Saswat Blog
All that's Left!
Beyond the Judiciary - Reservation as Reparation
By Saswat Pattanayak
Written for Radical Notes
"The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expressions of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance" (Marx and Engels).
The recent Supreme Court of India decision imposing a stay on the implementation of the 27 percent reservation for the "other backward classes" (OBCs) in elite institutions is a desperate attempt to secure a few public institutions exclusively for the 'meritorious' few, whose merit rests on accumulated wealth, connections and opportunities. This is also an attempt to draw a limit to the concessions that a neoliberal regime can admit (for the sake of public legitimacy) against capitalism's Malthusian values which it is supposed to protect. Already the ruling classes in India - the capitalists and their political and institutional henchmen have been troubled by the growing demand for affirmative action in the private sector. The SC decision comes as a relief for the executive and the legislature, who are formally bound to local interests and pressure. On the other hand, the judiciary is above and beyond every democratic and institutional binding, thus can be more consistent in its approach. Even if the Indian government's attempt to solicit the opinion of a constitutional bench to overrule the two judges bench decision result in the implementation of the reservations, the present judgment comes as a clear warning - this far and no further!
Here we will address the above issues from two disparate quarters: one, from the lens of the Supreme Court itself, since it appears like the judiciary might have acted here almost independently (considering all the criticisms it has been receiving from political parties), and two, from the perspective of the class society in India, at a more micro level.
Judicial Elitism
If we agree that despite all the technological progresses that should have made life for everyone way easier in the planet, the world is still in a despicable state suffering from unjust social order where majority of the human population is at the receiving end-afflicted by poverty, unemployment, homelessness-across countries, then something somewhere has gone really wrong. And perhaps to set things correct, to offer not mere sacred guidelines but forceful means to implement them, the societies have formed relatively autonomous judicial systems, which are considered essential for establishing the much-revered rule of law. Apparently the judiciary comprises the wiser of the lots deciding over how we are all going to lead lives, when there are disputes and conflicts.
However, the reality is that the revered judiciary for most comprises either people who are close to power structure (when they are selected by the government), or people who get there through sheer academic elitism (by virtue of their access to top law schools). In either case, the judiciary then does not necessarily, and very rarely comprise people, enriched by their varied experiences of social failures in life through which they understand the complexities of living conditions. Often times they are fed through to good schools and better jobs by utilizing their family's Old Boys Networks. Most often the judges then reflect the interests of the upper social strata of the society - becoming in themselves, the rich, creamy layer. Hence, even when they seem charitable, it is charity that is expected 'normally' from these strata.
The basic agenda before the judiciary is to deliberate on what is the best way of maintaining the status quo within a given legal and institutional framework. Revolution cannot be enacted by the judges - on the contrary, when a revolution or any grand change seems imminent, it rests upon the judiciary to make it jurisprudentially 'normal', legal and systemically palatable.
On the other hand, one of the basic elements in the conception of peoples' movements, howsoever moderate, is their challenge to the institutionalization and alienation of rules from popular scrutiny and control, even if they are not explicitly against them. This aspect puts them in conflict with the 'rulers', i.e. those who oversee the implementation of these rules. Naturally, every time the activists land at the court's door for justice, by this very act itself they fail their cause, upholding the 'sanctity' of the court or the jurisprudential policing. The court as the arbitrator appointed by the system to negotiate between the system and peoples can legitimately do anything. It has famously disgraced millions of people attached to their landless movements time and again. It is because of the court that displaced peoples (a la Narmada) do not receive any justice. It is because of the court that the high-rises are still allowed to exploit reservoirs worldwide. It is thanks to the court that no ruling has ever banned the police from attacking the workers when they stage a protest against the exploiting bosses. In fact, it is the court alone that has prevented the working class strikes from being legal.
If the society has made any headways in its civilizational history - if it has forced even a faint "sense" of equality among men and women, and among the races of people-it is because of the thousands of movements outside the courtroom-and, always against the prevailing social order. A court merely observes the situations outside to safeguard its own interests inside, because the court often consists of the same class of people that become the object of protests. As the agreements are reached outside, the rulings are made inside-which is why the court is always for months (or weeks) delayed in taking decisions. In the present case, let's wait till August, the judges have cautiously remarked.
Who's Afraid of the Class Society in India?
For, it is outside the courtroom, the realities are more apparent, as they are unmediated by the jurisprudential exactitude, which trims down the realities to fit them in the judges' learned sense. After all, most people do not pretend to be either wise or learned. In a country like India, where fifty percent of women and 35% of all people are sheer illiterate, people have been even instructed that they are not learned. And since wisdom in the age of information warfare is constituted of how much one succeeds in reading books and rulebooks, and not in reading people and situations, the large majority of Indian population is considered to be object, not subject of knowledge, of power.
How else can the country still be managing itself to be riding a racist power ladder since six decades of its "independence" now? How else can one rationalize why the judges could have ignored what the world could not any longer - that casteism in India is racist in nature. Just one week prior to a display of the Indian Supreme Court's learned ignorance, the United Nations had already recognized in no uncertain terms that India carried on a tradition of racism against the lower castes of people. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) voiced its feeble protests against India being a country that "systematically denies Dalit rights at home", even as the "learned" creamy smart bunch of Indian delegates at the UN debated over the difference between caste and race, confirming that they can be moral "pundits" over race matters, but will disown their roles in caste oppressions.
The seemingly unwise, ignorant fools of India - that comprises most of us who do not appreciate the fact that getting an entry into one of the elite institutions like an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has anything whatsoever to do with one's ability to showcase more merit than others - are obviously adopting a regressive path somewhere. How else can one justify the almost complete and continued monopolization of upper castes in India's power corridors, even as they constitute a tiny percentage of the population? Whose country did we wrest for when the struggle was against colonialism? A country that would have gone back to the elite bureaucrats of the Raj or a country that sought for social equality among classes of people - divided along the line of castes and religions by historical ruling elites?
A mantra of India's Independence has been well played now - and one can say enough played now - to evoke ringtones and create a thriving industry called Bollywood. But it sure is a sense of humor we could do well without. India continues to be oppressed by a small elite which is a mirror image of their counterparts during the colonial period - a group of people who believe that only a certain segment of population can be allowed to flourish. A group that thrives on a class society that makes impossible to bridge the gap between mental and manual labor. In fact, it thrives because it maintains a relationship of slavery - in which the manual workers are the slaves. In a land predominantly agricultural, India is in fact a sorry country of its slaves-where by its own official estimates, 111,000 peasants committed suicide last decade-even as the slave masters continued to climb corporate ladders in their age of "globalization". Definitely, this slavery is modernized today - with such a big number of slaves in reserve, you are not required to feed them continuously. The capitalist "hire and fire" machine is very convenient, indeed.
The official Republic of India is the country of slaves and untouchability - one in which discriminations used to be part of an unofficial public policy (until now - after the court decision, it is already official). That is, the Nehruvian dreams had drafted on its mammoth constitution certain sections along the line of abolishing untouchability. In doing so, the racists of India also smartly got rid of their age-old guilt trips arising out of their practice of untouchability. They created cultural images of untouchability existing only in the village lines of drawing water from the well. And silently they went on creating domestic slaves of the manual servants from the lower caste people in their high-rise buildings. They declared that in rural schools, now everyone was free to study and anyone who discriminates against others based on their caste will be penalized. Because they knew they would never enter those schools anyway-schools without blackboard, furniture and most of the times a teacher. Instead they created their own private English medium schools and created a reservation policy for students to enter into their elite technical institutes.
Who deserves reservations?
The progressive reservation policies - be it for SC/ST or OBCs; for the women, or for the people with disabilities-are of course different from the other form of reservations that exist without a debate - for the Non-Resident Rich Indians who call themselves "India Inc" and for the Indian Rich who are invited to buy the seats reserved only for those who can afford them.
The rest of the seats, they call comprises for the students with 'merit'. No surprises to be here, considering that among other grand narratives of India's entity (such as independence, liberalization, software giant, knowledge powerhouse, superpower for 2012 etc), this merit proposal fits rather beautifully. After all how can a country claim itself to be a "giant" without saying it has done so through merit!
India is indeed a giant-only one that has surged forward through perishing under its wheels of fortune, the millions of hungry and homeless it always chooses to ignore. After all, giants emerge only in this vicious manner - by gulping down anything that comes on their way. India has almost perfected that art by now, in refusing its people the land they deserve, by refusing its students the access they require, by eliminating its dissenters from its public and private press discourses.
The current discourse around reservations is quite interesting. Indeed no political party seems to be agreeing with the judiciary. So, suddenly have all the political parties gone progressive in India? What is at stake here?
In a simplistic fashion, possibly it is true that the political protests are in part to their apparently temporary loss of power. After all, even with legislative approvals, how could the court nullify the government decision? These protestors still have not got over the shock over this tacit powerlessness, far from realizing that it is they that hold the court to be a sacrosanct institution where they could run to every time they had a conflict over state water policies. Every time the government utilized the court to replace peoples' protests into policy matters. So whenever in India (or elsewhere in the world likewise) people took up a movement to destabilize the government system, the ruling party and the opposition together rushed to the court in the pretext of granting people justice, whereas all they do is to convert the revolutionary spirits into a "wait-n-watch" policy matter. They took away the issue from the people and gave it to the court. And here we have to realize that this "powerlessness" is actually as much a gimmick as any other power rationales are.
Remember how the Kings used to rule over their states in the bygone days. They would address their resenting masses that the Brahmins will decide the issue, and get absolved of the responsibilities thereon. The Brahmins of course were always in the King's favor. It would be quite unnatural otherwise-except in cases where the Brahmins themselves resolved to be the kings.
The high priests of those days have now occupied the IITs, IIMs, and National Law School at Bangalore. These are the ones now advising the Kings - the political parties. That is their assigned role (being part of the "three pillars") because they want the desired positions of security, money and power. It's true that we know what the priests want. The question, is what do the Kings want?
The political parties of Indian parliament are not in difference with each other. After all, with all the chair-flinging incidents they still are together under the same roof. This is because what brings them together is of a greater value than that, which could force them separate. What values does their unity bring? Why the political parties - despite their most fundamental differences in their agenda sheets-stay together along with their pillar partners - judiciary and the press - is because they can form their so-called "democracy" system only when they stick together. If the "executive", "legislature", "judiciary" and "the press" do not stay together who will each run to when they face peoples' wrath? Who will play the Brahmin when the time comes?
Officially, a prime minister of president or Supreme Court judge or mainstream media editor or any of their corporate investors are claimed to be different "check and balance" corridors of power. In fact at this mass deception too, they play out the acts very well. They have a question hour (get paid for asking questions on behalf of people), they have public interest litigation (what has public interest got to do with the court, anyway?), they have a letter to the editor (views that are of no consequences whatsoever), and they have corporate social responsibility (what's that?). These are conscious and deliberate efforts to normalize their operations in the interest of the ruling system of which they are a part. No matter if they change political parties or newspapers or corporate houses or departmental bureaucratic divisions - they are the cohorts of the same batch of rulers that must "swim together or sink together".
Of course they would prefer to swim together. And in this larger context of reservations, especially so.
What is important is not why the judges came up with such a decision (which is a natural class-alliance issue), but the more pressing question is how did they get away with making this decision? Were they not afraid of the people outside - that majority of people in whose favor a contrary decision was supposed to be taken? Were they not taking a chance with the Parliament-that sacred body of legislators who had already taken a decision? The answer is neither.
And in fact, quite the contrary. Judiciary has been once again used by the government to do what it always wanted to: to provide an illusion of equality while maintaining the status of inequality. The parliamentary decision last December had come with pressure to answer back to the constituencies of OBCs. Once the pressure was off, the government rushed to the judiciary with ill-filled papers of 1931 (as an excuse) to reverse the legislation. And the two-bench committee did exactly as per the governmental wish. Like the Brahmins of the royal era, the judicial priests knew that they were the last resort of blinded wisdom.
Such macabre dramas play out in our life everyday. One needs no reading of Arthashastra or of The Prince to learn the art of governance. We are acutely aware of the true faces of power accumulating politicians, corrupt judges, greedy business houses and the corporate press - and we are well aware how despite the façade of apparent disagreements, they all gel so well as to unite together against the majority of people by creating an elite commonsense.
The opposition to reservations in India is part of the elite commonsense. The judges got away with such decisions because they knew they would be protected only if they do so. The larger Indian media have been harping on the need to abolish reservations, so also the top administrators and corporate kingpins. From the editors, to bureaucrats to industrial leaders-majority of them do not just incidentally happen to be belonging to the higher castes, in fact they are there only because of their trampling over the hopes and aspirations of the lower caste peoples.
Just as economic classes developed the race paradigm, they also created the caste structures. Historical alliance between class and caste is no mystery today. What needs exploration is beyond the academic understanding of the alliance, and more of a social revolutionary movement towards destabilizing that alliance.
At this stage, the commonplace dominant narrative insists that the SC/STs were granted reservations by the well-meaning leaders of India. This is entirely false. The "backward" castes of India were not granted anything. They fought along the lines of demands and protests to earn the reservations-and by the sheer proportions of their success in relation to their historical dispossession-they proved worthy of every bit of that. It's entirely wrong to imagine that a government or its judiciary wing will donate anything in charity. Such a misplaced imagination can only lead one to the corridors of a court.
The fight to go on has to transcend its own limited imaginations. Knocking the door of judiciary is appealing to the hearts of the Brahmins. It is not the Brahmins who need to be blamed after all, considering that they have a share of power. What is important is to revitalize the movement taking place outside to make it entirely impossible for a regressive policy to be crafted either in the Parliament or in the Courts. And that is just the beginning. It's not a question of reservation issue. It's a question of revolution issue. The majority of people do not want nominal reservations. They deserve the entire institutes. They do not wish to work for the structures. They want the structures to work for them.
