Reparations for Enslavement and the Blackside of Things

"A Moment of Silence" by Emmanuel Ortiz

2011-09-14T21:19:00.000-04:00

A Moment of Silence

Before I start this poem,
I'd like to ask you to join me
in a moment of silence
in honour of those who died
in the World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon
last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you
a moment of silence
for all of those who have been
harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed
in retaliation for those strikes,
for the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
for the tens of thousands of Palestinians
who have died at the hands of
U.S.-backed Israeli forces
over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence
for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation
as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo
against the country.

Before I begin this poem:

two months of silence
for the Blacks under Apartheid
in South Africa,
where homeland security
made them aliens
in their own country.

Nine months of silence
for the dead in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, where death rained
down and peeled back
every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin
and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence
for the millions of dead
in Vietnam-a people, not a war-
for those who know a thing or two
about the scent of burning fuel,
their relatives' bones buried in it,
their babies born of it.

A year of silence
for the dead in Cambodia and Laos,
victims of a secret war ... ssssshhhhh ..
Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn
that they are dead.

Two months of silence
for the decades of dead
in Colombia, whose names,
like the corpses they once represented,
have piled up and slipped off
our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,

An hour of silence for El Salvador.
An afternoon of silence
for Nicaragua .
Two days of silence
for the Guetmaltecos .
None of whom ever knew
a moment of peace.

45 seconds of silence
for the 45 dead
at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence
for the hundred million Africans
who found their graves
far deeper in the ocean
than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing
or dental records
to identify their remains.

And for those who were
strung and swung
from the heights of
sycamore trees
in the south, the north;
the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of
indigenous peoples
from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen;
In postcard-perfect plots
like Pine Ridge,Wounded Knee,Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers,
or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced
to innocuous magnetic poetry
on the refrigerator of our consciousness .

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut

A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence -

You mourn now as if the world will never be the
same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about
what causes poems like this
to be written

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th poem
for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem
for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem
for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New Yor k, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem
for Somalia, 1992.

This is a poem
for every date that falls
to the ground in ashes

This is a poem for the 110 stories; that were never told
The 110 stories that history
chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC,
The New York Times,
and Newsweek ignored

This is a poem
for interrupting this program.

And still you want
a moment of silence
for your dead?
We could give you
lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces
of nameless children

Before I start this poem
We could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit

If you want a moment of silence,
put a brick through
the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses,
the jailhouses, the Penthouses and
the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt
fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second
hand
In the space
between bodies in embrace,

Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all
Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin
at the beginning of crime

But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

Emmanuel Ortiz

click to
listen

Emmanuel Ortiz works with the Minnesota Alliance for the Indigenous Zapatistas (MAIZ) and EstaciÃ³n Libre. He is a staff member of the Resource Centre of the Americas, the non-profit publisher of americas.org]

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

2011-01-28T21:13:00.000-05:00

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Beyond the Bricks: Challenging the Challenges Faced by African American Boys

2010-10-02T07:59:00.004-04:00

Produced by Washington Koen Media and supported by the Ford Foundation, Beyond the Bricks is a documentary film project and national community engagement campaign created with the goal of promoting solutions for one of America’s critical problems in education: the consistently low performance of black males in school. The film follows African-American students Shaquiel Ingram and Erick Graham as they struggle to stay on the track in the Newark, NJ public school system. Weaved into the boys’ stories is commentary from some of the country’s foremost leaders, experts and scholars focused on black boys and their education including Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and Schott Foundation President Dr. John Jackson, among others. Though the film focuses primarily on students from Newark, NJ, the issues addressed there extend to urban enclaves throughout the nation.

21 Reasons Why Black Organizations Fail

2010-09-21T10:44:00.001-04:00

21 Reasons Why Black Organizations Fail

by Haki Madhubuti

1. Don’t have an accurate understanding of the Institution’s programs and objectives. Do not attend briefing sessions and therefore find yourself unable to push the programs of the Institutions.

2. Don’t attend meetings. If you do attend come on your own time and leave when you get ready even it it’s in the middle of the meeting.

3. Never offer constructive advice or criticism to the Institution and if you have anything negative or inimical to say, say it on the outside where it can be heard only by the enemies of the Institution.

4. When a decision is made by the collective, go home and talk bad about the decision and do nothing unless it is in opposition to the collective decision.

5. Upon becoming a part of the Institution, always push your personality or the program and refuse to adapt to the programs and personality of the Institution.

6. Always find fault with the people in positions of responsibility, and do not discuss it with them, but go to the enemies outside the Institution with your criticism.

7. Be as inactive as possible while always talking about what the Institution is not doing and what “it is” supposed to be doing.

8. If asked about your inactivity, space on the question and talk about the inactivity of others to cover yourself.

9. When attending a meeting, always sit in the back of the room where you can talk while the proceedings are going on.

10. Get all the benefits the Institution can give, but give nothing back. This will surely limit the growth of the Institution. Always try to take more than you put in.

11. Talk collective cooperation but never cooperate. Always eat but never bring food.

12. Never push the Institution: always push yourself at the expense of the Institution and its programs

13. Never bring new people. Talk about organizing, but don’t organize.

14. If you can’t get your way, threaten to resign and push to see that others leave with you.

15. Never fulfill your obligations. If asked to help, never have time. When you do take an assignment, half-do it.

16. Never become an “officer”, if elected. It is easier to bad mouth and talk about the irresponsibility of others than it is to assume responsibility and direct projects yourself.

17. Have the attitude that nothing is as important as your theories and ideas even if they have been proven unworkable and conflict with the Institution and Our people’s struggle.

18. When given an assignment never follow through to completion. And when confronted with your shortcomings, act insulted as if someone is questioning your commitment to the struggle.

19. Seek leadership positions, but do not work and study commensurate with the position you seek.

20. Always maintain a negative attitude toward the Institution as well as the members of the Institution. In fact, make negativism your program.

21. Never offer anything constructive in the development of an ideological or philosophical base to operate from, but be highly critical of what everybody else offers.

Book review: 'The Warmth of Other Suns' by Isabel Wilkerson - latimes.com

2010-09-19T18:04:00.001-04:00

Probably the best book ever written about The Great Migration. Isabel Wilkerson is the first American African woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. A must reading...

Book review: 'The Warmth of Other Suns' by Isabel Wilkerson - latimes.com

Setting the Record Straight A Response to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

2010-05-29T23:38:00.004-04:00

Setting the Record Straight A Response to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

We, the undersigned, take strong exception to the Op-Ed, “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game,” published in the New York Times, April 23, 2010 by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. There are gross errors, inaccuracies and misrepresentations in Gates’ presentation of the transatlantic European enslavement system. Moreover, we are duly concerned about his political motivations and find offensive his use of the term “blame game.” It trivializes one of the most heinous crimes against humanity—the European enslavement of African people. Gates contradicts his stated purpose of “ending” what he refers to as a “blame-game,” by erroneously making African rulers and elites equally responsible with European and American enslavers. He shifts the “blame” in a clear attempt to undermine the demand for reparations.

The African Holocaust or Maafa, as it is referred to by many, is a crime against humanity and is recognized as such by the United Nations, scholars, and historians who have documented the primary and overwhelming culpability of European nations for enslavement in Europe, in the Americas and elsewhere. In spite of this overwhelming documentation, Gates inexplicably shifts the burden of culpability to Africans who were and are its victims. The abundance of scholarly work also affirms that Europeans initiated the process, established the global infrastructure for enslavement, and imposed, financed and defended it, and were the primary beneficiaries of it in various ways through human trafficking itself, banking, insurance, manufacturing, farming, shipping and allied enterprises.

No serious scholar of African history or reparations activist denies the collaboration of some African rulers, elites, merchants and middlemen. Indeed, collaboration accompanies oppression as a continuing fact of history. Historians have described collaborators in two other major Holocausts: the Jewish Holocaust and the Native American Holocaust. Yet Gates, ignoring the historical record, makes the morally unacceptable error of conflating three distinct groups involved in the Holocaust of enslavement: perpetrators, collaborators and victims. The Jewish Holocaust had its Judenräte, Jewish councils which chose Jews for enslaved labor and for the death camps and facilitated their transport to them, as well as its kapos, Jewish camp overseers, who brutalized their fellow prisoners along with the SS guards. In the Native American Holocaust, there were also Native American collaborators who fought with the Whites to defeat, dispossess and dominate other Native Americans. Thus, such collaboration in oppression is not unique to Africa and Africans.

Gates makes it clear that the article is written in the context of “post-racial posturing,” eagerly set forth by a nation citing its first Black president as false evidence of the declining significance of race and racism. Indeed, this is a period of resurgent racism reflected in the rise of the Tea Party movement, increasing hostility toward immigrants, open public recommitments to embracing and celebrating the history of racial oppression, joined with the fostering of fear to facilitate the continued denial of civil and human rights.

The purpose for Gates’ misrepresentation of the historical record is to undermine the African and African descendant reparations movement, and to make it appear to be based on unfounded demands. An accurate reporting of the history of the Holocaust of enslavement and the period of segregation and other forms of oppression which followed it, attests to the importance, in fact, the essentiality of reparations. The widespread opposing responses to Gates and the anti-reparations interests and sentiments he represents in his article, provides us with an excellent opportunity to renew the just demand for reparations for centuries of enslavement and continued economic disadvantage and exploitation Black people endured in the Jim Crow era and subsequent years of wage slavery.

Gates’ flawed and misconstrued presentation of the global reparations movement to redress the injuries of the Holocaust of enslavement and subsequent labor exploitation attempts to leave the reader with the impression that the movement is only a product of misguided African Americans. However, legal battles regarding reparations for the European enslavement of Africans are being waged throughout the United States, Jamaica, Brazil, South Africa, The Virgin Islands, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Martinique, Canada, Namibia and Barbados. The United Nations declaration that 2011 is the International Year of People of African Descent will afford yet another opportunity to expand the reparations movement for the longest unpunished crime against humanity --- the European enslavment of African people. In this country, reparations scholars, activists and others will continue their efforts in support of the House Judiciary Committee, HR-40, which calls for a study of the economic, cultural and psychological impact of enslavement on United States citizens.

The record of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), held in South Africa in 2001, offers additional evidence of the global reach and relevance of the reparations movement and the work of Africans and African descendants in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora. Gates’ omission of these efforts and WCAR seems to suggest either a deliberate misrepresentation or a reflection of his distance from contemporary political movements in the international African community.

We, the undersigned, intellectuals, activists, artists, professionals, men and women from various fields of focus, assemble here from a call by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century united in our profound commitment to African people and with a long history of involvement in national and international issues involving Africa and people of African descent. Signing this letter is not simply to respond to Gates’ clear inaccuracies, misrepresentations and questionable timing, but rather to honor and defend the memory and interests of the victims of the Holocaust of enslavement. We have come together at this historical moment to bear continuing witness to this gross human injury and the continuing consequences of this catastrophic and horrific event and process, and reaffirm our renewed commitment to continue and intensify the struggle for reparative and social justice in this society and the world.

Committee to Advance the Movement for Reparations

Rick Adams Dr. Leonard Jeffries
Atty. Adjoa Aiyetoro Sister Viola Plummer
Dr. Molefi Kete Asante Brother James Rodgers
Herb Boyd Atty. Nkechi Taifa
Dr. Iva Carruthers Dr. James Turner
Dr. Ron Daniels Dr. Ife Williams
Dr. Jeanette Davidson Dr. Ray Winbush
Dr. Maulana Karenga Dr. Conrad Worrill

Signatories

Adisa Alkebulan, San Diego State, President, Diopian Institute
Dr. Mario Beatty, Chair, African American Studies, Chicago State University
Keith Beauchamp, filmmaker
Dr. Melanie Bratcher, University of Oklahoma
Dr. Sundiata Keita, Cha-Jua, President of National Council for Black Studies
Dr. Lupe Davidson, University of Oklahoma
Dr. Joy DeGruy, author of "The Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome"
Dr. Daryl Harris, Howard University
Eddie Harris, filmmaker
Juliette Hubbard, Australian Aboriginal Activist
Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, North American President World Council of Churches
Iya Marilyn Kai Jewett, Progressive Images Marketing Communications
Darryl Jordan, American Friends Service Center-Third World Coalition
Prof. Chad Dion Lassiter President, Black Men at Univ. of Penn School of Social Work, Inc
Haki Madhubuti, President/CEO, Third World Press
Dr. Emeka Nwadiora, Temple University
Dr. Patricia Reid Merritt, Stockton State University
Dr. Segun Shabaka, National Association of Kawaida Organizations--New York
Dr. Michael Simanga, Fulton County Arts Council, Atlanta
James Lance Taylor, President of National Conference of Black Political Scientists
Dr. Christel Temple, University of Maryland
Dr. Ronald Walters, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland
Dr. Valethia Watkins, Chair, African American Studies, Olive Harvey College
Dr. Komozi Woodard, Sarah Lawrence College
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Pastor Emeritus, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago
Atty. Faya Rose Sanders, President, National Voting Rights Museum, Selma, AL
Leonard Dunston, President Emeritus, National Association of Black Social Workers
Betty Dopson, Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People
Bob Law, National Radio Personality

Contact Information

Press Inquiries and Interviews via Herb Boyd: 917.291.1825 - Email: herbboyd47@gmail.com
General Information and/or Responses: 888.774.2921 - Email. info@ibw21.org

Henry Louis Gates Lets US off the Hook in 'slavery blame game'

2010-04-24T10:36:00.003-04:00

Henry Louis Gates Lets US off the Hook in 'slavery blame game'

By Dr. Boyce Watkins

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. recently wrote an interesting piece for the New York Times called, "Ending the Slavery Blame Game." In the piece, Gates effectively argues that the fight for reparations is convoluted and somewhat mitigated by the fact that African elites participated in the slave trade. While describing complex business deals made between some African leadership and the Europeans who brought Africans to the New World, it almost appears as though Gates is saying that this disturbing relationship somehow undermines the right of African-Americans to hold our government accountable for its involvement in crimes committed against our people.

At very least, I am under the assumption that by "ending the slavery blame game," Gates is arguing that we should stop blaming the United States government and white America for the rape, murder, castration, lynching and beating of our ancestors.
Sorry Dr. Gates, but I must respectfully (or perhaps not so respectfully) disagree. If a young girl is sold into prostitution by her own parents, the pimp must still pay for the suffering he caused the young woman. He can't simply say, "Her parents made a deal with me, so you should stop the blame game."

In other words, the United States, as a broad and powerful industrial entity, benefited from slavery to the tune of several trillion dollars. Much of this wealth was passed down from one white man to another, and was always out of the grasp of the black men, women and children who gave their lives on American soil in order to earn it. As a result, the median net worth of the African-American family is roughly one-tenth that of white American families and we have consistently higher unemployment due to our inability to create jobs, since white Americans own most businesses.

These facts hold true without regard to how the African-American holocaust started in the first place. They also hold true because wealth and power are commodities that are passed down inter-generationally, and we missed out on all of this because we were slaves. What occurred after we left Africa can and must be considered independently from what happened while our forefathers were in the mother land.

Beyond the indisputable financial damage caused by slavery, there is also a price to be paid for pain, suffering and aggregate trauma. Even the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolishes slavery, has a clause stating that it's still OK to enslave another American, as long as that person has been convicted of a crime. Given that the United States incarcerates 5.8 times more black men than South Africa did during the height of apartheid, it's easy to argue that the human rights violations of American slavery continue to this day.

The arbitrary label of "convict" is used against black men in a disproportionate fashion as a loophole for American corporations to continue to profit from slave labor. I don't want to play the "blame game." But mainstream media must not play the "irresponsibility game," by promoting apologist African-American scholars who are willing to write off 400 years of systemically oppressive behavior. While the Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?" approach makes some of us more comfortable, the truth is that America cannot become truly post-racial until it overcomes its past-racial influences.

