Bankrupt Black Leadership, Nukes and Environmental Racism | Black Agenda Report

Bankrupt Black Leadership, Nukes and Environmental Racism

13 Jun 2012

🖨️ Print Article

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The same greedy corporations that have long funded white politicians now finance what used to be traditional civil rights organizations like SCLC and an entire new class of black politicians. The cutting loose of black political leaders from their constituencies has dire consequences for the entire American polity.

Bankrupt Black Leadership, Nukes and Environmental Racism

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

For more than a generation, in the last third of the twentieth century, black America was the immovable rock that anchored the left side American political life. Places like Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis were literally and figuratively where the left lived.

It was a time when civil rights organizations and African American politicians could reasonably be expected to object, to protest, to publicly resist blatant crimes against their constituents on the part of governments and corporations. But by the turn of the 21^st century, corporations had begun to finance the rise of a new class of elite black political leaders, politicians like Atlanta's Kasim Reed and Shirley Franklin, Philadelphia's Michael Nutter, and Newark's Corey Booker, and of course President Barack Obama. At the same time, those corporations became the major funders of what used to be called civil rights organizations like the Urban League, the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Council.

Except for ceremonial bows and obeisances like Black History Month and pleas to vote for them on election day, Black America's political leaders are now free from most obligations to black people, and what used to be vigilant, vocal civil rights organizations are silent in the face of corporate crimes like environmental racism against black communities, let alone the wider implications of these crimes for all Americans.

One of the best examples of this is in Georgia, where the Obama administration in 2009 granted Southern Companies $800 million to underwrite the construction of two nuclear reactors next to a pair of leaky existing nukes in a poor, mostly black Georgia town where almost every family has a cancer case or two. But who would raise the cry? The Southern Christian Leadership Council, perhaps, based in nearby Atlanta? No way. The CEO of Southern Companies headed up SCLC's building fund, raising millions to pay for its Auburn St. headquarters. So SCLC is silent.

Although poor rural black people are the first to pay the price of this atrocity, they won't be the only ones. Georgia's Public Service Commission, which is supposed to look out for consumers has allowed the power company to add $10 to $20 per month to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of utility bills to underwrite construction costs of this deadly monstrosity. Even officials of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have noted that the reactor design is similar to those of the ill-fated Fukushima reactors in Japan, and ought to be re-evaluated in the light of that disaster.

This is a textbook example of how the cutting loose of the black political class from black people has affected the entire American polity. The radioactive poisoning of poor black communities alone should have roused SCLC and the black political class to action defending its supposed constituency. If the Bush-Cheney gang had done such a thing, cries of “environmental racism” would ring across the country. But corporate-funded black leaders, who should be the canaries in the coal mine, don't allow themselves to criticize the corporate-funded black president. So the silence of the black political class enables the theft of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions from ratepayers statewide and permit the construction of the first of a new and hazardous generation nuclear plants that threaten the safety of millions.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20120613_bd_black_political_class_silent.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Gerald Horne on U.S. Foreign Policy - Part 2
28 Apr 2023
Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Ralph Yarl and the History of Racist Violence
28 Apr 2023
Dr. Melina Abdullah is Director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots and Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. She is also a Professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University Los…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Restoring Voting Rights for People with Felony Convictions
28 Apr 2023
Dr. Kristen Budd is a Research Analyst with the Sentencing Project. She joins us from Washington to discuss their new report, “Increasing Public Safety by Restoring Voting Rights.” The report…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Joe Biden's Re-Election Announcement
28 Apr 2023
Margaret Kimberley was a guest on the Sputnik program, The Final Countdown, with hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan. In this excerpt, she discusses the announcement of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why Americans Are Shot at the "Wrong House"
26 Apr 2023
People in the U.S. venerate its violent history, support violence committed by the state, and remain very racist, yet express shock when individuals kill and maim.