Ultimately reservation is not just a demand, but historical reparation obligation. And at its heart lies not the questions regarding the efficacy of reservations. At its heart lies the question of social order maintenance that thrives on discrimination. The sick medical students and arrogant doctors that went to strike last year are the questions to be solved. The reactionary right wing NGOs like Youth for Equality (who forever fail to understand that they are the root cause of inequality) are the questions to be solved. The judicial system that has no business with social justice is the question to be solved. The question to be solved is the question of our times: how long will people silently suffer at the hands of a political system that uses unofficial policies to maintain authority - pimping press, and a free market. The question to be solved is how to snatch the power from these sugar-coated, superpower-dreaming elites of one-nation Indians and replace the feel-good plutocracy with a truly working democracy driven by the will of the real majority, where the difference between the manual labor and mental labor would have subsided enough to make the issue of IITs/IIMs and their reservation policies quite irrelevant. And any wishful thinking, any pleading politics is not going to ensure that the striking doctors will accept the wage of their domestic servants - no matter if the servant cooks wonderfully to serve the rich master and the doctor lets hundreds of slaves die because he has to stick to the Apollo and the thriving corporate hospital industry.
To snatch the reactionary power of the ruling elites, the task is not to appeal to the rulers. In fact, quite the contrary. Let me end the passage that started this reflection, by quoting Marx and Engels again: "The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class."
That's the only task that needs to be done: to build the class that snatches its reparations by revolutionary means, not through appeals to courts and parliaments that ride on the waves of social injustice.
Appendix:
[The above article relates to the following decision by apex court of India:
(Case No: Writ Petition Civill No. 265 of 2006 (With WP Civil No. 269 & 598 of 2006, 35 & 29 of 2007))
Ashoka Kumar Thakur Petitioner versus Union of India and Ors Respondents
Date of Decision(mm/dd/yy): 3/29/2007.
The Subject Index reads:
OBC reservation policy -- prayer for grant of interim protection in the writ petition -- the policy of 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (in short the 'OBCs') contained in the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 is the subject matter of challenge. The primary ground of challenge is that the Union of India has failed in performing the constitutional and legal duties toward the citizenry and its resultant effect. Consequentially the Act shall have the effect and wide ramifications and ultimately it shall have the result in dividing the country on caste basis. It would lead to chaos, confusion, and anarchy which would have destructive impact on the peaceful atmosphere in the educational and other institutions and would seriously affect social and communal harmony -- concept of creamy layer cannot prima facie be considered to be irrelevant. It has also to be noted that nowhere else in the world do castes, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you -- the creamy layer rule is a necessary bargain between the competing ends of caste based reservations and the principle of secularism. It is a part of constitutional scheme. Therefore these cases have to be examined in detail as to whether the stand of Union of India that creamy layer rule is applicable to only Article 16(4) and not Article 15(5) is based on any sound foundation -- court not staying operation of the Statute, particularly, Section 6 so far as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates are concerned.]
Written for Radical Notes
"The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expressions of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance" (Marx and Engels).
The recent Supreme Court of India decision imposing a stay on the implementation of the 27 percent reservation for the "other backward classes" (OBCs) in elite institutions is a desperate attempt to secure a few public institutions exclusively for the 'meritorious' few, whose merit rests on accumulated wealth, connections and opportunities. This is also an attempt to draw a limit to the concessions that a neoliberal regime can admit (for the sake of public legitimacy) against capitalism's Malthusian values which it is supposed to protect. Already the ruling classes in India - the capitalists and their political and institutional henchmen have been troubled by the growing demand for affirmative action in the private sector. The SC decision comes as a relief for the executive and the legislature, who are formally bound to local interests and pressure. On the other hand, the judiciary is above and beyond every democratic and institutional binding, thus can be more consistent in its approach. Even if the Indian government's attempt to solicit the opinion of a constitutional bench to overrule the two judges bench decision result in the implementation of the reservations, the present judgment comes as a clear warning - this far and no further!
Here we will address the above issues from two disparate quarters: one, from the lens of the Supreme Court itself, since it appears like the judiciary might have acted here almost independently (considering all the criticisms it has been receiving from political parties), and two, from the perspective of the class society in India, at a more micro level.
Judicial Elitism
If we agree that despite all the technological progresses that should have made life for everyone way easier in the planet, the world is still in a despicable state suffering from unjust social order where majority of the human population is at the receiving end-afflicted by poverty, unemployment, homelessness-across countries, then something somewhere has gone really wrong. And perhaps to set things correct, to offer not mere sacred guidelines but forceful means to implement them, the societies have formed relatively autonomous judicial systems, which are considered essential for establishing the much-revered rule of law. Apparently the judiciary comprises the wiser of the lots deciding over how we are all going to lead lives, when there are disputes and conflicts.
However, the reality is that the revered judiciary for most comprises either people who are close to power structure (when they are selected by the government), or people who get there through sheer academic elitism (by virtue of their access to top law schools). In either case, the judiciary then does not necessarily, and very rarely comprise people, enriched by their varied experiences of social failures in life through which they understand the complexities of living conditions. Often times they are fed through to good schools and better jobs by utilizing their family's Old Boys Networks. Most often the judges then reflect the interests of the upper social strata of the society - becoming in themselves, the rich, creamy layer. Hence, even when they seem charitable, it is charity that is expected 'normally' from these strata.
The basic agenda before the judiciary is to deliberate on what is the best way of maintaining the status quo within a given legal and institutional framework. Revolution cannot be enacted by the judges - on the contrary, when a revolution or any grand change seems imminent, it rests upon the judiciary to make it jurisprudentially 'normal', legal and systemically palatable.
On the other hand, one of the basic elements in the conception of peoples' movements, howsoever moderate, is their challenge to the institutionalization and alienation of rules from popular scrutiny and control, even if they are not explicitly against them. This aspect puts them in conflict with the 'rulers', i.e. those who oversee the implementation of these rules. Naturally, every time the activists land at the court's door for justice, by this very act itself they fail their cause, upholding the 'sanctity' of the court or the jurisprudential policing. The court as the arbitrator appointed by the system to negotiate between the system and peoples can legitimately do anything. It has famously disgraced millions of people attached to their landless movements time and again. It is because of the court that displaced peoples (a la Narmada) do not receive any justice. It is because of the court that the high-rises are still allowed to exploit reservoirs worldwide. It is thanks to the court that no ruling has ever banned the police from attacking the workers when they stage a protest against the exploiting bosses. In fact, it is the court alone that has prevented the working class strikes from being legal.
If the society has made any headways in its civilizational history - if it has forced even a faint "sense" of equality among men and women, and among the races of people-it is because of the thousands of movements outside the courtroom-and, always against the prevailing social order. A court merely observes the situations outside to safeguard its own interests inside, because the court often consists of the same class of people that become the object of protests. As the agreements are reached outside, the rulings are made inside-which is why the court is always for months (or weeks) delayed in taking decisions. In the present case, let's wait till August, the judges have cautiously remarked.
Who's Afraid of the Class Society in India?
For, it is outside the courtroom, the realities are more apparent, as they are unmediated by the jurisprudential exactitude, which trims down the realities to fit them in the judges' learned sense. After all, most people do not pretend to be either wise or learned. In a country like India, where fifty percent of women and 35% of all people are sheer illiterate, people have been even instructed that they are not learned. And since wisdom in the age of information warfare is constituted of how much one succeeds in reading books and rulebooks, and not in reading people and situations, the large majority of Indian population is considered to be object, not subject of knowledge, of power.
How else can the country still be managing itself to be riding a racist power ladder since six decades of its "independence" now? How else can one rationalize why the judges could have ignored what the world could not any longer - that casteism in India is racist in nature. Just one week prior to a display of the Indian Supreme Court's learned ignorance, the United Nations had already recognized in no uncertain terms that India carried on a tradition of racism against the lower castes of people. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) voiced its feeble protests against India being a country that "systematically denies Dalit rights at home", even as the "learned" creamy smart bunch of Indian delegates at the UN debated over the difference between caste and race, confirming that they can be moral "pundits" over race matters, but will disown their roles in caste oppressions.
The seemingly unwise, ignorant fools of India - that comprises most of us who do not appreciate the fact that getting an entry into one of the elite institutions like an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has anything whatsoever to do with one's ability to showcase more merit than others - are obviously adopting a regressive path somewhere. How else can one justify the almost complete and continued monopolization of upper castes in India's power corridors, even as they constitute a tiny percentage of the population? Whose country did we wrest for when the struggle was against colonialism? A country that would have gone back to the elite bureaucrats of the Raj or a country that sought for social equality among classes of people - divided along the line of castes and religions by historical ruling elites?
A mantra of India's Independence has been well played now - and one can say enough played now - to evoke ringtones and create a thriving industry called Bollywood. But it sure is a sense of humor we could do well without. India continues to be oppressed by a small elite which is a mirror image of their counterparts during the colonial period - a group of people who believe that only a certain segment of population can be allowed to flourish. A group that thrives on a class society that makes impossible to bridge the gap between mental and manual labor. In fact, it thrives because it maintains a relationship of slavery - in which the manual workers are the slaves. In a land predominantly agricultural, India is in fact a sorry country of its slaves-where by its own official estimates, 111,000 peasants committed suicide last decade-even as the slave masters continued to climb corporate ladders in their age of "globalization". Definitely, this slavery is modernized today - with such a big number of slaves in reserve, you are not required to feed them continuously. The capitalist "hire and fire" machine is very convenient, indeed.
The official Republic of India is the country of slaves and untouchability - one in which discriminations used to be part of an unofficial public policy (until now - after the court decision, it is already official). That is, the Nehruvian dreams had drafted on its mammoth constitution certain sections along the line of abolishing untouchability. In doing so, the racists of India also smartly got rid of their age-old guilt trips arising out of their practice of untouchability. They created cultural images of untouchability existing only in the village lines of drawing water from the well. And silently they went on creating domestic slaves of the manual servants from the lower caste people in their high-rise buildings. They declared that in rural schools, now everyone was free to study and anyone who discriminates against others based on their caste will be penalized. Because they knew they would never enter those schools anyway-schools without blackboard, furniture and most of the times a teacher. Instead they created their own private English medium schools and created a reservation policy for students to enter into their elite technical institutes.
Who deserves reservations?
The progressive reservation policies - be it for SC/ST or OBCs; for the women, or for the people with disabilities-are of course different from the other form of reservations that exist without a debate - for the Non-Resident Rich Indians who call themselves "India Inc" and for the Indian Rich who are invited to buy the seats reserved only for those who can afford them.
The rest of the seats, they call comprises for the students with 'merit'. No surprises to be here, considering that among other grand narratives of India's entity (such as independence, liberalization, software giant, knowledge powerhouse, superpower for 2012 etc), this merit proposal fits rather beautifully. After all how can a country claim itself to be a "giant" without saying it has done so through merit!
India is indeed a giant-only one that has surged forward through perishing under its wheels of fortune, the millions of hungry and homeless it always chooses to ignore. After all, giants emerge only in this vicious manner - by gulping down anything that comes on their way. India has almost perfected that art by now, in refusing its people the land they deserve, by refusing its students the access they require, by eliminating its dissenters from its public and private press discourses.
The current discourse around reservations is quite interesting. Indeed no political party seems to be agreeing with the judiciary. So, suddenly have all the political parties gone progressive in India? What is at stake here?
In a simplistic fashion, possibly it is true that the political protests are in part to their apparently temporary loss of power. After all, even with legislative approvals, how could the court nullify the government decision? These protestors still have not got over the shock over this tacit powerlessness, far from realizing that it is they that hold the court to be a sacrosanct institution where they could run to every time they had a conflict over state water policies. Every time the government utilized the court to replace peoples' protests into policy matters. So whenever in India (or elsewhere in the world likewise) people took up a movement to destabilize the government system, the ruling party and the opposition together rushed to the court in the pretext of granting people justice, whereas all they do is to convert the revolutionary spirits into a "wait-n-watch" policy matter. They took away the issue from the people and gave it to the court. And here we have to realize that this "powerlessness" is actually as much a gimmick as any other power rationales are.
Remember how the Kings used to rule over their states in the bygone days. They would address their resenting masses that the Brahmins will decide the issue, and get absolved of the responsibilities thereon. The Brahmins of course were always in the King's favor. It would be quite unnatural otherwise-except in cases where the Brahmins themselves resolved to be the kings.
The high priests of those days have now occupied the IITs, IIMs, and National Law School at Bangalore. These are the ones now advising the Kings - the political parties. That is their assigned role (being part of the "three pillars") because they want the desired positions of security, money and power. It's true that we know what the priests want. The question, is what do the Kings want?
The political parties of Indian parliament are not in difference with each other. After all, with all the chair-flinging incidents they still are together under the same roof. This is because what brings them together is of a greater value than that, which could force them separate. What values does their unity bring? Why the political parties - despite their most fundamental differences in their agenda sheets-stay together along with their pillar partners - judiciary and the press - is because they can form their so-called "democracy" system only when they stick together. If the "executive", "legislature", "judiciary" and "the press" do not stay together who will each run to when they face peoples' wrath? Who will play the Brahmin when the time comes?
