In an interview to Mehr News on recent cases of police brutality and racial profiling in the US and the officers being cleared of charges by the jury which has sparked massive protests across the country, Dr. Rev. Randy Short described how the US system has caused racial discrimination through the history of the country.
Here is the text of interview:
Let me start from this point that Ayatollah Khamenei has in several occasions criticized the United States for violating human rights. Why do they always claim for it and accuse Muslim countries especially Iran of human rights violations? What is your idea about the human rights violation in the United States?
The United States has always been violating human rights, even before there was a declaration of human rights. Its origins is rooted in this; the basis of American empire expansion and the building up from a communal society into an agriculture society and then into an industrial society is on the violation of human rights. The basis of American wealth and power has been the genocide of indigenous people and enslavement and super-exploitation of them. For example the city of Washington is built upon the land that belongs to my people, who are of African-Indian descent. There is nothing with their name on it, to recognize they even existed. And even the major sports team for Washington is called the Washington Redskins.
The United States has an enormous mass incarceration problem; there are at minimum, about 2.5 million Americans incarcerated, and that’s just in prisons; in the jails that’s probably in the several hundreds of thousands. At any given day, in the United States there are 2.5 million people in prison or jail. And in terms of people who were former prisoners, it’s in the millions of millions. Poor people, African-Americans, Native Americans and Latinos are overwhelmingly represented in there. With only 4 percent of the statistics provided by the police department, every day at least one person is murdered by the police. What would a hundred percent report be? Let’s assume that 5 hundred people are killed every year and that is just 10 percent reporting; then it means that 5 thousand people are shot and killed by the police every year.
To be frank, in the constitution of the United States black people are called three-fifths human, so I’m a sub-human being according to the Law of the United States. The American Law has never recognized these particular people who have African descend as being equal or free or human. The law of the land whether it is stated or not is a Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the American Supreme Court ruled no black ever has been or ever could be a citizen of the United States by virtue of who they are. And that Blacks have no rights that anyone white would have to respect. Now many people would say that the Thirteenth Amendment that was ratified in the 1860s ended slavery and overturned the Dred Scott doctrine that denied my humanity, my ability to be an American citizen, and basically said that I have no rights that the State needs to protect. However, that’s not true. In the first half of the Thirteenth Amendment that made involuntary servitude also called slavery unlawful in the United States, also declared that involuntary servitude can’t be used for the people who are in trouble with the police or who’ve been arrested. So, on one hand they said that they ended the ownership of the Blacks like a cow or a horse, and on the other hand they came with the same law that says ‘I can take all of your human rights and treat you like a slave if you have a problem with the Law.’ So they began to pass specific laws that target Blacks to make certain that they remain slaves all the while saying that they ended slavery. It’s never happened.
Even prior to their being the United States, there were people like Benjamin Franklin who has an essay which says why increase the sons of Africa when you could increase the lovely whites and reds. And Benjamin Franklin in 1751 is saying we don’t want too many black people in America. Let’s not help them. We should increase whites and diminish blacks. He who is seen as the most liberal abolitionist founding father feels that there are too many black people. The white people bring the black people by force and then blame them for getting there! Do you get the irony? The arrogance of the Anglos, their relationship to the very people they oppress. They move them somewhere and hate them for being where they’ve been taken by force. And then prosecute them again for being transported against their will. In 1787, when they’re writing a constitution for the United States in the city of Philadelphia, these white men cannot agree to have a constitution and say that they would reduce the number of black people in the country or they would no longer allow them to be brought over so that this country can be white. So before you even have a constitution completed they are flustered about what to do to make certain that this population is diminished. Well, that’s called genocide.