I am not sure why Gates has gone out of his way to assuage white guilt in America. I hope that's not the price a black man must pay in order to write an op-ed in the New York Times. Perhaps his PBS specials, in which he goes out of his way to prove that he is actually from Europe, is his way of fitting into the society that never embraced the little black boy from West Virginia (Gates writes extensively about being rejected by white women as a child). Henry Louis Gates seems to have spent his entire life proving to the world that he is a "big shot," because simply being a black man may never have been quite good enough.
As Gates once wrote on his Yale University application, "As always, whitey now sits in judgment of me, preparing to cast my fate. It is your decision either to let me blow with the wind as a nonentity or to encourage the development of self. Allow me to prove myself." Gates' words remind us that the damage of oppression can be debilitating, and we can spend our entire lives overcompensating. When our spirit is torn apart by racial oppression, white acceptance and validation are sometimes necessary in order to make us whole.

Putting Henry Louis Gates to the side, a point must be clearly made. If there are African elites to be held responsible for the atrocities committed against Africans in America, then we can accept that. But while certain citizens of Africa can be found guilty for their contribution to the slave trade, America must also be held accountable for its decision to exploit slavery over the last 400 years. It's really just that simple.

Henry Louis Gates Lets US off the Hook in 'slavery blame game'

2010-04-24T10:36:00.000-04:00

Mad TV - Nice White Lady

2010-03-07T15:24:00.001-05:00

The helpful white woman parodied by Mad TV

Audacious idea: an overhaul of Black History Month

2010-02-15T23:15:00.003-05:00

Audacious Ideas » Audacious idea: an overhaul of Black History Month

Monday, February 15, 2010
Posted by A. Adar Ayira, Project Manager of the More in the Middle Initiative, Associated Black Charities

In 1926, when Carter G. Woodson first advocated for “Black History Week,” not only were the contributions of African descendants ignored, but American history was deliberately whitewashed (pun intended). Those responsible for writing what we now accept as the popular history of this country whitewashed the contributions of people of color, whitewashed the white-supremacist aspect of the country’s foundation and history, and whitewashed the generational impact—economic, legal, political, business—of those decisions.

In the time between 1926 to 2010, much has changed, especially as it relates to the laws and customs that upheld racial oppression. The change is undeniable and should rightfully be celebrated, even as we continue to live with the impact of the legacy of American Apartheid.

So do we still need one month to emphasize and “celebrate” Black History? Here is an alternative: Let’s do an overhaul of what is represented as “American History” so that the history of those of European descent is not over-represented, while the histories of others who make up and contribute to this country are under-represented.

Every citizen should expect a more comprehensive and inclusive American history to be taught in schools each and every month of the year. As a country we should be ready to accept a history that is more truthful in its inclusiveness and in its honest recognition of the country’s deeply flawed character as relates to its citizens of color, without turning away, denying, or minimizing historical racial oppression or its continuing economic, educational, and social impact on Americans of African descent and other people of color.

Finally, I would audaciously propose that we take care to contextualize the history of this country in a way that emphasizes thoughtful and inclusive context over American mythology. Let’s go deeper than the use of constant staples such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and others whose lives and stories only skim the surface of a vibrant and robust history and the meaningful contributions of African descendants in America. Let’s stop framing their stories in a way that strips them of their essence and re-packages them in ways that negate the context of the times and the veracity of their causes.

Let’s go deeper than re-working the history of African descendants and other people of color to ensure that they are a “comfortable” fit for a historical context that is viewed from the lens of American mythology (“land of the free, home of the brave,” “all men created equal,” and the like) and from the lenses and perspectives of those who have had and continue to have a clear bias and agenda in promoting and maintaining this mythology.

The fact that there is still a need for Black History Month instead of a wholesale incorporation of it in American History—from the lenses and perspectives of those who generationally experienced the “backside” of the American experience—speaks volumes about who we are as a country; how we (still) feel about the truth of our history; and how far we have, and have not, come.

What If Sarah Palin Were Black? | | AlterNet

2010-02-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

What If Sarah Palin Were Black? | | AlterNet

Mike Barber: Belinda's Petition a Perfect Primer on the Subject of Reparations

2010-02-09T18:53:00.000-05:00

Mike Barber: Belinda's Petition a Perfect Primer on the Subject of Reparations

Mary J Blige - Hope For Haiti Now

2010-01-23T10:08:00.001-05:00

This was my favorite performance on the HopeforHaiti fundraiser...an Afrikan song stolen by Stephen Foster in 1854 and song by the incomparable, Mary J Blige...

Olbermann Slams Limbaugh And Robertson For Sick Comments

2010-01-14T13:28:00.001-05:00

I mourn Haiti and I also have utter contempt for racist Rush Limbaugh and Pat ("I'm a Christian") Robertson.

Keith Olberman reflects my thoughts on both of these mindless blowhards...

Avatar, Africans and Racism: Some Brief Reflections on James Cameron’s Tale about White Supremacy

2009-12-25T22:07:00.010-05:00

I’ve seen Avatar three times in the past five days.

Suffice it to say that Hollywood rarely makes direct references to racism/white supremacy especially when it comes to African people.

Avatar does it and does it well.

I loved the film because it is one of Hollywood’s best attempts to deal with the horrors of white supremacy and the African response to it. Julie Dash’s hauntingly beautiful 1991 film Daughters of the Dust was remarkable for its rendering of the intersection of racism, white supremacy and African spirituality. James Cameron’s latest film expands on Dash’s contribution by providing science fiction as a backdrop for discussing global white supremacy.

Avatar is not the first attempt at discussing racism in the context of science fiction. Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner, a rendering of Phillip Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, used androids (“skinjobs”) seeking freedom from their makers as metaphors for Black people pressing for civil rights. Here’s a dialogue between Harrison Ford, playing a bounty hunter (“Deckard”) and, M. Emmet Walsh playing a racist cop named (“Bryant”) discussing “skinjobs”:

Bryant: Hi ya, Deck...You wouldn't have come if I just asked you to. Sit down, pal. Come on, don't be an ass-hole Deckard. I've got four skin jobs walking the streets.

Deckard (voice-over): Skin jobs. That's what Bryant called replicants. In history books, he's the kind of cop that used to call black men niggers.

It is interesting that Dick wrote “Androids…”during the civil rights era --- the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated.

It is also interesting to note how white critics are making weak attempts to transform the blue Na’vi people into anything but Africans.

Repeat after me: The Na’vi are clearly Africans and here are the proofs:

1. All the lead roles are played by Black people (DUH!)
a. Zoë Saldaña plays Neytiri, the princess
b. C. C. H. Pounder plays Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytucan
c. Laz Alonso, plays Tsu’tey, Sulley’s rival for Neytiri and heir to crown of the Omaticaya
d. Wes Studi, plays Eytukan, the leader of the Omaticaya and is the sole indigenous character (Cherokee) among the clan

2. The phrase, “I see you” is taken directly from the Zulu (South African) greeting, "Sanibonani" which means, “I see you”. The reply, "Yebo, Sanibonani". “Yes, I see you”, has been widely used for centuries among the Zulu.

3. The Na’vi wear locs in their hair (not “dreadlocks”) throughout the film, a hairstyle that is as old as Egypt (KMT)

4. The dress of the Na’vi is an amalgam of south and west African clothing

5. The names of the Na'vi are direct borrowings from Africa. (Thanks to Charisma (below) for this insightful point. "The princess' name is Neytiri, which immediately caused me to think of Nefertari; a woman with beauty and brains who ruled in the new kingdom with her father. Another example is one that almost jumped off the page as I read your blog! Mo'at as the spiritual leader in the film (according to the blog), shares a profound reflection and parallel to the ancient Goddess Ma'at.

In ancient Kemet Ma'at is known as the female balance. There are 7 virtues of Ma’at, which are truth, righteousness, harmony, balance, reciprocity, justice and order. Ma’at is the symbol, energy or deity of truth justice and balance. There are 42 declarations of Ma’at that were used in ancient Kemet as a moral code for the living and the standard that the dead would be judged by."

White reviewers of the film are in a state of denial about likening the Na’vi to “indigenous Americans”. Historically, violent, rapacious, imperialistic, white supremacist attacks have not only been directed toward Africans, but indigenous people as well. Indeed, if Avatar doesn’t do anything else, it shows that white supremacy directs its malicious onslaught against all people of color both inside and outside of Africa.

The reaction to the film is also split along racial lines. Some white critics have referred to it as “cowboys and Indians in outer space”, or emphasize its “technical achievements” or dispassionately talk about Cameron’s innovative use of motion-capture animation technology. Black people see the film for what it is --- a metaphor of how Africans have been treated for centuries, and the European worldview that encourages environmental degradation, ignores the sacred and dehumanizes any group it seeks to subdue.

It’s hard for people --- mostly white --- and some people of color, to talk about the most troubling social issue of today --- racism but Cameron has made this task a little easier by providing a visual, political and spiritual experience which can become a vehicle for doing just that. Don’t spoil it by twisting the film into something it isn’t --- “cowboys and Indians in outer space”… (((sigh)))…

HP computers are racist

2009-12-23T03:38:00.001-05:00

Even those who create seemingly "race neutral" technology are racist...

Excerpt: Harlem Children's Zone

2009-12-07T19:29:00.001-05:00

The greatest K-12 educator in the United States today, bar none...

Dracula and Racism: Some Reflections on the Contemporary Fascination with Vampires

2009-09-16T14:04:00.008-04:00

When Irish author Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897, little did he know that his blood-sucking protagonist would become the most popular monster in European literature. I believe this undead monster along with the Creature created by Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein and the werewolves of Eastern Europe, constitute a collective European worldview whenever they rise in popularity. They are “social barometers” of the angst Europeans feel when threatened.

Frankenstein, published in 1818 at the dawn of the machine age (coming right after the Luddite Riots of 1811-1815) showed how human creations can get “out of control”. Thus, the monster created by Victor Frankenstein ultimately destroyed its creator, a notion reflecting early 19th century social thought when machines were thought to be potentially destructive to humans. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger repeated this Frankensteinian theme in modern sci-fi epics like the popular Terminator series.

The publication of Dracula in 1897 marked the height of European colonialism throughout the world which literally sucked the lifeblood out of the indigenous people and their resources in Africa, Asia, South America, Australia, Canada, the United States and the Caribbean. Once again, the popularity of the monster reflected the actual behavior of Europeans.

Lon Chaney’s 1941 role as the Wolf Man was very popular at the beginning of World War II, and showed the dual personality of the European as the half man – half wolf monster. Wolves have long been the stuff lacing European children fairy tales be they the Big Bad Wolf imitating Red Riding Hood’s grandma, or the Three Little Pigs’ blowhard neighbor. Whereas Shelley’s Creature and Stoker’s Dracula remained who they were both day and night, the Wolf Man changed from human to monster depending on the phases of the moon. The Wolf Man simultaneously portrayed the “civilized” and “monstrosity” of the European personality reflected at that time with the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany --- the central nation in the werewolf legends.

Lesser monsters reflecting the social anxiety of Europeans are zombies who were popular during and after the Eisenhower administration culminating in George Romero’s 1968 classic film, Night of the Living Dead. The McCarthy Era was replete with flying saucer “invasions” which again illustrated the angst of Americans over the “Red Menace” of communism.

If you rank the three monsters in order of their popularity it would be Dracula, the Creature and The Wolf Man. More literature has been devoted to vampires than any of the three favorite European monsters, and so it is today.

It’s been interesting to watch the resurgence (or should I say continued interest) in vampires.

They’re everywhere.

True Blood’s gothic southern style vampires on HBO, the adolescent Twilight series; Laurell Hamilton’s vampire hunter, Anita Blake; Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and the list goes on. TV shows, books, favorite Halloween costumes, reenactments and films are full of creatures sucking blood, fangs piercing the necks of helpless women and men, and yellow, black and red eyes staring emptily at frightened audiences.

If past is prologue, (and it is) the omnipresence of vampires in today’s media reflect the European reality that banks and corporations are sucking the economic life out of their customers. They reflect the rapacious nature of the white world’s demand for “more blood” from those already existing as half-dead victims of white supremacy. Indeed, the very “lifeblood” of the planet --- air and water --- is oozing down the throats of insatiable blood-sucking companies indifferent to ideas for sustainable growth and who pay millions of dollars to lobbyists and scientists to “prove” that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is a convenient lie.

Dracula’s nemesis of course, was the laconic Dutch professor, Abraham Van Helsing. He had a vast array of weapons against the blood-sucking living dead, used them and was incredibly cool under pressure. He rescued accomplices of the half dead who unwittingly succumbed to the seductive nature of the Count.

Enter Barack Obama as Van Helsing.

As a Van Helsing symbol, supporters of Obama should not be surprised that the vampires of small town and corporate America resist the light of day regarding the reality of the failing American economy. It’s like driving a stake through the heart of the highly vaunted, but oh so vague notion of “the American Dream” which began crumbling two years ago when the mortgage bankers and Wall Street vampires initiated the housing crisis.

Lamias hate garlic because it thins the blood and makes their victims less “tasteful”. In the health care debate the “public option” has been lampooned by the health insurance industry because it makes the victims of the health care insurance industry more powerful and immune to the blood drinking tactics of these corporations.

I expect the love of vampirism to grow as we see the European world decline in economic significance to China, Japan, South America and Africa. Its citizens, like their ancient cousin Count Dracula will writhe in anguish as the light of truth, garlic of reality and cross of color finally put a stake in the heart of white supremacy once and for all.

Nappy Ass Hair

2009-07-29T19:30:00.001-04:00

Viral on the 'net, this video says much about how Our hair is viewed by Ourselves. Is it child abuse --- both physical and psychological? You decide...

The Black Funeral of Michael Jackson

2009-07-09T10:25:00.004-04:00

An absolutely brilliant article by Sister Melissa Harris-Lacewell of Princeton University...

The Black Funeral of Michael Jackson
by Melissa Harris-Lacewell
Princeton University

Funerals tell us more about the living than the dead. It's why anthropologists often begin with rituals of death as an entry point for understanding societies and cultures.

I remember watching the funeral of Princess Diana. It was a perfectly British event: the poignant, silent march of her children, the bells tolling at Westminster Abbey, the red coat pallbearers. But I remember being taken aback as the car carrying Diana's casket drove through the streets of London. I was surprised because at that moment the mourners began to applaud.

They'd stood for hours lining the streets and as the casket passed they needed to grieve collectively and publicly. Stiff-upper lip British culture does not have a mechanism for such public grieving. There is no piercing death wail, no garment rending, no ceremonial dance, so instead the British applauded. Those applause revealed the missing place in English life for public mourning.

The death and remembrance of Michael Jackson has been an interesting window into American culture, its relentless cable news cycle, and the overwhelming but false sense of intimacy our celebrity culture engenders. But for me it was the peek into African American culture that was most intriguing.

Within a week of Jackson's death I watched the avatars on my twitter feed turn from Iran-solidarity green to iconic photographs of Michael Jackson. But the photos were exclusively of "black" Michael Jackson: some from his childhood, some from the Off The Wall era, and many from the Thriller era. Few of my African American tweeps were visually remembering the Michael Jackson of the past decade with diminished features and whitened skin.

Memorializing Jackson included selective collective memory that allowed African Americans to see him as belonging especially, if not exclusively, to black folks.

Some African Americans were incensed by the misogynist, racially stereotypical B.E.T. Awards that gave the first public tribute to Jackson. Many have been critical of B.E.T as a network for more than a decade, and the tribute to Jackson renewed that those criticisms. The contrast of Michael Jackson with Soulja Boy felt particularly stark, regressive, and embarrassing.

Memorializing Michael Jackson renewed critical conversation about the direction of black music.

Jackson's passing inspired memorials that reflected local cultures, my favorite was the Second Line in New Orleans, but it was the massive funeral in Los Angeles on Tuesday that was most revealing. Michael Jackson was an international music icon and his memorial was covered on mainstream media, but it was black tradition most fully on display Tuesday.

African American death rituals have long been celebratory as well as mournful. As a marginal people whose collective identity is rooted in struggle, death is celebrated as a release from pain, inequality, and torment. As a deeply religious people, death is celebrated as an opportunity for reunion with God. As a people who were often denied dignity in life, the dignity of a proper homegoing is a critically important sign of respect. Along with these celebratory aspects of funerals, death rituals among African Americans are marked by loud, deep, displays of emotion and public grieving that mark the sense of loss experienced by the whole community.

