Berman James Watts, December 1997
The Civil Rights Laws that protect all did not spring from the struggle of the American Indians, or the Hispanics or the Asians or successive European immigrant groups. The greatest gains in assuring Civil rights for all came from a singular struggle that dramatized the irony inherent in a nation which sought freedom, declaring all men are created equal, even as it was enriched by slavery and inequity based on race.
In 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified:
"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States , and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any persons within its jurisdiction the equal protection of law.
In short the citizenship rights of all present minorities rest upon laws invoked by the continuing struggle of blacks for freedom and equality under law. So entwined was their fate with that of the Nation as to make such change possible in a land which originated "manifest destiny", violently suppressed and excluded Asian immigrants, suppressed indentifiable poor European immigrants and, repeatedly exterminated entire Indian tribes. In the ensuing struggle to make such rights real rather than theoretical , not only the "shock troops" but, the armies and the generals of a resistance to a continuing guerilla war against minorities by whites have been black. "Rivers of blood and mountains of dead" illuminate the history of such struggle.
All minorities are suppressed and victimized because ultimately total extermination was impractical. The white ruling tribes could not forever destroy the ever resilient "others" that compete with such whites for power, resources and "lebensraum" so that they were forced to a more subtle strategy than mere genocidal exploitation. They would enlist some of those others against the most effective of their competition.
Thus we have the spectacle of minorities whose very presence at such a level of achievement rests on the efforts of black struggle demanding that a new effort against a resurgent racism must exclude the basis and history of black struggle. Such demphasis of any element of minority interests is a self division in aid of a mutual enemy. It is only indulged because it offers an immediate advantage to such minorities at the perceived expense of another. But, the greatest concentration of wealth, opportunity and resources denied such minorities, regardless of ability, is not in the hands of other minorities but that of their mutual white oppressors.
Until all can be assured a true opportunity to compete to the fullest of their abilities, rather than their degree of relationship with or interests serving ruling white cliques, racism will remain a most potent force. Nor will the nation be as productive as it could and should be.