Dec. 22, 2013

Archbishop Tutu Chides ANC for Excluding Minority Whites at Mandela Services

Winnie Mandela and Archbishop Tutu

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network  

(TriceEdneyWire.com)  - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an activist in the anti-apartheid struggle, said he was dismayed at the “blatant exclusion” of Afrikaners from last week's memorial services for Nelson Mandela.

He noted the absence of the Dutch Reformed Church and the limited use of the Afrikaans language at the services.

It was a mainly Afrikaner party that introduced white minority rule, which Mr Mandela opposed. But after becoming South Africa's first black president, Mr Mandela preached reconciliation with his former enemies.

"We were amiss in not being as inclusive as Madiba would certainly have been," Tutu said. "To the extent that I can do so meaningfully, I apologize to our sisters and brothers in the Afrikaner Community.”

The Archbishop also criticized the prominence of the governing African National Congress during the week of events following Mr Mandela's death on Dec. 5. "It may have sent out a more inclusive message,” he said, “had the program directors at the Memorial and Funeral - both national and State events - not both been senior office-bearers of the ruling party.”

Meanwhile, in Ventersdorp, a former Afrikaner stronghold, grieving for the former anti-racist fighter was observed among some Afrikaner whites

At the Dutch Reformed Church on Cochrane Street, a BBC reporter said he watched the old and the young stand in silence to remember Mr Mandela.

The pastor, Gerrit Strydom, had served as a soldier patrolling the black townships during the violence of the transition years.

“The Dutch Reformed Church provided a religious justification for apartheid,” recalled reporter Fergal Keane. “Its ministers once preached that blacks were inferior beings, the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" of the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament.

Pastor Strydom now believes Mr Mandela taught Afrikaners the value of reconciliation. "After all the years we had him in prison, he could have turned around and made South Africa a bad place for our people. But Nelson Mandela was the one guy who brought people together."

Anna Johnson, a Black Ventersdorp resident, went further: “What he gave us was beyond what we expected. We were in chains, he freed us. We were blind and he opened our eyes.”

Dec. 20, 2013

Reality Check

Kwanzaa-Christmas: Both Are Meaningful To Black Folks
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Five years ago I wrote a column, “Kwanzaa-Christmas: No Conflict” in which I explained why there is no practical reason serious Black folks can’t participate in both celebrations. Guided by a belief that the sentiments expressed here are just as needed today as they were five years ago, I’m repeating the Dec. 29, 2008 column. Please note that today, instead of writing “pathetic secular types,” it would be “pathetic post-racial types.”

Those people, who for whatever reason, are nervous about or hostile towards the
celebration of Kwanzaa (Dec. 26 - Jan. 1) among an increasing number of Black people,
need to chill. They are way off the mark. Christmas, as celebrated by Christians, is or at
least is supposed to be, a religious celebration whereas Kwanzaa is a cultural celebration.
Both have a strong spiritual element.

It is not the fault of Kwanzaa celebrants that too many people treat Christmas more like a cultural celebration than a religious one. That is something that Christians have to deal
with, the re-taking of their religious celebration from the merchants who regard it as an
opportunity for dollar bills to be rained upon them.

The mission of the seven-day Kwanzaa celebration is to encourage Black people, no
matter what their personal religious beliefs, their personal political beliefs, their
nationality or their ethnicity, to strive for individual and group achievement and
excellence.

The seven principles of Kwanzaa - - Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and
Responsibility, Cooperative economics, Purpose, Creativity, Faith - - provide a solutions-
oriented guideline that, if adhered to by just 25 percent of our people in this country, will
greatly advance our individual and group economic, political and cultural interests.

Dr. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 as a call for both reflection and action. It
'has remained just that for the past 42 years. As more and more of us commit ourselves to its principles, there will be a much-needed psychological change among significant
numbers of our people. After a while, the major holdouts will not be those people who
have religious concerns about Kwanzaa, but those pathetic secular types who are
vehemently opposed to anything that has a Black perspective. They prefer to remain
exotic pets of White folks. This is good because such accommodationists are irrelevant to
Kwanzaa's overall mission.

Happy Kwanzaa!

A. Peter Bailey, author of the recently published book Witnessing Brother Malcolm X: The Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Dec. 21, 2013

Virginia State University Rector Rebuffs NAACP Request
By Jeremy M. Lazarus

Va. NAACP Executive Director Salim Khalfani

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - No.That was the quick response when a top state NAACP official asked to speak to Virginia State University’s board of visitors.

