According to news reports, there are three major cases pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, dealing with the new health care reform law, racial profiling and other assaults on civil rights in the guise of illegal immigration enforcement, and affirmative action in colleges and universities. All of these cases have at least one thing in common: they either wholly or disproportionately affect racial minorities. We live in a country where majority rules—that is to say, white people—although there are laws on the books meant to mitigate against the potential for prejudice and discrimination to intervene in public and private actions. Yet it would be disingenuous to deny that conscious and unconscious attitudes about race often informs public policy. I’ve referenced a 2000 study commissioned by the Brookings Institute that suggested that the reason why the U.S. has not adopted the kind of social welfare programs found in Europe (including universal health care) was because a plurality of whites are loath to support programs that they see chiefly benefitting minorities, who are more likely than whites to be poor, undereducated, unemployed or lacking health insurance.
Ironically—given the fact that this social and economic imbalance may in part be explained by the “preferences” and “privileges” that the majority demographic bestows upon itself, and by this “law,” winners and losers within society are to a great extent presupposed—the blind allegiance to prejudice by much of the electorate and their political representatives swallows up many of their own “kind” in its wake; yet even poor whites have a poor record of recognizing the reality that their condition is a by-product of the lack of support in many elements of society for the structures and institutions that maintain a civil society. Some of this can be seen in the so-called “affirmative action” problem that the current Supreme Court has been slowly, but steadily, eating away at. The reality is that blacks and Latinos are far less a “threat” to whites than the massive cuts in state education spending (due to foolish anti-tax attitudes), the increasing reliance on foreign students who pay high tuition fees (to ease budget shortfalls), and the fact that white students are apparently less adept at rote memorization than Asian students, whose representation in higher education tends to be double their population footprint (although their public profile continues to be near invisible). Anti-affirmative action rulings will not help white students looking for someone to blame for their own (and their voting parents’) failure of vision. It is ludicrous for 5,000 white applicants who were not granted admittance to their favorite college to blame it on 150 black and Latino freshmen, as was the case at the University of Washington, where an over-represented white female student provided the face for the previous anti-affirmative action court ruling. There would still be 4,850 white students who would not granted admittance, and nothing at all was gained by petty racial prejudice except ending the potential for a handful of the under-represented demographic. Feel good about yourself—I mean, about being a small-minded bigot?
While some may observe that the current right-wing majority in the U.S. Supreme Court does not represent the views of the country as a whole, I beg to differ, at least in certain respects. Hank Williams Jr.’s racist tirade on “Fox and Friends” was, he admitted, composed of views shared by “everyone” he knew, which is a scary—but not unexpected—thought. Such are the people making the decisions that affect minorities’ lives. The state of Washington is allegedly a blue state, yet it also voted for—in landslide fashion—an anti-affirmative action initiative, despite the fact there was no evidence that it was unduly beneficial to minorities, save in the minds of people looking for scapegoats. My suspicion is that even “liberal” whites do not have any particular problem with the Supreme Court handing down decisions that don’t require them to unduly burden themselves with the problem of racial imbalances even within their own spheres, social or institutional: The Court is just doing the “dirty work” they just pretend to oppose. The views of the majority of minorities is granted, but is essentially weak in the face of what the majority of the majority wants—and too often this amounts to disparagement and disregard.
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At a Cupertino, California cement quarry, workers complained that one of the truck drivers—Shareef Allman—was a one-man safety hazard after a series of driving mishaps. Finally, after flipping over his truck, his union shop steward informed him that he was no longer going to represent him before management to defend his numerous safety violations. "No one has ever had so many accidents in the company like you have" Mike Ambrosio said he told Allman. According to a story in the San Jose Mercury News, “Ambrosio set up a meeting Monday morning with management, telling officials that Allman's safety record was so bad, his driving so reckless, that ‘the workers weren't safe.’" Company officials were loath to discipline Allman, only suggesting that Ambrosio encourage “his fellow drivers to document any further problems.” Ambrosio suspected that word of this meeting reached Allman, because for a day his work improved.
According to the Mercury News, Allman “arrived for his 4 a.m. shift Wednesday at the quarry a few minutes late, said good morning to the guys, and like he always did, poured himself a cup of coffee and punched the time clock. But this time, after listening to the small talk of a morning meeting, which included a discussion about rescheduling a farewell party for another employee. Allman piped up, ‘If we ain't gonna have no party, give me my $10 back.’ Then Allman pulled out the gun and started (shooting). ‘You guys want to (expletive) with me? You want to (expletive) with me?’" Ten people were shot, including Ambrosio, and three—all Latinos—died of their wounds.
What grievance did Allman nurse that led him to such extreme action? "He's had so many accidents and always said that because he's African American, the company was after him," Ambrosio told the News. In other words, Allman believed that racism was behind the complaints about his driving safety record. Others might argue that the matter of race, rather than being used to oppress him, actually protected him. Company managers, conscious of diversity issues, likely overlooked complaints so long as no one was injured on the job.
