Because of past inequality of opportunity and because of continuing discrimination against racial ethnic minorities, it is Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans that 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 40% of the men on death row in United States prisons are Black, while Blacks make up only 11% of the total U.S. population. This is due in large measure to their economic inability to afford high-priced legal representation, a factor 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 (GCORR) 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 communities;
4) continued United Methodist opposition to the death penalty, emphasizing its disproportionate impact upon racial/ethnic minorities;
5) local churches to become intentionally multi-cultural and to share power with those they seek to include; and
6) every annual conference to provide opportunities for all United Methodists to develop appreciation of ethnic heritages and cultures beyond their heritage of birth.
In addition, we call for the U.S. government to enact legislation:
1) creating public sector jobs for the chronically unemployed;
2) creating a new and updated version of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the 1930's to save an alienated generation of youths in our urban ghettos; and
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: 22426-IC-NonDis-O
1996 United Methodist General Conference