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Whack!
Whack! Whack! That
sun is hot and plenty bright. Auctioning
slaves is a real high art. Bid
‘em in! Get ‘em in! Whack! Whack! Whack! Now
here’s a real good buy on about 15. Gonna
start her at three. Can I hear three? Bid
‘em in ! Whack! She’s
good in the fields. She can sew and cook. Bid
‘em in! Get ‘em in! Whack! Whack! Here’s
a bid of three from a man who’s thrifty. Bid
‘em in! Whack! Three
fifty’s bid. I’m looking for four. Don’t
mind them tears. That’s one of her
tricks. Bid
‘em in! Whack!
Pull
her down Roy.
Bid
‘Em In The
Washington Post of May 21, 1999 contained
the headline, Two Allege Racial Bias By
Customs/ House Panel Hears Tales of Detention, Humiliation. The newspaper cited a hearing held by the House
Ways and Means oversight subcommittee examination of whether the U.S. Customs Service
wrongly targets Black and Hispanic airline passengers for intrusive searches of their
bodies and luggage because of racial bias. One
of those testifying was Janneral Denson, an African American woman returning from Jamaica
to Fort Lauderdale, Florida who was pulled out of the airline passenger arrival line by
U.S. Customs Service agents, detained and then taken to a Miami hospital, where she was
handcuffed to a bed rail and not allowed to call her mother. She
was seven months pregnant at the time, and she said doctors told the Customs agents they
believed “I didn’t have anything inside of me” other than her baby. But the agents apparently suspected her of
swallowing packets of illegal drugs and forced her to drink four cups of a laxative. A day later, with no evidence of drugs in her
bowel movements, the agents took her back to the airport and let her go. Eight days later, after bouts of diarrhea and
bleeding, Ms. Denson said she underwent an emergency Caesarean. Her son was born, weighing 3 pounds and 4 ounces. “We do not know what permanent effects the
premature birth will have on my son,” she testified at the House hearing. Cornell
University law professor Sheri Lynn Johnson told the House subcommittee that her study of
Customs statistics showed that Black and Hispanic travelers were subjected to 43 percent
of the body searches conducted last year and that Black female travelers faced
approximately eight times the risk that white males face of a strip search by Customs
agents. Lewis cited another study that showed
that a Black female traveler was 20 times more likely to be stopped and intensively
searched by Customs agents than a white woman. During
their testimony, Ms. Denson and an Hispanic woman paused to fight back tears or regain
their composure at various times as they described their detentions, how they were
frightened by U.S. Customs officials and humiliated when told to take off their clothes or
spread their legs for searches. Ms. Denson
has filed suit against The U.S. Customs Service. Dr.
Na’im Akbar, clinical psychologist at Florida State University, has stated that a
part of the current attack on African Americans is a psychological conspiracy intended to
breed despair. He states data shows that the
fundamental social condition of African American people in 1999 - by and large - is relatively
unchanged since our ancestors came over on the slave ships.
We - in comparison to others in the American population - die faster, are
less well off economically, are at the bottom of the educational scales, and are at the
bottom of the political, business ownership and wealth scales. Dr. Akbar states that at present “... a few
of us have been elevated on the plantation. There
are more of us now who are visibly employed within the kitchen. We work and operate very often in close proximity
to those who run the plantation. Some of us
are even convinced that we are running the plantation.” |
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