All of these aspects of black life were on display Tuesday. And it tells us more about us than about Jackson himself. Jackson's radical surgical choices largely eliminated his black phenotype. Jackson's romantic choices did not include black women. His wealth and eccentricities set him apart from most black people. In the final years of his life his music was much more popular in European and Asian countries than among black American listeners. But in death black folks embraced Jackson.

Memorializing Jackson reminds me that death is still a segregated business in America. Funeral homes still anchor black neighborhoods and are a central path of black entrepreneurship. Though he may have transcended or "escaped" blackness in life, Jackson was rendered fully black in death. And that says much more about us than about him.

The Prophecy of James Baldwin on Michael Jackson

2009-07-07T04:29:00.003-04:00

"The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael.

All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair--to all of which may now be added the bitter need to find a head on which to place the crown of Miss America.

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated--in the main, abominably--because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires."

--- James Baldwin from his 1985 essay, "There be Dragons", from his book, The Price of the Ticket...

Welcome Home, Brotha Michael...

2009-06-30T11:12:00.015-04:00

Of all the media portrayals of Michael Jackson during the past few days, the one that captured his essence most for me was done by NBC News' Rehema Ellis. Ellis unabashedly addressed the rift between Michael Jackson and the American African community since his magnum opus Thriller --- something that has been widely discussed for 25 years in barber and beauty shops, pool halls, churches and around dinner tables in American African households. The clip was the most honest assessment of Jackson's roots in American African community and how he "left" the community after Thriller.

The white media orgy over Jackson's death replays Black or White and emphasizes how he drew all people together "regardless of color", as if his music, like him, had become deracinated and homogenized into an amorphous lump of rock/pop/blues/jazz/gospel that was completely disconnected from his roots as an American African. The opposite is true of course; Jackson's music is deeply embedded in the blues idiom that informs all American African music. The blues is most evident in my two favorite Jackson songs, Human Nature and Man in the Mirror where Jackson does a powerful self-reflection on how it feels to be an African man embedded in a white supremacist world.

I love Michael Jackson, always have and always will even during his obsession with plastic surgery, marrying Lisa Presley, choosing a white woman as a surrogate for his children and the silly Black and White, because I, like many other Africans knew that he was one of Ours but had drunk the kool-aid of white supremacy that ultimately took his life.

Brotha Michael, welcome home, we always loved you...

HR40: Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans

2009-04-28T06:57:00.002-04:00

HR 40 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 40
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 6, 2009

Mr. CONYERS (for himself and Mr. SCOTT of Virginia) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

A BILL
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act’.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.
(a) Findings- The Congress finds that--
(1) approximately 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies that became the United States from 1619 to 1865;
(2) the institution of slavery was constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned by the Government of the United States from 1789 through 1865;
(3) the slavery that flourished in the United States constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of Africans’ life, liberty, African citizenship rights, and cultural heritage, and denied them the fruits of their own labor; and
(4) sufficient inquiry has not been made into the effects of the institution of slavery on living African-Americans and society in the United States.
(b) Purpose- The purpose of this Act is to establish a commission to--
(1) examine the institution of slavery which existed from 1619 through 1865 within the United States and the colonies that became the United States, including the extent to which the Federal and State Governments constitutionally and statutorily supported the institution of slavery;
(2) examine de jure and de facto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, and social discrimination;
(3) examine the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the discrimination described in paragraph (2) on living African-Americans and on society in the United States;
(4) recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission’s findings;
(5) recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission’s findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1) and (2); and
(6) submit to the Congress the results of such examination, together with such recommendations.

SEC. 3. ESTABLISHMENT AND DUTIES.
(a) Establishment- There is established the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans (hereinafter in this Act referred to as the ‘Commission’).
(b) Duties- The Commission shall perform the following duties:
(1) Examine the institution of slavery which existed within the United States and the colonies that became the United States from 1619 through 1865. The Commission’s examination shall include an examination of--
(A) the capture and procurement of Africans;
(B) the transport of Africans to the United States and the colonies that became the United States for the purpose of enslavement, including their treatment during transport;
(C) the sale and acquisition of Africans as chattel property in interstate and instrastate commerce; and
(D) the treatment of African slaves in the colonies and the United States, including the deprivation of their freedom, exploitation of their labor, and destruction of their culture, language, religion, and families.
(2) Examine the extent to which the Federal and State governments of the United States supported the institution of slavery in constitutional and statutory provisions, including the extent to which such governments prevented, opposed, or restricted efforts of freed African slaves to repatriate to their homeland.
(3) Examine Federal and State laws that discriminated against freed African slaves and their descendants during the period between the end of the Civil War and the present.
(4) Examine other forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed African slaves and their descendants during the period between the end of the Civil War and the present.
(5) Examine the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4) on living African-Americans and on society in the United States.
(6) Recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission’s findings.
(7) Recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission’s findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4). In making such recommendations, the Commission shall address among other issues, the following questions:
(A) Whether the Government of the United States should offer a formal apology on behalf of the people of the United States for the perpetration of gross human rights violations on African slaves and their descendants.
(B) Whether African-Americans still suffer from the lingering effects of the matters described in paragraphs (1), (2), (3), and (4).
(C) Whether, in consideration of the Commission’s findings, any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.
(D) If the Commission finds that such compensation is warranted, what should be the amount of compensation, what form of compensation should be awarded, and who should be eligible for such compensation.
(c) Report to Congress- The Commission shall submit a written report of its findings and recommendations to the Congress not later than the date which is one year after the date of the first meeting of the Commission held pursuant to section 4(c).

SEC. 4. MEMBERSHIP.
(a) Number and Appointment- (1) The Commission shall be composed of 7 members, who shall be appointed, within 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, as follows:
(A) Three members shall be appointed by the President.
(B) Three members shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
(C) One member shall be appointed by the President pro tempore of the Senate.
(2) All members of the Commission shall be persons who are especially qualified to serve on the Commission by virtue of their education, training, or experience, particularly in the field of African-American studies.
(b) Terms- The term of office for members shall be for the life of the Commission. A vacancy in the Commission shall not affect the powers of the Commission, and shall be filled in the same manner in which the original appointment was made.
(c) First Meeting- The President shall call the first meeting of the Commission within 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, or within 30 days after the date on which legislation is enacted making appropriations to carry out this Act, whichever date is later.
(d) Quorum- Four members of the Commission shall constitute a quorum, but a lesser number may hold hearings.
(e) Chair and Vice Chair- The Commission shall elect a Chair and Vice Chair from among its members. The term of office of each shall be for the life of the Commission.
(f) Compensation- (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), each member of the Commission shall receive compensation at the daily equivalent of the annual rate of basic pay payable for GS-18 of the General Schedule under section 5332 of title 5, United States Code, for each day, including travel time, during which he or she is engaged in the actual performance of duties vested in the Commission.
(2) A member of the Commission who is a full-time officer or employee of the United States or a Member of Congress shall receive no additional pay, allowances, or benefits by reason of his or her service to the Commission.
(3) All members of the Commission shall be reimbursed for travel, subsistence, and other necessary expenses incurred by them in the performance of their duties to the extent authorized by chapter 57 of title 5, United States Code.

SEC. 5. POWERS OF THE COMMISSION.
(a) Hearings and Sessions- The Commission may, for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this Act, hold such hearings and sit and act at such times and at such places in the United States, and request the attendance and testimony of such witnesses and the production of such books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents, as the Commission considers appropriate. The Commission may request the Attorney General to invoke the aid of an appropriate United States district court to require, by subpoena or otherwise, such attendance, testimony, or production.
(b) Powers of Subcommittees and Members- Any subcommittee or member of the Commission may, if authorized by the Commission, take any action which the Commission is authorized to take by this section.
(c) Obtaining Official Data- The Commission may acquire directly from the head of any department, agency, or instrumentality of the executive branch of the Government, available information which the Commission considers useful in the discharge of its duties. All departments, agencies, and instrumentalities of the executive branch of the Government shall cooperate with the Commission with respect to such information and shall furnish all information requested by the Commission to the extent permitted by law.

SEC. 6. ADMINISTRATIVE PROVISIONS.
(a) Staff- The Commission may, without regard to section 5311(b) of title 5, United States Code, appoint and fix the compensation of such personnel as the Commission considers appropriate.
(b) Applicability of Certain Civil Service Laws- The staff of the Commission may be appointed without regard to the provisions of title 5, United States Code, governing appointments in the competitive service, and without regard to the provisions of chapter 51 and subchapter III of chapter 53 of such title relating to classification and General Schedule pay rates, except that the compensation of any employee of the Commission may not exceed a rate equal to the annual rate of basic pay payable for GS-18 of the General Schedule under section 5332 of title 5, United States Code.
(c) Experts and Consultants- The Commission may procure the services of experts and consultants in accordance with the provisions of section 3109(b) of title 5, United States Code, but at rates for individuals not to exceed the daily equivalent of the highest rate payable under section 5332 of such title.
(d) Administrative Support Services- The Commission may enter into agreements with the Administrator of General Services for procurement of financial and administrative services necessary for the discharge of the duties of the Commission. Payment for such services shall be made by reimbursement from funds of the Commission in such amounts as may be agreed upon by the Chairman of the Commission and the Administrator.
(e) Contracts- The Commission may--
(1) procure supplies, services, and property by contract in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and to the extent or in such amounts as are provided in appropriations Acts; and
(2) enter into contracts with departments, agencies, and instrumentalities of the Federal Government, State agencies, and private firms, institutions, and agencies, for the conduct of research or surveys, the preparation of reports, and other activities necessary for the discharge of the duties of the Commission, to the extent or in such amounts as are provided in appropriations Acts.

SEC. 7. TERMINATION.
The Commission shall terminate 90 days after the date on which the Commission submits its report to the Congress under section 3(c).

SEC. 8. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
To carry out the provisions of this Act, there are authorized to be appropriated $8,000,000.

Chances of Being Paid for Past Injustice Look Up

2009-04-24T22:59:00.003-04:00

Chances of being paid for past injustice look up

US President Barack Obama. He said the US could do to compensate African-Americans for past injustices was to provide better inner city schools.Photo/FILE

By JAMES KARIUKIPosted Friday, April 24 2009 at 19:09

A few days before South Africans elected their fourth post-apartheid president, a US court allowed a case against multinational corporations accused of victimising Blacks during apartheid to proceed.

In all likelihood, whoever made that ruling was altogether unaware that he may have been setting the stage for the making of racial history.

During his 2008 US presidential campaign, Barack Obama was asked about the issue of reparations for Black Americans. He responded that the best that the US could do to compensate African-Americans for past injustices was to provide better inner city schools. By implication, reparations in form of monetary restitutions were out of the question.

Obama’s response was politically tailored for the American electorate; his stand on the question of payment of reparations for Global Africans remains unknown.

But it may not be long before the US President has to take a position on the matter as the victims of apartheid will not relax on their case. Should they win, it is difficult to visualise restitution in any form other than cash.

In 1804 Haiti made history by undertaking a full-scale slave revolt against the colonising French. That revolution became the first successful strike against subjugation of Black people.

Haiti hit the world headlines again in April, 2003, by demanding that France pay back $21 billion in restitution for money paid in 1825 to French “settlers” as a precondition for recognising the island’s independence. This demand was conceivably the first international claim for reparations for Black folk with a specific amount attached to it.

In April, 2004, South Africa celebrated its 10th anniversary of democracy after the end of apartheid. That revolution became the final successful strike against legal subjugation of Blacks worldwide. South Africa concluded the racial liberation launched by Haiti 200 years earlier.

Affinity quickly developed between the two nations. In January, 2004, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki attended Haiti’s bicentenary celebrations of its revolution, the only Head of State to do so. Shortly thereafter, in May, 2004, Mbeki’s regime granted asylum to Jean-Bartrand Aristide, the president who had demanded reparations from France the previous year.

Seasoned critics insist that Aristide’s forced exile was triggered by his demand for reparations. Under the guise of seeking political stability in Haiti, we are told, Western powers colluded to force a popularly elected leader out of his homeland.

Meanwhile, South Africa was already caught in a storm of animated debate: Should Black South Africans seek legal restitution from Western multinational companies that had benefited from their exploitation during apartheid?

Opinions varied vastly. One proposition, championed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was that victims of apartheid were indeed entitled to seek legal restitution and, if found liable, the implicated corporations were duty-bound to make amends. Tutu was on record as a key “friend” of the claimants in a case lodged in New York.

Mbeki’s government differed, urging that in the interest of national healing, South Africans should let bygones be bygones.

Additionally, there was concern over the sensitive matter of jurisdiction; Mbeki’s presidency was opposed to the notion of its citizens seeking legal restitution in foreign lands for domestic grievances. On these grounds, the Justice minister wrote to the relevant US Court urging dismissal of the apartheid case.

By resisting the quest for restitution, Mbeki’s government added to a widely held perception that his was not a government for the ordinary people.

For the moment, Mbeki’s regime found itself trapped in the awkward position of being on the same side of the fence as the generally discredited George W Bush, who was of the view that demanding reparations would contaminate relations between Pretoria and Washington.

More alarmingly, Mbeki’s government found itself locking horns with Archbishop Tutu, the respected ex-chairman of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Further, the government held a position that was antithetical to the cause of its most celebrated international guest, Haiti’s ex-president Aristide.

Historians would probably agree that Blacks have endured greater “collective injury” than all the other groups combined. Yet, no reparations have ever been paid to them. African-Americans have aspired for reparations for enslavement since the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to no avail. Each freed slave is still waiting for 40 acres and a mule.

In April 2009, previously, anti-restitution forces vested in the persons of George Bush and Thabo Mbeki are no longer on the scene, replaced by Barack Obama and Jacob Zuma. Should Zuma uphold his pledge to be “president of the people”, he will throw his weight behind the apartheid’s victims.

President Obama’s position is less clear but it would be disingenuous if he actively opposed reparations while he started his political career in support of divestments against apartheid South Africa.

Prof Kariuki is a writer and independent consultant in international and African diaspora affairs.

Information on the Spanish Reparations Movement

2009-04-14T21:38:00.003-04:00

From: Federación Panafricanista [mailto:panafricanos@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 3:17 PM
To: Coates, Rodney D. Dr.
Subject: Fwd: solidarity with Spanish Reparation Movement

Brother and Sisters:

I informed you that at the initiative of Black Community: Spanish parliaments are discussing now to apologize African people for slavery and colonialism maafa . So we have launched the campaign we are not alone. http://www.documentalistas.org/proyectos/nosolos/documentos/madrid_declaration_english.pdfWe need your support the legislative initiative to become law.
We request your solidarity to collect 5 million signatures to turn this initiative into law. SIGNATURES http://www.documentalistas.org/proyectos/nosolos/firmantes.php?pagina=1&termino=

We attach you the original document

UHURU

Abuy Nfubea

www.panafricanos.com

Madrid Declaration Black Community
2008 International Merit Award Emilio Castelar
PARDON, RECONCILIATION AND DIALOGUE WITHOUT BORDERS

PREAMBLE
In Madrid, Spain, December 5th, 2008 we, the undersigned, participants of the Emilio
Castelar Award to Merit DISPERSOS E INÉDITOS event, in representation of the
organized civil society of the black community and African descendants from the
Americas and the Caribbean, and of kindred organizations , in the framework of the
Bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery and Slave Trade, the European Year of
Intercultural Dialogue, the Latin American Year of Non-Discrimination and Youth, the
Tenth Year of Black Communities, the Millennium Objectives 2015, the Follow-up
Report of the Durban Plan in Cincha/Perú ONU/CES 27 February 2006, Act 62/2003 on
Equal Treatment- Spain, in commemoration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the
Spanish Constitution, Sixtieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Tercentenary of the incorporation of Equatorial Guinea to the Crown of
Castile, and the Year of Planet Earth.

Considering our shared commitment and interest in using effectively the great
progress and development achieved by humankind in the fields of human, civil and
social rights, participative and representative democracy, citizenship, equity, equal
rights and justice, social peace, tolerance for the development of multicultural
diversity and multiethnic, cultural and educational diversity, in the protection and
defence of natural resources and the environment.

