Denial River

There was an episode of "Deep Space Nine" in which Captain Sisko didn't like that his senior staff was enjoying a holographic program about a Las Vegas lounge -- because the program was set during the early 1960s, a period when blacks (like Sisko) were legally segregated. Sisko's lover explained to him that the crew wouldn't take the historically inaccurate "holo-novel" too seriously, and eventually convinced the reluctant captain to participate in it. Her argument was that the only societal limitations in the 24th century are self-imposed ones.

Even after four years of living in this town, I'm still inundated with the dangerously naïve. They claim that the aforementioned argument actually applies here and now -- that racism magically disappeared at some point in the recent past and only appears if it comes up in conversation. It is as if we're talking about supernatural entities like Beetlejuice and Candyman, who won't show up unless their names are said aloud.

Well, guess what? The characters of "Deep Space Nine" live in the year 2374, when bigotry and poverty are as hard to find as someone in modern society who thinks the Earth is flat. When we get to that point, when Gene Roddenberry's vision becomes an everyday reality, then tell me I'm paranoid about racism. Until then, get the fuck off my case!

Meanwhile, in the savage and primitive 21st century, Human Rights Watch's 2003 World Report reads: "Dramatic racial disparities continued to characterize the correctional population. Although blacks accounted for only 13 percent of the United States population, more than 43 percent of all sentenced inmates were black men. Nationwide, one in ten black men aged twenty-five to twenty-nine was incarcerated; in some states one in ten of all black men was behind bars. ...

"The level of black incarceration should be cause for national concern."

But sadly, it's not a national concern. If anything, America is trying desperately to swim up Denial River (get it?). Take, for instance, California's Proposition 54 -- which would prohibit statewide government agencies from collecting any statistics addressing disparities between ethnic groups. Author and historian Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson said Prop. 54 "could cripple the fight against racial profiling and employment discrimination. It also could derail the goal of providing equitable funds for health, education and public services."

I called up my man Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project in Washington D.C., who specializes in collecting these kinds of statistics. Despite being about 3,000 miles away, Mauer will be watching California's recall election very carefully, since similar measures could potentially spread across the country like a plague.

Mauer discussed the motives of those who're heavily funding Prop. 54.

"They certainly are trying to maintain social, political and economic relationships much as they've liked them for the past couple of hundred years," he says. "Any little encroachment on their power and privilege is viewed as threatening."

For as long as I've written this column, I've never focused on insignificant issues -- only life or death ones. When Jesse Jackson went after Cedric the Entertainer last year for making fun of Rosa Parks in Barbershop, I didn't waste a single sentence on it. I'm more concerned with whether the psychotic fear of having Tiger Woods-looking descendants will prompt whites in power to commit (or turn a blind eye to) acts of evil.

If Prop. 54 passes -- and I pray that it won't -- I'll have to rely on international groups like Amnesty International and its ally, Human Rights Watch, for accurate statistics. Then again, white supremacy is worldwide. According to the People's Weekly World, the elite in Venezuela recently closed their businesses with a lockout/strike in an attempt to oust President Hugo Chavez. Why? "[Venezuela's upper classes] were convinced that the masses, largely darker skinned people of African and Indigenous origin, were incapable of organizing and sustaining economic life," the People's Weekly World reported.

We darkies must be "incapable of organizing and sustaining" a future Utopia as well. Ward Kendall is the author of Hold Back This Day, a white supremacist sci-fi novel akin to The Turner Diaries. In his online commentary "Why there may never be a Captain Kirk," Kendall wrote the following:

"If present immigration trends and falling white birth rates continue unabated, the end result will be total extinction for all whites on Earth within two hundred years. As a result, Captain Kirk will never be born -- at least, not the Captain Kirk we're all familiar with. ... As for the starship Enterprise (if by some miracle it should ever come into being) it will be manned by a completely -- and I mean completely -- non-white crew."

Kendall says this like it's a bad thing -- and given the rate at which blacks are being locked up, the Justice Department must concur. 'Course, California agencies won't even be allowed to monitor this rate if Prop. 54 passes. So see that it doesn't. Call your friends and relatives -- and tell them to vote against this measure.

Saab Lofton's first novel got him kicked out of one college yet helped get his degree from a better college two years later, making him living proof that karma exists. Lofton barely makes ends meet by freelance writing and drawing portraits for tips.