Posted on by rdaviddc17

 INNER-GHETTO BLUES:

“The Ghetto” is that part of a city where a minority group, often due to political, social, or economic factors, is forced to live. Perhaps the best example of these were the World War II Jewish Ghettoes of the Holocaust (i.e., Warsaw, Krakow). During the same period, in America, we had the Japanese Internment Camps (i.e., Tula Lake, Heart Mountain).  In the second half of the twentieth century major Ghettoes in America were renamed slums and were located in major cities. These, ranged from Tenement slums (Lower East Side and Harlem) to Public Housing Projects like Cabrini-Green in Chicago and others in Bed-Sty and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.  In dilapidated towns or rural communities they were simply referred to as being “on the other side of the tracks.” The “Inner City” was just a euphonism to camouflage the nitty-gritty reality of our modern Ghettoes.  The term was designed to further isolate the “Slums” with their share of underperforming public schools and scant municipal services from the “respected” communities. The “Blues,” as you know, is a musical art form which speaks of the laments of the spirit ignited by the pain and suffering inherit in the human condition.  The inherit conditions of our communitas were the bedrock of the Inner-Ghetto Blues.

Growing up in the ‘60’s and 70’s we were fully aware that we were living in the Ghetto and attending Inner City schools. We would cry out for change.  Not being heard or understood we turned to violence in the form of the Race Riots of the day.  We were left to our own devices and the sad aftermath of the burning down our own neighborhoods. The pain would last for decades with little to none improvements in the quality of life in the Ghetto. Sociologists and Urban Planners pried through our lives and our communities in a vain effort to show they truly cared. They authored Commission Reports and other “White Papers” on the causes of poverty and other ills in our Inner Cities. Most recommendations were seldom implemented and would lie dormant on some shelf. There simply was no denying how we were viewed and how we were treated.

For our part we turned to Music and the Arts to soothe our souls, cement our Brotherhood and Sisterhoods, and make alliance with those who knew the truth behind it all.  Donny Hathaway in his pulsating tune “The Ghetto” captured the sound and flavor of the Ghetto. Johnny Cash’s “In the Ghetto” captured the lament and sorrow of a mother with the harrowing lyric “A child is born in the Ghetto … and a Mother Cries.”  Bracing ourselves for impact we would flow with War on “The World is A Ghetto.” They, ever so gracefully, beseeched us with – “Don’t you know, that for me and for you, the World is A Ghetto.”  On Broadway we would champion James Earl Jones as Jack Johnson in the epic pugilistic battle dubbed “The Great White Hope.” In “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” Melvin Van Peebles purposely brought to the fore the drugs, homelessness, unemployment, police corruption, and other ills of ghetto life, such that we were to be seen. The “Blaxplotation” films such as Superfly, Shaft, and Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song equally portrayed the trials and tribulations of Inner City living while aiming to paint the enemy as “Whitey.” We needed that.

          Speaking of which, “White America” has seemingly tired of us dwelling on the Inner-Ghetto Blues” and dispensed with using the terms Slums, Ghettoes, and the Inner-City.  And, as if that was not enough, has embarked on a course of urban “Gentrification” to once and for all put us out of our misery.  Gentrification has succeeded in decoupling us from any nostalgia for the good old Inner-City. And, as it turns out, the modern city dweller is impressed with all the glitter of “Gentrification” and profess ignorance of their own roles in the process.  These mostly “White” enclaves are touted as the re-invention of our urban centers; having not only eliminated the long-standing blight but the local residents as well.  These new urban centers are designed to attract the up and coming (those with means) at the expense of the residents with deep roots in the community and the small businesses that once flourished. These upscale changes tend to camouflage the ever-expanding income gap and the vast increase in homelessness.  In a real sense, “Homeless Encampments represent the reinvented and out-of-sight Ghettoes.  Back in the Day, a group of young troubadours known as the “Mighty Temp” belted out their tune – “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World is Today).” Their message rings just as true today.

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A LESSON FROM MY LATE FRIEND DR. GILBERT LANCE RAIFORD

Long ago I was a youngster with Dreams.  I fancied myself a budding historian, although frankly I was a rather naïve teenager.  Back then I viewed history from the prism of rote memory splashed with romantic notions of the Nobility of Freedom Fighters.  Dr. Raiford, a social worker by profession, met me in my youthful and idealistic period. I had already declared to my parents that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I never knew that I could back away from that claim.  Dr. Raiford in ways small and big guided me in making my declaration a reality.

“Doc,” as he would come to be called, was also an unusual scholar with a broad range of interests and knowledge.  Over time I would come to appreciate him as a Constitutional scholar as well. Even before my first day of law school “Doc” was schooling me about our cherished American Constitution. In particular he would expound on the 14th Amendment.  He went through great lengths to help me understand how the rights of minorities as protected by the Constitution and the broader Civil Rights laws rested on tenuous grounds. In short, his position was that these rights were subject to change. As an example, he drew my attention to the 18th Amendment, known as the Prohibition Act, and how when the country tired of the “Dry Spell” they opted to repeal it with the 21st Amendment.  Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1933 and was a perfect example of “Doc’s” lesson that day.  As part of that lesson “Doc” showed me how these rights, which we view as fundamental, were an afterthought brought to life not by our Founding Fathers but by later generations of Americans.

