economic sanctions alone will not resolve what is now a tense stand-off.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran would defend itself against any US attack on its nuclear facilities.

George W. Bush insists Iran is not solely concerned with the development of nuclear power, but is trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

The stand-off is tense. Every politician of every Western nation involved is insisting diplomacy will always come before any military action, and military action is, and should always be, a last resort. But over the past few days, everything which has been said, done, and reported, is strikingly similar to the build-up to the war in Iraq. The United States is being stubborn in constantly asserting that a rogue nation under a fearsome dictator is either trying to make, or already has possession of, a nuclear weapon. The rogue nation refutes such a claim, but does not allow the Western world (either in the form of the UN or the United States) unlimited access to its 'nuclear' facilities.

Once again the United Nations seems on the sidelines, watching on, powerless to influence the things that really matter. The report of Hans Blix prior to the war in Iraq was first questioned by Donald Rumsfeld, before it was just ignored. Now, the United Nations has imposed sanctions on the rogue state, but now even the EU says economic sanctions may not be enough.

I think a lot of it comes down to who is scared, and who is scared the most. All the politicians talk tough. That does not help. Yesterday the BBC reported that Iran did not fear a US attack. That might be what Iranian officials say, but I would bet normal Iranian people have fears of a US invasion. They would not be human if they did not fear an American attack. Just across the border Iranians have seen the consequences of an American lead invasion.

Like their Iranian counterparts, the American people are scared. Nuclear bombs in the possession of a nation that is not allies with the White House scares the American people. Their fear is often expressed as an offensive gesture: Vietnam; Afghanistan; Iraq; and now Iran?

Maybe. At the same stage before the Iraq war, everybody knew the US was going to invade Saddam's country, regardless of whatever 'caution talk' was coming out of the Pentagon. I'm not so sure the United States is as gun happy as it was then for a number of reasons. Since then, one hopes that they will have learnt that overthrowing the country's leadership is only part of the problem. Rebuilding the country is far harder.

An American presence In Iraq will probably be necessary until at least 2010. More and more suicide bombings, car bombings and random shootings are occurring In Baghdad every day. Not a day goes by without innocent civilians dying at the hands of the insurgency. Killings happen so often, most news networks do not bother giving them more than a few seconds of coverage.

What is more of an issue, though, is troop numbers. The United States still has a big presence in Afghanistan. The Americans are still needed there. In January, George W. Bush announced a sharp increase in troop numbers in Iraq (because of the worsening violence). The United States of America is a big country, but it does not have an endless supply of soldiers. Thousands have died in Iraq. Thousands have died in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands still remain. Whisper this next statement quietly: they might need the draft.

Not since the Vietnam War has the draft been popular. Calling up ordinary civilians for compulsory military service is a crime against humanity. Forcing citizens to fight against their will is wrong.

How scared are the American public? How much more scared can they get? Can the White House scare them enough as so they support the reintroduction of the draft? Roughly two years ago now, one senator introduced a Bill into the US Senate which would have brought back the draft. 99 Senators, including the gentleman who introduced it, voted the Bill down. (One of the Senators was ill on the day of the vote.) This was done solely to convince Americans that bringing back the draft was not an option.

But two years is a long time. The United States has seen a lot of troops killed in Iraq since that vote. They have had to send more to troops. They have seen President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rise to power in Iran. To invade Iran, I think the White House would need to scare the American public into thinking the draft was necessary to protect American values. Undoubtedly, the region would be a safer place with a democratic regime in charge of Iran, but as we have witnessed in Iraq, a swift change is impossible. Democracy is not instantaneous, as it was sold to the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Tell me war is not going to happen, and I will call you a liar.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

Road Charging: The Way Forward

Since Saturday, all I have heard is what a bad idea road charging is. There seems to be no desire for change among the British people. Over one million people have signed the official petition on the number ten website. I got a link from a friend this morning urging me to put my name on it. I am yet to do so, and for very good reason.

Charging people for the use of roads would replace both road tax and penalty. I can only assume many people have signed the various petitions are ignorant of such a fact.

Charges start from just 2p a mile on little used roads used outside of rush hour. If anything, this is too low. The maximum cost is £1.34 a mile for the busiest roads during rush hour. I believe that is fair enough. I do not see any problem with pricing drivers off of the roads. If people used their cars less, an increase in the standard of public transport would be forced to occur. There are people who drive simply because they can. This is wrong. Anybody who drives somewhere when they could easily walk or get the bus or catch the train is wasting energy, polluting the atmosphere for no good reason and making the roads busier than they need to be.

Hopefully, the golden age of the automobile is coming to an end. The car is not a renewable mode of transport. It cannot continue to dominate the way in which we move for much longer. Sooner or later it will be the mode of transport for the minority -- hopefully sooner, rather than later.

As stated in the Independent this morning, it is vital for environmental reasons that people get out of their cars and off of the roads. It is time to make a choice: economic wealth or the environment. To date, it seems like only the Independent newspaper has really got a grasp of this issue. I know that the Daily Mirror (for what it is worth) has been running its own petition. Douglas Alexander, Tony Blair and the rest of the Labour cabinet need to stand together on this issue. By all means, they should listen to the general public on this issue. This is a decision that will effect 98% of the population. But what is need is a clear set of facts and a healthy debate on the issue, both in public and in Parliament. And by that, I mean an educated debate, whereby people back up their arguments with evidence, do not just go along with the popular view and do not just shout out irrational argument to support their current polluting habits.

People have driven for a long long time, but we are better positioned than we have ever been to manage, succeed and live happily without the automobile. We are nearing the point of no return where saving the environment is concerned. That is what was said in Paris not that long ago. And yet the British public seems most unwilling to cut congestion on the roads by 40%. Only 4% of cars would disappear from the roads within the first year. But a steady increase in the amount drivers are charged above the rate of inflation each year would gradually decrease the number of cars on our roads. Any economic cost of this should be balanced against the benefits to the environment.

Here follows the BBC's At A Glance guide to road charging. Perhaps some people should base their argument upon this impartial guide, rather than what they have heard from their friends/mates/co-workers, or what they have read in their (extremely biased) newspapers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4610877.stm

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Unionisation Means Philanthropy In Action

It is the democratic right of every human being to speak and be heard. But in a room that is too bog, where the acoustics are not very good, it is easy for one voice to get drowned out among all the other voices, struggling to be heard by one set of ears. If no one can hear that one voice, then that person suffers. Voices must speak in unison to be listened to.