Officially, a prime minister of president or Supreme Court judge or mainstream media editor or any of their corporate investors are claimed to be different "check and balance" corridors of power. In fact at this mass deception too, they play out the acts very well. They have a question hour (get paid for asking questions on behalf of people), they have public interest litigation (what has public interest got to do with the court, anyway?), they have a letter to the editor (views that are of no consequences whatsoever), and they have corporate social responsibility (what's that?). These are conscious and deliberate efforts to normalize their operations in the interest of the ruling system of which they are a part. No matter if they change political parties or newspapers or corporate houses or departmental bureaucratic divisions - they are the cohorts of the same batch of rulers that must "swim together or sink together".
Of course they would prefer to swim together. And in this larger context of reservations, especially so.
What is important is not why the judges came up with such a decision (which is a natural class-alliance issue), but the more pressing question is how did they get away with making this decision? Were they not afraid of the people outside - that majority of people in whose favor a contrary decision was supposed to be taken? Were they not taking a chance with the Parliament-that sacred body of legislators who had already taken a decision? The answer is neither.
And in fact, quite the contrary. Judiciary has been once again used by the government to do what it always wanted to: to provide an illusion of equality while maintaining the status of inequality. The parliamentary decision last December had come with pressure to answer back to the constituencies of OBCs. Once the pressure was off, the government rushed to the judiciary with ill-filled papers of 1931 (as an excuse) to reverse the legislation. And the two-bench committee did exactly as per the governmental wish. Like the Brahmins of the royal era, the judicial priests knew that they were the last resort of blinded wisdom.
Such macabre dramas play out in our life everyday. One needs no reading of Arthashastra or of The Prince to learn the art of governance. We are acutely aware of the true faces of power accumulating politicians, corrupt judges, greedy business houses and the corporate press - and we are well aware how despite the façade of apparent disagreements, they all gel so well as to unite together against the majority of people by creating an elite commonsense.
The opposition to reservations in India is part of the elite commonsense. The judges got away with such decisions because they knew they would be protected only if they do so. The larger Indian media have been harping on the need to abolish reservations, so also the top administrators and corporate kingpins. From the editors, to bureaucrats to industrial leaders-majority of them do not just incidentally happen to be belonging to the higher castes, in fact they are there only because of their trampling over the hopes and aspirations of the lower caste peoples.
Just as economic classes developed the race paradigm, they also created the caste structures. Historical alliance between class and caste is no mystery today. What needs exploration is beyond the academic understanding of the alliance, and more of a social revolutionary movement towards destabilizing that alliance.
At this stage, the commonplace dominant narrative insists that the SC/STs were granted reservations by the well-meaning leaders of India. This is entirely false. The "backward" castes of India were not granted anything. They fought along the lines of demands and protests to earn the reservations-and by the sheer proportions of their success in relation to their historical dispossession-they proved worthy of every bit of that. It's entirely wrong to imagine that a government or its judiciary wing will donate anything in charity. Such a misplaced imagination can only lead one to the corridors of a court.
The fight to go on has to transcend its own limited imaginations. Knocking the door of judiciary is appealing to the hearts of the Brahmins. It is not the Brahmins who need to be blamed after all, considering that they have a share of power. What is important is to revitalize the movement taking place outside to make it entirely impossible for a regressive policy to be crafted either in the Parliament or in the Courts. And that is just the beginning. It's not a question of reservation issue. It's a question of revolution issue. The majority of people do not want nominal reservations. They deserve the entire institutes. They do not wish to work for the structures. They want the structures to work for them.
Ultimately reservation is not just a demand, but historical reparation obligation. And at its heart lies not the questions regarding the efficacy of reservations. At its heart lies the question of social order maintenance that thrives on discrimination. The sick medical students and arrogant doctors that went to strike last year are the questions to be solved. The reactionary right wing NGOs like Youth for Equality (who forever fail to understand that they are the root cause of inequality) are the questions to be solved. The judicial system that has no business with social justice is the question to be solved. The question to be solved is the question of our times: how long will people silently suffer at the hands of a political system that uses unofficial policies to maintain authority - pimping press, and a free market. The question to be solved is how to snatch the power from these sugar-coated, superpower-dreaming elites of one-nation Indians and replace the feel-good plutocracy with a truly working democracy driven by the will of the real majority, where the difference between the manual labor and mental labor would have subsided enough to make the issue of IITs/IIMs and their reservation policies quite irrelevant. And any wishful thinking, any pleading politics is not going to ensure that the striking doctors will accept the wage of their domestic servants - no matter if the servant cooks wonderfully to serve the rich master and the doctor lets hundreds of slaves die because he has to stick to the Apollo and the thriving corporate hospital industry.
To snatch the reactionary power of the ruling elites, the task is not to appeal to the rulers. In fact, quite the contrary. Let me end the passage that started this reflection, by quoting Marx and Engels again: "The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class."
That's the only task that needs to be done: to build the class that snatches its reparations by revolutionary means, not through appeals to courts and parliaments that ride on the waves of social injustice.
Appendix:
[The above article relates to the following decision by apex court of India:
(Case No: Writ Petition Civill No. 265 of 2006 (With WP Civil No. 269 & 598 of 2006, 35 & 29 of 2007))
Ashoka Kumar Thakur Petitioner versus Union of India and Ors Respondents
Date of Decision(mm/dd/yy): 3/29/2007.
The Subject Index reads:
OBC reservation policy -- prayer for grant of interim protection in the writ petition -- the policy of 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (in short the 'OBCs') contained in the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 is the subject matter of challenge. The primary ground of challenge is that the Union of India has failed in performing the constitutional and legal duties toward the citizenry and its resultant effect. Consequentially the Act shall have the effect and wide ramifications and ultimately it shall have the result in dividing the country on caste basis. It would lead to chaos, confusion, and anarchy which would have destructive impact on the peaceful atmosphere in the educational and other institutions and would seriously affect social and communal harmony -- concept of creamy layer cannot prima facie be considered to be irrelevant. It has also to be noted that nowhere else in the world do castes, classes or communities queue up for the sake of gaining backward status. Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you -- the creamy layer rule is a necessary bargain between the competing ends of caste based reservations and the principle of secularism. It is a part of constitutional scheme. Therefore these cases have to be examined in detail as to whether the stand of Union of India that creamy layer rule is applicable to only Article 16(4) and not Article 15(5) is based on any sound foundation -- court not staying operation of the Statute, particularly, Section 6 so far as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates are concerned.]
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'Crash' Course from Kenneth Eng: Racism defines America
By Saswat Pattanayak
AsianWeek controversy has been quite an upset. For one, it claims to be the voice of the Asian Americans, and then goes on to publish an article written by a racist bigot who has absolutely no knowledge of his own history, and then the paper goes on to apologize while refusing to single out editors.
If only Kenneth Eng would have been the problem of it, the problem would have been solved by now, considering that he has been fired and even his article has been withdrawn from the AsianWeek website. On the contrary, bloggers are highlighting how immensely published is Eng and how his arguments might have some merit or how disgusted they are at this character. Now we have his photographs appearing on several sites and discussions on his student days in a New York film school. For someone who loves limelight (and any PR charmer can tell you any publicity is good publicity), Eng is having a field day. Amidst all this diplomatic efforts to showcase how not-so-racists we are in comparison to Kenneth Eng, the question must be redirected at the holier of the factions.
The truth of the matter is Kenneth Eng is a product of our system, not a creator of it. Just as Michael Richards was. Has Richards’ apologies helped any bit more than would Eng’s? Or did Mel Gibson really lose out all that deal after his apologies? Such politics of apologies are aimed at individual ‘atonement’s, not at social remedies.
Eng/Gibson/Kramer are trying to say something. And so also those who bear with these bunch. And again those of us readers who comment at the end of the blog entries reinforcing their myopic views. Now, deleting their comments and their articles and apologizing for the same is not the solution. Far from it, such responses are what I would say constitute the “Crash” actions. Remember that movie which won Oscar last year and promised everything was fine on the racial front and that Dubois was inherently wrong.
No, Dubois was not wrong. In fact he is more relevant today than ever before. America, the metamorphosed country of illusions lulling its “diverse” people to sound amnesia by preaching “equality and liberty” is condemned to grapple with its color-lines. Any amount of diplomatic legerdemain by community “leaders” and public figures, college professors and filmmakers cannot hide this reality. The problem of 21st century America is the problem of Capitalism that thrives on inequalities based on several of its social locations. How else does one justify the continued consolidation of most wealth and power in the hands of a few white men in this country? How does one justify the saga of discriminations against people of color in the workplace? How does one justify the annual raise of bonuses to the tune of two hundred percent for the owning class while the workers beg for a five percent up?
Individualism leading to Community-ism
In hostile situations of cut throat capitalistic competitions, everyone is up for the battle of interests. In place of individual rights that this country so proudly enshrined in its constitution that merely focussed on the wealthy and powerful (only the truly free enjoyed the rights, not those they enslaved), the group rights started forming impressions following several reformist movements last century.
Group reformist movements, just like the individual rights movements, engage in competing to garner support from those from whom the rights flow. The ruling classes who devise and define individual rights to their interests (for example it is alright to be a Christian, but not alright to be a Communist; its your right to have family, but not to have it if you are not heterosexual) also describe the scope of group rights. However just as illusive are individual rights, so are the group rights, in a capitalistic setup where the romance of rights are not inherent, but gifted.
To preserve the gifts (‘scope of rights’ that come with charity, although rights themselves may have been fought for, within limits set by the capitalists), groups often tend to resort to squabble, mud-slings and outright racism. People like Kenneth Eng are products of such society divided into groups competing to attract favors from charity masters. Even as the Engs hate racism targeted against them, they rarely stop to find out the true reasons behind the same.
Its utter ignorance of some people about their own history that leads to culmination and growth of racism in our world. Are young students like Kenneth Eng taught in their school about the role of black people in shaping the free America? Are young black students taught about the systematic biases that continue circulating against Asian-Americans in mainstream entertainment industry? Are young south asian students told of the role of black Muslims in enlightening the conscience of this country when it was deep asleep in evil contentment? Are young white students taught of the role of Latino working class in wealth creation of the superpower at the cost of their own exploitation over debates surrounding minimum wage? Are the minority students taught about how majority of white workers indeed are at receiving end of en exploitative economic system?
Need of the hour:
What needs to be done at this juncture is not for black commentators attacking Asian press or South Asian commentators condemning Kenneth Eng. For all we know, Eng could well become a celebrity in a few months. The root cause of racism is not one bigoted mind. Its capitalism that we largely let go unchecked for in its practice. We must address the manner in which private capital creation safeguards specific group interests rather than working for the betterment of the world. The racial tensions in the US are economic in nature. There is no place for moral preachings here. No place for Crash finale!
Lets admit and accept that as long as we refrain from critiquing the capitalist causes (private monopolies) we will have to accept racism as part and parcel of the deal. Till now, people other than white are being called in their suffixes. American history is differently noted than African-American history! How will we expect Engs of the world to even feel grateful for immense sufferings of generations of black people that must be acknowledged at every mention of America even as an idea? How will we expect white people to understand that Columbus was not after all some hero and that this land was indeed “made for you and me”, and not just for the English speaking elites. Such expectations will bear fruit only if people are treated equally irrespective of race in this country and elsewhere. However that would mean perhaps to quote Paul Robeson, “adopting the nature and politics of Soviet Union where people are treated as people, not as black or white”. Even adopting one-tenth of former Soviet policies would entail the reversal of centuries-old capital accumulation policies that are in place in a flourishing capitalism. As long as a society is built on bedrock of money as the only thing that matters--to buy health insurance to higher education--people will always be treated as secondary subjects. And where people need to be treated as secondary subjects, to refrain those very people from fomenting a revolution against their secondary status, it becomes imperative for the capital masters to wage a divide and rule policy that keeps people ignorant about their collective struggles in everyday lives. While at it, the economic system goes unchecked in its biases against working class by deliberately playing one group against another when it comes to economic parity, share holding and accountability. No wonder, thousands of discrimination cases at the workplace are filed every week based on racial disparities.
We need to shed our racialisms and embrace the collective history of struggles of working class people of this country and the world against their class antagonists in our everyday observations. Careful and conscious efforts must be made towards deconstructing problems such as Eng’s while observing the need for such racism not to take place again.
One thing is to condemn racism, which is all good, but entirely useless. Since we know no one can feel unscathed from racist attacks under capitalism which bases itself on human inequality, today’s condemned group will become the condemner tomorrow. The other thing is to actually ensure that we do not produce a new generation of racists in our own households. There would be no end to this Ghettopoly-Tsunami saga, if we did not really address the issues critically. That some Blacks despise some Asians, some Asians despise some Blacks, and some Whites despise some immigrants and vice versa is a well known fact. How many Indian families actually encourage their doting daughters to make friends with Blacks and Muslims? How many of us actually stop thinking about people beyond their colors the moment we fail to receive our due share? How long will the “good” people refuse to acknowledge that? How long we will keep condemning Kenneth Eng?
We must make every efforts to acknowledge collective contributions to working class struggles. White people should be educated about Whiteness history that must detail not the struggle of black people alone, but also the struggle of good white people while dealing with slavery and racism. Neither slavery nor racism should be treated as subjects of the past, for both are going to remain in full function as long as there is an owning class of minority people--those that traditionally were slaveowners and who own us mentally now with their monopoly media misinformation tirades.
South Asian Journalist Association (SAJA) which is composed of really nice people some of whom I have had the opportunity to have interacted with, must make every effort to include black people on its editorial board. No issues of journalism that pertains to people of South Asian origin precludes people of other races. Likewise good Asian folks at the AsianWeek should include Latino people on their boards. The black television programs that have been accused of making fun of some Asians should include some enlightened Asians in their team. And together all of them should include some white people in their efforts to understand and strengthen collective efforts to uproot racism from this country.
