By Justice Markandey Katju-
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own)
Don Lemon, the African American host on the CNN TV channel’s morning show for 17 years, has been fired.
One of the reasons attributed to this was his spat with the Indian American Republican Presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy ( though other reasons are also attributed e.g. his alleged misogyny, such as his remark about politician Nikki Haley being past her prime, and his screaming at co-host Kaitlan Collins ).
Don Lemon should certainly not have said in his show that Ramaswamy was lying and was not honest, since the latter was after all his guest. Lemon could simply have said that he disagreed with Ramaswamy.
But other than that, I think Lemon was correct about the history of blacks in America.
The Civil War in USA ( 1861-65 ) was certainly not fought to secure guns for blacks in America, as Ramaswamy contended, who alluded to the Second Amendment to the US Constitution ( which gives the right to people to bear arms ). In assessing the real causes of the Civil War one must keep in mind the oft-quoted aphorism that ‘politics is concentrated economics’, and should seek to find out the economic factors when trying to find out the real cause of the Civil War.
The real cause of the Civil War was this: industry was rapidly growing in America in the first half of the 19th century, particularly in the north, and the northern industries wanted cheap labor. A major source of this could be the slaves in the southern states.
At that time out of the total black population of about 12.2 million in USA, about 4 million were slaves, almost all in the southern cotton plantations. The northern industries wanted these slaves to be set free so that they could come north and join the labor force there on low wages. This was the real cause of the Civil War ( though there were some other contributory causes too, though these were only incidental ). The Civil War was certainly not fought to give guns to blacks, as Ramaswamy alleged.
Also, Lemon was right in suggesting that even after the Civil War the condition of blacks in America was very bad, particularly in the South. Black Codes and Jim Crow laws effectively enforced racial segregation and were used to suppress blacks.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/
The lynching of blacks by the Ku Klux Klan and others were a common phenomenon, and blacks were sometimes falsely accused and hanged for allegedly raping white women, as depicted in Harper Lee’s famous novel ‘To kill a mocking bird’.
The devious ‘separate but equal’ doctrine propounded by the US Supreme Court in Plessy vs Ferguson ( 1896 ) laid the legal foundation of racial segregation throughout the United States, and because of this schools, hotels, restaurants, theatres, parks, swimming pools etc were segregated, and blacks were not allowed in those where only whites were permitted.
This decision was overturned by the Supreme Court only in 1954 in Brown vs Board of Education. However, even thereafter, racial discrimination against blacks continued, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and blacks are sometimes discriminated against even till this day, though this is often now done covertly, and in a subtle way..
So one can understand the anguish of Don Lemon, who is himself black.
However, it must be added that the condition of blacks has certainly improved in the USA over the years, as compared to what it was earlier. There are no more segregated schools, colleges, hotels, restaurants, etc in USA, and blacks have attained many high positions e.g. Barack Obama who was elected President of the USA in 2008, and again in 2012, something inconceivable earlier.