The people whose ears should be burning to listen to these voices are a long way away. The people who should be listening are in the same room, but they are a great distance away. Let us call one of them Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam can see in the distance a set of lips moving. The lips are trying to communicate something. He turns away. That is not what he wants to see. If he turns away, he cannot see the lips. Uncle Sam glances back. Now there are several lips, all moving in sync. He turns away again. That is not what he wants to see.

In another room, the same thing is happening. The acoustics are not so bad in this room, but the lips still need to move in unison to communicate their message effectively. People who should be listening still turn away. But there is a key difference between the two rooms.

In one of the rooms, a novelty set of ear muffs appear. They are gigantic furry ones. Someone puts them on, and all the noise of the room is made silent:

"Wal-Mart said it would close a Canadian store where about 190 workers were close to winning the first-ever union contract with the retail giant after the company failed to reach a labor agreement with the employees, who are represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers. A Wal-Mart spokesman said union demands would have made it impossible for the store to sustain its business. Union leaders promised to fight the closing. The store in Jonquiere, Quebec, became the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America in September when the bargaining unit was certified by provincial labor officials. The closest a U.S. union has ever come to winning a battle with Wal-Mart was in 2000, at a store in Texas, where 11 workers -- all in the meatpacking department -- voted to join and be represented by the UFCW. That effort failed when Wal-Mart eliminated meatcutter jobs company-wide, and moved away from in-store meatcutting to stocking only pre-wrapped meat."

In the smaller of the two rooms, no comical ear muffs appear. Instead, the people who should be doing the listening turn around. All the lips are moving in sweet sweet harmony. The people thhis time are happy to face the music:

"Retail union Usdaw has made a £15,000 donation to the Farepak Response Fund after discovering members’ children were facing a bleak Christmas after the collapse of the food hamper company. Union leaders were incensed that shopworkers across the UK has lost thousands of pounds they couldn’t afford after Farepak went into administration and some would have no money to make sure their children had food on the table let alone presents. “Usdaw represents some of the lowest paid workers in the UK and this donation will go some way to making sure that people who did the sensible thing by not getting into debt and planning for Christmas will at least be able to afford a turkey to put on the table,” says Usdaw General Secretary John Hannett. “I was particularly touched when I found out that one of our members had donated her commission as a Farepak agent to the Response Fund organised by the Family Fund and Usdaw decided it needed to put its hand in its pocket and help out too.""

Individual noise is better than silence. Unified noise is better than individual noise. The socialist principle stands true in any room, regardless of size or acoustic quality: by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

The Race For The White House

One of these two people will become the 44th President of the United States of America. Both are Democrats. One is a women, and the other is an African-American. One of them will be the next President. They are two very contrasting characters, both of whom would do the United States a great deal of good.

.

Barack Obama, as he indicated in his speech in Springfield, IL, Saturday, does not have much experience of Washington. To me, that is not much of a concern. Many former Presidents of the United States had little experience of Washington prior to entering the Oval Office.

.

Nevertheless, Hilary Clinton's eight years as the First Lady to the 42nd President Bill Clinton are still an important asset. No previous candidate has ever had such first-hand experience of what it takes to be the Commander in Chief of the West's only superpower, as well as manage the world's biggest economy.

.

Both candidates appeal to me. I like what I have so far seen of both Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. I would certainly vote for one of them in the Democrat primaries. It would depend on policy. Whomever gets the Democrat nomination will have a lot of work to do. Something the United States seriously needs is the next President to be a Democrat. The US needs a Democrat to bring stability to the country (ergo the rest of the world) and to sort out the Republican quagmire which will be left by the outgoing President, George W. Bush.

.

It is not 'American' to criticise the President. But I am not American. I am an English socialist who has seen the Special Relationship manipulated by the current President. I have watched as George W. Bush has forced our Prime Minister to stand side by side with him on issues which have done the United Kingdom and the Labour Party no favours whatsoever. The Republican Party of the 1980's allied itself with the Iron Lady. It took Bill Clinton and the New Democrats to bring stability to the United States and prosperity to areas neglected by Reagan. Tony Blair has spent his time in office trying to help the working classes get back on their feet after Thatcher's Tories knocked them down and kicked them to keep them down.

.

The same tasks await either Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton. Because George Walker Bush is a disgrace to the United States of America, the Constitution of the United States of America and, most importantly, he is a disgrace to the people of the United States of America.

.

http://www.barackobama.com

http://www.hillaryclinton.com

.

Yours, wherever you may be,

Daniel C. Wright

What's In A Name?

I'm thinking about changing my name. Not drastically, but just moving a few dots. Here's my name as it appears at the moment:

Daniel C. Wright.

I have been thinking for the last few days whether or not to change it to:

D. Charles Wright.

A great many inspirational, famous, people have had initials in their names. One of my heroes is Booker T. Washington, the middle initial standing for Taliaferro. William Edward Berghart Du Bois had so many names he wrote under W.E.B. Du Bois. Sadly I do not have as many names as Du Bois to make that work. Hunter S. Thompson went for the central initial, whereas Malcolm X went for something completely different for well-publicised reasons concerning religion and slavery (if you do not know what I mean, read his autobiography).

The only reason I have thought about my name is purely to make it look better on the page. All I'm trying to do is maximize the aesthetic quality of the letter on the page. Any suggestions / comments / criticisms are more than welcome.

Yours, wherever you may be,

Paid To Eat: We Used To Be! And We Still Should Be!

When you are a student, thirty minutes is a long time with pay.

When I first started my Sunday job, workers commenced work at 10:30 and finished at 17:00. On our time sheets we were paid for 6.5 hours. Not long after I began, the hours changed. Workers commenced work at 10:00 and finished (as before) at 17:00. Since then, I and many other workers have put 7 hours on our time sheets.

All was well until this morning.

Today was the first day for a new member of staff, and that meant filling in his contract with the number of contracted hours for each week. There, the conflict began.

Duty manager asks me how many hours we are paid for. 7. A definite reply. Not an ounce of doubt in my mind. Duty Manager questions it. A paid lunch? Why are you bothered, I think, you're salary: this doesn't effect how much you get paid. But I keep that to myself. I try my best to explain that workers in the week get two fifteen minute breaks and a paid thirty minute lunch break. Working hours on a Sunday are shorter, due to the Sunday Trading Act, and as a consequence of which we do not get two fifteen minute breaks, but we still get a paid lunch.