Although racism, like sexism, is a byproduct of capitalism, capitalism will not vanish as long as we do not treat these diseases on a preventive manner. If we really wish to eradicate racism, and not merely talk about it, we must look beyond our own group interests and then we shall be able to address racism among our own communities in a more informed manner. Accusing the ‘other’ becomes easier when we are refusing to look outside our ‘own’ comforted walls. It is perhaps more true when we are dealing with a subject such as race--one that will not go away, but one we must deal with.
Time has come to look beyond our own races, and look for commonalities with the others in order to find the links that have been deliberately kept missing. Until then, we will be demanding an apology, not the solidarity. Because until then we are perhaps intending to let capitalism succeed at any cost in enslaving us while giving us an illusion of freedom, because we refuse to look beyond the windows to understand why some of us out in the rain will continue to suffer at the hand of the same system that can turn us against each other. For racism to go, we need to embrace human beings, not private wealth monopolists. For that to happen, we need to address issues of capitalism at its systematic level, not at its symptomatic level.
AsianWeek controversy has been quite an upset. For one, it claims to be the voice of the Asian Americans, and then goes on to publish an article written by a racist bigot who has absolutely no knowledge of his own history, and then the paper goes on to apologize while refusing to single out editors.
If only Kenneth Eng would have been the problem of it, the problem would have been solved by now, considering that he has been fired and even his article has been withdrawn from the AsianWeek website. On the contrary, bloggers are highlighting how immensely published is Eng and how his arguments might have some merit or how disgusted they are at this character. Now we have his photographs appearing on several sites and discussions on his student days in a New York film school. For someone who loves limelight (and any PR charmer can tell you any publicity is good publicity), Eng is having a field day. Amidst all this diplomatic efforts to showcase how not-so-racists we are in comparison to Kenneth Eng, the question must be redirected at the holier of the factions.
The truth of the matter is Kenneth Eng is a product of our system, not a creator of it. Just as Michael Richards was. Has Richards’ apologies helped any bit more than would Eng’s? Or did Mel Gibson really lose out all that deal after his apologies? Such politics of apologies are aimed at individual ‘atonement’s, not at social remedies.
Eng/Gibson/Kramer are trying to say something. And so also those who bear with these bunch. And again those of us readers who comment at the end of the blog entries reinforcing their myopic views. Now, deleting their comments and their articles and apologizing for the same is not the solution. Far from it, such responses are what I would say constitute the “Crash” actions. Remember that movie which won Oscar last year and promised everything was fine on the racial front and that Dubois was inherently wrong.
No, Dubois was not wrong. In fact he is more relevant today than ever before. America, the metamorphosed country of illusions lulling its “diverse” people to sound amnesia by preaching “equality and liberty” is condemned to grapple with its color-lines. Any amount of diplomatic legerdemain by community “leaders” and public figures, college professors and filmmakers cannot hide this reality. The problem of 21st century America is the problem of Capitalism that thrives on inequalities based on several of its social locations. How else does one justify the continued consolidation of most wealth and power in the hands of a few white men in this country? How does one justify the saga of discriminations against people of color in the workplace? How does one justify the annual raise of bonuses to the tune of two hundred percent for the owning class while the workers beg for a five percent up?
Individualism leading to Community-ism
In hostile situations of cut throat capitalistic competitions, everyone is up for the battle of interests. In place of individual rights that this country so proudly enshrined in its constitution that merely focussed on the wealthy and powerful (only the truly free enjoyed the rights, not those they enslaved), the group rights started forming impressions following several reformist movements last century.
Group reformist movements, just like the individual rights movements, engage in competing to garner support from those from whom the rights flow. The ruling classes who devise and define individual rights to their interests (for example it is alright to be a Christian, but not alright to be a Communist; its your right to have family, but not to have it if you are not heterosexual) also describe the scope of group rights. However just as illusive are individual rights, so are the group rights, in a capitalistic setup where the romance of rights are not inherent, but gifted.
To preserve the gifts (‘scope of rights’ that come with charity, although rights themselves may have been fought for, within limits set by the capitalists), groups often tend to resort to squabble, mud-slings and outright racism. People like Kenneth Eng are products of such society divided into groups competing to attract favors from charity masters. Even as the Engs hate racism targeted against them, they rarely stop to find out the true reasons behind the same.
Its utter ignorance of some people about their own history that leads to culmination and growth of racism in our world. Are young students like Kenneth Eng taught in their school about the role of black people in shaping the free America? Are young black students taught about the systematic biases that continue circulating against Asian-Americans in mainstream entertainment industry? Are young south asian students told of the role of black Muslims in enlightening the conscience of this country when it was deep asleep in evil contentment? Are young white students taught of the role of Latino working class in wealth creation of the superpower at the cost of their own exploitation over debates surrounding minimum wage? Are the minority students taught about how majority of white workers indeed are at receiving end of en exploitative economic system?
Need of the hour:
What needs to be done at this juncture is not for black commentators attacking Asian press or South Asian commentators condemning Kenneth Eng. For all we know, Eng could well become a celebrity in a few months. The root cause of racism is not one bigoted mind. Its capitalism that we largely let go unchecked for in its practice. We must address the manner in which private capital creation safeguards specific group interests rather than working for the betterment of the world. The racial tensions in the US are economic in nature. There is no place for moral preachings here. No place for Crash finale!
Lets admit and accept that as long as we refrain from critiquing the capitalist causes (private monopolies) we will have to accept racism as part and parcel of the deal. Till now, people other than white are being called in their suffixes. American history is differently noted than African-American history! How will we expect Engs of the world to even feel grateful for immense sufferings of generations of black people that must be acknowledged at every mention of America even as an idea? How will we expect white people to understand that Columbus was not after all some hero and that this land was indeed “made for you and me”, and not just for the English speaking elites. Such expectations will bear fruit only if people are treated equally irrespective of race in this country and elsewhere. However that would mean perhaps to quote Paul Robeson, “adopting the nature and politics of Soviet Union where people are treated as people, not as black or white”. Even adopting one-tenth of former Soviet policies would entail the reversal of centuries-old capital accumulation policies that are in place in a flourishing capitalism. As long as a society is built on bedrock of money as the only thing that matters--to buy health insurance to higher education--people will always be treated as secondary subjects. And where people need to be treated as secondary subjects, to refrain those very people from fomenting a revolution against their secondary status, it becomes imperative for the capital masters to wage a divide and rule policy that keeps people ignorant about their collective struggles in everyday lives. While at it, the economic system goes unchecked in its biases against working class by deliberately playing one group against another when it comes to economic parity, share holding and accountability. No wonder, thousands of discrimination cases at the workplace are filed every week based on racial disparities.
We need to shed our racialisms and embrace the collective history of struggles of working class people of this country and the world against their class antagonists in our everyday observations. Careful and conscious efforts must be made towards deconstructing problems such as Eng’s while observing the need for such racism not to take place again.
One thing is to condemn racism, which is all good, but entirely useless. Since we know no one can feel unscathed from racist attacks under capitalism which bases itself on human inequality, today’s condemned group will become the condemner tomorrow. The other thing is to actually ensure that we do not produce a new generation of racists in our own households. There would be no end to this Ghettopoly-Tsunami saga, if we did not really address the issues critically. That some Blacks despise some Asians, some Asians despise some Blacks, and some Whites despise some immigrants and vice versa is a well known fact. How many Indian families actually encourage their doting daughters to make friends with Blacks and Muslims? How many of us actually stop thinking about people beyond their colors the moment we fail to receive our due share? How long will the “good” people refuse to acknowledge that? How long we will keep condemning Kenneth Eng?
We must make every efforts to acknowledge collective contributions to working class struggles. White people should be educated about Whiteness history that must detail not the struggle of black people alone, but also the struggle of good white people while dealing with slavery and racism. Neither slavery nor racism should be treated as subjects of the past, for both are going to remain in full function as long as there is an owning class of minority people--those that traditionally were slaveowners and who own us mentally now with their monopoly media misinformation tirades.
South Asian Journalist Association (SAJA) which is composed of really nice people some of whom I have had the opportunity to have interacted with, must make every effort to include black people on its editorial board. No issues of journalism that pertains to people of South Asian origin precludes people of other races. Likewise good Asian folks at the AsianWeek should include Latino people on their boards. The black television programs that have been accused of making fun of some Asians should include some enlightened Asians in their team. And together all of them should include some white people in their efforts to understand and strengthen collective efforts to uproot racism from this country.
Although racism, like sexism, is a byproduct of capitalism, capitalism will not vanish as long as we do not treat these diseases on a preventive manner. If we really wish to eradicate racism, and not merely talk about it, we must look beyond our own group interests and then we shall be able to address racism among our own communities in a more informed manner. Accusing the ‘other’ becomes easier when we are refusing to look outside our ‘own’ comforted walls. It is perhaps more true when we are dealing with a subject such as race--one that will not go away, but one we must deal with.
Time has come to look beyond our own races, and look for commonalities with the others in order to find the links that have been deliberately kept missing. Until then, we will be demanding an apology, not the solidarity. Because until then we are perhaps intending to let capitalism succeed at any cost in enslaving us while giving us an illusion of freedom, because we refuse to look beyond the windows to understand why some of us out in the rain will continue to suffer at the hand of the same system that can turn us against each other. For racism to go, we need to embrace human beings, not private wealth monopolists. For that to happen, we need to address issues of capitalism at its systematic level, not at its symptomatic level.
Sean Bell lives on in unFree America
By Saswat Pattanayak
The legend of Sean Bell will forever ring a bell.
And it is in the interest of the larger humanity to remember this. His brutal murder by the “50 Shots” of state power is a grim reminder of the times we live in: of the democratic forces being reduced to serve the plutocratic interests.
Police force is not separable from state machinery. Indeed, the state power is as big as its police power. The more the state emerges powerful, the more it is so because of the cloak of brute power it wears on its sleeve.
Often times, on its grave.
Today’s massive demonstration in the heart of New York City by people from all quarters of life displaying their disgust at American police state will go down as irrelevant by the mainstream media. Indeed, it will not be quoted by the White House officials, not aired by FOX and CNN alike. It may not even find a place in the national dailies of China (as prominently as the New York Times decides to showcase arrests of Chinese prostitutes recently, to denounce its human rights records). But the cloak of power politics eventually leads the state to its demise. And people replace the power in the struggle. Even Kissinger ate his words. And Bush is no smarter.
That a police force, serving the “most democratic”, “free” country of the world, the famed glamorized NYPD, will kill an entirely innocent black youth and pull in 50 shots to get rid of an unarmed person and his unarmed friends, should not surprise us. That, subsequently the Mayor of the city who has an eye on White House will stand by the action, should not surprise us either. And naturally enough, the mass protests today in New York City amidst the otherwise times of religious festivities, were not conducted to express surprises.
And the media, as we know, love to cover only the surprises. Alas, today was a march for justice. And that’s almost a part of daily life for the average American. The means to seek justice possibly may be disputed. Marches and demonstrations are after all the tools of hopelessness. Yet, no denying the fact that the world can ill ignore this huge gathering of thousands of people against the most powerful forces in the world. And it’s a matter of time for the tools of hopelessness to turn themselves into rage machines of power reversals. At least, if we go by what the “first world” people of the world have to say in the following footages.
(All pictures and videos by Saswat Blog. Feel free to distribute.)
The legend of Sean Bell will forever ring a bell.
And it is in the interest of the larger humanity to remember this. His brutal murder by the “50 Shots” of state power is a grim reminder of the times we live in: of the democratic forces being reduced to serve the plutocratic interests.
Police force is not separable from state machinery. Indeed, the state power is as big as its police power. The more the state emerges powerful, the more it is so because of the cloak of brute power it wears on its sleeve.
Often times, on its grave.
Today’s massive demonstration in the heart of New York City by people from all quarters of life displaying their disgust at American police state will go down as irrelevant by the mainstream media. Indeed, it will not be quoted by the White House officials, not aired by FOX and CNN alike. It may not even find a place in the national dailies of China (as prominently as the New York Times decides to showcase arrests of Chinese prostitutes recently, to denounce its human rights records). But the cloak of power politics eventually leads the state to its demise. And people replace the power in the struggle. Even Kissinger ate his words. And Bush is no smarter.
That a police force, serving the “most democratic”, “free” country of the world, the famed glamorized NYPD, will kill an entirely innocent black youth and pull in 50 shots to get rid of an unarmed person and his unarmed friends, should not surprise us. That, subsequently the Mayor of the city who has an eye on White House will stand by the action, should not surprise us either. And naturally enough, the mass protests today in New York City amidst the otherwise times of religious festivities, were not conducted to express surprises.
And the media, as we know, love to cover only the surprises. Alas, today was a march for justice. And that’s almost a part of daily life for the average American. The means to seek justice possibly may be disputed. Marches and demonstrations are after all the tools of hopelessness. Yet, no denying the fact that the world can ill ignore this huge gathering of thousands of people against the most powerful forces in the world. And it’s a matter of time for the tools of hopelessness to turn themselves into rage machines of power reversals. At least, if we go by what the “first world” people of the world have to say in the following footages.
(All pictures and videos by Saswat Blog. Feel free to distribute.)
Of our racist tolerance of the Kramers..
By Saswat Pattanayak
Click on the video above to watch Michael “Kramer” Richards speak on last Friday, as the audience enjoys a hearty laugh. In fact they were so enjoying that Richards was not stoned or kicked out. He went on to get exclusive interviews on television channels, entirely unharmed. No, the interviews were not conducted in some dingy prison cells, but atop celebrity couches for CNN consumption. The great mainstream media melting pot even aired him as he went on continuing with his racist unapologetic mode: “I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.”
