Because of past inequality of opportunity and because of continuing discrimination against racial ethnic minorities, it is Pan-Africans, Latinos, and Native Americans which are hardest hit by rising unemployment. Because they have been kept at the bottom of the economic ladder in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the general population, they are the first and the hardest hit by cuts in welfare, health care, education, and by harsher prison conditions and parole policies. These policies, seemingly racially neutral on their face, are harshly racist in their effect and implementation. One of the most blatant forms of this new sanitized racism is the rising clamor for imposition of the death penalty. Over 85% of the men on death row in United States prisons are Pan-African and Latino. This is due in large measure to their economic inability to afford high-priced legal representation, but it is never mentioned openly by those who cry the modern equivalent of "Crucify him!"
The new face of racism requires new remedies. To this end we call for:
1) the General Commission on Religion and Race to develop new programs to unmask and eliminate racism in its new guises.
2) every annual conference to conduct anti-racism training programs, with a list of organizations and groups who provide such training to be provided by GCORR;
3) increased salary and benefits to racial ethnic pastors who serve minimum salary churches in economically depressed and dangerous inner-city communities; and
4) continued United Methodist opposition to the death penalty, emphasizing its disproportionate impact upon racial ethnic persons;
5) local churches to become intentionally multi-cultural and to share power with those they seek to include.
In addition, we call for the United States government to enact legislation:
1) creating public sector jobs for the chronically unemployed;
2) for continued funding for AmericaCorp;
3) placing a greater emphasis on education, job creation, drug rehabilitation, and community development than on building prisons, hiring police, and imposing the death penalty.
General Conference Webmaster: Susan Brumbaugh
PETS Creator: John Brawn
Petition Text: 20897-IC-NonDis-O
1996 United Methodist General Conference