The End of Racism?
By Asad U. Khaja, MD
Torrance, CA
As we anxiously awaited the swearing in of our new president, I was told repeatedly that his inauguration marked the end of racism. We had come a long way from the slave trade, apartheid and KuKlux clan. Opening up the web browser earlier, Martin Luther King appeared on my Google home page and I thought to myself that racism must really be over. Or is it?
Since the civil rights movement in the 60's the income gap between blacks and whites is $12,000 and has been bridged only 3 cents in more than 30 years! I wonder why statistics from the department of education show education among African Americans is deteriorating, African Americans are plagued with vastly higher unemployment, poorer access to health care, higher infant mortality. Do their babies not matter? Or do they matter less?
Then I think of our foreign policy and cannot help but see racist undertones in our dealings with other countries. Those impecunious nations who happen to have the misfortune of having 'strategic importance' or natural resource and of curious happenstance are time and again of subordinate race. Madeleine Albright stated that 500,000 Iraqi children are 'acceptable' casualties of our merciless sanctions. Never mind the 1,000,000 Iraqi dead as a result of the ongoing war.
Racism is alive and well in our media bias and vividly reflected in the news coverage of the Palestine-Israel 'conflict'. Ironically, I have to turn to the Israeli press to get a more balanced view of the current situation. Our continued blind support and overt racism in the unending occupation of illegally confiscated Palestinian land is despicable.
I think of the future and 'hope' and 'change' are on the horizon. In the next 30 years maybe we can bridge the income gap another 3 cents, maybe decrease our support of murder of civilians abroad. Or maybe we can just stop reporting it altogether.