In view of our common concern about the vulnerability, inequity and social injustice
the black community and African descendants are subjected to, as reflected in the
high rates of marginality, poverty, illness, hunger, exclusion, armed conflicts and
generalized violation of their human, civil and social rights and the significant
repercussion this has on structural and institutional racism.

We here present the following Madrid Declaration of the Black Community, urging
democratic governments to implement affirmative actions to ensure in an effective
manner the inclusion of the black community in all spheres of activity, cultural, social, economic and political.

WE HEREBY

UNDERLINE the significant historical contribution of the Black community to the
political, cultural, economic, social, and religious development and to World Peace,
which makes it deserve other forms of relations with the states and official and private
bodies, to guarantee the implementation of universal citizenship, as an expression of
participative and representative democracy and of social corporate responsibility.
HIGHLIGHT the success of the 1st INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS SYMPOSIUM 2008:
Abolition of Slavery and Slave Trade, Human Rights and Intercultural Dialogue, a
preamble encouraging Spain to become an example for other nations throughout the
world in the dignification of the black community, along with other counties such as
the United states, United Kingdom, France, and the Vatican.
www.documentalistas.org / www.documentalistas.com
STRESS the success of the event Dispersed and Unknown which was granted the
Award to the Merit Emilio Castelar in 2008.
HIGHLIGHT the meeting of Black Community representatives with representatives of
the two Chambers of the Spanish Parliament.
EMPHASIZE the clear will of the organized black civil community and that of Spanish
sympathizers to establish the BROWN RIBBON as symbol to the memory of the
victims of the holocaust and of the triangular trade of slavery, between Europe, Africa
and America.
REQUEST that the goodwill shown by the EUROPEAN UNION and SPAIN vis-à-vis the
indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean be EXTENDED TO AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION POLICIES to meet the aspirations of slave descendants in the form of specific
international cooperation schemes geared at their access to a comprehensive social
development, the social and economic fund and to the different civil bodies organised
around international cooperation.
REQUEST that the aspiration of the Black Community, its Diaspora and descendents
be placed on equal footing and be fully recognized in Spain as an ethnic minority and
as a socially excluded group (like Sephardic Jews, Saharawi, Gypsies, Muslims,
Buddhists, Protestants, Homosexuals), on the grounds of long-established settlement,
historical links and equal treatment.
STATEMENT
1. Human rights cannot be legitimated without taking into account the victims of
cruelty be it holocaust, racism, xenophobia, slavery, genocide and crimes against
humanity which do not prescribe or cannot be granted amnesty, and all connected
forms of surreptitious, legitimate, institutional exclusion.
2. We urge the States to recognize and include without any restrictions the Black
community among ethnic minorities, with priority treatment by the state.
3. We urge the Spanish Administration to publicly acknowledge slavery, to proclaim
forgiveness for the black holocaust and to draft proposals to foster the full recognition
of the black community in Spain.
4. We demand that the States open up their institutions to encourage dialogue and
reconciliation and to foster effective inclusion, visibility and empowerment of the black
community in all functional areas of the state and of human development.
5. We ask for the criminalization of racist acts leading to segregation and exclusion,
detrimental to the civil and social rights and freedoms of the Black community in
Spain.
6. We request the tipification of the Black community and that of other ethnic
minorities in the Spanish Constitution to guarantee their democratic representation
and participation as well as their political participation, through a special
circunscripción (constituency), and full representation in the legislative, judicial and
executive powers of the Spanish State.
www.documentalistas.org / www.documentalistas.com
7. We request the tipification of the Black community and other ethnic minorities to be
acknowledged in the European Constitution.
8. We urge the governments to guarantee compliance of the regulations and rules of
international bodies such as Durban 2001, the Human Rights Commission,
UN/ECOSOC 2006, OAS, SECIB, FRA,UNHCR, CERD/SP/69, ODM, Coalition of
American, Caribbean, African and European Cities Against Racism, Xenophobia and
Intolerance.
FIRMANTES REPRESENTANTES DE
Signatory countries and representatives:
PERU: CARLOS JARA CUEVAS
ANGOLA: JEAN BERNABE MOUSAJE
BRAZIL: JOSÉ ROBERTO GUEDES OLIVEIRA
SENEGAL: ARISTIDE KATARE
CUBA: GUILLERMO PONCE LEON
COLOMBIA: OLMEDO POVEDA BUITRAGO
COLOMBIA: JENNY DE LA TORRE CORDOBA
COLOMBIA: LUIS ALBERTO ALARCÓN VALENCIA
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: ABUY NFUBEA
ISRAEL: BEN YEHUDA KHAZRIEL
SPAIN: JOSÉ RAÚL VAQUERO PULIDO
SPAIN: RAQUEL PEREIRA
Organizations:
LAS ORGANIZACIONES
Instituto Brasilero de fluencia
Centro Europeo Ibero andino de España
Asociación Iberoamericana de Integración de España
Asociación Africa Viva
Asociación Mboloni
Federación de Asociaciones Cubanas e Iberoamericanas Siglo XXI – FEDACI
Federación de Asociaciones de Afro descendientes de Ibero América en España –
FEDAFRO
Asociación Progreso Da Nacao Angolenha
Documentation Sciences Foundation
Fundación Vida – Grupo Ecológico Verde
Federación Panafricanista de España
Plataforma Solidaridad
In attendance:
EN PRESENCIA
USA: Mr. STEVE COHEN
Member of Congress
NETHERLANDS: Ms. BERRYL BIECKMAN
Director Sixth Nepad Region – African Union
SPAIN: Mr. ADOLFO GONZALES
Member of Parliament
SPAIN: Mr. MARCO GARCIA MONTES
International Jurists Commission
SPAIN: REPRESENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND PARLAMENT IN
SPAIN
www.documentalistas.org / www.documentalistas.com
EUROPEAN UNION: Ms .MARÍA ROSA GARCÍA G.
General Secretary of Organised Civil Society and Corporate Social Responsibility
www.documentalistas.org / www.documentalistas.com

Father of Reparations Movement Joins the Ancestors

2009-04-13T18:05:00.002-04:00

Ray Jenkins, a longtime Detroit resident, will be remembered for his work advocating slavery reparations for African-Americans from the federal government, his family said.

Mr. Jenkins believed reparations were the debt the country owed blacks for the enslavement of their ancestors.

During the late 1950s, Mr. Jenkins began speaking publicly about his cause of getting reparations for African-Americans. At the time, it was a very unpopular notion.

"I used to go with him to meetings. People used to ridicule him to no end ... black and white," said his son, Ricardo Jenkins.

"They thought it was the most ridiculous thing. It wasn't until (the U.S. government paid Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II) that their moods changed. They saw it could happen. He then became a hero."

Mr. Jenkins, known as "Reparations Ray," or the father of the reparations movement in the city's black community, died Friday, April 10, 2009 of complications of a blood infection in Providence Hospital in Southfield. He was 88.

Born in Memphis, Tenn., Mr. Jenkins came to Detroit in 1942 for job opportunities. He also was veteran who served in the Philippines during World War II. He received an honorable discharge from the military, said his son, Ricardo Jenkins.

After arriving in Detroit, Mr. Jenkins worked a series of odd jobs before eventually settling into the real estate business as a salesman and then a real estate broker.

In 1958, Mr. Jenkins opened his own real estate business, Ray Jenkins Realty. The office was at West McNichols and Wisconsin on the city's northwest side.

In a July 1994 article from The Detroit News, Mr. Jenkins spoke about spending $50,000 of his own money and putting in countless hours in his efforts to push the federal government for a payoff for blacks.

Ricardo Jenkins said his father never thought reparations should be a blank check to African-Americans.

He said his father wanted the U.S. government to repay blacks for slavery through educational trusts and home ownership programs.

"He thought every black American who wanted to attend college should be able to attend for free," said Jenkins.

Besides his son Ricardo, survivors include his wife, Geraldine; a daughter, Lajuana; two grandchildren; and a nephew.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete Friday.

Bakari Kitwana: Did John Hope Franklin Want $100 Trillion for Blacks?

2009-04-06T19:54:00.004-04:00

Bakari Kitwana: Did John Hope Franklin Want $100 Trillion for Blacks?

Posted using ShareThis

Dr. John Hope Franklin, the wildly accomplished historian who documented Blacks' place in the great American story, firmly believed in reparations -- the idea that the descendants of slaves in the United States should be compensated for the centuries of free labor that enriched slaveowners and their descendants and the American empire. It is a fact overlooked by the recent flurry of mainstream media coverage commemorating his life work. (He died at the age of 94 late last month.) But it is no small detail.

Consider his response in 2007 to state legislators in North Carolina and Virginia who balked at apologies for slavery introduced by their peers. For him a mere verbal apology wasn't enough.

"People are running around apologizing for slavery," he said. "What about that awful period since slavery -- Reconstruction, Jim Crow and all the rest? And what about the enormous wealth that was built up by black labor? I think that's little to pay for the gazillions that black people built up -- the wealth of this country -- with their labor, and now you're going to say I'm sorry I beat the hell out of you for all these years? That's not enough."

When Dr. Franklin spoke of history, he did so with the definitive authority of an expert who spent over half a century culling through the details. His accomplishments are legendary: distinguished Duke University professor who taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard University (where he earned his doctorate in 1941); author of 20 books; first African American to chair a history dept at a predominately white university; over 3.5 million copies of his book From Slavery to Freedom have been printed since it's 1947 publication.

It is very easy now in our age of political correctness to courteously applaud the accomplishments of a barrier breaking African American in the field of U.S. History, which he said he wrote without "the embellishment of emotional display." But an entirely different pill to swallow is the conclusion he gleaned from his analysis: reparations are essential to acknowledging the country's wrongs.

"There are all kinds of ways you could do it," Franklin said in a video interview at Duke University, in which he insisted he wasn't asking for reparations personally -- even though he was entitled. "What about scholarships? What about descent places for people to live? Out of the fortunes that were made, you could build a mansion for the descendant of every former slave."

Others have argued that reparations should be paid directly by the U.S. government, which Harpers magazine (November 2000) estimated at $100 trillion dollars for 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 with compounded interest of 6 percent. Still others have argued that payments should come from corporations who benefited as well as former colonial governments.

The idea of reparations for Blacks has for years been met in the American mainstream with at best contempt and at worst ridicule. But for John Hope Franklin the essential truth of American history was found not just in the large sweeping narrative, but also in the subtleties of the racial divide lived everyday.

His careers as a historian and as an activist (he was a researcher for Thurgood Marshall for the Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education case and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma) are well documented. Less known are his day-to-day confrontations with the legacy of white supremacy, subtleties he often related in personal anecdotes:

As a 6 year-old boy, his father's business in Tulsa was destroyed (luckily his father survived) during the infamous 1921 race riot. As one of the first Black boy scouts in 1927, he was severely reprimanded midway through helping a blind white woman cross the street upon her discovery he was black. In 1995, while in DC to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest award for a civilian, he hosted a party for friends at the Cosmos Club where he was a member and was asked by a white woman to get her coat, even though uniform attendants were present.

Personal insults like these only scratch the surface of the economic and psychological setbacks he suffered, like countless other African Americans, at the hands of white supremacy ingrained in American culture. Insults like these were a reminder of the big picture reasons why descendant of enslaved Africans lagged behind in the present. For Dr. Franklin, this was a direct result of American slavery.

"They ought to develop some kind of modus operandi that they can do something else -- something to absolve themselves of three centuries of guilt from which they are the direct beneficiaries," he said in a 2007 interview. "How large is the black population now living in abject poverty in this country? How large is the population of blacks who have poor health? Sometimes they inherited the poor health right from their forebears who were beaten and treated like they were animals all over this country."

It is true, as opponents of reparations argue, that America's troublesome history of racial inequity was born in the past. But it is equally apparent, as John Hope Franklin insisted, that our future is defined by the ways we address its legacy in the present.

If we really seek to commemorate him, it seems to me that the best we can do is to not just pay lip service to the man. Instead we should honor him by paying homage in the form of meaningful national policy that considers the conclusion of his life work.

Bakari Kitwana is visiting scholar at Columbia College's Center for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media and co-author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era (Third World Press, 2009). He also writes for NewsOne.com.

Ray Winbush's Belinda's Petition Now Available for Purchase!

2009-04-03T08:02:00.010-04:00

http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.asp?bookid=48372

In 1782, Belinda, an African on the Ten Hills Plantation in Medford Massachusetts, petitioned the state legislature for reparations for her 50 years of captivity and unpaid labor by her former owner, Isaac Royall. Royall had fled to Canada shortly after the American Revolution since he was a “Loyalist” to Britain and feared for his life and his own captivity what would become the United States. This story of her captivity, enslavement and liberation is an incredible tale of resilience during a time when Africans in America were seen as something a little more valuable than livestock.

Belinda’s Petition is but one in a long history of the reparations struggle that is sewn in the fabric of African history for the past 550 years. This concise story of the reparations struggle is meant to provide a “view from the bridge” on the ongoing struggle of Africans throughout the world in obtaining justice for the most heinous crime of the past millennium --- the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Whether you support or oppose reparations is unimportant; what Belinda’s Petition will show you is that the western world is built upon 500 years of the unpaid labor of millions of enslaved Africans whose call for justice has been conscious, courageous and consistent since they were first captured in 1441 by Europeans.

'White people with blue eyes' caused financial crisis

2009-03-30T22:44:00.005-04:00

See, this is an *honest* statement about the global financial crisis and one we should discuss. It is also one of the hard truths that, as US Attorney General Eric Holder said in February, that Americans are too cowardly to discuss...

Brazil's President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has raised a few brows by suggesting the global ﬁnancial crisis has been caused by "white people with blue eyes".
Mr da Silva met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the capital Brasilia to argue that G20 economies back a $US100 billion expansion of ﬁnance to reverse a slowdown in global trade.

The President has been one of the most outspoken advocates of giving developing countries more say in multilateral organisations like the International Monetary Fund.
He has also been a ﬁerce defender of more open farm trade, trying to forge a common front among developing nations.

Asked to explain his comment that the international crisis had been fomented by "white people with blue eyes," Mr da Silva said he had no ideological bias. But poor people were the ﬁrst to suffer from the crisis, he said.

The President has often blamed the United States for causing a global crisis by practising "casino capitalism". Mr da Silva and Mr Brown said countries should adopt more ﬁscal and monetary stimulus to help combat the global economic crisis and called for tougher ﬁnancial market regulations.

Leading industrial and developing nations, including Brazil, will attend the G20 summit Mr Brown hosts in London on April 2.

"If the G20 becomes a meeting just to set another meeting, we'll be discredited and the crisis can deepen," Mr da Silva said.

"We must not let the crisis drag on as long as the Japanese crisis did," he said, in reference to a decade of stagnation in the Asian country.

Mr Brown is on the third stop of a tour through Europe, Latin America and the United States to seek support for the G20 meeting that will discuss measures to tackle the global ﬁnancial crisis.

He said the meeting was a vital opportunity to take international action required to "restore global demand through concerted and coordinated ﬁscal and
monetary policy action".

Some European leaders have opposed calls by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President Barack Obama to agree to larger stimuluspackages at the G20 meeting.

A New Cartoon about the NYPost.

2009-02-20T18:09:00.002-05:00

Yet Another Indicator of the Myth of a "Post-Racial America"

2009-02-18T12:40:00.004-05:00

In its mad rush to declare a "Post-Racial America", the nation fails to see how blind it is to its own current racist attitudes.

Appearing in today's New York Post, this Sean Delonas "political" cartoon conflates the tragedy of the recent chimpanzee attack with the just signed Stimulus Package by Barack Obama, and creates a twisted and sick rendition of what is unconsciously (and consciously) on the minds of many Americans --- the death of the President.

Post-Racial America, may be better described as "Racist Amerikkka"...

Belinda's Petition...Coming soon...

2009-02-05T21:32:00.004-05:00

When Are We Going To Get Over It?

2009-01-18T08:50:00.006-05:00

(BLOGGER'S NOTE:) This article is how race and racism should be discussed in the United States. The frankness, openness and honesty of Professor Andrew M. Manis is rare among white Americans, and is to be commended...