What had he said at the first place that he found those objecting to him were actually the insane people?
Politics of apology is a prerogative of the privileged. After all, the essentially underlying presumption is normalization of situation. In fact, apologies are the soothing weapons of the smooth criminals.
Michael Richards aka Kramer of the “Seinfeld” is another one in the line, following the horrible footsteps of Mel Gibson. No, I am not outraged that these celebrities became honest about how utterly inhumanely and disgustingly racists they were. But certainly outraged that these bigots are still at large in the society hogging the fancy of thousands of their young fans clearly as misguided missiles as are the Aryan sisters called “Prussian Blue”, about whom I wrote last year.
I am clearly outraged that the white supremacist society has yet not found a solution to teach itself some decent lesson in human dignity even after its long evolution as it claims, other than letting some liberal middlemen hosting quick subsequent apology shows to forgive evil intentions as some form of accidental lip-slips.
Was I hoping any better than this? Are we all hoping that the Congressmen will suddenly behave better than corrupt jerks preaching moralist pronouncements of the sexist church order? Are we hoping that the Hollywood will eventually make better movies than pathetically dumb discourse called Crash and the television stars will become any better than this sick, deafeningly sick, Michael Richards? Or that our educational institutes will finally stop bullshitting us about how World War II ended with bombing of Japan and that Ronald Reagan “apologized” a bit too late. Or that we shall be treated to some charming Oprah any better than announcing that “Dreamgirls” is the movie she loves because its made for all people irrespective of their economic class! Aha!
No, I am not expecting miracles here. For the most, the way the television culture has depraved us, a movie or a performer only remains to be graded in terms of recognition and awards. Will she win Oscars? An entirely uncritical society resting on laurels of backdoor promotional competitions to shape its yardsticks of appreciation will only be able to reflect in its churned out “talents”, its own true self.
Michael Richards is not some self-made TV star. He is not some celebrity on his own merit. He is just one of us. He is there at that stage, because we put him there to entertain us. Because most of us actually laughed like sick saddists without applying our critical minds to the television culture. Every evening, this country (and following it, most in the rest of the world) telecasts stupid comedy shows that runs late into the late night with special comedy shows, apparently by liberal by names of Stewarts and Lopezs too. There are dedicated channels and prominent companies producing “stand-up comedies” 24/7. The culture of humor in capitalistic marketplace is the most potent ingredient to normalize the otherwise actual tension that prevails in the society.
Humor as capitalistic agent of illusive consensus:
Racial tensions are not some exaggerated fictionalized accounts of hyped media reports. They are for real. In fact, in every racist country from Britain to France, they are the only things that’re real. Denial of privilege and race-blindness is the prerogative of the few elites representing the historically oppressing racial category that manufactures the divisions to distinguish humans on basis of color skin. One would have wished the Apartheid ended. One would have perhaps also imagined that the black issues were resolved following desegregation. But wishes and hopes do not make a society run.
The reality is that the racial tensions are necessary consequence of free trade capitalism. It is capitalism that’s the creator of racism through its patriarchal control of private property by means of subjugating human beings as slaves to further the profit consolidation of the masters class. In fact, for capitalism to grow and further its own interests, racism needs to be furthered too. New forms of racism will take place of old forms of racism, just as credit cards are replacing old cash circulation. But the essential implementation of divide and rule will forever remain the cornerstone for the wealth-grabbers to stay in power over those that earlier used to remain as slaves, and now as freemarket consumers. Earlier they were house slaves, today they are software slaves. Difference is in the degrees.
Likewise, earlier the subjugation of society used to take place through sheer brutal force. As the levels of sophistication increased, the territorial conquests were replaced by imperialistic expansions. And these days, via more implicitly sophisticated means such as words defined by the masters’ dictionaries as soothing: words such as liberty, democracy, family, happiness, elections, television, comedies and organic food.
So what we have is the culture of comedies in the most obnoxious of places. In the most inappropriate settings. During the most pathetic times. Never in the history of humanity, so many people of the world felt so very helpless at their inability to prevent wars of mass destructions launched by the most unqualified of people to assume leaderships. And yet during days like these, the television shows and comedy films are making the biggest of business. During a time when the entertainment industry should have been focusing on agitating the people through critical education about their role in reversing world order, we have all the world television channels owned by five old men and the film industries run by people like Tarantinos (another N-word hyperactivist). And all of them have readymade shows to make people stay relaxed. How will we know if we need to be relaxed? The celebrities tell us when is the time to relax and how to feel relaxed after undergoing body jobs. How we shall know this is the time to laugh? The background clap sequences on comedies will ask us to laugh along the scenes. Such perversity of underestimation of collective human intelligence is a compelling tale of how far have we regressed in our movements.
What to do with Michael Richards?
Nothing. Ideally he should be jailed for "fifty years with a fork up on his ass". That’s the minimum verdict that he deserves. But that’s not even a portion of what we must all undergo if we envisage our future as active agents of humanity, and not some remote controlled passive recipients of messages and bullets.
All of us must daily observe a couple of hours introspecting about our own inactions, apathy, indifference, involvement and withdrawal from the largely racist world that has been a direct creation as a result of our collective indecisiveness. While at it, we must realize that we need to be as honest with ourselves as Richards and Gibson were with themselves, not just when we are angry, but throughout the 24 hours everyday. If overcoming the deep love for our own dominant supremacist race at the cost of degrading those we oppressed becomes too difficult, we must be prepared to die the way that abominable creature and our racist epitome called Hitler ended his life. We don’t need another television show which the neo-nazis like Michael Richards pay to apologize. We need Richards and his likes to be forced to introspect and change. And if they do not “amend”…..Well, they better amend.
I wish I could say all that I wanted to. But unlike some elite white folks in this country and their counterparts in much of Europe, I certainly do not enjoy "Hate Speech" privilege anyway. And neither do I want to enjoy any of this. Good for them.
Click on the video above to watch Michael “Kramer” Richards speak on last Friday, as the audience enjoys a hearty laugh. In fact they were so enjoying that Richards was not stoned or kicked out. He went on to get exclusive interviews on television channels, entirely unharmed. No, the interviews were not conducted in some dingy prison cells, but atop celebrity couches for CNN consumption. The great mainstream media melting pot even aired him as he went on continuing with his racist unapologetic mode: “I'm not a racist. That's what's so insane about this.”
What had he said at the first place that he found those objecting to him were actually the insane people?
"Shut up! "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass."
"You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherfucker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"
Politics of apology is a prerogative of the privileged. After all, the essentially underlying presumption is normalization of situation. In fact, apologies are the soothing weapons of the smooth criminals.
Michael Richards aka Kramer of the “Seinfeld” is another one in the line, following the horrible footsteps of Mel Gibson. No, I am not outraged that these celebrities became honest about how utterly inhumanely and disgustingly racists they were. But certainly outraged that these bigots are still at large in the society hogging the fancy of thousands of their young fans clearly as misguided missiles as are the Aryan sisters called “Prussian Blue”, about whom I wrote last year.
I am clearly outraged that the white supremacist society has yet not found a solution to teach itself some decent lesson in human dignity even after its long evolution as it claims, other than letting some liberal middlemen hosting quick subsequent apology shows to forgive evil intentions as some form of accidental lip-slips.
Was I hoping any better than this? Are we all hoping that the Congressmen will suddenly behave better than corrupt jerks preaching moralist pronouncements of the sexist church order? Are we hoping that the Hollywood will eventually make better movies than pathetically dumb discourse called Crash and the television stars will become any better than this sick, deafeningly sick, Michael Richards? Or that our educational institutes will finally stop bullshitting us about how World War II ended with bombing of Japan and that Ronald Reagan “apologized” a bit too late. Or that we shall be treated to some charming Oprah any better than announcing that “Dreamgirls” is the movie she loves because its made for all people irrespective of their economic class! Aha!
No, I am not expecting miracles here. For the most, the way the television culture has depraved us, a movie or a performer only remains to be graded in terms of recognition and awards. Will she win Oscars? An entirely uncritical society resting on laurels of backdoor promotional competitions to shape its yardsticks of appreciation will only be able to reflect in its churned out “talents”, its own true self.
Michael Richards is not some self-made TV star. He is not some celebrity on his own merit. He is just one of us. He is there at that stage, because we put him there to entertain us. Because most of us actually laughed like sick saddists without applying our critical minds to the television culture. Every evening, this country (and following it, most in the rest of the world) telecasts stupid comedy shows that runs late into the late night with special comedy shows, apparently by liberal by names of Stewarts and Lopezs too. There are dedicated channels and prominent companies producing “stand-up comedies” 24/7. The culture of humor in capitalistic marketplace is the most potent ingredient to normalize the otherwise actual tension that prevails in the society.
Humor as capitalistic agent of illusive consensus:
Racial tensions are not some exaggerated fictionalized accounts of hyped media reports. They are for real. In fact, in every racist country from Britain to France, they are the only things that’re real. Denial of privilege and race-blindness is the prerogative of the few elites representing the historically oppressing racial category that manufactures the divisions to distinguish humans on basis of color skin. One would have wished the Apartheid ended. One would have perhaps also imagined that the black issues were resolved following desegregation. But wishes and hopes do not make a society run.
The reality is that the racial tensions are necessary consequence of free trade capitalism. It is capitalism that’s the creator of racism through its patriarchal control of private property by means of subjugating human beings as slaves to further the profit consolidation of the masters class. In fact, for capitalism to grow and further its own interests, racism needs to be furthered too. New forms of racism will take place of old forms of racism, just as credit cards are replacing old cash circulation. But the essential implementation of divide and rule will forever remain the cornerstone for the wealth-grabbers to stay in power over those that earlier used to remain as slaves, and now as freemarket consumers. Earlier they were house slaves, today they are software slaves. Difference is in the degrees.
Likewise, earlier the subjugation of society used to take place through sheer brutal force. As the levels of sophistication increased, the territorial conquests were replaced by imperialistic expansions. And these days, via more implicitly sophisticated means such as words defined by the masters’ dictionaries as soothing: words such as liberty, democracy, family, happiness, elections, television, comedies and organic food.
So what we have is the culture of comedies in the most obnoxious of places. In the most inappropriate settings. During the most pathetic times. Never in the history of humanity, so many people of the world felt so very helpless at their inability to prevent wars of mass destructions launched by the most unqualified of people to assume leaderships. And yet during days like these, the television shows and comedy films are making the biggest of business. During a time when the entertainment industry should have been focusing on agitating the people through critical education about their role in reversing world order, we have all the world television channels owned by five old men and the film industries run by people like Tarantinos (another N-word hyperactivist). And all of them have readymade shows to make people stay relaxed. How will we know if we need to be relaxed? The celebrities tell us when is the time to relax and how to feel relaxed after undergoing body jobs. How we shall know this is the time to laugh? The background clap sequences on comedies will ask us to laugh along the scenes. Such perversity of underestimation of collective human intelligence is a compelling tale of how far have we regressed in our movements.
What to do with Michael Richards?
Nothing. Ideally he should be jailed for "fifty years with a fork up on his ass". That’s the minimum verdict that he deserves. But that’s not even a portion of what we must all undergo if we envisage our future as active agents of humanity, and not some remote controlled passive recipients of messages and bullets.
All of us must daily observe a couple of hours introspecting about our own inactions, apathy, indifference, involvement and withdrawal from the largely racist world that has been a direct creation as a result of our collective indecisiveness. While at it, we must realize that we need to be as honest with ourselves as Richards and Gibson were with themselves, not just when we are angry, but throughout the 24 hours everyday. If overcoming the deep love for our own dominant supremacist race at the cost of degrading those we oppressed becomes too difficult, we must be prepared to die the way that abominable creature and our racist epitome called Hitler ended his life. We don’t need another television show which the neo-nazis like Michael Richards pay to apologize. We need Richards and his likes to be forced to introspect and change. And if they do not “amend”…..Well, they better amend.
I wish I could say all that I wanted to. But unlike some elite white folks in this country and their counterparts in much of Europe, I certainly do not enjoy "Hate Speech" privilege anyway. And neither do I want to enjoy any of this. Good for them.
A Warning From An “Eyes On The Prize” Creator
Got this from Dr TSB of the media blog
Drums in the Global Village.
Hey, Folks -
Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.
Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott
Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.
Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides
Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham
Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer
Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March
**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo
It’s also in the 2nd series that
you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the
establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica
Rebellion.
So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.
Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.
Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)
Hey, Folks -
Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.
Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott
Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.
Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides
Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham
Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer
Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March
**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo
It’s also in the 2nd series that
you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the
establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica
Rebellion.
So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.
Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.
Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)
France helps Italy save Match-fixers
By Saswat Pattanayak
Finally, the fraud is over. The conmen have been caught on camera. Two teams sans any genuine emotions of either tears or laughter came together to celebrate the end of month-long television opera that promised them millions of dollars for putting up several Acts and Scenes that would have put Shakespearian drama to shame.
If there ever was a match-fixing ever caught on camera so boldly, it was the World Cup Soccer 2006. The final match between France and Italy just basked in it. Amidst the earlier charges of match-fixing scandals that the Italian team has been caught with, this was the only logical result the world would have seen. It’s a dirty white fascist trick that the Europeans exhibited with charm and carried on with élan. Yet again.
A pathetically mediocre player by the name of Zinedine Zidane who has been hogging media highlights since many years now proved his mettle in this tournament as well. Not just by playing horrendous, but also highly prepared, as certain to make Italy (not France) win!
