USA Africa Dialogue Series - Trayvon Martin and Change and Hope --- Blacks Suffer More Under Obama

'African-American suffer more than ever under Obama rule'

Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:58AM GMT

Interview with Dr. Randy Short

This is a society that covertly wages war on a minority. We have to see African-Americans as the single largest national minority group in the world, without any control of its destiny."

A political analyst says that US President Barack Obama has systematically worked to prevent black people living in the United States from going to the international community by denying the existence of racism in the country.

Press TV has interviewed Dr. Short to get his views on the recent killings of African-Americans by US police forces.

What follows is a rough transcript of the interview:

Press TV: Many African-Americans were optimistic when the US President [Barack Obama] was elected. However, many political experts are saying that in actuality the situation for black Americans has actually become worse under the presidency of Obama. Your take sir?

Short: I wouldn't disagree. You know, we have many ethnic groups in this country that have political power and influence. I name one: The Jewish-American community. They have been very reluctant to have a Jewish president, because they understand if they have a member of their ethnic group, that person may have to ignore in order to seem fair, ignore their interests and their issues. We have a person who happens to be black, he's not an African-American. I don't mind people disagreeing.

That's a big issue, because those people who are African-American, if I were to give an estimation, people who have a history several hundred years and it's not based on his white mother, but the father who is Kenyan who is a recent comer here. So, we have an issue as well as a person who is black, but doesn't have the kind of roots and connection to the pain that many of us have and even if you did have an African-American who was here, who came from several generations, he would have to appeal to a white majority, which means that you more or less, get more of the same. You treat blacks the same way a white president would and hope that folks a sense of fulfillment through the status of a person being black that's a president. And that's all we have, a status, not substance. 

Press TV: Well Dr. Short, you've been nodding your head in agreement, but I want to go back to what Mr. Meade has said and talking about this sort of cover-up and there are cries in the African-American community in general of a cover-up from the Sanford police's botched investigation to even the mainstream media that many say even sat on the story a long time, before putting it out. What's your take on that? 

Short: Well clearly, if you look at the [Sanford] Mayor [Jeff] Triplett, he's supporting the sheriff who is in charge of what goes on in that department, should be fired. And the city manager who has the power to fire him but will not, you see complicity within the structure down in Sanford that they donâ't want to do anything about it.

As far as the justice system goes, Mr. Eric Holder who is a Barbadian-American, yet another person that is black but is not African-American who is the first black attorney general. When he was in Washington DC as an attorney, they spent 40 million dollars to prosecute Marian Berry, to catch him for smoking crack in a setup. They spent 40 million dollars, to make someone commit a crime and now he's head of the Justice Department, and they can't bring this guy to justice, they can't find him or if they do know where he is, they're obstructing justice not to arrest him. I'm very curious, because there's a gentleman by the name of Samuel Sheinbein. A Jewish-American, along with another Jewish-American that murdered a Latino named [Alfredo] Tello, and his father was an attorney, he fled to Israel. And I'm listening to the last name of Zimmerman and I'm wondering, does this have something to do with the power of this particular ethnic group in the country that this man is being treated so differently from other persons? Had the person been black, wouldn't they have rushed in the house, the same way they shot that boy in front of his grandmother in Brooklyn or the Bronx?

There seems to be differential treatment and I'm curious as to why. What did Robert, the father of Zimmerman do? Who are these that are exempt from the law? Other than being white people or white-Latinos, are they Cuban-Americans? What's their connection to the system that gives their son the right to kill and for the papers to publish that he's an altar boy?


Press TV: Mr. Short, you were once again nodding in agreement. Would you agree with Mr. Wareham about the political leaders? Let's look at the African-American political leaders right now in the US. Do you think they can actually help resolve the problem or are they part of the problem themselves?

Short: I think that most are part of the problem, but there are other things like the Church is part of the problem. You know, black people are fearful. They're either afraid of losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their lives, because this country has a history of killing, retaliating, jailing, or destroying black people who stand up. I'm in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and I need to remind everyone that April 4th will be the anniversary of when this government had some role to play at a Noble Peace prize being shot in the face. We have seen many people stand up and they get killed carefully or quietly and that's not just us. It's the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement, the American-Indian Movement.

We've got people who have been in jail for almost 50 years, almost twice as long as Nelson Mandela. Further I would say, that you have a huge amount of drugs, you have a culture that's been created by Hollywood of music, to poison people's minds. You have a lot of things that are happening all at one time. You have a massive dislocation movement of black people from Urban communities across the country. Here in Washington, New York, wherever you have black communities, what was a black community has been destroyed between the time Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated
And today.

This is a society that covertly wages war on a minority. We have to see African-Americans as the single largest national minority group in the world, without any control of its destiny. The Democratic Party has constantly betrayed us, and we can't really trust the Republicans either. Now I need to say this that President Obama has systematically worked against black people going to the international community. George Bush did it first when there was a world conference against racism in 2001 that Bush had everyone boycott.

Mr. Obama has had that done twice. In fact, the Obama administration denies the existence of racism in the country. So we have a man who is worshipped like he is Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Santa Clause put together, and if his administration says there is no racial problem, why are so many people happy to see a black person make it? I call these people blacknecks. They're so happy there's a black person in the White House, they're like white rednecks, they don't want any change. The changes that there's a black man in the White House, We've achieved everything we're supposed to do, and that has people immobilized.

SZH/JR