For much of the last 40 years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African-Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African-Americans finally going to get over it?" Now I want to ask "When are we white Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?"

Recent reports that "Election Spurs 'Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Ala., in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk." Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame, we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right.

Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was a nonpolitical mental case who wanted merely to impress Jodie Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be black, and we're back in the '60s again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying "” that in America anything is possible, electing a black man as president. But instead, we now hear schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -- once and for all -- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with nonwhites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations? I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become president of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?

Until this past Nov. 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African-American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here's my three-point plan during the Obama administration: First, every day that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built, I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I'm going to report to the FBI anyone I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama. Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."

Andrew M. Manis is associate professor of history at Macon State College in Georgia.

COMMEMORATION, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION: A FEW WORDS ABOUT RIGHTING HISTORICAL WRONGS

2009-01-13T16:36:00.004-05:00

William Wilberforce

(Speech given at the Slavery, Anti-Slavery and the Road to Freedom Conference in Halifax Nova Scotia, June 25-30, 2007, by Ray Winbush)

I always feel uneasy about commemorations. They force one to look at an historical event and then, like Rubik’s Cube, attempt to twist and turn them in such ways that others will see it with all of the events in order and in one way. There is a desire on the part of the “commemorators” if you please, to give everyone a shared vision or a “co-memory” of an event that allows people to have a homogenzed understanding of the event.

In 2006, we witnessed the attempt by the current administration to create a “co-memory” of the events of September 11, 2001 by having a commemoration ceremony, characterized by a jingoistic fervor for things American and ignoring a bankrupt American foreign policy in the so-called “Middle East” that may have triggered this horrific event in the first place. Creating a “co-memory” between George W. Bush and let’s say Muqtada al-Sadr for 9/11 is impossible since commemoration at the government level is, in fact, what politicians want their citizens to remember and forget about the past.

And so, on March 25, 1807, the once mighty British Empire where the sun never set, through the efforts of William Wilberforce abolished the most heinous and longest lasting crime of the 2nd millennium, the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Commemorations of this event have abounded throughout the former colonial holdings of the UK including the United States and I am at once struck at the white supremacist nature of them. William Wilberforce is being venerated by commemorators during this period to the extent that my African colleagues in the UK have dubbed this fawning over him “Wilberfest”.

I reluctantly went to see the new film about Wilberforce entitled Amazing Grace, since I knew audiences would be asking me about it. It should have been titled “Amazing RACEism”, since there were only three speaking roles for Africans in the entire film and was more about white men running around in waist coats and powdered wigs valiantly saving Africans from the horrors of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

What Amazing Grace represents is how commemoration is totally a subjective process and is an act left up to the conquerors as to how it will be done. The US does not commemorate the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the Japanese do. The descendants of this settler nation don’t talk much about the Trail of Tears in my former state of Tennessee in but the Cherokee do. I have no doubt that one day, the atrocities of Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq will be commemorated by Iraqis --- both Shiites and Sunnis --- but I doubt that such a day will be recorded on any calendar made in the United States.

At the UK’s March 25th commemoration of the abolition of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, Toyin Agbetu, a human rights campaigner, ran in front of the altar at London's Westminster Abbey -- packed with dignitaries -- shouting "you should be ashamed," "you're a disgrace," and "this is an insult to us." Needless to say, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II were apopleptic as Brother Toyin yelled to his fellow Africans in attendance, "We should not be here, this is an insult to us. I want all the Christians who are Africans to walk out."

I like Brothers like Toyin; they speak truth to power in ways that are pure and simple. Nothing he said was untruthful and his one-man protest represents the best in civil disobedience and illustrates the schizophrenic nature of commemoration since he, rather than joining the orgiastic praise for William Wilberforce, chose to commemorate his Ancestors’ agency in their struggle for freedom which began in the rain forests of Africa and continue in the diaspora today. Toyin, like me, believes that although the institution of slavery was symbolically abolished 200 years and 17 days ago by the English, the mentality of the slaveowner and the slave mentality still exist in the world today. It is reflected in Don Imus calling my African sisters “nappy-headed hos”, or Clarence Thomas sycophantic relationship with Antonin Scalia which tells Old Massa that he is still a good slave. It is reflected in the mentality of Condoleezza Rice propping up her Marse President and also in comedian Michael Richards rant that included what would have happened to Black men just 50 years ago.

I doubt if any African will have the shared experience that white commemorators want us to have especially when it comes to enslavement. My reflections on enslavement include the heroism of Nat, the courage of Paul Bogle, Bussa and Harriet. My reflections also pause when I ask the question how a people can capture a human being, shackle them, transport them, castrate them, rape them, work them for 300 years and then rationalize the behavior as being divinely ordained and scientifically justified.

What we can do is to seek racial reconciliation by linking forgiveness with atonement. I repeat: what we can do is to seek racial reconciliation by linking forgiveness with atonement. It is not enough to say that I am sorry without restitution. Put another way, apologies without atonement is a deserted road to racial reconciliation. Reparations are the only way to move from hollow apologies or “deep regrets” as Tony Blair puts it, to a true understanding of the greatest crime against humanity of the past millennium.

Grandson of Enslaved Africans...

2009-01-12T05:32:00.003-05:00

A White Person Who Favors Reparations for Enslavement

2009-01-10T06:44:00.007-05:00

Historically, most people associate the reparations movement with Black people. This article shows the increasing number of white people who see them as an essential means of acknowledging this crime against humanity and its after effects. Paul Devlin provides a good historical context why reparations for enslavement as a stimulus package deserves consideration.

Reparations as an Economic Stimulus
by Paul Devlin

Jan. 8, 2009--Don't call it reparations. Call it a belated bailout of the Freedman's Savings Bank, chartered by Congress in 1865 as a financial haven for freed slaves and failed in 1874 because its white board lost all the money after a spree of wild speculation.

It was like black people's version of the Bernie Madoff scandal (but the bank was thought to be as safe as the government could make it, and it was for a time). Thousands of African Americans lost millions of dollars—millions that had been earned through pure sweat and toil—when the bank failed. That combination of real assets lost and hundreds of thousands of people involved (to whom most African Americans today could claim an ancestor) provides a legitimate cover for, or different way of looking at, reparations. It's not a giveaway; it's a bailout, you know, just like the kind white people get today.

And OK, I am white. But as some of my best friends are black, I hope to at least get a meal or two out of any future reparations package.

All jokes aside, now is the perfect time, perhaps the only time, that African Americans might be in a position to achieve the elusive goal of reparations. The nation has dashed to the rescue of the undeserving, most notably in the sickening $150 billion bailout of the unhedged fund known as AIG. The automakers were bailed out by the White House, despite some Southern senators who have a complex about unions. And then there's the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

Barack Obama's election certainly makes reparations more likely than they were under, say, Woodrow Wilson, but nobody thinks Obama has the political will to fight the fight, nor should anyone expect him to play with such political dynamite. Some enterprising Southern or Southern-ish GOP senator (paging Mitch McConnell, who'll never win another term anyway) needs to see the big picture, glimpse his place in history, foresee how African-American reparation spending will help his state/region and proceed to call in every favor and twist every arm until every congressman signs. It's not like Obama won't sign it. My calculations show it would cost a mere $900 billion. Now that we're on the verge of deflation, it's time to rev up the printing press anyway.

A belated Freedman's Savings Bank bailout package would effectively kill two birds with one stone. It would finally acknowledge and attempt to compensate African Americans for a portion of their fair share in creating this nation while simultaneously stimulating the economy.

Dave Chappelle, as funny as he is, did a disservice to the idea of reparations with his skit on them, which many average white people are likely to reference if the issue is brought up. Sure, maybe some black people will buy trucks full of cigarettes and act extra ignorant. But, I think it's safe to say that most African Americans will not rush the money to Switzerland, Bermuda or the Caymans. Most of the money will not disappear in insufficiently hedged or unhedged "hedge" funds.

No, instead the money will pay off mortgages, hopefully recapitalizing banks and stabilizing them. The money will go to buying new appliances. It will also go to higher education. Can you imagine how many people will return to school to finish degrees or get new ones? People will suddenly have the breathing room to do so. Crimes of a desperate nature will decrease. The money will go to churches and finance new church building projects. Some money will line the pockets of some worthy pastors and some unworthy pastors, but that's fine, because both groups will spend. Blighted neighborhoods will spruce up. Dreams deferred will become more possible. Much of the money will actually be spent in red states, thus placating the GOP.

Sounds like a rising tide!

Paul Devlin is a graduate student and writer on Long Island, N.Y.

A Concise History of White People's Relation to Black People in the United States

2008-12-22T16:42:00.004-05:00

'Twas the Day of Election

2008-11-07T04:49:00.003-05:00

“When out in the world there arose such a clatter
I turned on my TV to see what was the matter
On all of the stations there were millions of Blackfolk
Standing in lines to cast their Black votes

More rapid than eagles their relatives came,
Cousins and aunts and voted the same
Voting for history and deep in their hearts
They honored their Ancestors who had done their part.

And then in a twinkling I heard at eleven
That Barack had been chosen over McCain and Palin
Tears flowed down the cheeks of people worldwide
And I saw My People bursting with pride

They were chubby and thin, the old and the young
They came from all places to right the wrongs
The world saw a people who were always denied
The justice for which many had died.

And then in a moment the Beautiful First Family
Came on the stage in front of humanity
And the tears flowed even more as we saw this great sight
And we said to the world on that glorious night:

‘The struggle continues, it will be hard and raw
But at this moment in time it is worth it all
For we can tell our daughters and we can tell our sons
That if we band together victories can be won…’”

"Twas the Night Before Election"...

2008-11-03T19:45:00.003-05:00

"Twas the night before election, when all through the land,
Everybody was stirring, to see who'd be the Man.
The Republicans were attempting to steal it again.
With visions of Oval Offices as part of their plans.

The voting booths were nestled all snug in their places,
Ready to discriminate against those with dark faces
With McCain in Arizona and Palin in Alaska
I tuned into the pundits to see what was the matta..."

More tomorrow...

The Racial DNA of The United States of Amnesia

2008-10-28T07:42:00.016-04:00

We're one week exactly from the most historic election in American history, and I continue documenting events during this period. I'm writing this from Thurgood Marshall/Baltimore-Washington International Airport while waiting for a flight to Toledo Ohio where I will be speaking to city residents on how to talk about racism.

My job should be easy tonight since yesterday a plot was uncovered to assassinate Barack Obama. Two white white supremacists from Tennessee were planning on killing 88 Africans in America, don all white tuxedoes then die in a hail of bullets attempting to kill Barack Obama. The news media is covering these events heavily and pundits are snickering about the absurdity of the plot and portray the two would-be assassins, Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman on the fringes of society and dismiss them as malcontent looney tunes vying for attention.

They're not.

They represent a large segment of the United States that has tolerated the existence of white supremacist groups since the founding of the Ku Klux Klan on Christmas Eve 1865, in Pulaski Tennessee. Like albino roaches, the KKK, Neo-Nazi, Skinheads and other white supremacist groups are born as mutant offspring of an America that spawns domestic terrorism against Black people. Members of these groups know that they say and practice what is on the minds of many white Americans too afraid to express their hatred toward Black people openly, but code it in syrupy language such as, "Country First!", "not like us", "Obama associates with terrorists" and "I just can't identify with him."

We forget how the KKK has a history of influence on electoral politics, particularly presidential elections particularly between 1915 and 1944.

We forget that white supremacists have routinely been found innocent despite overwhelming evidence that they are guilty of killing Africans in America.

We forget that Tuskegee University recorded 3,437 lynchings of Black people between 1880 and 1951, though some estimate that the number of unrecorded lynchings could be double or triple that amount.

We forget that embedded in the minds of many white women is that they will be paid attention to, rescued and exonerated from crimes if they blame an imaginary Black man for molestng, raping or hurting them. Behold the dumpy looking Ashley Todd last week accusing an imaginary "6 foot 4 inch" Black man with "shiny shoes" of carving a "backward 'B'" on her cheek and sticking his hand up her dress because "he" was angry about her support for John McCain. Salivating conservatives like McCain's Pennsylvania media director exaggerated the claims of "victim" Todd before she confessed that she had lied about the entire incident.

Yes, white supremacists know that embedded in the racist wombs of many white people is a primeval fear of Black people and how these wombs can become racist embryos if the right racial sperm penetrates them.

Todd knows it.

Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman know it.

David Duke knows it.

And so does Sarah Palin...

They all understand the racial DNA of the United States of America all too well...

What "Bradley Effect"?

2008-10-20T07:28:00.006-04:00

We've heard so much about the so-called "Bradley Effect" regarding race and this year's presidential election. I still am amazed how media, like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill, can turn non-issues into "reality", distort history and confuse their viewing public.

Repeat after me: "THE SO-CALLED 'BRADLEY EFFECT IS PURE FICTION!"

Read the following New York Times written by Blair Levin who actually worked on the 1982 campaign for the late mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley...

October 20, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
What Bradley Effect?

By BLAIR LEVIN

WITH only two weeks to go before the election, talk has turned to the Bradley effect. The phenomenon is named for Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, who lost the 1982 California governor’s race even though exit polls predicted he’d defeat his Republican opponent, George Deukmejian. Some white people, the theory goes, tell pollsters they will vote for black candidates and then, once in the voting booth, don’t.

While it’s no surprise that this has become a topic of discussion as John McCain and Barack Obama near the finish line, as someone who worked for Bradley’s campaign, I think it’s worth pointing out that the effect has been widely misunderstood.

On election night in 1982, with 3,000 supporters celebrating prematurely at a downtown hotel, I was upstairs reviewing early results that suggested Bradley would probably lose.

But he wasn’t losing because of race. He was losing because an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated, giving Mr. Deukmejian a narrow victory.

This is not to say that race wasn’t an issue; it was in 1982 and it has been since. But to those who keep citing the Bradley effect — not so fast. It’s more complicated than you think.

As we’re on the subject, we should free Tom Bradley’s name from an association he would have abhorred. After all, he practiced the sort of politics whose goal was to bring people together, not to play up their differences. He was the opposite of the “Us vs. Them” politics so often cited as demonstrating the Bradley effect.

I worked for Bradley in his 1973 mayoral campaign against Sam Yorty, the incumbent. Bradley was holding his own. But a key group, Jewish voters, was up for grabs. One Sunday, I drove Bradley to a banquet with a Jewish group. Walking in, I noticed many men wearing yarmulkes. I had one in my jacket and gave it to Bradley. He put it in his pocket.

When the event began, Yorty was called to the podium and given a yarmulke, which he put on. Then Bradley was called up. When offered a yarmulke, he said, “I have my own,” reached into his pocket, took it out and put it on. The response? Laughter, applause, smiles. It sent a message not of pandering — “I am one of you” — but rather, “We are all in this together.”

Bradley won the day and then the election. Over 20 years as mayor, he had the same effect on many diverse audiences. To me, that’s the real Bradley effect.

Blair Levin is managing director of a financial services firm.

IT'S ALIVE!!! John Muckain and Sandra Palinothology's Racial Frankenstein Monster

2008-10-13T10:35:00.008-04:00

Still blogging after all these years, especially now as we countdown to the most historic presidential election in American history...

The nearer we get to the election, the higher the anxiety is among people classified as white struggling with their racism. Five other points to ponder:

1. Consider the idiot who got up last Friday night and said that Barack Obama was an "Arab" (??!!)

2. The racism tolerated by both Muckain and Palinothology have come back to haunt them so that they are actually forced to defend Obama against the vile and vicious attacks of Joe and Josephine Six Pack. Like Shelley's monster, the encouragement of racist chants during political rallies has come back to haunt them. John Lewis likened the Muckain's rallies to those of George Wallace in 1972 that were a feeding frenzy for racists disguised as populism.

3. Muckain is plummeting in the polls and Americans are saying they're tired of the attacks on Obama.

4. The economy is on a roller coaster ride globally. It is a pyrrhic victory for Obama since the mess caused by Bush's "deregulation" and lack of oversight by a Republican Congress from 2000 to 2006 has created an unprecedented global financial crisis.

