| AMERICAN RACISM AND MY VISIT TO PHILADELPHIA AND CAMDEN |
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| Robert Morpheal, Bob Ezergailis, Morphealism (morpheal@yahoo.com) |
2008/11/20 08:24 |
AMERICAN RACISM AND MY VISIT TO PHILADELPHIA AND CAMDEN
I recall my journey into the downtown heart of Philadelphia in the
1990s.
I had a relationship in Philadelphia, but in the suburbs, with a
white, Jewish, professional lady.
I am white.
I noticed the racial tension in the better areas of Philadelphia right
away.
People of color behave differently than I would have expected, being
from much further north.
In fact I live in Canada. We have racial tensions here too, but it is
amazing how different the
social atmosphere is.
Oh, everyone was polite, but there was that notable tension.
Then I found out that the old factories nearer to the river were all
black, and that whites do
not go there. It's not considered safe for whites to go there. So I
was told. Huge multi storey
factory buildings converted into black clubs, and exclusively black.
Then we drove across the river into Camden, New Jersey. What I saw
made me think I had
entered a war zone. This is on the road towards Atlantic City, from
Philadelphia, liberty city,
right after crossing the bridge. Buildings half destroyed. Maybe
commercial structures by the
looks of them. Completely abandoned. They would not have looked worse
if the US air force
had strafed and bombed them. Beyond those monumental ruins, there were
attached and
semi detached houses, but no windows. Every window was boarded up.
Apparently you cannot
maintain a glass surface in Camden. I thought it was an abandoned part
of town, maybe
slated for demolition, but then noticed that there were people, all
blacks, coming out of
various buildings, and running as if afraid of being shot down by an
enemy in mid stride,
from building to building. They ran, like in combat, and disappeared
through the doors of
wherever they were headed to. I assume they were afraid for their own
lives, when they
stepped outside of those boarded up houses. Those houses were all
inhabited by people.
Black people.
Now, I know that in history Camden was the home of the first black
regiment. Something
like that. I am not really up on American history all that much now.
Did a course in high
school and read the books. Camden gets mentionned right back to the
Civil War. It was that
promise of emancipation. Whatever that means. I didn't see anyone in
Camden looking
emancipated and it was more than a hundred years later.
Clearly something was wrong. My lady friend simply took it for granted
as how it is. No one
stops in Camden, and you hope to heaven that your vehicle never breaks
down until you
get out of Camden town.... and yes, people live in those ruins, behind
those boarded up
windows, in that miserable war torn condition that most urban
guerillas would tend to
want to stay away from.
Yes, there was racial tension in America.
Maybe it was worse in Philadelphia than in some other places, because
of Camden. I don't
think that was it. I don't think it was because of Camden.
I did feel that there is a lot of anti white racism among blacks, as
there is anti black racism
among whites. It came across as being a racist country, even from
visiting Philadelphia. It
saddened me because I am not a racist and had a small bit pawn player
part in the
dismantling of apartheid as it existed in South Africa to give blacks
more voice in their
own country and its politics. Little interventions are sometimes like
chaos theory where
the ripples caused by the wings of an insect over the Atlantic can
cause a storm to occur
in the Pacific. It works that way sometimes. But racism disturbs me. I
was even more
disturbed by the tacit acceptance of "that's how it is" and 'everyone
knows it is that way"
as if that is how it ought to be. My friend had no concept of anything
different. It was
simply what white Philadelphians accepted as the "truth" in "liberty"
city.
When I think of those solidiers from Camden who fought for "liberty"
and gave their lives
in every war since the Civil War, trying to fight their way out of the
poverty and
wretchedness that Uncle Sam has never given one tinker's damn about, I
feel sick inside.
I want to vomit and I want to punch Uncle Sam right in the nose,
because I hate what
he has done. It isn't right. It isn't how it ought to be.
It was worse in Georgia, but it wasn't as much a war torn wasteland.
It was more racist,
and more obviously divided between black and white, and there were
larger tensions there,
but somehow there wasn't the level of black despair and poverty that
there was in
Philadelphia and Camden. There wasn't that repressed, violent, hatred
for white America,
evident to this visitor to "liberty" city. Actually blacks were always
very polite in Georgia. Too polite. Unnaturally polite. It still felt
like it was a southern plantation with white masters in charge of it,
and black slaves doing the labor. That was many years earlier than my
visit to Philadelphia, but I hear that not much has really changed.
thing and it changes more slowly than the propaganda about America
tends to want the world to believe. Much more slowly. Change comes so
slowly that it seems most blacks had given up, and have given up,
making change even slower. One cannot wonder what types of
psychological, social and eoconomic beatings, what forms of
disempowerment, really cause that condition, stopping real change and
maintaining such a strange status quo.
