The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 61

ill; I'm I' I 1 y- as i If vV Of" I i inn I i-f kM. I mA. GERALD S. WILLIAMS Inquirer Staff Photographer to elect or defeat candidates of any color, as racism is right here in America, and there Is no escape. We must fight right here.

We can win right here." When will we look beyond skin color? Racism is the blinder that prevents us from seeing our neighbors as part of our family. As the only white family on our block at our first Philadelphia address in the 1950s, we received literature at election time that was obviously tailored for black voters. If the candidates being hyped were white, they were photographed with blacks children and ministers preferred. If the candidates were black, then they found no need to display any but African American people. It is obvious that these flyers were targeted, and the candidates would have been quite upset if there had been a switch.

Race is made an issue and used to elect or defeat candidates of any color, as are ethnicity and religion. Affirmative action was employed big time after World War II. City employees could add their military time to their tenure for pension purposes. Veterans could add 10 points to test scores in civil service exams. Veterans could bump workers who had replaced them when they went away to war.

Was this unfair? In some ways it was, but there was very little noise made about this. People say veterans earned everything they received. As a veteran, I appreciated everything I got. Black veterans received some of the above, but frequently had to fight every step of the way. They couldn't buy houses wherever they wanted.

They could not use many hotels or restaurants until after the war in Vietnam even in Washington. Today blacks are shown preference in incarceration and executions. We have had some improvements. We have elected a second black mayor, which demonstrates it takes more than a change of skin color. When are we going to see the people behind the veneer? Carl Dahlgren Philadelphia carl.dahlgrenmail.verizon.net Too much 'crying wolf can divide the nation The word racism has become just that a word.

It has been distorted into a catchword used to cast blame with little or no basis in fact. These hollow claims have become such a divisive tool that the mere utterance of the word is viewed by whites in a "boy who cried wolf light. As a result of the manner in which this divisive term is tossed about, many whites have lost any respect they had for the NAACP, so-called black leaders and the civil-rights community who interject race into each and every issue and nonissue. Whites are always expected to be sensitive, inclusive and tolerant, and show respect for others' viewpoints, but these black leaders are either unable or unwilling to do the same. Though they sometimes speak of equality and unity, their divisive actions show otherwise.

At some point we must say: Enough! This is divisive. It is setting us back years in race relations. We are not going to play this one-sided game any longer. Many people feel that the time has come to confront this plague legally, with some sort of racial exploitation law. Dismiss those who revel in the division they cause while holding them legally accountable and put a stop to this disgusting epidemic.

Randal Davis Media rhdavis65hotmail.com A more compassionate states' rights movement Forty years ago, the leaders of the states' rights movement were relatively honest. They said what they meant and meant what they said. They wanted the federal government off their backs and they wanted the federal bureaucracy, especially the U.S. Justice Department, cut down in size. This way, they could allow their constituents to run all over us without interference from lefties, pinkos and outside agitators.

Racism is so much more subtle today. Kinder, gentler racism. Compassionate racism. States' rights have been dressed up and cloaked in intellectual arguments that have obtained the same results all across the country. Want a quick checklist for intentional andor inadvertent racism? Here are three litmus tests: How would your favorite suburban state rep vote on dipping into Pennsylvania's $950 million surplus to build a fabulous physical plant like Council Rock High School smack in the middle of North Philly? Where do your favorite pols stand on census sampling? Do they really think census enumerators will enter the same "abandomin-iums" that cops won't enter unless they have at least two teams and back-up present? Why shouldn't our 700,000 District of Columbia residents have one voting rep in the U.S.

House? The city has a larger population than at least one state, which has two senators and a rep. When education, fair play and political equity are routinely denied, then racism, de facto and ingrained, is alive and thriving. Terr! Sims-Perry Levittown A tit 1 1 -'hi There's no escape from the battleground There have been moments when I have wished that I lived in another country, a country in which black people are not stigmatized as if we all stole something. In my preteen years, I lived in the Mideast, not as a tourist but as a refugee. My father, Lynn Hope (a.k.a.

El Hajj Abdullah Rasheed Ahmad), an Orthodox Muslim who played a cool jazz saxophone and headed his own band, decided he'd had enough of American racism. During our two years of freedom, my family learned what it was to be simply human instead of being one of the despised. This escapee's daughter, however, has no intention of leaving the race-charged political battlefield that is America. She also knows that the struggle for human rights for black people is not a one-on-one battle. It is political.

And it takes unity. If people of different races had not united in a fight against slavery and segregation, black people would still be enslaved. Blacks in America, as a group, have been voting for a scant 35 years. But the recent election showed that black people, when allowed to exercise our right to vote, will vote in our best interests. And, we are not alone, just as we were not alone when held in brutal chattel slavery.

