Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Monday, January 24, 2005
Does the "baggage of bigotry" get x-rayed at airports?
In his Inaugural Address, Bushie’s speechwriters made him say this:
“Our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.”
But who’s carrying them bags, Dubya?
Forty-two percent of the death row population is African-American, an ethnic group that constitutes a mere 12-13 percent of the nation’s people as a whole. In Georgia, defendants charged with killing whites are 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence then those charged with killing blacks while in Pennsylvania, where African-Americans comprise 9 percent of population, over 60 percent of its death row residents are black.
As Mumia muses, “You will find a blacker world on death row than anywhere else.”
Racism—both covert and overt—is not a one-party issue. Consider the distinguished Democrat from West Virginia, Robert Byrd, a member of the Senate since 1958. This recent hero of the liberal set filibustered against civil rights legislation by reading into the record the entire text of the Magna Carta…and there’s always Byrd’s tenure as a KKK Kleagle in the 40s.
Maybe the emperors have no bags. After all, the concept of race has no biological meaning. Human beings fit into a species called Homo sapiens and, as any post-1960s biologist or anthropologist could tell you, we have no objective subspecies or races. Biologist Ruth Hubbard has explained quite eloquently that Homo sapiens are a relatively homogeneous species...genetically speaking: “About 75 percent of known genes are the same in all humans. The other 25 percent are known to exist in more than one form, but all the forms can be found in all groups, though sometimes in different proportions.”
In addition, the head of Human Genome Sciences, Inc., Dr. William Haseltine, has stated: “Only one-quarter of one percent of our basic genetic information can be ascribed to what we call ‘racial’ differences.” Anthropologist and geneticist Jonathan Marks adds, “You may group humans into a small number of races if you want to, but you are denied biology as a support for it.”
To make it simpler, ponder the actuality that if all Europeans disappeared overnight, the genetic composition of our species would hardly change…but the planet might smell a helluva lot better.
(This post is presented in solidarity with the Progressive Blogger Union. For more information, please visit: http://www.pbu.blogspot.com.)
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