As a player who performs good only on penalty shots (possibly also because of misuse of his position) he knew that Italy was supposed to win this final. Perhaps he was told, and perhaps he was part of this act all along. After all, tomorrow was going to be a day when the world would have watched one after the other card fall in the recent history of soccer match-fixing scandal, since the day after the world up (July 10) was about to discuss the charges, that involved top football clubs of the world. Resultantly, in a Hansie Cronje (South African White Cricket Team Captain) act, Zidane committed a career suicide deliberately just when his penalty skills would have led to opening of Pandora’s Mafia Box the day after.
And just before he headbutted Marco Materazzi in the chest, he made sure that the best French player in its history, Thierry Henry was sent away from the field. The only players in French team who were genuinely giving their best shots have been incidentally black players. The only ones who made every attempt to make France lose in this championship were the only non-black players in the team: one, the goalkeeper Fabien Barthez who was so easily a loser that the Italian bullshitters at penalty were not even looking at the net while kicking the ball—they were certain that their French accomplish was anyway going to miss the ball. Remember this guy was with Olympique Marseille club and faced match fixing charges in 2000. The second non-black was the French immigrant to Argentina-back-to-France David Trezeguet. This guy obviously knew what he was doing. The racist French crowd which tolerated slurs against Henry was the people who always favored Trezeguet over Henry all along. And third, their crown prince, the so-called “master-of-the-game” Zidane who knew well that Henry was absolutely the best one in the game against Italy and could spring a surprise during overtime. And so the best football player of the tournament was asked to leave long before the game was over.
After that little nasty white trick to make sure that Italy wins the world cup and saves the faces of frauds, Zidane knew the world believed him to be the best penalty shootout player. This image had helped him emerge as one of the richest skippers (Zidane was signed by Real Madrid for a world record €73m). But now if he had to continue in the game and score the penalty, he could be out of the deal.
So what was at stake?
If France would have won, professional soccer would have lost. By professional, I mean the profiteering industry of corporate sponsorships that insures legs and runs campaigns in the name of football. By professional, I mean a racist sports hierarchy that prevents Asians and Africans to play in the best possible circumstances, or even allow them to be fair competitors. By professional, I mean a game that celebrates match-fixing, racist slurs, anti-black monkey chants as part of sports ethics. This neo-nazi professional sports is headquartered in Europe, and currently being bossed by Italian merchants who fix the referees, and the rules. The players are betted upon, and the clubs are pitted against aggressively. After the Germans admitted of match fixing last year and the Italian top clubs were caught on telephonic communication of fixing matches this year, the world was awaiting decisions. The decisions would have affected majority of Italian players and countless other players whose names would have been disclosed in the process. It would have all exposed the mafia involvement in soccer. And that’s not what FIFA is supposed to stand for. So the only way it could have been averted was through the victory of Italy. This is the only way to ensure that people celebrate Italian team than deride it or accuse it any more. And the Italian prosecutors who have asked the clubs to face courts tomorrow would be forced to lose face.
Zidane: World Champion! The Golden Boy of Italy
Trzeguet (right): The Chosen One
Barthez: Future of Football
The mafia swim and sink together. As usual, they decided they will swim together this time.
And France lost. What an irony. After some of the magnificent performance by the team (all except three, are formidable black players who have not erred for once), the team’s captain, without any provocation and certainly not any compulsion, and obviously not while the ball was being chased, turned back on a walking Italian player and went and hit him on his chest. Deliberately so that he would be declared out. So that he would not have to shoot penalty kick.
This is ridiculous. Such things are not done even by school kids. Not done in a village tournament in eastern India. Certainly never imagined to be done by the captain of a fabulous team in the world cup final match!
Aftermath of World Cup Shame!
A few white men again have conned the world by practicing downright racism, unfair game tactics and scandalous match-fixings. Strict action must be taken against Zidane for violating the basic spirits of the game: respect for the audience. None of us must be taken for a ride for a month in the name of euphoria if the matches were all along been fixed. Since it has proven to have happened now, Zidane must face the music. He knew he was retiring rich, and he messed up with his career. But the gains that he has amassed by making certain that Italy win this world cup are things he has to be made responsible for.
One knew Italy is one of the worst playing teams that has ever reached the final of a world cup. But the dirty match-fixers as they are (with 13 out of 23 players in tainted clubs), now they have even bought the French captain in the world cup final. But amidst all media created enthusiasm, people should remember that its no Hobson’s choice for soccer audience. The choice is clear. The “qualified teams” in this mess called World Cup must be banned from playing professional football until the rules of the game are changed to become more inclusive and less monopolistic; and the Italian team (and their frontrunner friend Zidane) are thoroughly investigated on grounds for match-fixings.
Finally, the fraud is over. The conmen have been caught on camera. Two teams sans any genuine emotions of either tears or laughter came together to celebrate the end of month-long television opera that promised them millions of dollars for putting up several Acts and Scenes that would have put Shakespearian drama to shame.
If there ever was a match-fixing ever caught on camera so boldly, it was the World Cup Soccer 2006. The final match between France and Italy just basked in it. Amidst the earlier charges of match-fixing scandals that the Italian team has been caught with, this was the only logical result the world would have seen. It’s a dirty white fascist trick that the Europeans exhibited with charm and carried on with élan. Yet again.
A pathetically mediocre player by the name of Zinedine Zidane who has been hogging media highlights since many years now proved his mettle in this tournament as well. Not just by playing horrendous, but also highly prepared, as certain to make Italy (not France) win!
As a player who performs good only on penalty shots (possibly also because of misuse of his position) he knew that Italy was supposed to win this final. Perhaps he was told, and perhaps he was part of this act all along. After all, tomorrow was going to be a day when the world would have watched one after the other card fall in the recent history of soccer match-fixing scandal, since the day after the world up (July 10) was about to discuss the charges, that involved top football clubs of the world. Resultantly, in a Hansie Cronje (South African White Cricket Team Captain) act, Zidane committed a career suicide deliberately just when his penalty skills would have led to opening of Pandora’s Mafia Box the day after.
And just before he headbutted Marco Materazzi in the chest, he made sure that the best French player in its history, Thierry Henry was sent away from the field. The only players in French team who were genuinely giving their best shots have been incidentally black players. The only ones who made every attempt to make France lose in this championship were the only non-black players in the team: one, the goalkeeper Fabien Barthez who was so easily a loser that the Italian bullshitters at penalty were not even looking at the net while kicking the ball—they were certain that their French accomplish was anyway going to miss the ball. Remember this guy was with Olympique Marseille club and faced match fixing charges in 2000. The second non-black was the French immigrant to Argentina-back-to-France David Trezeguet. This guy obviously knew what he was doing. The racist French crowd which tolerated slurs against Henry was the people who always favored Trezeguet over Henry all along. And third, their crown prince, the so-called “master-of-the-game” Zidane who knew well that Henry was absolutely the best one in the game against Italy and could spring a surprise during overtime. And so the best football player of the tournament was asked to leave long before the game was over.
After that little nasty white trick to make sure that Italy wins the world cup and saves the faces of frauds, Zidane knew the world believed him to be the best penalty shootout player. This image had helped him emerge as one of the richest skippers (Zidane was signed by Real Madrid for a world record €73m). But now if he had to continue in the game and score the penalty, he could be out of the deal.
So what was at stake?
If France would have won, professional soccer would have lost. By professional, I mean the profiteering industry of corporate sponsorships that insures legs and runs campaigns in the name of football. By professional, I mean a racist sports hierarchy that prevents Asians and Africans to play in the best possible circumstances, or even allow them to be fair competitors. By professional, I mean a game that celebrates match-fixing, racist slurs, anti-black monkey chants as part of sports ethics. This neo-nazi professional sports is headquartered in Europe, and currently being bossed by Italian merchants who fix the referees, and the rules. The players are betted upon, and the clubs are pitted against aggressively. After the Germans admitted of match fixing last year and the Italian top clubs were caught on telephonic communication of fixing matches this year, the world was awaiting decisions. The decisions would have affected majority of Italian players and countless other players whose names would have been disclosed in the process. It would have all exposed the mafia involvement in soccer. And that’s not what FIFA is supposed to stand for. So the only way it could have been averted was through the victory of Italy. This is the only way to ensure that people celebrate Italian team than deride it or accuse it any more. And the Italian prosecutors who have asked the clubs to face courts tomorrow would be forced to lose face.
Zidane: World Champion! The Golden Boy of Italy
Trzeguet (right): The Chosen One
Barthez: Future of Football
The mafia swim and sink together. As usual, they decided they will swim together this time.
And France lost. What an irony. After some of the magnificent performance by the team (all except three, are formidable black players who have not erred for once), the team’s captain, without any provocation and certainly not any compulsion, and obviously not while the ball was being chased, turned back on a walking Italian player and went and hit him on his chest. Deliberately so that he would be declared out. So that he would not have to shoot penalty kick.
This is ridiculous. Such things are not done even by school kids. Not done in a village tournament in eastern India. Certainly never imagined to be done by the captain of a fabulous team in the world cup final match!
Aftermath of World Cup Shame!
A few white men again have conned the world by practicing downright racism, unfair game tactics and scandalous match-fixings. Strict action must be taken against Zidane for violating the basic spirits of the game: respect for the audience. None of us must be taken for a ride for a month in the name of euphoria if the matches were all along been fixed. Since it has proven to have happened now, Zidane must face the music. He knew he was retiring rich, and he messed up with his career. But the gains that he has amassed by making certain that Italy win this world cup are things he has to be made responsible for.
One knew Italy is one of the worst playing teams that has ever reached the final of a world cup. But the dirty match-fixers as they are (with 13 out of 23 players in tainted clubs), now they have even bought the French captain in the world cup final. But amidst all media created enthusiasm, people should remember that its no Hobson’s choice for soccer audience. The choice is clear. The “qualified teams” in this mess called World Cup must be banned from playing professional football until the rules of the game are changed to become more inclusive and less monopolistic; and the Italian team (and their frontrunner friend Zidane) are thoroughly investigated on grounds for match-fixings.
Racist Football and Farcical Finalists!
By Saswat Pattanayak
4th of July was celebrated as Italian Victory day here with red, white and green all around in big honking cars, loaded with obscene shouting fans. NYPD police watched in silence by the road sides as long chain of cars went on breaking all possible traffic rules one after the other. Some people on the sidewalks might have cursed them for forgetting the 4th of July as an American day. Yet most anyway thought they were more Europeans that day than European-Americans. So the whistling continued; the sloganeering and even blocking the streets.
One would guess it was celebration time. But somehow deep inside, I was terrified by the look of it. What would have happened if as many Asians people would have blocked the road like this and shouted ‘Dil Dil Pakistan” for its Cricket match victory over India? Or blacks of America would have protested by blocking roads for one reason or the other, among so many? Would they not have been all locked up for traffic violations? Or for criminal misconduct? I am sure either of these would have been the fate. But for thousands of unruly Italians or pseudo-Italians on the rampage, not even their licenses were checked that day! Heads popping out of the windows of vans, most standing atop roofless trucks. Groups of people ecstatic to the point of sheer madness. After hours of honking and endless noises, I don’t know when the fans must have retreated. White Power?
To me, it seemed as cheap and as outlandish as the whole drama of Football world cup. Like most games today, Football in the age of globalization has become just another get-rich game involving criminal frauds, and outright racism. These need to be visited for serious appraisal, lest we all merely end up chanting yet another corporate theme song for football hooligans.
The famed frauds:
The Italian football federation prosecutor has finally called for the relegation of Italian clubs AC Milan, Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina for their involvement in the match-fixing scandal.
This is the country that has now gone to the finals, possibly to win! Hosting all major football clubs in the world, Italy sits pretty at the Mafia position of world soccer. The only difference is this time, even bigger crimes are being conducted. Prosecutor Stefano Palazzi has already charged a total of 30 “subjects” for a range of illegalities. Thirty? Yes.
It started in May this year when Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi was heard telling referees chief Pierluigi Pairetto over phone about which match officials he wanted assigned to certain games! Yeah it stinks as bad as this. And the worst?
Thirteen of Italy's 23-man World Cup squad play for the four clubs that are under scrutiny. That’s more than half of Italian world cup team! So now we know how they won? Well, let’s ask the Germans. No better than their Italian frauds, earlier last year, German referee Robert Hoyzer had already admitted to match-fixing charges.
So one fixes the win, and the other fixes the loss. And the audience worldover are thrilled to television reality shows on the stadium!
In shame, Italian football federation (FIGC) president Franco Carraro and vice-president Innocenzo Mazzini had already resigned in May because they along with Juventus chairman Antonio Giraudo, are among those under formal investigation. And only last week, on June 23rd, Italian football league president Adriano Galliani, the vice president of AC Milan, has finally tendered his resignation.
In a conversation in May this year, with Italian sport journalist Giancarlo Galavotti, BBC Sport had interesting findings. Galavotti compared Italian soccer regime with Fascism, and said “People would not admit to being fascist, but they were concealing or pretending that they never were, switching sides with alarming ease. There are plenty who are saying that nothing has been proven and nobody has been indicted of anything yet. But the gut feeling among the vast majority of Italians is that this is scandal the likes of which there hasn't been before, at least in European football.”
Fascists? Oh yeah, you realize when you hear their slogans in uptown New York. But what does the Italian coach think?
Following the 2-0 triumph over the hosts, Italian coach Marcello Lippi said the match fixing scandal had actually helped bring the team together! “Certainly, initially, all the confusion that came out two or three months ago created a desire and a determination to respond and show that Italian football is effective, real and strong on a technical and moral level. It helped to create a tight group.” said Lippi. The critical question here is if technical and moral level ever lacked in the team back then?