(Am I sure it is the lunch that is paid on the other six days of the week, and not the two fifteen minute breaks? Yes: I was told by a former manager (who has since been promoted) that if I worked through one (or both) of my fifteen minute breaks, then I should add the time on to my time sheet to get paid for it.)

Today, the paid lunch vanished.

After a call to 'Head Office' (quite who is at 'Head Office' on a Sunday is beyond me), the Duty Manager kindly asked all staff to alter their hours from 7 to 6.5. To not get paid for that thirty minutes means a lot. Members of staff who have worked there longer than I were complaining that the rate of pay was too low anyway. This is something I disagree with anyway, although, of course, in capitalist Britain I wouldn't begrudge a pay rise. I personally have no quarrel with the current rate of pay. Perhaps this is because I am aware of life prior to 1997. Probably.

It will be interesting to see what materialises in the coming days. I think complaints will be made to the Store Manager, who's weekend it was not to work, hence the Duty Manager being in charge. If they are not, I shall be making them. As long as I have worked there, there has always been a paid lunch on Sundays. If anyone in the world thought (or knew) that to be wrong, it would be the former manager who was there when I started -- who has since been promoted. She was a great manager when it came getting things done and getting them done right. Her effort every day was faultless. One thing I also remember was her notoriety for checking the time sheet at the end of the week. Her primary reason for doing so was to make sure all staff were getting exactly what they deserved and nothing less. If, for instance, she saw worker x on Wednesday work all afternoon without a break, and worker x had only put the usual amount of hours down, she would happily increase it, for the good of the worker.

I am sue the Duty Manager in charge today is wrong. Whomever he spoke to at 'Head Office' is wrong. We do not get a paid lunch by law, but we do by company policy. Such reckless behaviour makes unionism more and more justified.

Where I work, workers rights have always been one step above the law. We do not, for example, get paid the minimum wage; we get paid a little bit more than that. Although the law states that it is only every 8 hours a labourer is entitled to a thirty minute break, I would argue that company policy should be more generous than that. The job I do is more physically demanding than an ordinary office job. Being on your feet all day and often having to help move heavy objects can be very hard. The company should remember this.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Liverpool Lime Street, The British Transport Police And I

***The following incident occurred on Monday, January 22, 2007. The discrimination shown in the forthcoming story should not be thought of as being limited to the British Transport Police, for some of us have to fight prejudices and preconceptions every single day, from people who belong to no particular organisation and people whom we have never met.***

I boarded the stopper service at Warrington Central. Although I dislike the fact it takes twice as long as the two express trains that go through Warrington Central, it does have it's pleasures. It is seldom busy. It doesn't go as fast, so you can take in more of the beautiful countryside, especially the open field just before and just after Widnes. I sat towards the front of the train. For most of the journey I was sat in the front compartment. Alone. Peacefully watching the, birds, the fields, the trees, the stations go by.

A slight jerk to the right. A slight jerk to the left. Up the embankment the train struggled. Up towards Allerton Junction, to join the main line into Liverpool Lime Street. This is a Northern Rail service, and announcements are rare. But so are new stations.

"The next stop is Liverpool South Parkway. Liverpool South Parkway the next station stop." Quite a few people got up to alight at this point. I was sat facing down the train. I stared at those waiting for the doors to open. They stared back. I knew what they were thinking. Still, perhaps I might get off there one day. The 86 bus stops there. It might be quicker than going into Lime Street, and then getting on in town.

But not today. The journey was too pleasant. Too peaceful.

As always on nice journeys into Liverpool, I rued the moment the train hit the tunnels. Then there was nothing outside. Just the reflection of neon lights from the train, and the occasional flash of neon lighting from another train. On the express trains, people get ready to leave the train as soon as the dark of the tunnels arrive. On Northern Rail services, no one stands up until the last second, and then everyone stands up almost as soon as the first person has.

Platform six. Damn, why not platform eight? Now it's through the ticket barrier. Well, it's not the ticket barrier I mind, it's the idiot in front of me who can't find his ticket. I'm always stuck behind him! Surprise! Not today, and it's not a he, and she's not that bad. A business women, I think. Everyone from platform six has walked around together and we're all through the ticket barrier together.

And then the dog comes. An unusual sight on the marble floors of a busy train station. He seems keen to welcome us. Hang on, he's dragging a police officer along. Tut. Lucky dog! Getting to stuff around that nice lady. Why's he coming to me? Like my suitcase do you, buddy? Get any closer and you won't be so fond of my size 10.

That police officer is saying something. I'll take a headphone out and look at him. I still can't hear him. Bloody tannoy! Too loud, I'll have to take the other one out as well then.

"Have you taken any class A, B, or C drugs in the last forty-eight hours, sir?" What? Me, drugs? Is this guy having a laugh. I manage to fumble a 'no'. Now I'm a bit scared. my answer isn't very convincing, but that doesn't matter because it's the truth. I haven't done any drugs in the last nineteen years, never mind the last two days.

Actually, that's a lie.

I had to have some paracetamol about a month ago, for a headache, I think. But that's not illegal. At least, it wasn't a month ago.

It turns out that dog is trained to smell the scent of illegal drugs. Hmmm, ok. Well now I am shaking. "Can you just step this way please, sir." I'm trying so so hard to act cool, but inside I'm in a million pieces. I know what's coming: a thorough search. In a moment of madness, I thrust my suitcase at him. "Yeah yeah, you're welcome to search it -- sorry -- me." Wow, now I sound like I'm on drugs. By this time I think we've reached our destination of the seats, but we haven't. "Just follow me please, mate." Mate?! If you were my mate you wouldn't put me through this.

I know I have nothing on me. I never have and I never will. But I feel a second away from being arrested. I think it will be a matter of minutes before I'm being interviewed under caution.

Eventually, we stop. In between platforms six and seven. Not, as the officer thinks, a discrete place. Then my details are taken. One officer is asking the questions while the other writes out the answers I give. Name, date of birth, &c.. Date of birth! I remember when I was younger my dad taking me to the hospital and asking what my date of birth was on the way. "You'd better know it" he said, "'cos they're gonna ask you it." I had to work it out then. I had to work it out now. Most of this is a blur now. "You about six foot one," one of them asks. As said yes immediately. Hang on? Six-one? For a copper that guy's a bad judge of height. At least another two inches please! I didn't correct him.

Then the question asker turned into searcher.