5. Palinothology's being found guilty of ethics violations by an Alaskan legislative committee.

It is fascinating how the media is now pumping up the notion of the so-called "Bradley Effect" which refers to the failed 1982 gubernatorial bid of Thomas Bradley because white voters lied to pollsters about who they would vote actually for.

CNN and other news outlets are raising the same specter with Obama's campaign and reports that he could lose as many as six points due to the fact that whites lie about voting for Black candidates to pollsters and actually vote for white candidates when the voting booths curtains are closed. It's almost as if the media is suggesting that white voters actually do this at the very last minute, and mentioning it over and over provides a "See? I'm not the only one who feels this way" rationale for the individual sitting on the white supremacy fence.

I think that this campaign will be written about for decades because so many ugly but ever present issues are surfacing: racism, sexism, voter disenfranchisement, experience of elected officials and the relationship between religion and the state.

More later...I hear the #1 Hockey Mom is about to make a speech...

Calling Barack Names or "Keep the nigger out of office"

2008-10-09T09:10:00.008-04:00

Yep, that's what 75 year-old Wade Williams said to the Registrar of Voters in Monroe Louisiana when he failed to get his voter registration card in the mail.

It's Day Two of my "blogging down" to the election, and I think Wade is representative of many white people voting against Obama rather than for McCain. I muse on how many times the word "nigger" has been used in the same sentence with "Obama" during this year. Sorta like asking the Zen-like question of how many drops of water are in the ocean.

Let's see, there's about 300 million folks living in the United States and I'm guessing that about 25% of them have called Barack a "nigger". Black, white, Asian, Latin@. Yep, I think that's about right give or take a few percentage points.

Now don't get me wrong, calling Barack Obama a "nigger" is very Amerikkkan and reflects a loyalty to Amerikkkan values that is deeply rooted in this nation's history of white supremacy. Sarah Palin referred to him as "Sambo", and as noted above Wade added his two cents worth to this Amerikkkan pastime.

When Black folk call him that, it just reflects the deeply-rooted self-hatred that is now part of the conversational DNA of Black Amerikkkan speech and rationalized by those who use it as an "in-group term of endearment".

Whatever...

Given the fact that "nigger" has been used millions of times in connection with Obama, it's no wonder that racism has undergirded this entire election year, including the Democratic primaries. It's like a social super glue that bonds Amerikkkans together regardless of race and makes for coded language when discussing race in America.

It's also not limited to trailer trash like Wade Williams, but oozes out more subtly in cocktail conversations, gated communities, coffee shops, over a game of bridge and bid whist, in Black and white barber/beauty shops and in high school cafeterias in far away North Dakota.

Yep, it's as Amerikkkan as apple pie...

Racism and the Election: Slithering into November 4...

2008-10-08T10:55:00.005-04:00

I've decided to do a daily blog from now until November 4 about this historic election. It is important that Africans in America provide an historical voice about what is going on now so that generations who follow might read Ourvoices rather than what a future or even contemporary white historian says about these events.

Last night I watched the debate between Barack and McCain. I got a little nostalgic since the debate took place at Belmont University, just a few miles from where I taught at Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities for 22 years while I lived in Nashville.

McCain is a mean-spirited S.O.B. and when he pointed to Barack as "that one", while lying about an energy bill, I winced since it reminded me of the "you people" comment of Ross Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign. McCain's campaign is in a desperate situation since it's behind in all of the national polls. Sarah "Hockey Mom" Palin is appealing to white racists in a speech she made two days ago in Florida. Blackfolk are very skilled at reading coded racist language, simply because of the fact we have to in order to survive in a white supremacist society. I don't expect either Palin or McCain to apologize for their not-so-coded racist remarks. They're appealing to the hardcore white supremacist element that comprises a third of all of those who will vote in the first place and their votes are definitely needed to get McCain back in the race.

Stock markets around the world are tanking and the stupid $700 billion "bailout-to-Wall Street-executives" simply isn't working. This has been to Barack's advantage since Americans see the Democrats are viewed as being better able to handle the economy. Are we looking at a global depression? Who knows, but regardless the end of America white supremacist rule over the world is waning...

Whipping Black Professionals in America...

2008-06-10T15:56:00.005-04:00

Like other Black professional males, I am asked to serve as a “role model” and speak to Black children and professionals about a host of issues.

I have seriously thought about incorporating a business dubbed “Rent a Male Black for Your Organization” (RAMBO for short), because of the high demand for “professional” African-American males to talk before various groups about their “endangerment” and to serve as “role models” for Black children. I rarely decline these invitations, and when I do it has been primarily because of the stupidity of persons -both Black and white - who believe that they should “screen” what I say before it is presented to the designated group. Fear of my presentation “offending” someone about race is uppermost in their minds. I always refuse to do this...

I have heard other brothers give similar stories of how persons have persuaded them to avoid mentioning “controversial” topics such as Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, the Million Man March or even the continent of Africa! I am very forthright with these organizations and tell that perhaps Clarence Thomas would make a better keynote speaker than me. These organizations---public and private---while outwardly professing to want their children and employees to “see and hear a positive Black male role model” in reality wish to keep the jelly beans stuck at the bottom of the bag to quote the infamous “Rodney King” tape of corporate America.

Being a RAMBO is akin to being an advisor to guerrilla fighters in the midst of the enemy's camp with limited weaponry.

In the case of employees, their frustrations over the racism present in their particular company is expressed by furtive glances at their white colleagues when I say something that sends a message they dare not utter for fear of retaliation. There is a vicarious satisfaction derived through me in “telling it like it is” as a Black man to “the man” in their company. On one occasion a brother came to me after I had made my presentation, shook my hand vigorously and told me that I had “got them”--- “got” meaning that I had said some things that he wished he could say, and “them” being his white co-workers. I asked him what prevented him from telling his co-workers about daily job related ills involving racism in a company known for its hostile working environment toward African Americans. Without hesitation he said “fear”. He said that mortgages, children's tuition and other financial considerations forced him to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself.

I thought about the captured African men on plantations over the centuries who performed the drudgery of slavery on a daily basis, but were unable to express their frustrations and/or suggestions to a "master" who could punish quickly and with extreme severity. These captured men harbored anger, fear and rage as they saw relatives and friends sold, beaten, raped and mutilated.

I have been told that it is a bad analogy between them and Cinque's children who have “made it” in Fortune 500 corporations and are getting paid for the work they do. After all, aren't Cinque's children “getting paid”, commute to homes that hardly resemble slave quarters and eat the finest food that money can buy? Aren't Cinque's children, joining country clubs that historically excluded them? Aren't Cinque's children sending their children to the Ivy League for training to cope with white America? Hell, aren't Cinque's children making progress, if you please?

If the analogy stays at the level of material comparisons, perhaps the comparison is extreme. If it corresponds to the psychology of Cinque's children and his ancestors, then I would argue that it is entirely accurate. The slave on the plantation, intimidated by the "master's" whip is psychologically identical to the Black male executive who bites his tongue for fear of the whip of firing, demotion or isolation on the rungs of the corporate ladder. I have been asked repeatedly by white colleagues if Blacks are as “angry” as Elise Cose says they are in his book Rage of a Privileged Class. My reply is “angrier”. No African American professional doubts the genuine fear of retaliation at the end of Du Bois's century of the color line, and find themselves remarkably similar to their ancestors who feared rope and whip as they worked to harvest massa's crop.

This fear of the economic “whip” of slavery is not limited to the expanded Black professional class, but pervades all Black working males in America. I have heard Black men and Black women debate strategies concerning how they might wear their hair---facial and braided--- not only in corporate settings, but in gas stations, fast food restaurants and at hotels.

The whip extends to any African American who comes “too Black and too strong” in an educational, government, or corporate setting. White America prefers a timid approach to African Americans' “blackness” especially the Blackness of Cinque's children. Toni Morrison's brilliant essay on the smile of Clarence Thomas tells how Black smiles provide a degree of comfort for whites in dealing with Black males. The rapper Ice Cube in one of his rhymes asks the rhetorical question, “Why do Black folk always have to show their teeth?” It is because shiny white teeth assure white America that Black males are still happy with the treatment received by them at the hands of a society that daily disaffirms both their manhood and Blackness. The teeth of an Eddie Murphy assuages consciences wondering about their own complicity in the continued whipping that Cinque's children receive at the post of an America desperately looking for an internal enemy to blame for its ills.

Thus Spake HiLIARy Clinton...

2008-05-25T17:19:00.009-04:00

In the beginning, Politricks created HiLIARy

HiLIARy's campaign was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of HiLIARy as she saw the rise of Prophet Barack who would be King of Americaland.

And Politricks said, let there be lies: and there were Lies.

And Politricks saw the lies, that they were good...

And HiLIARy became the Princess of Lies.

HiLIARy divided the people by the lies she told.

She spake about being shot at in Bosnia.

And it was not so.

She spake about the unimportance of Prophet Martin during the Civil Rights Movement

And it was not so.

She promised that the Lands of Michigan and Florida would not be counted because of their sins against the Democratic Party.

And it was not so, especially when she saw the rise of Prophet Barack.

She said that she would not seek her throne in Florida.

And again it was not so...

And the rise of Prophet Barack brought great fear unto the heart of Princess HiLIARy.

And her great fear of Prophet Barack causeth her to speak unto her servants, "Come, let us tell even greater lies about why Prophet Barack might be slain if he is elected King of Americaland."

And the people were wroth with the words of Princess HiLIARy. She spaketh a loathsome thing unto the land where several kings had been slain.

And the wrath of the people turned against Princess HiLIARy because she spake of the death of former Prince Bobby and Prophet Barack.

And so Princess HiLIARy wrote unto the great kingdom of New York words that were also lies about her not meaning what she had spaketh.

But the people did not believe her because their wrath was kindled against her words suggesting that the young Prophet Barack might be slain...

And the people started thinking and turned their eye with favor toward the young Prophet Barack...

Thus the seeds of anger were sown again Princess HiLIARy.

And the people saw that it was good...

Black Bogeymen, Barack and the 2008 Presidential Vote

2008-05-13T22:10:00.005-04:00

This article first appeared as an editorial written by me in the May 6, 2008 Nashville Tennessean.

A double standard for a black candidate

Two months ago, white America had only two black activist ministers as their bogeymen, the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

They can now add a third: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago, since most of white America did not know he existed prior to March 13, when ABC News aired highly edited segments of his sermons.

The sermon segments, looped thousands of time on news outlets and YouTube became the most talked about "political issue" of the 2008 presidential campaign since Wright's most famous parishioner was Barack Obama. I believe that clear thinking Americans will hold the candidates responsible for their policy proposals rather than their pastors' utterances.

As an African-American, I am used to experiencing double standards in every aspect of my existence in this country. Stiffer sentencing for rock (crack) cocaine users (majority of whom are black) than powdered cocaine users (majority of whom are white), lighter sentences for white than black juveniles, whites "finding food" during the Katrina disaster while blacks "looted" for the same food are just three examples of how white America places a Band-Aid on white "challenges" and performs major surgery on black "problems"…

Hold white candidates' feet to fire

So for a change, let's follow the logic when by holding some of the white 2008 candidates' feet to fire the way some white Americans have done with Obama's:

• Mitt Romney was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints before 1978 when it taught that some black people of "Hamitic lineage" were banned from its priesthood.

• Priests in Rudy Giuliani's faith community, the Roman Catholic Church, had molested children and banned women from its priesthood.

• John Hagee, John McCain's pastor, referred to the papacy as "The Great Whore."

By the standards imposed on Obama, all of these candidates should be castigated and vilified for not leaving their respective faith communities and held accountable for not "repudiating and denouncing" their pastors and priests. But we forget one thing: they're all white and Obama is black, and so the white double standard forces Barack to be joined at the hip with Jeremiah Wright for the duration of his bid for the presidency.

Because of this racial hypocrisy, I am convinced that nothing Obama says or does will be enough to satisfy the feeding frenzy involving his former pastor.

Even though we have 4,000 dead Americans in Iraq.

Even though the dollar is at an all-time low in global markets.

Even though gas is creeping toward $4 per gallon.

Even though the mortgage crisis is snatching the "American Dream" of owning one's home from millions.

Even though these real crises exist in a nation that has never dealt honestly with racism, we choose to make Barack Obama responsible for the utterances of his minister. The 51st state of the United States is the "State of Denial." So says political commentator Paul Levy.

I agree with him.

Jeremiah's Right!

2008-04-28T20:54:00.004-04:00

"Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is! How it pierces to the heart!"

--- Jeremiah, 4:18, NIV

During the past four days, I've been amused to "hear" the corporate news media react to Dr. Jeremiah Wright's three extraordinary presentations on the Bill Moyers Show, the Detroit NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet and the National Press Club.

The silence has been deafening compared to the corporate media feeding frenzy over the out of context snippets from Wright's sermons delivered nearly seven years ago. The media "experts" on nearly nothing but commenting on nearly everything have zipped their pie holes shut.

This silence is because Jeremiah's right.

He is right about how a consistent and bloody history of domestic and international terrorism cause "chickens to come home and roost"

He is right about the cultural differences existing between Africans in America and European Americans relative to educational learning styles, music and linguistics.

He is right that his vilification by the corporate owned media is really an attack on the Black church and its historic role in forcing this nation to live up to the principals outlined in the Constitution which has always been a fickle lover to Africans in America.

He is right in speaking truth to power and questioning Dick Cheney's "patriotism". Cheney received five --- count them --- five deferments to avoid being drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

Jeremiah is right that few white Americans, and particularly reporters know anything about Black Liberation Theology.

If your perceived world through its media, educational and entertainment systems, reinforce the false notion that "white" culture, accomplishments, history, music and even "white" interpretations of the Sacred and the Eternal should be viewed as "righteous", "infallible" and superior, you will begin to think of yourself as a perverted "First Cause" --- a "god" if you please --- and see all others, not only as inferior, but possessing an inability to challenge anything about how you perceive the world in which you think you have created.

You will be utterly confused.

You will be unable to accept the simple idea that you may be incorrect about people of color, incorrect about how people should worship, and incorrect about the "superiority of white culture". In sum, you will have little need for anyone's opinion except your own and a narrow interpretation of the world around you.

Yes, Jeremiah's right, and unfortunately you're wrong...

Toni Morrison's "The Seven Days" from the Song of Solomon

2008-04-26T17:06:00.002-04:00

'Okay, said [Guitar], 'but you have to know that what I tell you can't go any further. And if it does, you'll be dropping a rope around my neck. Now do you still want to know it?'"
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"'I suppose you know that white people kill black people from time to time, and most folks shake their heads and say, 'Eh, eh, eh, ain't that a shame?"

"Milkman raised his eyebrows. He thought Guitar was going to let him in on some deal he had going. But he was slipping into his race bag. 'I can't suck my teeth or say 'eh, eh, eh.' I had to do something. And the only thing left to do is balance it; keep things on an even keel. Any man, any woman, or any child is good for five to seven generations of heirs before they're bred out. So every death is the death of five to seven generations. You can't stop them from killing us, from trying to get rid of us. And each time they succeed, they get rid of five to seven generations. I help keep the numbers the same.'"

"There is a society. It's made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks. They don't initiate anything; they don't even choose. They are as indifferent as rain. But when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner if they can. If the Negro was hanged, they hang; if a Negro was burnt, they burn; raped and murdered, they rape and murder. If they can. If they can't do it precisely in the same manner, they do it any way they can, but they do it. They call themselves the Seven Days. They are made up of seven men. Always seven and only seven. If one of them dies or leaves or is no longer effective, another is chosen. Not right away, because that kind of choosing takes time. But they don't seem to be in a hurry. Their secret is time. To take the time, to last. Not to grow; that's dangerous because you might become known. They don't write their names in toilet stalls or brag to women. Time and silence. Those are their weapons, and they go on forever."

"You? You're going to kill people?"

"Not people. White people."

"But why?"

"I just told you. It's necessary; it's got to be done. To keep the ratio the same."
"And if it isn't done? If it just goes on the way it has?"

"Then the world is a zoo, and I can't live in it."

"Why don't you just hunt down the ones who did the killing? Why kill innocent people? Why not just those who did it?"