Generations of Americans would agitate for change in order to uphold the “Spirit “of Freedom even when the law was not on their side. This battle was best illustrated by the 1857 Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford.  This landmark case revealed how much of the country was still tied to the notion that African American “slaves” were not equal, so it was written in our constitution.  The Dred Scott decision found “that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the Federal government or the Courts.”   Of course, in later conversations we would speak about how the North lost the Civil War and how in many respects it was still raging. But all that is for another day.

Dr. Raiford was able to articulate how despite their intellect and strong philosophical ideals our Founding Fathers would fail our nation by excluding from recognition the “Negroes.,” whether freed or enslaved and settled on allowing them to be counted as three-fifths of a person.  Let me be clear he exclaimed; they weren’t really recognizing us as Citizens but rather as chattel or property that had to credited in order to rectify the economic imbalance between the Northern and Southern Colonies.  In short, “Created Equal” was never meant for us. Hard to imagine but true nevertheless.

Despite arguments to the contrary the Civil War was fought primarily over the “Institution of Slavery. “The 14th Amendment came about as a way to justify the carnage between brothers (not to be confused with Bros.).  The victor (the North) had come to the late recognition that indeed “Created Equal” must have been meant to include “Slaves” and that it was about time to state this as clearly as possible. 

The first clause of the 14th Amendment reads, in part, as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Almost immediately the Southern States began to balk. In short order they would reverse most of the gains of the “Reconstruction Era,” and while in theory they “Honored” the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment they would pass laws that would strip and violate not only the spirit of the Amendment but the law itself.  Voting rules from poll taxes to literacy tests were ruthlessly enforced, thereby depriving “American” citizens of the very protection promised by the new and improved Constitution. There remained countless of ways in which society in general allowed all sorts of violations of the Constitution to go unchallenged.  That is until Pres. Lydon B. Johnson at the prodding of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others ushered in the Civil Rights era and brought us a measure of equality. Mid you, I did say “a” measure. With Affirmative Action being put to bed and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion all on the ropes one can see the importance of the lessons taught to us by our Elders and our ancestors.

The important lesson Dr. Raiford imprinted upon me long ago was simply that our rights as citizens were mostly created by Amendments and not the foundational document itself, and thus they are subject to change at any time. Mostly, at the whim of a “privileged” few. Two things that I urge you to consider today are: 1) the history of the United States of deporting American citizens, and 2) the quest to end birth-right citizenship.  Both of these have transversed a tangled and twist journey throughout our history.

In 1882 Congress enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The act was the first major restrictive immigration law which in addition excluding the entry of Chinese immigrants resulted in the deportation of Chinese-American citizens.  American citizens were also deported during the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920.  Although the raids focused on Italian and Eastern European immigrants who were considered radicals American citizens were nevertheless rounded up and deported.  Within the decade the Depression would lead to the launch of the Mexican Repatriation program. The scarcity of jobs placed many Americans on the “Soup Line” and our leaders felt the urge to protect the few opportunities available for “White” Americans.  The program ran from 1929-1936 resulting in the deportation of Mexican immigrants as well as Mexican-Americans citizens. Then came the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.  The U.S. government reacted in two significant ways. The better known was the infamous Japanese-American Interment Program. Less spoken of is the actual deportation of Japanese-American citizens.

The question of “Birth Right” citizenship is right there on the first line of the h Amendment.  That line also contains the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”  These words have in the past, and even more recently, been interpreted by some as support for the proposition that children born in the U.S. to parents in the U.S. who are not themselves citizens are also  not citizens.  This twisted reading of the Amendment was at the very core of the 1898 case of United States vs. Wong Kim Ark a Chinese-American born in San Francisco to parents who were lawful permanent residents but not naturalized U.S. citizens.  The Court considered the key facts that Wong Kim Ark’s parents were neither diplomats nor otherwise official emissaries of the Emperor of China and thus were indeed “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”  The Court laid this stretch of an argument to rest and its decision has maintained precedential value ever since.  Nevertheless, the argument has regained currency with the far-right fringe and “White Supremacists” alike. They have found additional support from their De Facto leader President Donald J. Trump. 

Pres. Trump apparently never studied Civics and fails to understand the Constitutional process.  He has proclaimed through an Executive Order the end of “Birth-Right” citizenship.  He has been swiftly rebuked in the case of State of Washington vs. Donald Trump, et. al.  Federal Judge John Coughenour issued a Temporary Restraining Order on the basis that the State of Washington demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits of its claim.  The Judge went further and stated during arguments that the Executive Order was “blatantly unconstitutional.”   The Judge went further and stated “I have been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear.”  What is clear is that a Constitutional Amendment can be repealed through the Legislative process but not revoked by Executive Action.

My take-away is to recall my friend’s lesson of years ago, as supplemented by my own knowledge and experience, and stand guard against efforts to erode our Constitutional rights, especially that of Birth Right citizenship.

It is not inconceivable that future efforts could expand from eroding the 14th Amendment’s Birth-Right protection to eviscerating it in its entirety.  May God have Mercy on us. And thank you my dear friend for your wisdom and valuable lessons that have kept me grounded.