First he went through my pockets. He took my wallet out at one point and had a good nosey round. I wanted him to take a look at the red card in the top right hand corner -- the one with a rose on and the words The Labour Party Membership Card on. Perhaps then he might get an insight into my character -- an insight which wasn't based on the clothes I wear and the length of my hair. But he didn't. After he was convinced I didn't have any more pockets, he went for my university bag. "Highlighter. Good to see," he remarked. Why the highlighter? Why not the pad, or the other pens? The highlighter is probably the least useful of them all (ask Ross Dawson).

And then the big one. I fumbled the locks open. He asked what I had in there as I did so. I told clothes... oh, and some food. That last declaration probably saved me a lot of trouble and a lot more questions.

He found a suspicious package. It had been opened, but was now heavily taped back up. What was in there. There was a substance in there. Please, dear God, don't open it! "It's the best tea I've ever tasted!" I thought. I couldn't bear to see it go to waste!

He put it back. I let out a smile. The other officer then looked at me. I wiped that smile from my face immediately. To relieve myself of any embarrassment, I avoided eye contact with the officers. I looked over towards the AMT Coffee stall (at least I think that's the name of it). I saw a lot of faces looking at me as they walked past.

I'm a criminal. I don't have any drugs on me. I never have and I never will. But I'm a criminal. In the minds of all those people walking past and watching, I, the man in the leather jacket, guns n' roses t-shirt, combat pants and boots, I...... am a criminal. I've never actually broken the law in my life, but that doesn't matter. I'm a criminal.

The search is almost complete. My right leg has almost stopped shaking. The other officer is talking into his radio, and another officer, handling the dog, has appeared. I stare at the dog. I don't hate animals, and I don't hate that dog. I hate the people who 'trained it'. The officer on the radio turns to me: "You're not been to Ormskirk, 'ave ya, ladd?" Erm, no. I answer like that. This time the 'no' is more assertive, more confident, that our initial exchange near the ticket barrier.

As he put my suitcase back together, he searching officer just explained they were running my details against the national police computer database. Scary. Then they gave me a slip of paper. And that was it.

That was the end. They didn't find anything. But if that dog has been trained properly, then there are only four other possibilities:
1) The dog is stupid.
The most likely possibility, I think.
2) I took drugs in the last forty-eight hours and that's what got the dog interested.
But I know that's not it.
3) Someone else in that group of people had drugs on them.
In which case, the officers in charge should be ashamed they let their prejudices get the better of them. Instead being able to pick out the person with drugs, they were only able to pick out the most visibly aesthetic as far as drug taking was concerned.
4) Someone else in that group of people had taken drugs in the last forty-eight hours.
Again, the officers should be ashamed their prejudices won out.

The officers did not apologise. They were only doing their jobs. Badly, And with prejudices. And they added twenty minutes onto my journey. They did not apologise.

I can only imagine what it is like to be black.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

A Correction Regarding The Post "Genocide: Fergal Keane's Account"

My instinct that Fergal Keane was, in the chapter 'Limits' shielding his reader from the true horrors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been proved correct, for in the following chapter 'Valentina', his descriptions are far more shocking.

He describes in thorough detail the events in the (predominantly Hutu) town of Nyarubuye, where a corrupt leader (Mr. Gacumbitsi) promises the Tutsis protection if they gather in the church, before ordering the slaughter. Horrifying. But two factors make this an effective piece of writing.

Firstly, this particular narrative is personalised through familiarisation with a girl called Valentina. Suddenly the people being massacred in the church have names, relations, souls. I shall spare the gory details.

Secondly, the truly shocking parts are told to us in quotation marks by Valentina. They are presented as her words. She is eight years old, with her head hacked open as she has to live among the rotting corpses of the church for four weeks. If she leaves, Gacumbitsi will slaughter her, she being the only Tutsi to survive in the Nyarubuye church massacre. Believe me, I have spared you the gory details.

Half way through the chapter, Keane goes through a transformation from journalist to philanthropist. He is deeply moved by the state he finds Valentina in. She is couped up in a makeshift clinic, her hand bandaged where she no longer has fingers, and something else I cannot bring myself to describe. He is deeply saddened. he wouldn't be human if he wasn't angry by what he saw.

But he gives her no chance. She will die. There aren't the treatments there in rural Rwanda to save her. She will die.

Two and a half years later, Keane is back in Rwanda, and he heads straight for Nyarubuye. The miracle of miracles has happened -- Valentina was taken to the capital where a foreign doctor carried out the procedure to save her life. By the end of the day, he has met up with her again. By the time he has to leave, she is sad to see him leave. He says he will stay in contact, and he does. He still keeps in touch with Valentina, who by now is a beautiful young women, with high hopes of becoming a doctor herself.

If every foreign journalist who had covered war zones kept in touch with every injured women or child they came across, they would have more friends than anyone else in the world. it is a fact that John Simpson, probably the most experienced and most travelled of any BBC hack ever, has tried to not get 'involved' with the stories he covers, but he still has friends scattered across the face of the Earth. Fergal Keane's pleasure in seeing Valentina go from being needy survivor to aspiring doctor emphasises no reasonable man's occupation can ever get the better of him. Humanity always comes before work.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Is The Construction Of The White Citizen, As Defined By Williams (2005), Explicitly Evident In Supreme Ct Case Opinions Of The 19th & 20th Centuries

In her 2005 essay, Linda Faye Williams details how slavery was the fundamental explanation as to understanding identity in the United States, and that it signalled the conjoining of (male) whiteness to citizenship, whilst casting to one side quintessential non-citizens such as white women, Indians and the enslaved[1]. In the pages that follow, I intend to examine opinions of Supreme Court cases where such an ideology of white superiority may appear. Furthermore, I intend to analyse to what extent (if any) this may be related back to slavery.

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
The Warren Court is best known for being the most liberal Supreme Court that has ever over-looked the United States, and a close examination of this (and the general politics of the era) is first necessary to put into some sort of context the ruling made in the case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954, and remember that Earl Warren was appointed to the bench by President Eisenhower a year previous to the deciding of Brown. He was expected to be a consolidator and take a conservative approach to all matters. As events unfolded, however, the Warren Court became the most notoriously liberal Supreme Court that the United States has ever had. Coupled with the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, the Warren Court was to play a major role in what was to be a turbulent time of great change in US history, intertwining with great civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Bob Dylan, as well as the actions of Mohammed Ali, Tommy Smith and John Carlos. In the lifespan of the United States Supreme Court, the case of Brown is something of a watershed moment. Along with Roe vs. Wade (1973) and Marbury vs. Madison (1803), Brown is one of the three most important Supreme Court case rulings of all time. Simply from the high regard in which it is now held, it is unimaginable that such a revolutionary opinion would be underpinned by Williams’ ideas of the white citizen.