The aim: To push inclusion of Black-and minority-owned companies in the construction of the school’s new $84 million convocation center.

The rebuff came from Harry E. Black, the VSU rector or board chairman,whom the university says has discretion to make the decision.“Although our meetings are open to the public, we typically do not have a public comment period,” Black wrote in responding to the speaking request from King Salim Khalfani, the Virginia State NAACP’sexecutive director.

A surprised Khalfani called the speaking ban a first: “In my 21-year tenure with the NAACP, I have never been denied an opportunity to address a public university’s board.” A former top Richmond city official who now manages Baltimore city’s finances, did offer an alternative in his Dec.16 rejection letter, which was obtained by the Free Press.

He said he would set up a meeting between Khalfani, himself and top university officials to focus on business diversity. No date for that meeting has been set. Khalfani has accepted the meeting invitation, but also has appealed to Black to reconsider the ban on him speaking at the Jan. 16 board meeting. Khalfani told the Free Press that he wanted to let the board know “how important it is for them to ensure inclusion in building the convocation center. As a historically Black university, I believe they have a special responsibility to make that happen.”

He said state reports show VSU ranks near the bottom among state agencies and schools in the amount of contracts or subcontracts awarded to Black-owned businesses.

He said, “The convocation project provides VSU with an opportunity to show that it recognizes it needs to improve.” 

Dec. 20, 2013

After Apartheid and Jim Crow: Still Not Equal
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.  

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As Nelson Mandela’s body was laid to rest, the leaders from across the world who came to pay tribute to him leave with shared perspectives. They see the fruits of the remarkable triumphs of Mandela and the African National Congress — the defeat of apartheid, the transition of power from the oppressive minority to the newly empowered majority, the creation of a great democracy. And they see the continued inequality that scars South Africa, the gulf between the wealthy and the impoverished, still largely reflecting a color line.

We see the same in this country. We celebrate, as we should, the remarkable triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement: the end of apartheid in the South, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the legal prohibition of racial discrimination in employment and education.

Yet we also see the gulf between rich and poor, a gulf still often tracing a color line in many of our cities and regions. These parallels are not random or accidental. The reality was one people enslaved on three continents — North America, Europe and Africa. Racism is a tool that was used to justify the brutality.

Racism exploits the other economically. It creates the illusion of one group’s superiority and another’s inferiority. The attitude and the practice get rooted into institutions across the society. In South Africa, Mandela and the ANC ended apartheid laws and won the right to vote. In the US, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement did the same.

But there is also engrained economic separation: clubs, businesses and meetings that remain closed informally, even if they were no longer legally separated. There is the discrimination of legacy: the young inheriting less, having less access to elite schools, for their parents had been locked out. There is the discrimination of property and neighborhood: people of color left out of better neighborhoods, even after they could no longer be legally excluded. There is the discrimination in education: poor urban schools can’t keep the best teachers nor offer the best equipment and supplies. There is discrimination in the access to capital: minority businesses still find it more difficult to raise capital, and rapacious mortgage bankers still prey on minority homeowners.

Over time, a few from across the color line excel and break into the closed clubs, but the majority still faces long odds. But the problem in South Africa, where blacks are the majority, or the U.S., where people of color are becoming the majority, is that the whole economy suffers from the vestiges of entrenched discrimination. In South Africa, an impoverished majority limits the ability of the country to build a prosperous economy and stable society. In the U.S., the government does less than in other industrial nations to lift the poor, a legacy of the belief that these “takers” are “those people.”

Even now the right attacks the Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare,” for allegedly raising costs on the middle class in order to provide health care for “those people.” In reality, most poor people in the U.S. work every day that they can. They take the early bus. They serve and prepare our food in fast food restaurants. They staff the Wal-Marts where we buy our goods. And at the end of the week, they are paid so little that they are forced to use food stamps to be able to feed themselves.

More poor people are white than black. They are disproportionately young and female. So as we celebrate the remarkable triumphs of Nelson Mandela and his movement in South Africa, and of Dr. King and his movement in the U.S., we realize that much more remains to be done. They freed their peoples but could not win them equality. That remains the next chapter. 

Rev. Jesse Jackson is president/CEO of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.