The State of Black America is in Disarray by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

One cold winter’s night, I chose to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue along the route of Presidential motorcades. I began to think how far we’ve come. And then, I couldn’t help but see it. I tried not to look. But I had no choice; I had to pass it. I couldn’t turn my head as if to not look. What if my eyes met his and he saw me glance away. I had no choice. I looked straight into his eyes. {I saw} a Black man, with all his worldly possessions, cradled by the doorway of the bank across the street from the White House. And on that walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw Black man after Black man in makeshift beds made of cardboard, sleeping on sidewalk benches, over heating grates, under bridges; tucked away in urban nooks and crannies, discarded like trash, on the streets of the most powerful city on the planet. I saw an elderly Black woman wrapped in newspapers in a bus shelter trying to avoid the cold wind of the night. And suddenly, the walk that was supposed to cool me down, made me absolutely hot because the face of poverty and despair that I saw on that night, was Black. But they tell us it’s the best of times for us Blacks because our unemployment is lower than it’s ever been since they started keeping statistics.

On the streets of America, do you see what I see? For those men and women on the streets of America, this is not the best of times. It’s the worst of times. And if we don’t dare to care for them, who will? Let me report to you the true State of Black America.  A little Black baby born today is more than twice as likely as a white or Latino infant and three times more likely than an Asian infant, to die during her first year of life. That baby is almost three times as likely as a white baby to be born to a mother who has had no prenatal care at all and that baby’s mother is four times more likely than a white mother to die in childbirth. That Black baby’s father is still twice as likely to be unemployed as the white child’s father and the Black baby’s family still earns 84% of what the white family earns. That Black child is more likely to attend overcrowded or crumbling schools where performance is below the state or national average.

Black America has specific issues that must be addressed by our leadership. Twenty-six Black men were executed last year and we know that some of them were probably innocent. We began 2001 by executing a retarded Black woman. There are one million Black Americans in prison. A recent report written by the United States Department of Justice informs us that Blacks are more likely than whites to be pulled over by traffic police, imprisoned, and put to death. Additionally, though Blacks and whites have approximately the same rate of drug use, Blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites and are more likely to receive longer federal prison sentences than whites.

In the area of health care, Congressional hearings on health disparities tell us that Blacks are less likely to receive surgery, transplants, and prescription drugs than whites. Physicians are less likely to prescribe appropriate treatment for Blacks than for whites and Black scientists, physicians, and institutions are being kept out of the funding stream to prevent correction of the disparity.

Generally speaking, we Blacks work more, earn less; face discrimination in school, on the job, and in our neighborhoods. This is the state of Black America. The absence of strong and vibrant Black leadership in this country has not come about because of poor Black voter turnout or because of anything that we have done or not done. Rather, it is a direct result of a widespread and systematic U.S. government program over a number of decades aimed at destroying any chance of effective Black leadership in this country.

In the past, I’ve discussed with many people the contents of a COINTELPRO memo: a memo that among other things says that:

• There should never be another charismatic Black leader with national appeal able to unify the Black movement
• The United States Government will institute actions that discourage linkages between Africans and African Americans; create tension, conflict, and dissension within the Black community; and support the nomination and election of Blacks who will be more loyal to existing institutions and policies than to the Black movement.

Let me be specific about what COINTELPRO did to Black America and the whites who stood with us. In the 1960s and '70s, the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) sections of the federal government destroyed Black leadership in this country through government-orchestrated burglaries, planting of false evidence, and murders as part of the wholesale violation of fundamental constitutional rights of activist American citizens. That this happened is not fiction. It is well documented. Remember, Geronimo Pratt served 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The scale of COINTELPRO rivals anything committed by the apartheid government of South Africa.

As I reflect on my walk down Pennsylvania Avenue that day, and the impact of COINTELPRO, I know that the conditions of Black America are as they are because it was meant to be. The real struggle is to turn around everything that is in that memo. We must reject the leaders that they pick for us. We must connect with our brothers and sisters in Africa. And we must create a real rainbow movement that joins Blacks and whites together to change the policies that produce Black misery, poverty, and pain as I witnessed on that fateful night along the route of the Presidential motorcade.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney is a Democratic member of Congress from Georgia.