Brown was a major catalyst of the civil rights era, being decided as it was in 1954. Whilst the ruling was revolutionary, the opinion was far from it. Considerably shorter than those written for the Warren Court’s other foremost liberal decisions, it stretches in all it’s glory to just eleven pages (Miranda vs. Arizona (1966) is closer to seventy), but quality comes without quantity in Brown. Balkin notes how writing for the future in court case opinions poses numerous problems for the presiding judge, and usually results in one of two equal and opposite tendencies: the first being to state with undoubtable clarity the basic principles they don’t want undermined or overlooked over time; the second being an attempt to decide as little as possible[2]. “In short,” wrote Wilkinson, “the opinion failed to rouse or inspire; it simply existed[3].”

Chief Justice Warren erred on the side of discretion when penning the unmotivating final statements, content to carefully take one memorable step and leave all problems for the future, thus fulfilling the second of Balkin’s two tendencies reasoned above. The simplicity of the document makes a statement in itself: that perhaps now the nation could start anew, drawing a thick line under racially motivated problems. This line could, therefore, signify a hope as towards a change in the attitude of whites as well as Negroes. Whatever privileges that were held in accordance with the ‘white citizen’ should not be relinquished, but should be shared among those of a darker skin as well. Desegregating the schools of the South would, they hoped, signal the beginning of the end as far as the curse of slavery was concerned. Of education, Warren writes in the seventh paragraph:-

“Today it is a principle instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment[4].”

This tells us that Warren wanted to bring an end to the subliminal existence of any notion of the ‘white citizen’ which was left over from slavery. The idea of white superiority should have died out with the nineteenth century, but instead lingered on for another fifty years, and can even now be traced in existence.

The overruling of Plessy cannot have been an easy decision to make. Any Chief Justice who overturns a previous Supreme Court ruling leaves him/herself open to criticism for their judicial activism. Though it may seem like a logical and correct decision to many in the twenty-first century, there are still some who contest it’s worth. Bell, for example, argues it would do nothing to prevent sustained white resistance to full social equality for blacks, and that it is nothing more than a symbolic act. To leave it on the statute book would, according to him, be more beneficial if a series of orders were sent out requiring strict equalisation of facilities, as to lie bare the “simplistic hypocrisy” of Plessy[5]. Bell’s fear is of antagonising those who embrace the ‘white citizen’ and enjoy it’s racist benefits whilst caring very little for anyone else; his more conservative and measured method of change still hold the belief that separate is inherently unequal, and because of this, his popularity among the civil rights leader of the time would have been very non-existent. Today, it is taken for granted that Plessy was overruled:-

“Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal[6].”

The general acceptance of the meaning of this is that Plessy was, at least, now irrelevant. It was meaningless. The symbolism of this move alone is underrated by Bell: he dismisses it as having no value whatsoever. The symbolic devaluation of Plessy by the Earl Warren indicates a change in the feelings of white Americans, with the possible exception of those in the South, where slavery was, then, still a dream, rather than a nightmare that was left in the past. Furthermore, Chief Justice Warren also argues that equalisation has already happened, and so any process like the one set out by Bell would just slow down what was inevitable. “The Negro and white schools involved have been equali[s]ed or are being equali[s]ed, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers[7],” wrote Warren.

In the opinion, he then spends a lot of ink debating ‘tangible’ qualities, before deciding a mere comparison of such attributes will not suffice. He turns his attention to the effect of segregation itself on public education. Warren’s decision to rely on qualities which cannot be objectively measured but make for greatness is a bold attempt in itself to break down the colour line. The crucial statement Warren makes is:-

“To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their heart and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone[8].”

We get the impression from this that the dividing itself is not done fairly. The white children are not being pushed away half a metre by the left hand and the black children are not being pushed away half a metre by the right hand; the black children are being pushed away a whole metre with both hands! Here, he describes the elevation of the whites and their self-esteem as having been derived from the pushing away of the Negro race and their children, as if they were some way inferior to the white race.

To conclude, the task Warren appears to have set himself (possibly subliminally) in writing this opinion is to equalise the two races in a way that is immeasurable. This is in itself inherently reversing the notion of the ‘white citizen’ and retracts the idea that “to be a citizen [i]s also to be white.[9]” What he writes in the Brown vs. Board Of Education opinion is effectively a statement which says it is possible to be a citizen and black in the United States. There is acknowledgement of apparent white supremacy within the states of the South, which can only imply that the general social standing of the African-American in the early 1950’s in said states had not improved much since Emancipation. There is evidence that white people still resented those of the Negro race (many parents moved their children to private schools in the years that followed Brown), and this only resembles a shift in the colour line as opposed to an abolishment of it. However, this is, of course, not reflected in the opinion of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case, and what illusions there are to the white citizen, they are made in a criticising manner, and are spoken of with disdain and dislike. They are spoken of as if they are the problem at the heart of the matter.

Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) And The Works Of W.E.B. Du Bois
As mentioned in previous paragraphs, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) effectively overruled Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which dealt with a similar matter. The opinion of the latter gives us an insight into the American political view of race and the slavery aftermath and, when analysed in alignment W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Souls of Black Folk”, gives us two contrasting views of the mood at the time.

It is first important to point out that Plessy vs. Ferguson was decided just thirty-one years after the end of the civil war and the ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. It should not surprise us, therefore, that the plaintiffs tried to prove the act in question unconstitutional and conflicting with the Thirteenth Amendment as well as the Fourteenth. In just the third paragraph, Mr. Justice Brown dismissed any possible conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment and stated it was “too clear for argument.[10]” It is a safe guess to say, I think, that Du Bois would have disagreed, for he wrote:- “For this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free.[11]” These are two greatly contrasting opinions. While the Negro may no longer be in chains, being whipped by his Master, he is neither free to sit wherever he likes on a train. He must be sectioned off from the white people, in a place deemed equal to that of the white people. Too clear for argument it no longer appears, and had Justice Brown ruled the act of Louisiana’s general assembly to be in conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, then equalisation may have occurred half a decade earlier than Chief Justice Brown ordered it. Justice Brown’s plain and flat refusal of the act conflicting with the Thirteenth Amendment can also be seen as embodying the notion of the ‘white citizen’. He dismisses it apparently without due care and consideration. He finds it unthinkable that something so washed in the blood of dead slaves still exists in his society today.