Not only committing frauds, but also justifying them comes easy to Lippi. Why the trial of the conmen have been scheduled to be held only after the world cup final is over: they do not want to upset the playing team while the tournament is on. But it is also not a very bad guess to presume that the accused will be let go scot-free once Italy wins the fixed world cup too. If Italians can behave in a foreign land like insane hooligans on the loose, one can imagine how the final results will have them, resulting in complete chaos around the judgments! Amidst all apprehensions, what should not escape our attention at this point or future is that match fixings (referee assignments!) are being done by club managers who own half of Italian playing team squad… Someone has to take responsibility? How about first finishing investigations and then only let the millionaires play with each other, if anyone is still left?
The Racists:
In some specific games, while clearing the football fields after the euphoria, one finds banana skins and peanuts all over. Why? Because some or at least one player in the teams were black. Monkey noises are all the time reported in European stadium among audience to deride the black people as monkeys who need bananas and peanuts.
These cheering crowds are the mainstay of professional football. They bring in the moolah, they sport the jerseys, they bring in the rallies and pamper the players with corporate sponsors by making them popular. The quid pro quo relations between racist audience and their role models have promoted football to emerge as not only the largest played game in human history, but also the most racist.
Only recently, Cameroonian FC Barcelona star Samuel Eto'o almost walked off the pitch after being showered by “fans” with monkey chants and peanuts. Last November, Messina’s Marc Zoro picked up the ball and threatened a walk out if racist chants continued from Inter Milan fans.
In November 2002 monkey chants were hurled at Manchester United's Dwight Yorke by Sunderland fans during their Worthington Cup tie at the Stadium of Light. In the same month, Leicester City’s British-born Turkish star Muzzy Izzet was loudly booed by Leeds United fans each time he touched the ball during their Premier League clash. In September that year, fans watching England’s friendly match against France in Paris racially abused Andy Cole and chanted “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk”.
Few selected recent racist incidents that Football Unites, Racism Divides mentions include how in 2004, Ron Atkinson resigned from his job with ITV after being heard on television describing Chelsea’s Marcel Desailly as “what is known in some schools as a f*****g lazy, thick n****r”.
These are continuance of shameful legacies. A decade ago, in the wake of Deptford Fire where 13 black youths were burnt to death, a chant in soccer stadium that could be heard at Millwall was: “We all agree, Niggers burn better than petrol”.
Similar chants used by national soccer teams include:
“Stand by the Union Jack
Send those niggers back
If you're white, you're alright
If you're black, send 'em back”
Although racist chanting is considered unlawful only since the 1991 Football (Offences) Act, the law is actually a big loophole. Chanting is merely defined as the "repeated uttering of any words or sounds in concert with one or more others". Hence, an individual shouting racist abuse can only be charged under the 1986 Public Order Act for using "obscene and foul language at football grounds".
More creative racist slurs have also helped in letting the crowd overcome legal boundaries. In 1994, Holland audience were chanting
"Get back on your jam jar
Get back on your jam jar
La,la,la,la, La,la,la,la."
New Age Racism-The Neo-Nazis:
Since last two years, scores of neo-nazi tactics have been displayed with audacities that would put human beings to shame. Not to these fans! Four British fans were fined and banned from matches for 4 and 5 years for racially abusing Birmingham’s Dwight Yorke. Emile Heskey and Andy Cole were racially abused by Slovakia fans. Black players were racially abused by Macedonia fans. Motherwell’s Steven Hammel was prosecuted for racist insults towards St Johnstone’s Mohammed Sylla. Asian referee Gurnam Singh successfully sued the FA for racial discrimination. FA was fined £70,000 for pitch invasion and racist abuse by England fans at Euro 2004 qualifier v Turkey.
Last August, ten men were jailed for upto 18 months for conducting violent attack on a Portuguese-run pub after England's defeat to Portugal in Euro 2004 on 24th June. They were part of a mob which shouted racial abuse and hurled missiles smashing 37 windows at the pub in Thetford, Norfolk, leaving eight people injured and staff and customers forced to barricade themselves inside. Last November, Anderlecht’s Nenad Jestrovic was sent off for racially abusing Liverpool’s Momo Sissoko in a Champions League match at Anfield.
This year itself, Peterborough manager Mark Wright was suspended, and then sacked, for gross misconduct after a dispute stemming from the alleged racial abuse of defender Sean St Leger. He had resigned as manager of Oxford United after being fined and given a 4-match ban by the FA for making allegedly racist remarks at black referee Joe Ross.
In March this year, 39 people were charged following disorder and racist chanting at an FA Cup tie in Stoke between Stoke City and Birmingham City in February.
Kick it Out says fans, ethnic minority communities and players are still racially abused, particularly at the grassroots level where racist abuse is common in amateur football on our parks at the weekend.
What now:
Nothing has changed over last few months either. In fact, the inaugural edition of the Streetfootballworld festival has kicked off in Berlin. But the teams of Nigeria and Ghana have been refused entry visa!
The Streetfootballworld festival 06 is an official element of the Artistic and cultural program to the 2006 FIFA World Cup and is funded under FIFA’s Football for Hope-Program and the German Federal Ministry for Youth. Basically, even in July 2006, the European conglomerates are practicing widespread racism.
The silver lining is that there have been few campaigns to end racism in football. But they have come a cropper since institutional support obviously leans towards the cash rich sponsors, who do not give two hoots. The Campaign for Racial Equality (CRE), the Football Supporters Association (FSA) and the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) have all launched initiatives to try and rid football grounds of racism and encourage more people from ethnic minorities to attend matches.
Chairman of Kick It Out, Herman Ouseley has opined that more black players should rise up and protest, now that they are at a better league at least as members of national teams. “Why do you think the incident with Spanish fans happened at Bernabeu last month? Was it because of Aragones' earlier comment about Thierry Henry [being 'a Black s**t']? Or why now?
The Black players of Arsenal should have insisted that they would not play in Europe till they got a full apology to Henry from Aragones and until the Spanish FA reprimanded him. Black players in national sides (in England and France) and in the Premier League are in a very strong position now to say that there is no way this kind of racism can continue, that they won't take it any more.” If not many, at least Ronaldhino has come out speaking against current racism in the game, and that could be a saving grace for a world cup that is witnessing duels between racist giants.
French: The other finalists
Just as Italy is infamous for its fraudulent acts by any means, its contender France is a cruel joke indeed. All the while highlighting Zidane as its star and skipper, France would actually not have been in the finals if not for its black stars!
This is important to understand especially given the recent official apathy that French have taken towards French black youths that caused widespread protests last year.
Check this BBC report for example. In the entire story, there is not much mention of the player who actually made the victory goal. Only at the last paragraph the reporter writes “Goalscorer Henry”, not even attributing him with his full name Thierry Henry. By contrast, Zidane is very respectfully written about, his photograph splashed and he is called the man of the match. He is quoted in the headline! He is written about in the intro.
Yes it’s the same Thierry whom the Spanish players derided as black s**t. And the French never made a condition that unless the Spanish apologize they would not play their team. As for Henry, he is actually the brightest of all French players. With his fifth world cup goal he is ranked joint second with Michael Platini on the all time scorers list for France. And in the present world cup, out of total 7 goals scored by France so far, Henry has scored the highest: 3. One of the greatest living footballers in the world, he was also the top scorer in 1998 World Cup which France had bagged.
And yet it’s Zidane who takes the cup. Why? At times answers are really simple. There is no need to beat around the bush here.
A look at French team would show why
there was not much jubilation when it entered
the Finals. But then that’s a story for another
day. It’s a story of granting favor, making
laws, prohibiting opportunities, and minting big
money. Which is why one feels tempted to ask one
last race-based question for the world’s largest
played game: Where are the players from world’s
largest continent? Asia?
4th of July was celebrated as Italian Victory day here with red, white and green all around in big honking cars, loaded with obscene shouting fans. NYPD police watched in silence by the road sides as long chain of cars went on breaking all possible traffic rules one after the other. Some people on the sidewalks might have cursed them for forgetting the 4th of July as an American day. Yet most anyway thought they were more Europeans that day than European-Americans. So the whistling continued; the sloganeering and even blocking the streets.
One would guess it was celebration time. But somehow deep inside, I was terrified by the look of it. What would have happened if as many Asians people would have blocked the road like this and shouted ‘Dil Dil Pakistan” for its Cricket match victory over India? Or blacks of America would have protested by blocking roads for one reason or the other, among so many? Would they not have been all locked up for traffic violations? Or for criminal misconduct? I am sure either of these would have been the fate. But for thousands of unruly Italians or pseudo-Italians on the rampage, not even their licenses were checked that day! Heads popping out of the windows of vans, most standing atop roofless trucks. Groups of people ecstatic to the point of sheer madness. After hours of honking and endless noises, I don’t know when the fans must have retreated. White Power?
To me, it seemed as cheap and as outlandish as the whole drama of Football world cup. Like most games today, Football in the age of globalization has become just another get-rich game involving criminal frauds, and outright racism. These need to be visited for serious appraisal, lest we all merely end up chanting yet another corporate theme song for football hooligans.
The famed frauds:
The Italian football federation prosecutor has finally called for the relegation of Italian clubs AC Milan, Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina for their involvement in the match-fixing scandal.
This is the country that has now gone to the finals, possibly to win! Hosting all major football clubs in the world, Italy sits pretty at the Mafia position of world soccer. The only difference is this time, even bigger crimes are being conducted. Prosecutor Stefano Palazzi has already charged a total of 30 “subjects” for a range of illegalities. Thirty? Yes.
It started in May this year when Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi was heard telling referees chief Pierluigi Pairetto over phone about which match officials he wanted assigned to certain games! Yeah it stinks as bad as this. And the worst?
Thirteen of Italy's 23-man World Cup squad play for the four clubs that are under scrutiny. That’s more than half of Italian world cup team! So now we know how they won? Well, let’s ask the Germans. No better than their Italian frauds, earlier last year, German referee Robert Hoyzer had already admitted to match-fixing charges.
So one fixes the win, and the other fixes the loss. And the audience worldover are thrilled to television reality shows on the stadium!
In shame, Italian football federation (FIGC) president Franco Carraro and vice-president Innocenzo Mazzini had already resigned in May because they along with Juventus chairman Antonio Giraudo, are among those under formal investigation. And only last week, on June 23rd, Italian football league president Adriano Galliani, the vice president of AC Milan, has finally tendered his resignation.
In a conversation in May this year, with Italian sport journalist Giancarlo Galavotti, BBC Sport had interesting findings. Galavotti compared Italian soccer regime with Fascism, and said “People would not admit to being fascist, but they were concealing or pretending that they never were, switching sides with alarming ease. There are plenty who are saying that nothing has been proven and nobody has been indicted of anything yet. But the gut feeling among the vast majority of Italians is that this is scandal the likes of which there hasn't been before, at least in European football.”
Fascists? Oh yeah, you realize when you hear their slogans in uptown New York. But what does the Italian coach think?
Following the 2-0 triumph over the hosts, Italian coach Marcello Lippi said the match fixing scandal had actually helped bring the team together! “Certainly, initially, all the confusion that came out two or three months ago created a desire and a determination to respond and show that Italian football is effective, real and strong on a technical and moral level. It helped to create a tight group.” said Lippi. The critical question here is if technical and moral level ever lacked in the team back then?
Not only committing frauds, but also justifying them comes easy to Lippi. Why the trial of the conmen have been scheduled to be held only after the world cup final is over: they do not want to upset the playing team while the tournament is on. But it is also not a very bad guess to presume that the accused will be let go scot-free once Italy wins the fixed world cup too. If Italians can behave in a foreign land like insane hooligans on the loose, one can imagine how the final results will have them, resulting in complete chaos around the judgments! Amidst all apprehensions, what should not escape our attention at this point or future is that match fixings (referee assignments!) are being done by club managers who own half of Italian playing team squad… Someone has to take responsibility? How about first finishing investigations and then only let the millionaires play with each other, if anyone is still left?
The Racists:
In some specific games, while clearing the football fields after the euphoria, one finds banana skins and peanuts all over. Why? Because some or at least one player in the teams were black. Monkey noises are all the time reported in European stadium among audience to deride the black people as monkeys who need bananas and peanuts.
These cheering crowds are the mainstay of professional football. They bring in the moolah, they sport the jerseys, they bring in the rallies and pamper the players with corporate sponsors by making them popular. The quid pro quo relations between racist audience and their role models have promoted football to emerge as not only the largest played game in human history, but also the most racist.
Only recently, Cameroonian FC Barcelona star Samuel Eto'o almost walked off the pitch after being showered by “fans” with monkey chants and peanuts. Last November, Messina’s Marc Zoro picked up the ball and threatened a walk out if racist chants continued from Inter Milan fans.
In November 2002 monkey chants were hurled at Manchester United's Dwight Yorke by Sunderland fans during their Worthington Cup tie at the Stadium of Light. In the same month, Leicester City’s British-born Turkish star Muzzy Izzet was loudly booed by Leeds United fans each time he touched the ball during their Premier League clash. In September that year, fans watching England’s friendly match against France in Paris racially abused Andy Cole and chanted “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk”.
Few selected recent racist incidents that Football Unites, Racism Divides mentions include how in 2004, Ron Atkinson resigned from his job with ITV after being heard on television describing Chelsea’s Marcel Desailly as “what is known in some schools as a f*****g lazy, thick n****r”.
These are continuance of shameful legacies. A decade ago, in the wake of Deptford Fire where 13 black youths were burnt to death, a chant in soccer stadium that could be heard at Millwall was: “We all agree, Niggers burn better than petrol”.