The United States came into existence to enslave or maintain the enslavement of African people and extermination of Indians to take their land. There was a war fought— the Seven Years' War from 1754 to 1763 which is called the French and Indian War. What happened at the end of that war was that because the British Empire had lost money fighting for its Anglo citizens in North America, made all laws of the American thirteen colonies subject to parliamentary law of Great Britain. And in the 1760s, there was a Declaratory Act which said that all laws that are made in the British Empire were binding on the American colonies. So the very creation of America is one that is fighting for the dehumanization and exploitation of people of which I’m comprised. Throughout the country’s history, their constant efforts whether it’s segregation or eugenics, something that has been practiced by the United States to this day, whether they feel there are too many of some people or other people that need to be reduced so what do they do, they bring in a lot of Europeans to give them jobs and house and they make certain that the blacks don’t get the same opportunities. If you can’t take care of yourself you commit crime and then they put you in jail for it. Or that you suffer; you die and other people grow, they expand and become powerful. This is the systematic policy of elimination.
The United Nations last month declared that the US has a racially unjust society, and that can be evidenced by the fact that the Black die younger, our schools are inferior, we’re mass incarcerated, the US government funds as a population policy the mass abortion of black babies. So blacks may comprise about 17% percent of the population and they get close to 40% of the abortions.
That’s the human rights violation, racists Anglos try to tell me or us who we are, instead of us defining it. The US systematically does not enforce its own laws. The civil rights bill of 1964 is often not enforced the voting rights; we have the issues with voting across the country in 1965. There’s the convention for elimination of all forms of racial discrimination which US says they have a thing called RUD which stands for the Reservation of Understanding Declaration and means they say “our constitution gives all Americans free and equal access and they all are completely protected under the law.” This is what the US government sends to the UN but if the constitution were sufficient, why would they need the civil rights bill in 1964? Voting rights bill in 1965? Why they needed affirmative action policies? All of these say the system is designed to not work.
Economically we are ripped off; we are not paid fairly; we face epidemic of ethnic cleansing. I can just give you very simple example: My grandparents own a house not far from the capital of US. I think someone white wants it, I don’t know who wants it. They have policies which say if you have a property and your electrical bill or water bill falls behind, they can take your home from you even if you owe just a few dollars. Your home is taken and all these policies have been broadening. That home has been for my family for 80 years, suddenly someone white wants it and we didn’t even run up.
This is happening across the country, so blacks are systematically driven from the cities. For example I have four degrees. I would be denied a position because I don’t speak Spanish. Spanish people in the US don’t have to speak English this is a way to bring other people in and make certain that even blacks like myself who are educated, don’t have fair vocational opportunities. This goes on and on and on. It is systematic and deliberate.
I want to give you an example: There is a man named Kermit Gosnell. He says he knew a black abortion doctor who did not have a license to do the murder of babies in the city of Philadelphia for years. He had dirty office with dirty instruments and women were infected with herpes and AIDS because they were poor and primarily blacks. The doctor was selling illegal drugs too. They let him operate because he was destroying black people. This man is murderer. He would have the woman have the baby alive and then cut the babies spinal cords with scissors. Maybe as many as 20000 babies were murdered by this man.
When president Obama was asked about it, his response was he couldn’t speak on a pending court case. And after the court ruled that this man had committed crimes, the president of US went to a group called Planned Parenthood. This group is a genocide group. You had it in Iran that was called the International federation of Planned Parenthood. Ayatollah Khomeini who I love dearly called them the great satin because under the Shah, they were pushing abortion on Iranian women trying to exterminate Iranians too. That group was federally funded by the US. So they abort every year maybe 300000 or more black babies, 80% of their facilities within the 2 miles of walking distance from black communities in the country.
Many of these doctors are not even doctors. Abortion is a policy and it is funded by the US. Obama went to a meeting for Planned Parenthood and said God bless Planned Parenthood. Let me give you more details: Planned Parenthood was started by a Jewish woman named Margaret Sanger and she is a lesbian. Margaret Sanger’s initial group was called the American birth control league established in 1917. In the 1930 she created the thing called the Negro Project with the agenda to exterminate blacks. You will find that, the American birth control league during the height of Nazi genocide of Jews changed its name to Planned Parenthood.
