Today's Stories

November 27 - 29, 2009

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

Weekend Edition
November 27 - 29, 2009

Germany, South Africa and the United States

Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

By HEATHER GRAY

In his book “The Souls of Black Folk” in 1903 W.E.B. DuBois stated profoundly that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line”. It is perhaps unlikely that DuBois speculated the excessive degree to which that would be the case. Before he died in 1963, however, he would witness the institutionalized Jim Crow laws across the Southern United States that stripped the Black community of its civil liberties; he would witness the Nazi Germany holocaust in the 1930’s and 1940’s; and he would witness the establishment of the apartheid government in South Africa in 1948. Scholar George Fredrickson refers to all of these three regimes as “overtly racist”.

George Fredrickson died in 2008 at age 73. As a scholar of comparative history he was profound. In the New York Times obituary on March 7, 2008, Douglas Martin writes of Fredrickson as being “a historian who cast new light on the study of race and who helped define the field of comparative history with a penetrating examination of racial relations in the United States and South Africa”. Martin also credits Fredrickson “with breaking ground in the use of comparative history to escape provincialism and suggest broader, more thematic judgments about historical forces. This was particularly evident in his book “White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History” (1981), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.”

One of Fredrickson’s last books was “Racism: A Short History” (2002). The book serves as a composite of much of his profound comparative history on racism and white supremacy. For those of us in the United States, he importantly places the southern United States Jim Crow period in an international context and he anticipates the questions or critique of his analysis.

It was in the 20th century, no less, that we in the course of our human history had what Fredrickson refers to as our only overtly racist regimes. While, his comparative analysis is sobering and compelling I only touch on some of it in this article. We've always had racism and discrimination, he says, and wherever Europeans went they were always racist but the degrees varied. Fredrickson states, however, that "racist principles were not fully codified into laws effectively enforced by the state or made a central concern of public policy until the emergence of what I will call 'overtly racist regimes' in the last century."

Fredrickson's description of an overtly racist regime is as follows:
What are the distinguishing features of an overtly racist regime that would distinguish it from the general run of ethnically pluralistic societies in which racial prejudice contributes significantly to social stratification? First there is an official ideology that is explicitly racist. Those in authority proclaim insistently that the difference between the dominant group and the one that is being subordinated or eliminated are permanent or unbridgeable. Dissent from this ideology is dangerous and is likely to bring legal or extralegal reprisals, for racist egalitarianism is heresy in an overtly racist regime. Second, this sense of radical difference and alienation is most clearly and dramatically expressed in laws forbidding interracial marriage. The ideal is "race purity" and the bans on miscegenation reflect the maintenance or creation of a caste system based on the presumed racial difference. Third, social segregation is mandated by law and not merely the product of custom or private acts of discrimination that are tolerated by the state. The object is to bar all forms of contact that might imply equality between the segregators and the segregated. Fourth, to the extent that the policy is formally democratic, outgroup members are excluded from holding public office or even exercising franchise. Fifth, the access that they have to resources and economic opportunities is so limited that most of those in the stigmatized category are either kept in poverty or deliberately impoverished. This ideal type of an "overtly racist regime" applies quite well to the American South in the heyday of Jim Crow, to South Africa under apartheid, and to Nazi Germany. Nowhere else were the political and legal potentialities of racism so fully realized."

In anticipation of a critique, after his description of an overt racism, Fredrickson says that while many other countries had a "significant racist dimension" they would "fall short of meeting the criteria for an overtly racist regime." He cites many examples, such as Latin America that had many blacks and indigenous populations and informally discriminated but did not, for example, institute Jim Crow laws that banned intermarriage.

Then Fredrickson describes the similarities between these three regimes. Why was it that they became so racist? For one, the slavery period and forming attitudes based on race was certainly a factor in the United States and South Africa and a history of intense religious bigotry in the case of Germany.

Fredrickson writes that "Another common factor was the varying significance in the three cases was the extent to which the racial other came to be identified with national defeat and humiliation." In the southern United States white southerners blamed blacks for the loss of the Civil War either because, for example, the war was fought around the issue of preventing the spread of slavery or black involvement in Union lines (200,000 blacks fought for the Union). Also the black franchise helped keep in power the Radical Republicans during the Reconstruction period much to the disdain of the ruling white elite.

In the German case Hitler blamed the Jews for the loss of World War 1.

In South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902) Africans were blamed for siding with the British rather than the Afrikaaners in what became a humiliating defeat.

As Fredrickson says, the northern United States, the Allies in World War I and the British were "too powerful to be within reach of reprisal, at least in the short run." So one way of dealing with the frustration was to use the "vulnerable Other" as a scapegoat.

The empire building by Europe and the United States also impacted the rationale used by the overtly racist regimes as a way of justifying their actions and also softened the criticism of those outside the regimes. For example, when Rudyard Kipling came out with his "White Man Burden" poem in 1899 as the US was building it's own empire as a result of the war in the Philippines in 1899, another and compelling justification for occupation was given. It was the white man's responsibility to "civilize" these brown skinned peoples of the world.

Finally, Fredrickson refers to the fact that this “highest stage of white supremacy” in South Africa and the American South as well as the racist anti-semitic German regime were facilitated by “becoming modern” which, he says, was a precondition to the development of the overtly racist regimes. Fredrickson has a way of turning things on their head. The goal of white Europeans has always been to maintain control but the question is how this can be done. For example, during the slavery period whites in the South could largely control blacks more often by their own personal dictates. This control became more problematic as the economy evolved to a more urban and industrial setting in the 20th century. As Fredrickson says, “the maintenance of white supremacy now required rules and regulations to prevent blacks from taking advantage of the absence of personalized surveillance and thereby ‘getting out of their place.’” Thus, the overtly racist regimes were established to control all behavior.

As a political activist myself, and white I might add, and who in one way or the other has been impacted by all of these overtly racist regimes, it was rather sobering to realize that in the whole history of the world it was in the 20th century when I was born and raised that these regimes evolved. My Canadian uncle was killed in Germany during the war; my neighbor here in Atlanta was a survivor of Dachau death camp in Germany; all my adult life I have been involved in challenging civil rights abuses and hammering in yet another nail in the coffin of Jim Crow and it’s dreadful impact in the urban and rural southern United States; in the 1970’s, 80’s ad 90’s I was organizing and helping to intensify the battle against apartheid and finally, in celebration, serving as an observer of the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

Fredrickson’s analysis was sobering as it helped me to step away from the provincial sense of Jim Crow in he United States, to better understand the enormity of it all and to place it all in the universe of human history - or as David Martin referred to above “suggest broader, more thematic judgments about historical forces.” It was this, then, that many of us in the world were battling against in the 20th century – overt state controlled racism and brutality the degree to which the world has never seen in terms of racial hostilities in all three regimes. Even the South African whites were shocked at the brutality in the southern United States and that’s saying a lot! Yet, though these overtly racist regimes evolved in the 20th century, they were also defeated in the 20th century thanks to the struggles and demands and armed struggles of the victims themselves. The legacies of these regimes still resonate of course and the struggles and resistance by people all over the world continue now and will continue in the future to chip away and often make profound gaping holes in these legacies of oppression.

Heather Gray produces "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net <mailto:hmcgray@earthlink.net> .

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