In Armando's front paged diary
NYC Mayoral Election: The Race Card?, various comments have appeared deploring the Democrats' playing of said "race card". In my opinion, it is this question alone that is the linchpin of what will become of our society, the turning point around which our survival or destruction will turn.
Race is the central question for all of America.
Really.
It ain't just about NYC.
It is the original sin of this country, and until we totally expiate that sin, we will continue to shuffle on off towards Buffalo.
Or Armegeddon.
Whichever comes first.
Race card?
The "race card" MUST be played.
It is the joker in this deck.
The one from which everyone seems to want to avert their eyes.
Eyes wide closed, we stumble through history with a racial ball and chain securely locked to our leg.
Read on.
Until TOTAL RACIAL EQUALITY is achieved in this country (for at least one generation, maybe several) we will continue to have a vast, undereducated, angry underclass siphoning off massive amounts of funds and energy from our gross national product. Like a car that is completely inefficient, we can no longer run that vehicle in today's world. It is simply too damned expensive, if for no other reason.
Our wars?
Racial, mostly.
Except for Germany, which was so fucked up in that regard that even WE could see it.
Our incredibly expensive prison and so-called "justice" systems?
Not much more than a holding pen for angry members of minorities who have been quite literally driven mad at a very young age by the bitter realization that they do not have a snowball's chance in hell of leading a successful life if they are not exceptionally gifted,
And THEN only if they are damned lucky as well.
And so Bloomberg and the rest of the Ratpubs "run the race card" with every breath they take.
They run it in voter suppression.
Everywhere and always.
They run it in shorting the educational systems of the inner cities.
And they run it by keeping their business empires...the entire middle class consumer system from which they make their billions in usury-based graft...liberally supplied and lubricated with a permanent underclass that will (MUST) do the dirty work of the system for low pay.
The drudge work.
The soldiering work.
The shit work.
The dying.
So when some anti-Ratpub politician has the temerity to point some of this out...just a little, because they can't afford to have the Rat-owned media jump all over them for fear that they will rock the boat too far and spill the racial beans (Bad for business, don'tcha know.)...WE jump on them for being RACIST???
Give me a break.
Malcolm X was absolutely correct when he said:
'You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you are making progress."
And
"I can't turn around without hearing about some 'civil rights advance'! White people seem to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah'! Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back -- and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!"
But that knife MUST be removed, or else both the stabbed and the stabber are going to die.
And you cannot pull that knife out until you admit its presence in the first place.
Which is where we came in here.
HOORAY for Nadler and Meeks.
And hooray for Ferrer, who knows EXACTLY what it means to be a minority child in a ghetto in America, and will not forget it very damned soon, either.
Fossella...in the grand tradition of Italian racist Staten Island pigs (Google <"Guy Molinari" + mafia> for more on THAT.) is being used as a code talker, aimed at the white ethnic vote in NYC. Jews and Italians, mostly. Brooklyn and Staten island Italians, Queens Jews. Now THERE's a coalition made in Heaven, eh?
Staten Island is the most heavily Italian American county in the United States, with 44.55% of its residents claiming Italian ancestry in 2000 according to Wikipedia, And Staten island politics is as racist as those of Pre-Faubus Arkansas. Bet on it. "There goes the neighborhood" has been the greatest fear of the white working class in Staten Island (and the rest of what remains of all-white ethnic NYC as well) for 60 years. That's NYC politics. Abe Beame, that nasty old fart Ed Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg...they all ran the same game. Play off the idea of marauding hordes of unwashed savages on the white working class, then suppress the ghetto vote any way they can.
It works, too...
Ferrer has his work cut out for him.
And we are not helping by moaning about "the race card".
Hell, it's race POKER being played in NYC.
EVERY card is a race card.
And the Rats deal from the bottom of the deck.
The bottom of the barrel, too.
Bet on it.
Give Ferrer his due.
And let him use whatever weapons he can muster.
NYC is a Spanish city now. HUGE portions of it. The most vital portions, in my opinion. Of the people who really carry this city on their backs today (The workers, the REAL workers, not the hustlers), I would estimate 40% to 50% of them are Spanish. Maybe more. From the Mexicans and other Central Americans who are the latest arrivals and do so much of the shit work right on through the oldest group, the Puerto Ricans who are now largely second and third and fourth generation and staff a great deal of the educated infrastructure that keeps the city functioning...teachers, civil servants...
Add the black population and the percentage gets up into the 80th percentiles and even higher.
Time for a "minority" mayor.
Considering that "minorities" are in the MAJORITY here.
Both in numbers and especially in work hours spent maintaining the joint.
And considering that the people who are represented by Bloomberg......
The extremely wealthy.
The hustlers.
The bloated Trump motherfuckers.
...are in such a minority here in every way except in dollars hoarded that the idea of a democracy fronted by one of their own is absolutely laughable.
It is about time for a "minority" mayor.
HOWEVER he can get elected.
Lay off Ferrer.
He's actually got a shot.
Let him take it.
Or...do you want a city of Keriks?
Naaaaahhhhhhh...
Support Ferrer no matter WHAT his tactics.
And support any OTHER Democrat who has the courage to face the race question for what it really is.
The single most important failing of the American culture.
Our survival depends on it.
Charles