Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [MO]  Abuse of Black Men a Prelude to Scandal

Questi che posto sono selezioni di selezioni di articoli dalla stampa di
tutto il mondo anglofono, sono sempre molto interessanti e ve ne raccomando
la lettura, in questo la sintesi e':
Non e' vero, come dice Bush, che quanto e' successo in Iraq e'
"unamerican", perche' l'america ha come suoi valori la liberta' ecc. ecc.
Quello che ha fatto e che fa in iraq e' nient'altro che quello che ha fatto
in casa con i neri, fino a 50 anni fa con la segregazione e fino a ieri con
casi come quelli di Rodney King.
Qui il testo, sono disponibile a tradurre per chi vuole approfondire.
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Boston Globe May 12, 2004 
US abuse of black men a prelude to scandal
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the abuse of
Iraqi soldiers by American soldiers was "inconsistent
with the values of our nation. It is inconsistent with
the teachings of the military to the men and women of
the armed forces, and it was certainly fundamentally
un- American." In his Rose Garden press appearance with
King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Bush said he told
the king: "I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by
the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by
their families. I told him I was equally sorry that
people who have been seeing those pictures didn't
understand the true nature and heart of America.
"I assured him Americans, like me, didn't appreciate
what we saw, that it made us sick to our stomachs. I
also made it clear to His Majesty that the troops we
have in Iraq, who are there for security and peace and
freedom, are the finest of the fine, fantastic United
States citizens, who represent the very best qualities
of America: courage, love of freedom, compassion, and
decency."
Of course, all of the apologizing over un-American
behavior comes only after the global equivalent of the
Rodney King tape.
What happened in Iraq is a natural extension of the
humiliation that has gone on for two decades in this
country. Whether Americans' behavior in Iraq is due to
racial, religious, or other cultural feelings of
superiority -- or a numbed acceptance of government
sponsored violence -- the abusing soldiers and the
commanders who let it happen assumed that they were
dealing with people who had no voice. So thought the
Los Angeles police who clubbed King in 1991 -- until
the videotape.
Bush lately is fond of saying, "Freedom is the
Almighty's gift to each man and woman in this world."
Yet for tan Muslims in Iraq and black men in the United
States, the gift is too often incarceration and worse.
In the midst of the soldier scandal, it is critical to
consider a recent report by the Sentencing Project, a
criminal justice think tank.
Fifty years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of
Education decision declaring segregated schools
unconstitutional, the Sentencing Project says there are
nine times more African-American men in prison or jail
today than in 1954. There are now 884,500 African-
American men incarcerated compared with 98,000 at the
time of Brown.
In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren said: "Education is
perhaps the most important function of state and local
governments. . . . It is doubtful that any child may be
reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is
denied the opportunity of an education." In the 1980s
and 1990s, prison building accelerated as Americans
chose to scapegoat African-Americans for a national
drug problem. African-Americans represent 13 percent of
monthly drug users, the same as their percentage of the
national population. Yet African-Americans make up 32.5
percent of people arrested for drugs. While white youth
snorted unseen behind fences and gates, police swept
nonviolent black drug offenders off stoops and corners.
While looking at the photos of Iraqi prisoners bound,
wired, and beaten, one must not forget that in 1992,
not even the videotape that showed King's beating, in
which he received a fractured skull, was enough to
shock sense into the jury in Simi Valley, Calif. The
jury acquitted the police officers on almost all
charges. That jury had no African-Americans on it.
This humiliation, it should be clear, grew under both
Republican and Democratic administrations. Federal drug
laws that treated black offenders far more harshly than
white offenders began during the Reagan and elder Bush
years, but President Clinton did little to change the
laws in his eight years. No one even talks about black
prisoners under the younger Bush.
African-American prisoners, it turns out, were a
prelude to Iraq. Congress and the White House said they
needed to wage a war on drugs, the weapon of mass
destruction in inner cities. After lots of hard police
work and community activism, violence in the streets
has been significantly "pacified" on the surface. But
how long the streets stay peaceful is unknown as the
nation continues, through its wild spending on defense
and tax cuts to the rich, to turn its back on education
for working-class and low-income communities. All it
does is throw mandatory tests at ill-prepared, easily
discouraged youth.
Black men are criminalized to the point where one out
of every three African-American boys faces the prospect
of jail at some point in his life. Black men can't even
drive without facing a significantly higher chance of
being stopped by police. Black men can count on
innocent people being periodically brutalized. Who can
forget the 41 bullets New York police pumped into the
unarmed Amadou Diallo? Or the retired black minister,
Accelyne Williams, who was literally scared to death by
Boston police in a botched drug raid? Or the New York
police sodomizing of Abner Louima? Or the shootings,
beatings, and stranglings that barely make the papers
and end up as justifiable homicides?
The Iraq abuse scandal shows how America keeps
forgetting its mistakes at home. Rumsfeld says the
abuse was un-American. African-American men remain the
proof that abuse is an American pastime.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is 
jac...@globe.com
. 
(c) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company 
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/05/12/us_abuse_of_black_men_a_prelude_to_scandal/
 

 casi come quelli di Rodney King.
E' interessante a questo riguardo anche l'editoriale dell'ultimo
"Internazionale"  (l'articolo non e' on--line) cosi' riassunto sul sito: 
Una foto, una storia
Nelle carceri statunitensi la violenza sessuale è la norma. 
Ma non ci sono foto
P.
-- 
"Cos'è questo?". "È l'adesso". "Come l'adesso?".
"Questo è l'adesso adesso, quello che sta succedendo ora sta succedendo
adesso".
"Che è successo al prima?". "È passato". "Quando?". "Adesso".

 "Internazionale"
PdA. Interessante che la "normalità" dello stupro in carcere fosse uno degli
argomenti usati a scuola per convincere i quindicenni a non farsi le canne.
-- 
ArAmesh

ArAmesh :

Se ne era parlato anche qui, in occasione di "la 25a ora"
P.
-- 
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