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The Importance of Diversity
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12511 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1987 |
2,869 Words |
| Author
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John S. Nettles
The Rev. John S. Nettles is national vice president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. |
There is no system or policy of segregation and political and economic discrimination on the face of the earth that can be equated to that of the Republic of South Africa. The system of apartheid is the most damnable exemplification of inhumanity anywhere. The implementation of this system has made it possible for the 30 percent of the population that is white to suppress the 70 percent of the population that is black. The cruelties, inequities, and violence utilized by the ruling minority over a period of years have set the stage for what many observers predict will be a catastrophic bloodbath if substantive power-sharing is not effectuated in the very near future.
There are both similarities and dissimilarities in blacks' quest for full citizenship in America and in South Africa.
Though laws of segregation were operative in America prior to the 1960s, particularly in the South, and though black protesters were often harassed beaten, jailed, and even killed by state troopers, county sheriffs, and local police, blacks were inherently protected by the Constitution of the United States. These laws afforded blacks the protection of the federal government in their quest for full citizenship. This was evidenced by the Supreme Court's decision outlawing so-called separate but equal schools in the Brown vs. Board of Education case in 1954 and the same court's decision outlawing segregation of public transportation in 1957. This case emanated from the Montgomery bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which galvanized the modern civil rights movement in America. These guaranteed rights and protections were often evidenced at the point of bayonets. In cases such as the protection of the Little Rock Nine, the federal government ensured the protection of students attempting to integrate the University of Arkansas when 101st Airborne troops were dispatched by the president. Similar federal efforts took place in the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In addition, countless civil rights cases were won in federal courts throughout the nation.
Joseph E. Lowry, president of the Southern Christian Leadership conference (SCLC), believes that in America a national consciousness of the majority opposed legalized segregation. Segregation to a degree was an embarrassment to America as the world watched.
None of these factors exists in South Africa. To begin with, the constitution sanctions segregation. It is designed and structured to give rights to "whites only." Despite the rhetoric of inclusion of blacks in government, blacks
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