"It doesn't matter who did it. Each and every one of them could do it. So you just get any one of them. There are no innocent white people, because every one of them is a potential nigger-killer, if not an actual one. You think Hitler surprised them? You think just because they went to war they thought he was a freak? Hitler's the most natural white man in the world. He killed Jews and Gypsies because he didn't have us. Can you see those Klansmen shocked by him? No, you can't."

172 Bullets in Three Black Bodies...

2008-04-25T11:03:00.015-04:00

As many Blackfolk were, I was looking at CNN about two hours ago when the verdict came in that all of the "police officers" were found not guilty of killing 23-year old Sean Bell on November 25, 2006 --- the day of his wedding. One of my former students at Vanderbilt University, Jackie Lopardo an attorney in New York, texted me her anger over the media and the verdict. I heard from Yaa Asantewaa who doubts if anything will be done in this latest case of police violence toward us.

And the beat goes on...

Sean Bell - 50 bullets
Amadou Diallo - 41 bullets
Deandre Brunston - 81 bullets

These are all Black men who were murdered by police. The total bullets in the bodies of Sean, Amadou and Deandre: 172. That's an average of 57 bullets ripping through the flesh of each of these Black men.

57 bullets
57 bullets
57 bullets...

These police murders have long been so routine, that I believe if I had to make a choice between abolishing the death penalty and abolishing "justified homicide" by police officers, I would choose the latter.

172 bullets
172 bullets
172 bullets...

While white folks get alarmed at the righteous indignation of Jeremiah Wright toward a nation addicted to violence at all levels, they should see this indignation arising in part from the long, sordid and murderous conduct of police in the killings of Sean, Amadou and Deandre and other Blackpeople. Police departments kill Blackmen as an indoor sport --- target practice if you please and no one gives a damn. It is sanctioned by a nation that has always seen Blacklife as cheap and dispensable.

We will see what Blackpeople in New York and the nation do about this latest "abortion of justice" as Al Sharpton labels it. Probably nothing, because we yield to white supremacy's aggressive brainwashing that convinces Us that Our lives are indeed cheap. I'm reminded of the last verse of Jayne Cortez' powerful poem, "There it is::

"And if we don’t fight
If we don’t resist
If we don’t organize and unify and
Get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
The exaggerated look of captivity
The stylized look of submission
The bizarre look of suicide
The dehumanized look of fear
And the decomposed look of repression
Forever and ever and ever
And there it is."

172 bullets...
172 bullets...
172 bullets...

The White Man's Burden is Not the Black Man's Responsibility

2008-03-17T07:39:00.004-04:00

Sister Jasmyne Cannick nails white supremacy's attempt to discredit Rev. Jeremiah Wright and by default, any political utterings from Black pulpits. I've asked my friends, "What is incorrect about anything Rev. Wright has said?" Absolutely nothing...

The White Man's Burden is Not the Black Man's Responsibility

Jasmyne Cannick
http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/03/the-white-mans-burden-is-not-t-000339.php

Posted March 17, 2008 12:44 AM

Jasmyne Cannick is a critic and commentator based in Los Angeles who can be reached at www.jasmynecannick.com.

Wright may be retired now, but thank God for us that there are still pastors and ministers like him out there who aren't afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to the United States Government and the history that was so conveniently left out of the schoolbooks.

Well I guess on the bright side of things, there should be no more questions about whether or not Senator Barack Obama is a Christian.

If you recall, throughout his campaign for the presidency, he's been painted out to be an undercover Muslim who was sworn into office on the Koran. When that didn't work, they switched to rumors that he doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance and he was the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan's flunky. They said he's anti-Israel, friends with terrorists...who actually want him to win. And the most absurd rumor of all...he's the Anti-Christ.

Now the focus for Obama haters has turned to his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and what are being called "controversial" comments he's made from the pulpit regarding America's politics.

It seems that it's not enough that we've adopted their religion and most Blacks are worshiping to their white blue-eyed Jesus, but now they want to dictate the message that we receive as well. And in the process, they've backed Obama against a wall, forcing him to publicly distance himself from his pastor in order to prove that he's not an angry Black man in disguise.

Civil rights icon the Rev. Joseph Lowery once said, "The country's creating a 51st state--the state of denial.

I guess if the history books favored my race against all reality, I'd be pissed off at anyone who tried to say otherwise. Too bad.

The fact is that Rev. Wright isn't the first or the last preacher or Black to call out America for her racist history. A history that for some reason we are always being encouraged to forget because today Americans are transcending race. Is that why Black men and women are being imprisoned almost as fast their mothers can give birth to them? Is that the reason why a man who called a group of young Black women "nappy-headed ho's" is still on the air? And were we rising above race when it was joked that Tiger Woods should be lynched? Is the transcending of race to blame for the pimps and ho's parties on university and college campuses around the country?

The belief that America is somehow transcending race because whites voted for a Black man is dangerous thinking.

Another greatly feared Black man, Dr. Maulana Karenga, taught me that I am American by birth and African by choice and quite frankly that's the feeling of a lot of African-Americans who are fully aware of the United States' role in the history of not only the underdevelopment of Africa, but generations of Black Americans. One Black man running for president isn't enough to erase that history or the feelings that many Blacks harbor -- whether publicly or on the down low -- towards the United States government and white folks. We haven't touched on the issue of reparations, which our government continues to downplay.

But it's this constant state of denial that continues to have some white folks' sheets all up in a bunch to the point where they want to now go into our churches and dictate the message that the pastor delivers. And if they have their way, we'll be singing hallelujah and thanking Jesus for slavery, Jim Crow, and the end of affirmative action, because if you recall it was the Bible that justified whites' mistreatment of Blacks. But wait---we haven't forgotten Guyana.

The church, our church, white Jesus aside, is the one institution that carried Blacks through America's state-sanctioned slavery, lynching, racial discrimination, oppression, disenfranchisement, and exploitation. It is not our responsibility as Blacks to sugarcoat the truth to make it a easier pill for some whites to swallow. We didn't have a choice between the red or the blue pill, reality or make believe. We came out of the womb awake to the ways of the world.

And it'll probably be right about now that most whites reading this will begin to tune out.

Yes, it's that state of denial that begins to kick in right about now whenever the words lynching, racism, and slavery are mentioned in relationship to the Black experience and the role whites played in it that is hard for some to comprehend. Unless, however, it's in the form of a primetime movie special during Black History Month, then it's all good for about two hours and some change to remember.

So here comes the mainstream, and at times divisive, media trying to take Wright's comments out of context and making it into a bigger issue than what it should be, perhaps to make up for a slow news day and/or Clinton's complaints of a media love affair with Obama. Either way, I thought race wasn't supposed to be a factor in this election? Maybe they're forgetting that Wright is but one Black pastor in this country and I am willing to bet that a peek into other Black churches around the country and the message is quite the same, maybe even more controversial. And that's just Black churches.

Let's not forget All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, which had been under investigation for a guest sermon its former rector had given just before the 2004 presidential election. In it, he strongly criticized the war in Iraq but said he believed that both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, were good Christians. This was taken as an endorsement of Kerry over Bush and in came the IRS.

I know it's hard to believe for some, but everyone isn't down with America's unwritten policy of bomb now, ask questions later. I think we all know what lengths the American government will go to keep the truth from coming out.

It wasn't that long ago when we were dealing with the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow. Then came the mysterious arrival of crack cocaine in Black neighborhoods around the country and COINTELPRO. By the late 70s, the white sheets had been replaced with business suits and phony smiles. And even though the damage had been done that didn't stop them from giving us Reagan.

A.M.E. church founder Richard Allen said "the only place that Blacks felt they could maintain an element of self-expression was the church," and I'll add, but they still managed to burn down more than a few back in the day.

Fortunate for Dr. Wright, it's not so easy to get rid of dissident voices today as it was 30 and 40 years ago.

Dr. Wright may be retired now, but thank God for us that there are still pastors and ministers like him out there who aren't afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to the United States Government and the history that was so conveniently left out of the schoolbooks.

Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it...and this ain't no reentry in slavery. Preach on, preach on.

Mammy Goes to Washington

2008-02-13T12:28:00.007-05:00

Melissa Harris-Lacewell's article is the most brilliant analysis I've read about the role of gender and race in the 2008 presidential race. Here it is:

==============================================================================
Mammy Goes to Washington by Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Feb. 8, 2008–There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I’m just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary’s Scarlett O’Hara act.

Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband’s power and influence, have been complicit in black women’s oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.

The loyal Mammy figure, who toiled in the homes of white people, nursing their babies and cleaning and cooking their food, is the most enduring and dishonest representation of black women. She is a uniquely American icon who first emerged as our young country was trying to put itself back together after the Civil War. The romanticism about this period is a bizarre historical anomaly that underscores America’s deep racism: The defeated traitors of the Confederacy have been allowed to reinterpret the war’s battles, fly the flag of secession over state houses, and raise monuments to those who fought to tear down the country. Southern white secessionists were given the power to rewrite history even as America’s newest citizens were relegated to forced agricultural peonage, grinding urban poverty and new forms segregation and racial terror. Mammy was a central figure in this mythmaking and she was perfect for the role. The Mammy myth allowed Americans in the North and South to ignore the brutality of slavery by claiming that black women were tied to white families through genuine bonds of affection. Mammy justified past enslavement and continuing oppression.

Privileged, Southern white women were central in creating and propagating the Mammy myth. In 1923, the United Daughters of the Confederacy were nearly successful in lobbying Congress to erect a statue on federal land to honor “the memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South.” The desire to memorialize Mammy reveals how Southern white women reveled in the subordinate role of their darker peers. These black women were vulnerable to the sexual and labor exploitation of slaveholders and household employers. These women masked their true thoughts and personalities in order to gain a modicum of security for themselves and their families.

The Mammy monument was meant to display black women as the faithful, feisty, loyal servants of white domesticity. In the face of the Mammy myth, real black women spoke for themselves against the monument. It was substantial, sustained, opposition from organized African American women and the black press that killed the Mammy monument proposal.

Media have cast the choice in the current election as a simple binary between race and gender. But those who claim that black women are ignoring gender issues by voting for Barack just don’t get it. Hillary cannot have black women’s allegiance for free. Black women will not be relegated to the status of supportive Mammy, easing the way for privileged white women to enter the halls of power.Black feminist politics is not simple identity politics. It is not about letting brothers handle the race stuff or about letting white women dominate the gender stuff.The black women’s fight is on all fronts.

Sisters resist the ways that black male leaders try to silence women’s issues and squash women’s leadership. At the same time, black women challenge white women who want to claim black women’s allegiance without acknowledging the realities of racism. They will not be drawn into any simple allegiance that refuses to account their full humanity and citizenship.Black women want out of the war.Black women need health insurance. Black women need decent schools for their children. Black women need a strong economy that creates jobs. Black women need help caring for their aging parents. Black women want a Democratic win in the fall. Sisters chose Barack on Tuesday because they believe he can deliver these things and that is much more empowering than just having a woman in the White House.

Massa Bill, Missus Hillary and Oh

2008-01-14T16:40:00.000-05:00

(With apologies to Richard Pryor's character, Mudbone)

Once upon a time on the Clinton Plantation, there was a young slave named Oh.

That's right, Oh.

White folks back in the day called Black folks what they wanted to and they decided to call this one "Oh" because he was so smart. When people on the Clinton Plantation asked him questions, his answers surprised Massa and Missus Clinton so much, they would just say, "Oh!".

People would ask Oh all types of questions about the world, the plantation, cotton and 'gators and he'd always give such wonderful answers so much so that questions started coming from the slaves like, "was he really Black enough". Now, keep in mind that on most plantations there wuz always slaves who had white daddies and on occasion, while Massa was lookin' the other way, a slave might even have a white mama. Yes they did.

But that ain't what this story is 'bout. Let's get back to what happened to Oh. He taught himself to count and read --- somethin' slaves just wasn't spozed to do. He preached on Sunday down at the slave quarters and the Black folks just loved how he told them about the visions God had given him, just like Prophet Nat Turner. Oh was smart all right, and white folks loved to hear him make speeches and Black folks loved to hear him tell them about the world beyond the Clinton Plantation.

One day, after the harvest was in and the cotton was chopped, Oh called a secret meeting down in the slave cabins and told his friends and family that he thought it was time for them all to run away from the Clinton Plantation. Just get up and get and don't look back. The slaves looked shocked and many of them just said, "Oh!" real loud. One of the old slaves, Rastus, (who some say came from the Johnson Plantation in South Carolina) got up in the back and said that he'd been servin' Massa and Missus Clinton for 16 years and he wasn't 'bout to run away. Massa Clinton was gettin' old Rastus said, but Missus would take his place when De Lawd called Massa home.

Many of the slaves mumbled their approval of what Rastus said, but the younger slaves and many of them who learned to read from Oh, said there were better places than the Clinton Plantation and that running away was important so that they could decide what they wanted to do rather than being told what to do. Even if they were caught and killed, it was better to be dead and free rather than alive and enslaved by the Clintons. Some of the old slaves said Massa and Missus acted like they was Black anyways because they would eat in the slave quarters during their birthdays and Massa Clinton could play the banjo better than some of them!

Never mind that the Clintons had told them that if they were caught stealing a hog they would be sold...

Never mind that the Clintons had ignored the slaughter of hundreds of slaves on a nearby plantation when the Massa went away to visit New York...

The old slaves loved the Clintons a lot and just couldn't imagine life without them since they had treated them so well. They felt that other white folks might be mad at them if they were caught runnin' away and so would the Clintons.

They might not get any more Christmas hams, Saturday night socials or chances to buckdance at very rapid speed. They remembered how the slaves Jesse and Al had tried to run and they almost got away but were brought back to the plantation and watched carefully.

The vote was taken. Oh's followers won and decided to run before next harvest depending on weather, when the Clintons would leave and how bad the world was around them. But for sho they wuz gonna to run. Oh's plans weren't perfect, but he had the future in his eyes and had always been able to pull people together during harvest plantin' season and teachin' them how to read and write.

The next mornin', Rastus and a group of others went to the Big House's back door and told the Clintons that Oh was plannin' to run. The Clintons were shocked. They knew Oh was smart but they had always kept him in his place and were disappointed that this smart young slave was organizing others to escape from the Plantation. They were afraid however, to punish him because they feared that the other slaves would see through their hypocrisy of being "benevolent slave owners." Instead, they decided to start a whispering campaign against him. Why not talk about his "lack of experience" in leading Blackfolks to the Promise Land? Why not talk about their skills at running a plantation and how kind they had been to their slaves?

Hmmmm...it might work...

(to be continued...)

Lotioning Up Black Boys

2007-11-30T20:27:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, a couple friend of mine shared a story and gave me permission to share it with you. Names are changed but the details are accurate.

Their nine-year old son, (we'll call him "Jamal") a very bright little boy, went to a sleepover at his best friend's house. My couple friend knew the single mother of their son's friend and had swapped sleepovers with her several times. At the sleepover, Jamal was the only boy coming from a two-parent home and each boy had packed clothing for the night with the necessary Game Boys and Play Station cartridges --- absolute necessities for an enjoyable weekend for the pre-adolescent boys.

When Jamal came home to his parents the next morning, he asked his Dad why didn't he "lotion up". His father asked him what he meant. Jamal said that after he and his friends had taken showers in the morning, all of them were slathering various body lotions all over the body from head to toe. He simply put his on the "ash spots" that Black people have --- elbows, knees, ankles and a few drops on the back of his hands. The boys said he didn't know how to "lotion up", and that all of their Moms had taught them this a long time ago. Jamal had seen his mother go through this morning ritual that Blackwomen have, but had modeled his behavior after his father who dabbed a little bit of grease on the ash spots the way most Blackmen do. A simple thing though, took on significance since Jamal's friends had made him the butt of jokes for the rest of the weekend.

Jamal wasn't traumatized by the event in the least, but his parents were a little shaken that a "feminine" behavior --- "lotioning up" --- had been used to poke fun at their son who had simply followed his Dad's footsteps --- or should I say rubbing --- which he had seen a thousand times.