The constitutionality of the separation of the Negroes from the white race has a direct link to slavery, and the period just before Emancipation swept through the South. Du Bois writes:-

“The very name of the [Freedmen’s] Bureau stood for a thing in the South which for two centuries and better men had refused even to argue, -- that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the maddest of experiments.[12]”

He tells us that such a Governmental institution as the Freedman’s Bureau was resented with great disdain throughout the states of the South, and the separation of the two races was, in some way, a denial of the fact that Negroes were no longer bound for eternity in servitude. Through this simple ruling that separate but equal could carry on, Justice Brown was letting the white citizens of the South continually believe that the Negro was no longer a tool of a Master. This refusal to let the coloured people mix with the white people makes the entire opinion of the case Plessy vs. Ferguson one of that set to benefit the ‘white citizen’.

Specific examples of the notion of the ‘white citizen’ can be found in the opinion. Indeed, at the opening of paragraph twelve, Justice Brown concedes that “the white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country.” The true meaning of such a statement is two-fold: firstly, it recognises that the Negro is sociologically below the status of the white man; and secondly it emphasises to us that the average white citizen on the street probably has little respect for the Negro and his rights. After all, why should he? The Dred Scott decision (dealt with in more detail later on) of 1857 said that no negro was afforded any rights that the white man had to recognise and acknowledge. Nevertheless, in “Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B. Du Bois argues Negro degradation is the result of colour prejudice, and not the other way round. He contends that colour prejudice is the foundation for the status and condition of the Negro; what this means in relation to the above quote from the 1896 opinion is that the white race has become the dominant race through colour prejudice -- a fact overlooked by Justice Brown. The plaintiffs argument as referred to in paragraph seven, of the “enforced separation of the two races stamp[ing] the coloured race with a badge of inferiority.[13]”, is an interesting one, so far as it is a principle argument which is upheld in the Brown vs. Board of Education opinion of 1954. Moreover, this is again intertwined with the above paragraph: the white race saw itself as the dominant race, we are told, and so it was always going to be that the Negro race would become the second-rate race, and hence the notion of the ‘white citizen’ would be maintained as the status quo.

To refer back to paragraph twelve of the Plessy opinion, Justice Brown details how, in the eyes of the Constitution and of the law, there is no one ruling body, made up of one particular class or one particular race[14]. This comes directly after he informs us of the white class seeing itself as the dominant race. Consequently, the dominant interpretation of this is that technically, in the eyes of the law, there is no domination whatsoever, but in reality, there is sociological domination. It appears he is willing to let the ‘white citizen’ practice domination while pretending it really does not exist in any form by saying it is not in existence in the United States Constitution:-

“The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his colour when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.[15]”

The ‘white citizen’ is no longer present in the eyes of the American Supreme Court, but it still exists -- it has shifted personas from the Dred Scott vs. Sandford opinion of 1857, where it was set in concrete in American law[16], as will be outlined later on.

The doctrine of separate but equal is ultimately an attempt to mask the supposed superiority of the white citizen; it is a vain attempt to make the black people feel accepted; it draws them closer with one hand and pushes them away with the other. This attempt to somehow satisfy the Negro race is an admittance of guilt, as if they were aware this social construction was immoral and unethical from the beginning.

In the final analysis, we see the ‘white citizen’ notion shifting from one guise to another. The official status it bore of 1857 is no longer recognised and it is not acceptable in a court of law. Nonetheless, it still exists, in something of an unofficial capacity. Judge Brown appears reluctant, uneasy unwilling to look into ways of breaking it down, and perhaps unaware of how to go about such a thing. His hesitancy was only helping the notion of the ‘white citizen’ survive well into the twentieth century. Overall, the written opinion is touched by a stench of “the court’s chronic refusal to dismantle the structure of white supremacy.[17]”

Guinn vs. United States (1915)
Decided some nineteen years after the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, this case is the least notable of all four concerned in this essay; this is reflected in the amount of material so far written on it by scholars of any worth. It is, however, notable for being the first lawsuit to be taken up by the NAACP.

It has been established previous that the ‘white citizen’ theory is prominent in the opinion of Plessy, albeit in an unofficial capacity which Justice Brown plays down. The question, then, is whether or not the notion of the ‘white citizen’ is still in existence in Supreme Court case opinions in the first part of the twentieth century. Certainly the opinion for this case is the longest of all four concerned in this essay, but this is most likely due to the complexities of the US Constitution and the relationship of it to the constitution of the state involved.

The similarities of Guinn vs. United States to the other three cases are marked, especially Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954. While Brown abolished segregation in public schools throughout the South, Guinn overturned a state constitutional provision limiting the right of suffrage to whites. It was automatically nullified by ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment[18] some forty-five years previous. The ruling in this case would lead us to believe that quite a lot had changed since Plessy, since the ruling grossly favoured the African-American plaintiffs. Nevertheless, there are brief occasions where the ironically-named Chief Justice White appears hesitant towards possible judicial activism and errs on the side of restraint. He writes that the court has “. . . no right to question the motive of the state in establishing a standard. . .[19]” Here, it would be naive to suggest Chief Justice White was manipulating the checks and balances in American politics; nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine the Warren Court restraining itself from going further by penning such a sentence.

Although no direct reference is made to the suffering of the Negro in the opinion, and the supposed dominance of the white race which comes with it, Chief Justice White does allude to, and show awareness of, the critical sociological problem at the heart of the court case:-

“. . . [the] standard is a mere denial of the restrictions imposed by the prohibitions of the 15th Amendment, and by necessary result re-creates and perpetuates the very conditions which the Amendment was intended to destroy.[20]”

In the above quote the Chief Justice seems eager to uphold what the fifteenth Amendment stands for, and appears to be unwilling to let any state in the South by-pass it or find a way around it with temporary measures -- measures which have the ‘white citizen’ theory at the centre of them. He sees the possibility for a reversal regarding the destroying of prejudicial behaviour, and gives the impression of being unwilling to let such a thing happen. An insight is also given by the opinion of Chief Justice White into what one may term the ‘rehumanisation’ of the black man. Roughly half way through, he tells how “the word 'white' disappeared and therefore all male citizens . . . came under the generic grant of suffrage made by the state.[21]” This is clear irrefutable evidence that the states of the South (including the state in question, Oklahoma) were making strides to include persons of the Negro race in citizenship; they were trying to make their legislation at least fair, even if the hearts of many white people were still prejudiced with racism. The ruling in this court case would further help equalise the statute book by dealing a blow to the temporary, blatantly racist legislation.