Coalition-building is vital for black people. We must join with those who share common interests. Although I cherish the memories of feeling like a human being in Egypt and Lebanon, the battleground of racism is right here in America, and there is no escape. We must fight right here. We can win right here.

No child should have to discover her human worth only as a result of leaving America. Barbara Jean Hope Philadelphia Stadium plan was part of a familiar pattern The politics of race always has been a mul-tilayered issue that most obviously embraces class and ethnicity but also, more subtly, English-language ability, immigration status, geographic location, environmental health, education, sexual orientation, gender, ability disability, and age issues. The struggle against the Chinatown stadium is evidence of the complex nature and institutionalization of racism. Most people would never say their support for the Chinatown stadium was racist. But racism is not about intent.

To understand racism, look at effects over time; If one looks at the pattern of treatment of this predominantly Asian American community over 30 years, racism is surely the conclusion of the stadium proposal. Chinatown is perhaps the last community of color in Center City. It is over 130 years old and has 4,000 residents, one-quarter of whom are children, yet it has no public school, no park, no library and no city health services. Yet it has had plenty of public investment in the form of an expressway, a shopping mall, a Convention Center and transportation lines. These investments have cost Chinatown half its land and one-third of its housing.

Three decades of urban renewal reveal a pattern of neglect of an entire community. The Chinatown stadium which would have brought no benefit to the community as a neighborhood was another piece of a well-established pattern of environmental racism. The stadium struggle also revealed the complexities of racism within the city. When other neighborhoods were considered for the stadium, the concerns focused mainly on the residents. But for Chinatown, the discussions constantly focused on businesses and restaurants, ignoring the impact on residents.

Even when the media attempted to highlight the community's perspective in the struggle, it tended to present U.S.-educated, English-language speakers as leadership. The most powerful voices never made it in front of a microphone simply because English was not their first language. To most Philadelphians, these champions of the community remained invisible. In this city, at this time, what racism means to Asian Americans is invisibility and silence. The Chinatown stadium struggle showed how quickly and nonchalantly our community was made invisible, and how systematically non-English speakers were silenced.

In a city where race is often talked about in terms of black and white, our struggle is about visibility and voice. Helen Gym Deborah Wei Asian Americans United Philadelphia Subverting spirit of civil-rights movement There has been more civil-rights legislation enacted in this country in the last 40 years than at any time in our history. Yet race relations seem tenser now than they have ever been. The social and economic status of the African American in this country has improved immeasurably through the efforts of the Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the civil-rights movement, as well as the U.S. government. I don't pretend that the playing field is level, nor do I pretend that racism no longer exists. Since very few people admit to being racists, all we can do is treat the symptoms.

However, there are civil-rights professionals and politicians who use race as a tool to foster their own agenda and actually subvert the spirit of the civil rights movement. I don't feel that race is the end-all cause for every failure in the minority community; I don't believe that it should be used as a crutch for failure or a rationalization for bad behavior. Responsible groups should maintain their vigil against racial injustice, but in the 21st century, each race should own up to its failures. Racial harmony will be achieved when I am permitted to dislike anyone regardless of tha color of his skin, without social stigma. William A.

Whelan Media of the color of one's skin. What this brand of racism means for 21st century America is gridlock for humanity in all things until all of us get rid of the racial baggage we choose to carry around. Katherine Conrad Philadelphia Individual actions aren't the main problem Well-meaning whites believe we can conveniently separate ourselves from racism's negative ascendancy because we certainly are not guilty of its malicious doctrine. We have falsely provided ourselves with this privilege by defining racism simply as "individual acts of meanness based upon the conscious belief that one race is inherently superior to others." The conscious belief in racial supremacy subscribed to by a minority of "bad whites" is known as active racism. But the non-malicious, unconscious belief that we whites are the normative standard for how culture is defined in America, while frequently not perceiving ourselves as members of a racial group, is known as institutional racism.

It is the most dangerous characteristic all white Americans possess because only 1 out of 1,000 of us is conscious of it. That one individual awakens each day aware that he has a responsibility to help end racism by deliberately renouncing the unearned privileges from which he benefits permanently. Persons of color in America are well aware that they suffer from the consequences of institutional racism, and many live in disbelief that so many whites actually deny its existence. That is why the rare white politicians who understand institutional racism earn the majority of votes from persons of color and whites committed to genuinely ending racism in America. Mark C.

Good Havertown Profiling hits home at casino bus stop I had no objection to police stopping suspicious characters on the highway until it happened to me. We were waiting at the casino's bus station in Atlantic City when a young African American security guard approached and asked to see our tickets. All around us, drunks and junkies were sleeping it off. The homeless sat bundled up among the debris that once was their life. I felt secure.