It felt so unreal compared to what we are taught and expected to
believe, based on how America presents itself, sells itself, con
trickiing, the world. Well, my belief was shattered, but then again I
tend to be an educated, trained, observer, able to see the truth as it
factually presents itself, when others fail. So maybe my perceptions
were a bit more outsider than most. Maybe that is why I was not under
standing so naked there in front of me, while showing off its brass
unforms and its designer fashions, its business suits and old school
are, and why they think the world is so blind that they cannot see
through the illusions. Often it is and often they, it seems, are also
delusional, believing in their own illusions, and not seeing through
it, thus never really achieving any real change.
Of course no one had to worry, during the Cold War years about the
destruction of that general area situated as it was near to the famous
naval shipyards of Philadelphia. It was expected.
That would be one place on the certain target list for nuclear
warheads from the USSR.
Camden and the riverside of Philadelphia would be expected to be gone.
Nothing but a
nuclear ground zero. Maybe someone in the suburbs would survive.
Not much resolve to rebuild and develop. Not much interest in
progress. It was after the Cold War was winding down and in those
latter years some of the downtown of Philadelphia was being developed
into small boutiques, just north of the black ghetto down by the
river. A small business district in the middle of the wasteland and it
was nice, and exclusive, not far from the famous Museum of Art, which
deserves its reputation for being one of the best. I spent two
weekends there and I think that cultural contrast to the city and the
cannibalized shells of stripped down stolen vehicles, racist tensions,
ghettoization, and all the other ills, including savage looking
aggressions from the bagel men who looked more like desparation than
commerce, made the situation all the more surreal. It was hard to
cracked. Crack house cracked, and mental case cracked, and racism
cracked, and urban violence cracked..It was cracked alright. Liberty
was so cracked between the rich and exclusionary suburbs and the down
by the river slums, Camden cracked by the river apart from
Philadelphia. The river as a crack of sewage running right down the
middle between black and white contrasts of liberty city. Cracked too
between the north and the south and the differences in how racial
emancipation. I lost respect for Lincoln. Nothing was what the
propaganda claimed it was and was to be.
I was led to wonder what extremes of oppression had been brought to
bear upon America, since the race riots of the 1960s, to quell
political upheaval. It was unimaginable as to what extremes America
must have gone to, to oppress political dissent. Dissent was the
natural reaction to what I saw in America. Dissent was mandatory, not
optional. It was required by the situations. Someone had to fight, in
the sense that Saul Alinksy taught fighting for causes, and yet there
was no fight left. It was oppressed, suppressed, and that oppression
internalized as repression. Oh, there was no fight remaining in most
anyone I chanced to see. What had America done to them, since the
radical upheavals of the 1960s ? That was one of the big questions.
How had America violated the basic human rights of its own dissidents.
There was no sign of real freedom in America. Not freedom of political
dissent which the situations clearly present as facts, not opinions,
clearly evident to any one able to see, hear, and open mindedly
experience truth. There was not even the smallest indication of
freedom in America. The statue of liberty seemed utterly surreal.
Something from noir fiction, and far from any reality.
Camden was no different, however, from much of New York in the 1970s.
I chanced to see some of that in my teenage years. The approach to New
York, was like approaching something unreal. It was apocalyptic in its
impressions, even before the bomb, which it was already expecting any
day, any day, ground zero. Ground zero would have cleaned it up, when
nearly nothing else ever could or would. I hear Detroit is still the
same. An engineer acquaintance visited there only a few years ago.
zero too. Nothing much has changed, he said, since his previous visit,
nearly 20 years earlier.
And for another reason. Camden, being kept so poor, is a great place
to recruit soldiers
already made angry enough about other issues, and looking for a legal
target to vent their
anger against. Yes, Camden and the ghettos of Philadelphia, make good
soldiers. All you
need to do is point those ready made weapons of destruction at an
enemy and they will
kill for you, but they would rather kill you if they could.
Robert Morpheal
Anyone may copy, reproeduce, distribute, this article in any form, by
any means and is in fact encouraged to do so.
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