In conclusion, it is perhaps fitting that the case Guinn vs. United States of 1915 is often only cited as a minor victory in the struggle for civil rights and the battle to fully escape the shackles of slavery. The victory was what it was: Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka some thirty-nine years later proved to be a catalyst for a revolutionary period in American history and a further step away from the shadow of slavery; Guinn vs. United States was a victory for the coloured man in Oklahoma (and, to a lesser extent, Maryland as well) and that was it. As far as the ‘white citizen’ theory is concerned, the case marks a period of transition. While Justice Brown was happy to acknowledge the supposed dominance of the white race over the Negro race (and take no steps to try and stamp it out), the opinion of Chief Justice White is a bridge between that and the judicial activism of Chief Justice Warren. Chief Justice White does not recognise the ‘white citizen’ as being of a higher stature in any form, and yet he does not try and alter too much in his opinion of Guinn vs. United States. If we reconsider Balkin’s opposite and equal tendencies for writing for the future, it is a fair assumption to conclude Chief Justice White was writing with exceptional caution, in what was an attempt to decide as little as possible and leave as much as he could to future judges and opinions they may write. It is more than likely Chief Justice White was all to aware of the racism suffered by coloured people as slavery still stalked the United Sates, yet he made no explicit stand against it.

Speculation still swirls as to what Chief Justice Edward Douglass White really believed as far as segregation is concerned. There is little evidence to substantiate such an extreme claim, but many believe White was a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana. The only piece of ‘evidence’ is of him speaking to Thomas Dixon in 1910 “I was a member of the Klan,[22]” but there has been no recognisable academic verification of such a statement ever being made. The lack of condemnation in the final opinion of Guinn vs. United States would surely authenticate such a claim, but that would be nullified by the overall ruling in the case.

Dred Scott vs. Sandford (1857)
In recent years, Dred Scott has taken on the appearance of the ultimate ‘bad decision’[23], as well as coming to symbolise the high point of racism in American law. Never before, or since, has a case been so decisive as to compel every single Supreme Court judge to write an opinion. The opinion of the court would prove divisive politically, and was a major aid in helping Lincoln seize power in the election of 1860, and it drew a war between the northern states and the southern states considerably closer.

Nevertheless, to contextualise Dred Scott is to look at it back then, as it happened. The civil war was still five years away when the case was decided and Emancipation for Negroes held in servitude was still a distant dream of the future that seemed doubtful whether to appear at all. Five years previous, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ had been first published to great joy in the North, and some were still heading west to California in search of gold. The United States was still growing as a nation. The works of W.E.B. Du Bois were still fifty years in the future and Booker T. Washington was just one year old. The United States still had a lot to learn.

It is the only case focused on in this essay decided prior to the civil war and Emancipation. It is because of this, therefore, that we may expect to find the notion of the ‘white citizen’ in great detail. Indeed, the Dred Scott decision is cited by Williams as “further conjoining citizenship to whiteness”[24]. The question as regards this Supreme Court case opinion has, to some extent, then, been pre-answered by Williams, and there is clear, direct evidence in the opinion of the Dred Scott case to back up her claim.

Back in 1857, to be a slave was to be Negro and (in the South) the term ‘Negro’ meant slave, except when explicitly modified by the word ‘free’[25]. When we consider this as intertwined with the statement made early on in the opinion of the court, that the class of persons described in the plea were thought not to be members of the political body, it becomes blatantly obvious that Williams was only too correct in referring to Dred Scott as disenfranchising the African-American in a demeaning (and racist) manner.

Equally shocking (if not more so) is what follows in paragraph two of Chief Justice Taney’s opinion:-

“. . . they were . . . considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges. . .[26]”

The above quote demonstrates two key factors in relation to racial prejudice of the time. Firstly, it shockingly assumes white superiority, as if it had always been that way and was always going to be that way. It fails to take into account any emotional value the Negro may have and instead siphons him off as simply “inferior”. The first part of the quote also gave the ‘white citizen’ a legal framework with which to weave racism around. Inbuilt to the assumption that white people were superior and ‘better’ than those with coloured skin was the knowledge that this brought with it special privileges while the Negro was devoid of any human rights. The reaffirming of white dominance from the highest court of the land fundamentally placed the judiciary on the side of the states of the South as the battle of wills between the North and the South began to gain a genuine momentum in Congress.

Interestingly, the third paragraph almost serves the purpose of a disclaimer. Chief Justice Taney argues it is not up to the court to decide how ‘right’ this is, but they are there solely to interpret the constitution and pass judgement in a way they see fit. Taney is passing off the content of the previous paragraph as simply judicial restraint.

This is also proven to be a disclaimer for what is to follow, as Chief Justice Taney declares that “no state can . . . introduce a new member into the political community created by the Constitution of the United States.[27]” From this, he consequents that the Negro was “intended to be excluded from it.” This is deeply shocking because he says it was never the intention of the United States Constitution to make persons of the Negro race fully-fledged citizens of the country. The statement once more aligns citizenship with whiteness, and makes the United States appear as a place for white men and white men only to live in freedom.

Approximately half way through his opinion of the court, Chief Justice Taney cites the Constitution as only making reference to coloured people as property. This is devaluing the Negro further by reducing him to something that can be bought, sold, and done away with. He is not recognised as having any feelings, emotions, or any other worth other than what work he can do before sundown (the female slaves worth is linked specifically to the child-bearing ability).

Nearing the end of the opinion, Chief Justice Taney notes how “it seems . . . to be supposed that there is a difference between property in a slave and other property.[28]” This signifies that the white people were aware that a slave as a piece of property, though property in the eyes of the law, was actually something different to that. And although the same laws apply to the slave as to other items of property, that, perhaps, should not be the case.

It has been stated beforehand that Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka of 1954 was a catalyst for a period of turbulent revolution in American history, while the deciding of Guinn (1915) and Plessy (1896) had less of an impact upon the nation. It is of my opinion that the decision reached in the Dred Scott vs. Sandford case of 1857 had a greater impact than all three of the prior-named cases put together. And the underlying reason: the racial discrimination contained in the opinion and the theory that has come to be known as the ‘white citizen’.