We had a permanent address, money in the bank and carfare home. We had family who sent us cards and photos of their children at Christmas. We had a church where everybody knows who we are, who our parents were. We had a cemetery plot in Holy Sepulchre. He dozed behind the paper while I ate a tangerine.

We were set for life when the security guard showed up. Startled, I asked: "Are you the bus driver?" "No, ma'am," he said politely, "but we are having trouble with people sitting in here to keep warm. We got some complaints about racial stereotyping so I thought I would ask you." I produced the tickets and he went away, satisfied. But for days afterward it grew in my mind: Why were we singled out? Did our out-of-date rainy-day clothing label us paupers? Did our tote bags full of casino gifts look like vagrants' luggage? Or, most infuriating, was he just having fun tackling two old white folks who wouldn't give him a hard time unlike the belligerent dispossessed who haunt the place? I brooded over those old movies of Jews in wartime Germany hustled off to concentration camps because their papers were not in order. Finally, I asked myself the right question: Would I have laughed this off if he had been white? Mary Orzechowskl Philadelphia Cart Dahlgren: "Race is made an issue and used are ethnicity and religion." dominance, power and control over those populations feared.

And as long as those who have sold us this covertly racist bill of goods cleverly weave the "war on crime drugs" into their own self-serving agenda, and manipulate us into believing that incarceration is the efficient, effective and simple "answer" to these most complex societal problems, we will continue to uphold and maintain pervasive institutional racism. Elaine G. Selan Co-FounderPrisoner-Community Liaison Philadelphia justforallyahoo.com Frustration, disrespect are a volatile mix I experienced several examples of racism after a recent unexpected snow. After waiting for the R8 train for more than 90 minutes, I attempted to take a cab home, but the cabby he was black, I am white said he didn't want to drive as far as I needed to go (Lawndale). However, he then accepted the black folks who approached him who were going to 44th and Baltimore.

Drenched from being outside, I decided to take the Broad Street subway. When I approached the black SEPTA cashier, who held a telephone to her ear during our encounter, and asked her the fare, she said, "Read the sign." I wear glasses, which were wet from the snow, and couldn't see well. I replied, "Couldn't you just tell me the fare?" She said, "Don't take an attitude with me." She never told me the fare. With little alternative, I cleared my lenses and read the sign. While she was talking to a black person, I knocked on the window to ask how to pay.

She yelled, "Don't knock on my window." I paid and left her with a "Have a nice day." Today's definition of "racism" seems to be frustration followed by more frustration, all caused by the discourtesy, disie-gard and poor manners of fellow human beings based on a perceived bias because I GERALD S. WILLIAMS Inquirer Staff Photographer Deborah Wei (left) and Helen Gym: "The Chinatown stadium struggle showed how quickly and nonchalantly our community was made invisible and how systematically non-English speakers were silenced." Justice system ensures dominance over blacks Racism is the practice of discrimination, segregation andor domination toward people of color, lifestyle or custom. From a historical perspective, one may think about the practice of slavery or the millions killed during the Holocaust as examples of how it used to be, perhaps thinking that we have come a long way from those eras. Or are we just being duped because the methods of racism practiced today are done with more savvy? Consider the following statistics from the Department of Justice: The penalty for possession of five grams of crack cocaine (predominantly used by racial minorities) is a mandatory five years' imprisonment. The same sentence for powdered cocaine (predominantly used by whites) requires possession of 500 grams.

Blacks constitute 14 percent of all drug users nationally. However, they are 35 percent of all drug arrests, 55 percent of all drug convictions and 75 percent of all prison admissions for drug convictions. Blacks are questioned, apprehended, charged and convicted at a far higher rate than whites. One in 20 black men over the age of 18 is in prison. Eighty percent of all black men will be arrested at some point in their lifetimes.

While black youths are 15 percent of the population, they are 26 percent of all juvenile arrests, 32 percent of those convicted in juvenile court, 40 percent of those sent to adult courts and 58 percent of those admitted to state adult prison. Despite these alarming numbers, we seem to be more than satisfied with the increasing rate of incarceration: over 2 million and growing. Racism is alive and well in Americas' We have just found palatable means and methods to implement white America's need for More Essays, a Reading List and a Chat Room Online To see what more of our readers had to say In response to this question on racism, visit http:inquirer.philly.comgovoices. At the same Web site, you'll find a list of books on race and race-related issues. If you want to add to the list, send title and author to inquirer.

com. Also online you'll find essays in response to our previous Voices series "The Personal Side of Race." To join an ongoing online chat in response to our question on racism, visit http:forum.philly.comnews and click on the folder titled "Inquirer Community Voices." Send responses to what youVe read today to The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, Send e-mail t4 Inquirer.lettersphillynews.com or faes to 215-854-4483. 1.