Similar chants used by national soccer teams include:
“Stand by the Union Jack
Send those niggers back
If you're white, you're alright
If you're black, send 'em back”
Although racist chanting is considered unlawful only since the 1991 Football (Offences) Act, the law is actually a big loophole. Chanting is merely defined as the "repeated uttering of any words or sounds in concert with one or more others". Hence, an individual shouting racist abuse can only be charged under the 1986 Public Order Act for using "obscene and foul language at football grounds".
More creative racist slurs have also helped in letting the crowd overcome legal boundaries. In 1994, Holland audience were chanting
"Get back on your jam jar
Get back on your jam jar
La,la,la,la, La,la,la,la."
New Age Racism-The Neo-Nazis:
Since last two years, scores of neo-nazi tactics have been displayed with audacities that would put human beings to shame. Not to these fans! Four British fans were fined and banned from matches for 4 and 5 years for racially abusing Birmingham’s Dwight Yorke. Emile Heskey and Andy Cole were racially abused by Slovakia fans. Black players were racially abused by Macedonia fans. Motherwell’s Steven Hammel was prosecuted for racist insults towards St Johnstone’s Mohammed Sylla. Asian referee Gurnam Singh successfully sued the FA for racial discrimination. FA was fined £70,000 for pitch invasion and racist abuse by England fans at Euro 2004 qualifier v Turkey.
Last August, ten men were jailed for upto 18 months for conducting violent attack on a Portuguese-run pub after England's defeat to Portugal in Euro 2004 on 24th June. They were part of a mob which shouted racial abuse and hurled missiles smashing 37 windows at the pub in Thetford, Norfolk, leaving eight people injured and staff and customers forced to barricade themselves inside. Last November, Anderlecht’s Nenad Jestrovic was sent off for racially abusing Liverpool’s Momo Sissoko in a Champions League match at Anfield.
This year itself, Peterborough manager Mark Wright was suspended, and then sacked, for gross misconduct after a dispute stemming from the alleged racial abuse of defender Sean St Leger. He had resigned as manager of Oxford United after being fined and given a 4-match ban by the FA for making allegedly racist remarks at black referee Joe Ross.
In March this year, 39 people were charged following disorder and racist chanting at an FA Cup tie in Stoke between Stoke City and Birmingham City in February.
Kick it Out says fans, ethnic minority communities and players are still racially abused, particularly at the grassroots level where racist abuse is common in amateur football on our parks at the weekend.
What now:
Nothing has changed over last few months either. In fact, the inaugural edition of the Streetfootballworld festival has kicked off in Berlin. But the teams of Nigeria and Ghana have been refused entry visa!
The Streetfootballworld festival 06 is an official element of the Artistic and cultural program to the 2006 FIFA World Cup and is funded under FIFA’s Football for Hope-Program and the German Federal Ministry for Youth. Basically, even in July 2006, the European conglomerates are practicing widespread racism.
The silver lining is that there have been few campaigns to end racism in football. But they have come a cropper since institutional support obviously leans towards the cash rich sponsors, who do not give two hoots. The Campaign for Racial Equality (CRE), the Football Supporters Association (FSA) and the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) have all launched initiatives to try and rid football grounds of racism and encourage more people from ethnic minorities to attend matches.
Chairman of Kick It Out, Herman Ouseley has opined that more black players should rise up and protest, now that they are at a better league at least as members of national teams. “Why do you think the incident with Spanish fans happened at Bernabeu last month? Was it because of Aragones' earlier comment about Thierry Henry [being 'a Black s**t']? Or why now?
The Black players of Arsenal should have insisted that they would not play in Europe till they got a full apology to Henry from Aragones and until the Spanish FA reprimanded him. Black players in national sides (in England and France) and in the Premier League are in a very strong position now to say that there is no way this kind of racism can continue, that they won't take it any more.” If not many, at least Ronaldhino has come out speaking against current racism in the game, and that could be a saving grace for a world cup that is witnessing duels between racist giants.
French: The other finalists
Just as Italy is infamous for its fraudulent acts by any means, its contender France is a cruel joke indeed. All the while highlighting Zidane as its star and skipper, France would actually not have been in the finals if not for its black stars!
This is important to understand especially given the recent official apathy that French have taken towards French black youths that caused widespread protests last year.
Check this BBC report for example. In the entire story, there is not much mention of the player who actually made the victory goal. Only at the last paragraph the reporter writes “Goalscorer Henry”, not even attributing him with his full name Thierry Henry. By contrast, Zidane is very respectfully written about, his photograph splashed and he is called the man of the match. He is quoted in the headline! He is written about in the intro.
Yes it’s the same Thierry whom the Spanish players derided as black s**t. And the French never made a condition that unless the Spanish apologize they would not play their team. As for Henry, he is actually the brightest of all French players. With his fifth world cup goal he is ranked joint second with Michael Platini on the all time scorers list for France. And in the present world cup, out of total 7 goals scored by France so far, Henry has scored the highest: 3. One of the greatest living footballers in the world, he was also the top scorer in 1998 World Cup which France had bagged.
And yet it’s Zidane who takes the cup. Why? At times answers are really simple. There is no need to beat around the bush here.
A look at French team would show why
there was not much jubilation when it entered
the Finals. But then that’s a story for another
day. It’s a story of granting favor, making
laws, prohibiting opportunities, and minting big
money. Which is why one feels tempted to ask one
last race-based question for the world’s largest
played game: Where are the players from world’s
largest continent? Asia?
Capitalism's Standards of Success
By Saswat Pattanayak
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
--Jean-Paul Sartre
I apologize for the delay in posting this entry, but I guess I had to wait till the mainstream media no more confused readers with the “hot topic” any longer. I had to wait until after they would have well done away with the headlines and sensations and the matter were allowed to be relegated to backburner. And I realize now is such a time when suddenly the matter of “Reservation” is not being brought about any longer. Its no more being contextualized, as yet again a socio-economic defeat on part of the lower class struggle of India.
However, I will begin with the comment of a long standing reader of this blog. In my last post, Friend Sanjay has kindly posted a comment worth introspecting over. I will do it here.
While thanking him for his continuous critical appraisals for posts here, let it be stated that despite staunch opposition to some of his views, I have always held them with utmost respect. Many a times I have felt like some views that are reactionary to the point of resulting in further ambiguity in progressive views must be discouraged. But truthfully, I have never “censored” a single view so far.
There are certain difficulties in indulging in intellectual discourses when one relates to the self. While walking down the less taken roads, one always feels tempted to stop by more often, and ask the critical questions, “Could I have been wrong throughout the trip? How come the journey is so lonesome? Is it because this road is not going to provide any solution? Am I merely dreaming that things would take place, whereas in reality the road that most people have already taken is the one which is fulfilling dreams every passing moment? People are making records, breaking records, appearing on prime time shows, winning applauds, gold medals and Hollywood breaks. And I am here philosophizing against the notion of success and dream of a society sans “individual successes”. But then how is it logical to state that “their” dreams are any inferior to my own? Am I the sole custodian of notion of what constitutes “societal good”? Where do I intersect, accept, and carry on, because if the struggle is for all, at least majority needs to approve me at some point.”
I am not indifferent towards these series of questions which challenge the roots of my thoughts, opinions, views, and actions. I have known all the while, that in fact, views that are opposing one’s own are the only views that have any intrinsic values worth cherishing. Only through opposing tooth and nail most existing views, have I learnt anything in life. And now why the resistance to be opposed, when it comes to my own worldviews?
Sanjay provides the answer already: He says, “As you are not part of the society which is opposing reservation, I too refuse to belong to a society which develops selective amnesia in attributing traits.” It merely implies that in the nature and process of forming views, we choose sides. At times we are flexible in the face of new facts to change our views. At times we are not. Personally for me, I have changed many of my views (on God, on Salman Khan or on Indian Cricket team) several times in life basing on newer facts or facets. I am sure all of us do the same too.
Then is the struggle to impose (or you may say, influence) views a struggle to win non-members into one’s side? For a professional politician it is a desirable thing to do (hence I have problems with people who think ‘vote bank politics’ is a bad thing. I mean that’s the whole point of politics in a democracy). But for those, including myself, who do not aspire to be political candidates, what sort of struggle would that be? A struggle, which Sanjay refuses to be with me in?
This is a struggle to ‘understand’ opposing viewpoints. Now the word ‘understanding’ is more complex than it looks like. We need to give time to, contextualize, empathize, agree with reason, disagree with justification—all of these and more, in order to merely understand someone or someone’s views.
On a public forum like this, the purpose is just this: to understand each other and each other’s views depending on where we come from.
Sanjay’s concerns are obviously genuine. Are reservations going to be the solution?
A right-wing political solution?
The answer is, I do not know. But the only alternative which nays the reservations has at least proven that it would mean further systematic marginalization of the dispossessed. When reservation proposal was being discussed, I was not exulted either. I knew for certain that it is a move to pacify, not to agitate. It was a step to bow down to reactionaries, not to give vent to the oppressed. It was actually so reactionary a step that all we found out after the bill being tabled was an unforeseen unity among the upper castes, a unanimous media support to their causes, a never-before-seen coverage of their strikes, and most importantly an organized efforts by the opportunistic elites in such an organized fashion, that it must have put the neo-nazis to shame. Reservations debates, if at all helped the elites to recognize each others’ needs all the more and made them get united so much that right wing parties gaped. What BJP could never achieve in terms of uniting the upper castes (since half of them did not want any of Advani yatras anyway), the Congress at the center had achieved: notwithstanding their party affiliations, in fact notwithstanding their political standpoints or lack thereof, irrespective of the states they came fro
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
--Jean-Paul Sartre
I apologize for the delay in posting this entry, but I guess I had to wait till the mainstream media no more confused readers with the “hot topic” any longer. I had to wait until after they would have well done away with the headlines and sensations and the matter were allowed to be relegated to backburner. And I realize now is such a time when suddenly the matter of “Reservation” is not being brought about any longer. Its no more being contextualized, as yet again a socio-economic defeat on part of the lower class struggle of India.
However, I will begin with the comment of a long standing reader of this blog. In my last post, Friend Sanjay has kindly posted a comment worth introspecting over. I will do it here.
While thanking him for his continuous critical appraisals for posts here, let it be stated that despite staunch opposition to some of his views, I have always held them with utmost respect. Many a times I have felt like some views that are reactionary to the point of resulting in further ambiguity in progressive views must be discouraged. But truthfully, I have never “censored” a single view so far.
There are certain difficulties in indulging in intellectual discourses when one relates to the self. While walking down the less taken roads, one always feels tempted to stop by more often, and ask the critical questions, “Could I have been wrong throughout the trip? How come the journey is so lonesome? Is it because this road is not going to provide any solution? Am I merely dreaming that things would take place, whereas in reality the road that most people have already taken is the one which is fulfilling dreams every passing moment? People are making records, breaking records, appearing on prime time shows, winning applauds, gold medals and Hollywood breaks. And I am here philosophizing against the notion of success and dream of a society sans “individual successes”. But then how is it logical to state that “their” dreams are any inferior to my own? Am I the sole custodian of notion of what constitutes “societal good”? Where do I intersect, accept, and carry on, because if the struggle is for all, at least majority needs to approve me at some point.”
I am not indifferent towards these series of questions which challenge the roots of my thoughts, opinions, views, and actions. I have known all the while, that in fact, views that are opposing one’s own are the only views that have any intrinsic values worth cherishing. Only through opposing tooth and nail most existing views, have I learnt anything in life. And now why the resistance to be opposed, when it comes to my own worldviews?
Sanjay provides the answer already: He says, “As you are not part of the society which is opposing reservation, I too refuse to belong to a society which develops selective amnesia in attributing traits.” It merely implies that in the nature and process of forming views, we choose sides. At times we are flexible in the face of new facts to change our views. At times we are not. Personally for me, I have changed many of my views (on God, on Salman Khan or on Indian Cricket team) several times in life basing on newer facts or facets. I am sure all of us do the same too.
Then is the struggle to impose (or you may say, influence) views a struggle to win non-members into one’s side? For a professional politician it is a desirable thing to do (hence I have problems with people who think ‘vote bank politics’ is a bad thing. I mean that’s the whole point of politics in a democracy). But for those, including myself, who do not aspire to be political candidates, what sort of struggle would that be? A struggle, which Sanjay refuses to be with me in?
This is a struggle to ‘understand’ opposing viewpoints. Now the word ‘understanding’ is more complex than it looks like. We need to give time to, contextualize, empathize, agree with reason, disagree with justification—all of these and more, in order to merely understand someone or someone’s views.
On a public forum like this, the purpose is just this: to understand each other and each other’s views depending on where we come from.
Sanjay’s concerns are obviously genuine. Are reservations going to be the solution?
A right-wing political solution?
The answer is, I do not know. But the only alternative which nays the reservations has at least proven that it would mean further systematic marginalization of the dispossessed. When reservation proposal was being discussed, I was not exulted either. I knew for certain that it is a move to pacify, not to agitate. It was a step to bow down to reactionaries, not to give vent to the oppressed. It was actually so reactionary a step that all we found out after the bill being tabled was an unforeseen unity among the upper castes, a unanimous media support to their causes, a never-before-seen coverage of their strikes, and most importantly an organized efforts by the opportunistic elites in such an organized fashion, that it must have put the neo-nazis to shame. Reservations debates, if at all helped the elites to recognize each others’ needs all the more and made them get united so much that right wing parties gaped. What BJP could never achieve in terms of uniting the upper castes (since half of them did not want any of Advani yatras anyway), the Congress at the center had achieved: notwithstanding their party affiliations, in fact notwithstanding their political standpoints or lack thereof, irrespective of the states they came fro