And in the 1950s, the same model of killing of blacks was brought to Pakistan and India, because they don't think there are too many of me [blacks], but too many of you [Muslims] as well. And that there should be more white people and less Arabs, less Muslims, less Chinese; just get rid of them and let there be only white people because they're the master race. And this is supported, I would go further; the water in the United States where blacks are living in particular has high rates of Fluoride. Fluoride is a toxic metal. They have found through studies that blacks absorb it twice the rates of whites, meaning that when I drink a glass of water with poison I would get twice as much as they do. So they have made it a matter of national policy to keep this poison in the water. And I can go on and on about things that are systematically done to destroy and hurt people because of their color and their origin, that’s done on the state municipal and federal level.
Alright, as you just mentioned, the same conditions existed at the time of the founding fathers when they were writing the constitution with only the white men in mind, excluding the women just the way they excluded the blacks...
Well you have to keep in mind that when the guy beats the black to pick the cotton, the white woman gets taken care of. So they are in there [constitution] now. We are talking about the people who are targeted, so the people who are victimized are primarily black and male and then black women and then so forth. The United States is not a human rights leader. It is hypocritical to say it is so. For an example of its hypocrisy we don't have to go any further than your country. Who gave them the right to give Saddam Hossein biological and chemical weapons to mass murder Iranian combatants? And does that show our regard for human rights? Who’s propelled up these people in Bahrain? Who’s behind the oppression of the Shia in Yemen? Who’s behind what's happening with the people in Gaza? How can they talk to anyone about human anything? In fact, they don't even show their humanity in terms of how they treat people domestically or internationally. So, to me it's quite interesting that we have in this 5+1 discussions about nuclear weapons and Iran's nuclear energy and yet every other day there are implications of politicians who are making statements calling for the nuclear annihilation of Iranian people when they know Iran has nothing. And they're worried about Iran having [a nuclear bomb?]. It’s just fair that if someone is constantly threatening me with nuclear annihilation I may want a bomb too. Not so much because I like them because of course we know through the wisdom of Ayatollah Khamenei that Iranians don’t believe in this [using mass destruction weapons against people]. And as Muslims they fight men-to-men like they did with the Iraqis, or they would defend themselves; they don't want wars and they don’t want offensive weapons. And Iran has attacked no one in the better part of three hundred years; you can't name a month when the United States hasn't attacked or done something somewhere for its entire history. Let’s not just talk about the last 50 years. So of course the United States is not a human rights leader.
We have close to 50 million Americans in a country that dumps food on its people that lack food security. How can a country that throws half of its food in the trash and exports food to depress indigenous food production of other countries [have a claim on human rights?] The United States allows 50 million of its people to both be on food stamps or the supplemental nutrition program and then people go wanting for food in a country that produces and exports food, that will plow oranges into the ground, grow them and then destroy them so the prices would be very high for people. Does that sound humane to you? Or on the issue of homelessness, we have three to four million homeless Americans and we have 19 million weak at homes. Does that sound like human rights to you?
In 1994 the US government passed a law where police departments across the country were supposed to keep statistics where they will be able to determine when racism and racial profiles, racial abuse and racial shootings occurred by the police, 20 years ago.
This has been systematically ignored meaning that US (government) has refused to enforce its own law because they do not want to know how much and to what degree racial killings by the police, racial discrimination abuse exist.
So that 4 percent figure, and that four percent means that 96 percent and that is just between 2001 and 2013. So this human problem is quiet grave, it is so serious that when the young people and Ferguson were protesting out of nowhere, they started finding ISIL people to behead a few white men and get a miracle… to get and change the way. You would see mass police violence against people, bloodshed, so called despotic dictatorship. We are that close to it, if you saw the footage from Ferguson, this white man would have no problem shooting you, me or any one. In particular when we are not white we are not human. They try to put it in your head and the fact that many Americans are conditioned to see that non-European people as less than human , that includes black and brown people who have been taught that they are inferior to white to shoot another black or brown without thinking, because this is tolerating.
Dr. Randy Short is an American university professor, historian, researcher and social action minister. He is also founder of the Anti-Depo Provera Coalition that aims to educate the public and demand that Congress restrict or wholly outlaw the dangerous contraceptive Depo Provera which is deadly with countless side effects.
Interview by Hamid Reza
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