The Impact Of Dred Scott
To let Dred Scott vs. Sandford take it’s place on a chronological timeline is to see the waves it made in US history.. Throughout the North, in the months that followed Chief Justice Taney’s decision, there was widespread anger among both the white people and the free Negroes. This is best exemplified by a New Orleans newspaper which, on March 21, 1857, stated that “the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case is the theme of bitter comment in the anti-slavery . . . North.[29]”

Some Northern went further in blaming the Supreme Court as an institution:-

“The dangers apprehended from the organic tendencies of the Supreme Court to engross the legislative power of the Federal Government, which Jefferson foresaw and so often warned his countrymen against, are no longer imaginary.[30]”

A further impact of the Dred Scott ruling is touched upon here. The power held by the Supreme Court of the United States was immediately called into question. Taney’s decision (in part due to him addressing issues beyond the scope of Scott’s immediate claim) led to a temporary diminution of the power of the Supreme Court[31]. Because the bench had so vigorously preached that the ‘white citizen’ was king of the sociological spectrum, they came under immense pressure from those who could see this was not necessarily the case.

The opinion of the Dred Scott case then sparked a chain of events which would all, in some way or another, be in opposition to the ‘white citizen theory. The choosing of Abraham Lincoln as Republican Party candidate for the election of 1860 came first. Coming from nowhere to be candidate, Lincoln went on to assume the Presidency later that year and was a voice for those trapped in the involuntary servitude that was slavery.

It would be a gross exaggeration to say Dred Scott started the civil war the following year, but the decision in the case certainly ended any hope of a peaceful agreement being reached between the North and the South. Dred Scott was, at the very least, a catalyst for the war. From the war came the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves and giving birth to the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. To concede the Negro's right to freedom, however, is not to concede his right to U.S. citizenship[32]. The ‘white citizen’, it appears, was not killed off in the civil war, as the Plessy opinion, some thirty-one years later, would testify. As well as the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were also born out of the war which was started, in part, by the racism of the Dred Scott vs. Sandford decision of 1857.

In the final analysis, it is worth stating that this case stands out among all four for its lack of humanity and its inner belief that white people are inherently superior. The selfishness of the assertion, shown in the opinion, that the Declaration of Independence was formed by white people and for white people, is startling. Moreover, it has the most direct link back to slavery; it is a legalised product of the slave-holding South; It is a testament to what they believed; and it was a founding factor in the ideological notion of the white citizen. That is not to say, however, that the other three cases are of no importance in relation to slavery.

“The colour line,” wrote Williams, “fabricated citizenship itself.[33]” This is what Plessy did. Through the enforcing of separate railway carriages, equal or not, and the permitting of such enforcement, the case of 1896 strengthened the divide between the two races, thus making the fabrication of citizenship even stronger. Williams ends the crucial section of her essay with an explanation amounting to the civil war and all the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States not being able to provide coloured people with equality in the public sphere. Today, ‘separate’ is taken to mean inherently unequal. It seems equality has been brought a step closer through affirmative action policies of the second half of the twentieth century, but there are immeasurable qualities in society that cannot be judged with any absolute accuracy (inbuilt hatred expressed away form the public gaze, for example); how great these are will determine the extent to which the notion of the ‘white citizen’ still exists. One thing is for sure: it is still there, left over from slavery, having evolved from one form to another through time. It came from slavery, and though it is unlikely to lead back to slavery, it still has a detrimental and harmful effect on the society public sphere.


Endnotes
[1] Williams, Linda Faye. “The Constraint Of Race: Slavery, The Legacy Of The ‘White Citizen’ And American Social Policy”. p3-9
[2] Balkin, Jack M. What Brown v. Board Of Education Should Have Said. New York: New York University Press, 2001. p45
[3] Wilkinson, “From Brown To Bakke”p29
[4] Chief Justice Warren. Brown vs. Board Of Education Of Topeka Opinion
[5] Balkin, Jack M. What Brown v. Board Of Education Should Have Said. New York: New York University Press, 2001. p46
[6] Chief Justice Warren. Brown vs. Board Of Education Of Topeka Opinion
[7] Chief Justice Warren. Brown vs. Board Of Education Of Topeka Opinion
[8] Chief Justice Warren. Brown vs. Board Of Education Of Topeka Opinion
[9] Williams, Linda Faye. “The Constraint Of Race: Slavery, The Legacy Of The ‘White Citizen’ And American Social Policy”. http://www.yale.edu/glc/justice/williams.pdf Accessed 13 / 03 / 2006. p3
[10] Chief Justice Brown. Plessy vs. Ferguson Opinion
[11] Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls Of Black Folk. New York: Dover, 1994. p24
[12] Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls Of Black Folk. New York: Dover, 1994. p17-8
[13] Chief Justice Brown. Plessy vs. Ferguson Opinion
[14] Chief Justice Brown. Plessy vs. Ferguson Opinion
[15] Chief Justice Brown. Plessy vs. Ferguson Opinion
[16] Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1997!. p4
[17] Harris, 1993. As quoted by Golub, Mark. “Plessy As Passing: Judicial Repsonses To Ambiguously Raced Bodies In Plessy v. Ferguson”. Law & Society Review. 39:3 (2005): p563-600
[18] As quoted by United States Government Mpringing Office. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/amdt15.html
[19] Chief Justice White. Guinn vs. United States Opinion
[20] Chief Justice White. Guinn vs. United States Opinion
[21] Chief Justice White. Guinn vs. United States Opinion
[22] As quoted by Wikipedia.
[23] Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1997. p5
[24] Williams, Linda Faye. “The Constraint Of Race: Slavery, The Legacy Of The ‘White Citizen’ And American Social Policy”. http://www.yale.edu/glc/justice/williams.pdf Accessed 13 / 03 / 2006. p3
[25] Allen, Theodore W. The Invention Of The White Race, Volume One: Racial Oppression And Social Control. London: Verso, 1994. p46
[26] Chief Justice Taney. Dred Scott vs. Sandford Opinion
[27] Chief Justice Taney. Dred Scott vs. Sandford Opinion
[28] Chief Justice Taney. Dred Scott vs. Sandford Opinion
[29] Taken from ‘The Daily Picayune’ article Citizenship, dated March 21, 1857, as quoted in Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1997. p132
[30] From the ‘New York Evening Post’ article The Supreme Court of the United States, dated March 7, 1857, as quoted in Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1997. p147
[31] Finkelman, Paul. Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History With Documents. New York: Bedford Books, 1997. pg 2
[32] Herbert Storing, as cited by Graber, Mark A. “Desperately Ducking Slavery: Dred Scott And Contemporary Constitutional Theory”. Constitutional Commentary. 14:2 (Summer 1997): p271
[33] Williams, Linda Faye. “The Constraint Of Race: Slavery, The Legacy Of The ‘White Citizen’ And American Social Policy”. http://www.yale.edu/glc/justice/williams.pdf Accessed 13 / 03 / 2006. p3