Racism has become a major issue in the context of the presidential race. We are so focused on what people are saying about Obama, what white people are saying about black people, what black people are saying about white people.
However, there is a much MUCH larger race relations problem in this country. It has nothing to do with words spoken, or even black and white skin. It has to do with a portion of this country facing 20% unemployment rates, 70% poverty rates, 45-65 year life expectancy, and some of its people still being held as political prisoners for crimes they did not commit.
I am speaking, of course, about the American Indian.
This racism is incredibly prevalent, and completely acceptable in our culture. Try naming a sports team the "Blackskins" and see what happens. Yet the Redskins is alright. Try having a caricature of an African American parading around a football field and see what happens. Yet a caricature of an Indian tribal leader is alright.
Even here on DailyKos, we participate in this racism though ignorance and silence. If we don't honor an agreement with Iraq, there are 20 diaries about it, yet there are very few about the hundreds of agreements and treaties broken with the American Indians. If we take a prisoner from another country, create false witnesses against them, hold them in a maximum security prison, torture them, and deny them health care, there are 20 diaries about it here, yet few have been written about the American Indians this is happening to. I wrote a diary about the most famous of these political prisoners, Leonard Peltier, not long ago, and it got fewer than 10 comments.
Let me focus on the inaction that makes this racism very apparent. I will site just a few statistics comparing the Pine Ridge Reservation (the reservation that the crime Peltier was imprisoned for happened on) to the state in which it lies, South Dakota.
Let's start with household incomes. $22,503 for the state of South Dakota. Not that great, is it? Then we come to the res: $11,260. This is not anywhere NEAR the rest of the country.
Those income numbers translate to 15.9% of people living below the poverty level in South Dakota, while on the res, that number jumps to 62.6%. This is the reality for these people. As one line in the movie "Thunderheart" states, we've got the third world right in the middle of the USA.
These numbers may have something to do with the unemployment rate: 4.1% for the state of South Dakota, and a staggering 28.9% on the res. This probably results from lack of education: While 77.1% of people in SD have at least a high school diploma, we see that number drop to 58.4% for those living on the reservation.
These numbers are unforgivable. While the white middle class is being squeezed paycheck to paycheck, American Indians aren't even able to feed their children on their meager budgets. They have truly become invisible in their own country.
I ask that we not forget them. Whenever you get a chance, remind our candidates of the plight of the American Indian, and press them for an answer on what they plan to do about it. We cannot ignore this blatant racism, nor can we allow it to continue.