However, the UK’s Daily Mail found the alleged racism angle sufficiently newsworthy to interest British readers. It focused on the shooter rather than the victims, who were not named. Interestingly, the Mail reported that Allman was “disgruntled” not in regard to complaints about his work habits, but for “having been switched from day shifts to night shifts.” He blamed this on racism, according to a friend. “‘As far as I know he was the only African-American truck driver,' he said. 'He told me the company was racist.'” The Mail quoted Allman’s friends as saying “something terrible” must have happened for him to snap. To humanize him, the Mail also posted a flattering link to a YouTube video showing Allman interviewing Jesse Jackson, and it was noted that he was known to appear on public access television stations sermonizing on “peaceful conflict resolution.”
But another portrait of Allman was provided by the Mercury News: Not one of “a spiritual, peace-loving man” as described by friends, but “a coldblooded killer who sheriff's officials said kept a handgun at home hidden in the cutout pages of a Bible.” It was also revealed that “Allman used a rope and piece of plywood to jam shut a door and trap about a dozen co-workers” inside the trailer before he started shooting. “While on the run a little more than an hour later, Allman made a walkie-talkie call back to the terrified survivors. His message: He was coming back to finish them off.” In an attempted carjacking, Allman shot a 60-year-old woman, before being tracked down hiding between two cars in a Hewlett-Packard campus parking lot, where Allman was shot after he threatened to go down shooting.
What made him snap was likely an extreme sense of “victimization,” that he was being targeted because he was black. Being the only black in his shop, everyone else was his “enemy.” Although he preached “peace,” Allman only meant this on his terms, based on his and his community’s own racial grievances. That most of the people he targeted were Latino might make mock of his claim of “racism,” but given the popular media and political mantra that Latinos are taking jobs from “everyone,” apparently, Allman found it easy to focus his rage on them rather than his own faults.
But knowing this is no consolation for the victims and those who grieve for them."We may spend the rest of our time on this earth trying to make sense of this madness," said Luz Brown, the aunt of one of dead.
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It was is being described as a “bizarre” case—not merely because the right is running wild with its “implications”—an Iranian-American in Texas named Manssor Arbabsiar was recently arrested in New York and charged with conspiring with an Iranian national to hire a “purported member” of the Los Zetas drug cartel to assassinate a Saudi Arabian diplomat. The “evidence” to support this charge consists of claims made by a DEA-paid informant, and testimony from the man’s neighbors who thought he was “strange” and noted that he spoke a “foreign” language. A friend, David Tomscha, found it hard to believe that this “likeable,” but “lazy” man could dream-up an assassination plot. It is unknown why Saudi ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir was the alleged target, except perhaps to put a damper on U.S.-Saudi relations; of course if that was the case, the nationality of who the alleged conspirators being revealed before the alleged assassination took place obviously has the opposite effect.
What makes this case even more bizarre is the allegation that a Mexican drug cartel, no matter how violent or greedy, would be foolish enough to become involved in a high profile assassination scheme in the heart of the U.S.—which in turn would only persuade the U.S. to put more resources against them in a drug war that has become only more violent since the Bush administration started supplying military equipment to Mexico in 2006. The fact is that despite mainly right-wing media and “expert” opinion, there only “evidence” suggesting a link between Muslim terrorists and Mexicans was the arrest of a purported member of Hezbollah in Tijuana, and tattoos on prison inmates that allegedly show “alignment” with the Lebanon-based group.
The Washington Post has noted that “a favorite chestnut of some activists and politicians keen to tighten immigration” was the charge that terrorists are infiltrating the Mexican border. The reality is that “terrorists have rarely crossed into the United States from Mexico. In a recent Nixon Center study of 373 Islamist terrorists, Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke concluded: ‘Despite widespread alarms raised over terrorist infiltration from Mexico, we found no terrorist presence in Mexico and no terrorists who entered the U.S. from Mexico.’” The study also concluded that "a sizeable terrorist presence in Canada and a number of Canadian-based terrorists who have entered the U.S."—not surprising considering how lightly patrolled the Canadian border is.
A more recent story on a website dealing with national security issues, National Security Zone, quoted a Department of Justice criminal division official who claimed that the department had no substantive evidence that Hezbollah was operating in Mexico (besides that single arrest), and if Hezbollah was in Latin America at all, is was for funding reasons. The story quoted a “global intelligence” expert named Scott Stewart suggesting that although the Iranian-backed Hezbollah was more dangerous than Al-Qaida, it was “unlikely” to tempt a “swift and harsh” response by launching a terrorist attack against the U.S.; “The Hezbollah leadership may be radical, but it is not irrational.”
Of course, this won’t stop the usual paranoid propaganda being instigated by Republican politicians and the right-wing press (that includes CNN). The sad, pathetic truth is that Americans are “suffering” far less than billions of people on this planet, and that includes the vast majority of people in Mexico. Thanks to U.S. drug war propaganda that places sole blame on drug suppliers rather than face its own failed domestic “war” against consumption, the U.S. is helping to instigate even more disruption and chaos supplying weapons (both legal and illegal) and “know-how” which is only being used to kill tens of thousands of people—and Americans have the audacity to point fingers in self-righteous fear. Few Americans (white, anyways) are affected—directly or indirectly—by the turbulence beyond their isolated lives, yet they continuously seek scapegoats and demonize not just the violent elements but the vast majority of vulnerable “foreigners” just trying to survive. This latest alleged foiled terrorist attack is just another point on the graph to chart this pre-determined course.
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