I mused on this event and saw yet another indication of how the assault on Black males has even entered the area of personal hygiene. The lotioned up Black boys at Jamal's friend's house weren't "guilty" of anything sinister and neither were their mothers. All however, were victims of the increasing number of absent fathers who simply don't show their sons the little things that fall under the category of what is "masculine".

Mwalimu Baruti has written extensively about the "effeminization" of Black men, and I agree with him. It is nothing new to cite data about the "disappearing Black father" in the lives of Black boys; it's one of the most written about topics within the Amerikkkan Afrikan community. The consequences of this disappearance is a plethora of behaviors --- boys wanting pedicures, talking about about lotions among themselves and swabbing the latest clear Max Factor polish on their little fingernails. Oh, I know, some of the women who read this might say this is sexist nonsense and there's nothing wrong with a boy learning to be "well-groomed" at an early age. I would ask my Sisters, however are these the same boys who will become tomorrow's metrosexual --- similar to the self-obsessed and narcissistic "Greer Childs" character in Spike Lee's film, She's Gotta Have It, and would you want him for either yourself or your daughter?

I don't know, maybe I'd better expand my slathering beyond the elbows, ankles, knuckles and knees...

The Slave Side of Sunday - Anthony Prior

2007-10-30T23:23:00.001-04:00

It is extremely rare to see a Black athlete speak up about white supremacy in sports, particularly football where Black bodies are battered, killed, paralyzed and thrown away similar to the slave on a plantation. Anthony Prior is a strong voice telling the unvarnished truth about the "$40 Million Slaves" spoken of by William Rhoden in his book by the same title...

The Big Payback?: Reparations in South Afrika

2007-10-23T05:56:00.000-04:00

The big payback?
by Kwanele Sosibo and Niren Tolsi

22 October 2007 11:59

Still hurting: Sindiswa Nunu was shot in both legs by apartheid police. (Photograph: David Harrison)

A shattered life
In 1976 Sindiswa Nunu, then a pupil at Gugulethu’s Isaac Mkhize Secondary, was shot in both legs by the police during the wave of student uprisings that swept the country.

She could not walk for three months. Eight years later, while pursuing her diploma in teaching, she was teargassed and detained when Nyanga Bush, a squatter camp near Crossroads in Cape Town, was raided under the pretext that it was a “terrorist camp”. An active United Democratic Front (UDF) member, she was forced to abandon her studies and live life on the run.

Detained and beaten several times in the ensuing years, a five-months pregnant Nunu suffered a miscarriage after a brutal beating in 1987 at Caledon Square Police Station.

Today she is unemployed and lives in an unfinished house in Phillipi. She survives on grants she receives for two of her four children. She half jokingly says that apartheid is the reason she is single, because marriage would have demanded a more stable lifestyle.

The case and the Tort Act
Nunu is one of 97 plaintiffs who have taken on multinationals -- including IBM, General Motors, Daimler Chrysler, Rheinmetall Group and Barclays Bank -- as part of the Khulumani Support Group’s quest for reparations for gross human rights violations during apartheid.

They allege that these corporations “aided and abetted” the apartheid system by providing arms and ammunition (especially the Rheinmetall Group), military technology, oil and fuel for police and army vehicles used in the transport of personnel involved in violent human rights abuses. Khulumani has asserted that the firms profited from apartheid because of the cheap pool of labour entrenched through racialisation.

The case was initially thrown out by US district court Judge John Sprizzo in 2004, but last week, hearing an appeal, the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals found in favour of the plaintiffs. If the various corporations do not appeal against the judgement, the case will return to the district court to be heard again.

The appeal court found that Sprizzo had erred in “two fundamental respects” in 2004 when analysing the claims. Contrary to his judgement, the court found that the American federal court did indeed have jurisdiction to hear the claims under the Alien Tort Claims Act. It pointed out that liability in aiding and abetting does fall under international law. This, according to human rights activist Yasmin Sooka, has added weight to the “legitimacy” of the Tort Act “as a mechanism for human rights victims from around the world to seek reparations”.

A tort is an infringement of a right that leads to legal liability. The Tort Act was introduced in 1789 to cover violations during acts of piracy, infringements on the rights of diplomats and violations of safe conduct.

The section used by litigators against human rights abuse includes the assertion that American “district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the US”.

The Act has more recently been used to hold multinational corporations, governments and various armies accountable, in a court of law, for human rights abuses.

Precedents
The Act was first used for human rights litigation in 1979 when the family of 17-year-old Joel Filartiga sued the Paraguayan police chief over Filartiga’s torture and death, citing “a violation of the law of nations” redressable under the Act. A New York Federal Court ruled that Paraguay was responsible for state-sponsored torture and subject to prosecution under the Act. Other cases include the Ken Saro Wiwa litigation against the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, alleging complicity in the assassination of several Nigerians, and the case against Serbian military leader Radovan Karadzic, alleging he orchestrated various rapes and murders during the Balkan crisis.

Fewer than 100 cases have been filed under the Act and there has yet to be a judgement against a corporation.

The US ruling
In passing judgement in the South African case, Judges Korman, Katzman and Hall found that US federal district courts do have jurisdiction to try cases of this nature in relation to the Tort Act, reaffirming the possibility that future cases could be tried in this arena. The judgement allows the plaintiffs to amend their submissions when the case is heard again.

The judges found that Sprizzo had “erred in holding that aiding and abetting violations of customary international law cannot provide a basis for [the Act’s] jursidiction. We hold that in this Circuit, a plaintiff may plead a theory of aiding and abetting liability under [the Act].”

With the US and South African governments making submissions in favour of the corporations, the ruling also cautions against a blurring of the separation of powers when considering if a case is “justiciable”. The judgement states that assertions by the executive branch of governments are entitled to “respectful consideration”, but should “not necessarily preclude adjudication”.

“Not every case touching foreign relations is non-justiciable, and judges should not reflexively invoke these [political] doctrines to avoid difficult and somewhat sensitive decisions in the context of human rights,” it says.

Government response
The US government has maintained that litigation would cause tensions with South Africa and affect efforts at reconciliation and reparation.

The South African government, in a 2003 declaration made by then minister of justice Penuell Maduna and reiterated by current Minister Brigitte Mabandla, said the case interfered with its own rights to litigate. Ministerial spokesperson Zolile Nqayi confirmed this week that government’s position remains unchanged.

SA civil society’s response
Activist Dennis Brutus, one of the plaintiffs, said the government’s stance is spurious. “I find it a disgraceful submission by the government that they would turn their backs on their own citizens in favour of what is an attempt to maintain their neoliberal economic agenda,” said Brutus, who was shot in the back by police in 1963.

Nunu, now 46, joined the support group in 1999 for trauma counselling. “Apartheid would not have succeeded had these companies not supported the government. It would have been difficult to uphold apartheid if Caltex [a ChevronTexaco unit] had not provided the fuel for the hippos [Casspirs] to use, or if the banks had not supported the economy during the state of emergency,” she told the Mail & Guardian.

“Without the support of IBM pass laws would have been difficult to implement.”

She does not know what awards the court applications are seeking. Although there have been media reports placing the expected figure at $100-billion, Shirley Dunn, of the Khulumani Support Group, said the figure is unquantifiable.

Dunn added that apart from the 97 named plaintiffs, Khulumani had more than 45 000 members, who all stood to benefit.

Khulumani said the US ruling is “an important step forward in a fight for reparations”.

It pointed a finger at the government, saying it “has to date not made public the community reparations programme referred to by [former justice minister] Maduna in his ex parte declaration, based on President Thabo Mbeki’s announcement of April 2003. Khulumani calls on the South African government to make its proposals on community reparations public without further delay.”

The support group said an amount of R600-million, which remains in the President’s Fund, is not being used transparently, making it a struggle for organised victim groups to secure sustainable livelihoods. It said the group has been shunned by the justice department’s Truth and Reconciliation Unit, which “continues to function in an opaque fashion, and has not yet involved Khulumani in discussions to plan how to deal comprehensively with the unfinished business of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.

Companies contacted by the M&G failed to respond at the time of going to press.

An incomplete reconciliation
Alex Boraine, former vice-chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, insists that the TRC process in South Africa is incomplete and is mired in foot-dragging over prosecutions of those who were denied amnesty.

Those who did not appear before the commission or others who had obviously lied to it, or withheld testimony, should be in the dock, he said this week.

“The question of community reparations is being totally ignored,” he said, calling for a swift decision from the government to make transparent the processes of prosecution and reparation.

The targets
Barclays
British Petroleum
ChevronTexaco Corporation
ChevronTexaco Global Energy
Citigroup
Commerzbank
Credit Suisse Group
Daimlerchrysler
Deutsche Bank
Dresdner Bank
ExxonMobil Corporation
Ford Motor Corporation
Fujitsu
General Motors
IBM
JP Morgan Chase
Shell
UBS
AEG
Daimler-Benz
Fluor Corporation
Rheinmetall Group
Rio Tinto Group
Total-Fina-Elf

Al Qaeda's Ayman Zawahiri, Speaks Directly to Afrikans in Amerikkka

2007-10-15T21:51:00.001-04:00

It is interesting that the average Amerikkkan rarely sees an unedited video from Al Qaeda. In previous years, there were the unwarranted concerns that there were "secret messages" cryptically embedded in the tapes and therefore, they were "dangerous". The tape below was made by Ayman Zawahiri where he speaks directly about the motivation of Afrikans in Amerikkka who support Bush's racist regime. Notice Zawahiri's thoughts on Malcolm X, Colin Powell and Condolleezza Rice. I think you will find them fascinating...

"You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little Black boy and nothing happens."

2007-10-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Benjamin Crump said that.

He is the attorney for the Anderson family, the parents of Martin Lee Anderson a 14-year old boy, beaten to death by seven former boot camp guards and a nurse.

He said it after an all white jury deliberated just 90 minutes and found all eight of the defendants "not guilty" in the horrific beating of Martin.

Michael Vick may go to jail for killing dogs, these "guards" and "nurses" will go home...

Aren't you tired of white people (and in this case psychotic Black and Asian cops) killing Black people?

There are no consequences for killing a Black person in Amerikkka.

All of history attests to this fact with the bloody and sordid history of lynchings, castrations, medical apartheid, murders, kidnappings, rapes and drownings of millions of Black people throughout the world during the past 500 years is irrefutable evidence that the price of Afrikan life in the white world is cheap.

In my opinion, Ida B. Wells-Barnett said it best over 100 years ago; it is something that Afrikans must read, study and take heed to as we witness the killing of Sean Bell, the re-incarceration of Mychal Bell, one of the "Jena Six" and the exoneration of those who aided and abetted the death of Martin Lee Anderson.

"The lesson this teaches and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched."

--- Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In all its Phases, 1892

Jenacide

2007-09-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

"Jenacide" - another manifestation of white supremacy characterized by an obsession with exonerating whites from all manners of evil toward Black people while simultaneously punishing Black people for retaliating against the injustice perpetrated against them. The term gained popularity in 2007 when six Black boys were handed harsh jail sentences for responding to three nooses being hung from a schoolyard tree in the northern Louisiana town of Jena (pronounced "JEE-nah")...

Joy DeGruy Leary, author of The Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome and I went to Jena last Thursday in support of the "Jena 6" --- Robert Bailey, Carwin Jones, Mychal Bell, Theodore Shaw, Jesse Beard and Bryant Ray Purvis. By now you have heard about the escalating white supremacy/racism toward them after a schoolyard fight with a white boy who taunted them with racial threats and slurs. You can find out the details of by simply googling "Jena 6". Some thoughts on the rally...

1. There were more young Black people there than there were older Black folks. Like others, my heart was warmed and encouraged by this generation's unselfish support AND organizing around the Jena 6. It is truly a young people's movement that will not end in Jena. While others criticize younger Black folk over their obsession with bling, slavish devotion to fashion and selfishness, I saw thousands of young people who were organizing against injustice and making better plans for follow-up than the older leaders present at the rally.

2. This was a turning point in the use of Black radio to mobilize and organize Blackpeople. Hats off to Michael Baisden and other radio talk show hosts around the country who pulled off a stunning rally of nearly 100,000 (not the CNNizing crowd count for Black people of "15-20000 demonstrators") similar to how talk show hosts help make the 1995 Million Man March a success. It shows the power of the airwaves as a "town hall for Blackpeople" and revisits how radio was used as an organizing tool during the civil rights era.

3. Blackpeople are increasingly aware of how agent provocateurs attempt to disrupt meetings where Blackfolk are organizing. One of the first things that Al Sharpton noted was the loud noises from some unknown group of Blackfolk who were deliberately shouting their "anger" at the unjust incarceration of Mychal Bell. These agents feign "uncontrollable rage and anger" and can paralyze a meeting in a matter of seconds. They are the police and Blackfolk finally are beginning to see them for who they are --- buckdancing slaves of law enforcement injected into Ourmeetings for the purpose of disruption.

4. What are we going to do next? The white supremacists in Jena gave the middle finger to Blackpeople when they refused to grant bail to Mychal Bell on Friday. The Jena judge basically told Us that he didn't care how many Blackpeople rallied in "his" town; he wasn't letting Mychal go. In other words, Blackpeople, it's your move. We must always have a "Plan B, C, and D" in place when confronting white supremacy, otherwise we will be left dazed and confused by the white supremacists.

5. The wearing of Black around the country in solidarity for the Jena 6. I called friends in Chicago, Cleveland and California and was struck by the thousands of folk who wore Black on Thursday as a sign of solidarity. This shows the power of an idea and how we can mobilize on anything when we want. Economic boycotts are something that immediately comes to mind, but what about our portrayal in all forms of media, Katrina and other Jenacidal crimes against us in Amerikkka?

6. What you can do to help the Jena 6. The families of these young men have suffered mightily. They have mortgaged their homes, have to pay private tuition because the one high school in town won't let them attend, and sent them away to other locales because of threats to their lives.. You can help by donating to their defense fund. Put your money to work against jenacide and "Free the Jena Six"!...

PETAA: People for the Ethical Treatment of All Afrikans

2007-08-27T11:19:00.002-04:00

In light of the orgiastic treatment of Michael Vick by the media, and the outrage (shared by me) of his cruel treatment of dogs, I'm forming a new organization called PETAA (People for the Ethical Treatment of All Afrikans). Its animal analogue is PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) who wage similar battles for "animal rights". This is what PETAA promises to do...

1. Whenever an Afrikan is beaten, killed or maimed by a white supremacist, there will be a feeding frenzy on the perpetrator(s) that will call for their lynching, castration or both. At the time of this posting and according to google, 19,752 postings were related to the Vick case. We will call for similar media coverage for the Jena Six or the victims of the Katrina who were "mercifully" killed by nurses and doctors.

2. Members must be willing to hug an Afrikan who has been mistreated and if possible kiss them in the mouth.

3. U. S. Senators who are outraged by the abuse of Afrikans must cry on the Senate Floor.

4. A website should be erected that will thank the prosecutors who successfully try those who have abused Afrikans.

5. Background information and possible reasons why the white supremacist abused, killed or maimed the Afrikan will not be given. This will only be done for people who are privileged and white like Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Robert Downey, Jr.

Membership materials will be offered at a later posting. Until such time, make sure you hug an Afrikan, and cry when you hear that one has been mistreated, killed, maimed or wrongfully imprisoned...

Is Hillary Clinton White Enough to Be President?

2007-08-16T16:24:00.000-04:00

During the last few months, there have been numerous articles about whether or not Barack Obama is "black enough" to be President of the United States. Given the enormous importance of such questions in a white supremacist society, particularly as a way of creating doubt about the political commitment of Barack to the American Afrikan community, I thought I would list suspicions I have over candidate Clinton's "whiteness" and whether or not white people feel she is qualified to represent their interests in the White (no pun intended) House...here are my observations:

1. She admits being in an interracial marriage since her husband was declared by Toni Morrison as being "America's first Black President".

2. She admits that when she is around a lot of Black people, she lapses into a "southern Black dialect". Hear her "talk that talk" at: http://www.ifilm.com/profile/breitbart/video/2829104

3. Other than Barack Obama, she has the thickest lips of any candidate.

4. Magazines publish racy photos of her (as they do with Blackwomen) on the cover of their magazines.

5. She spent a lot of time in Arkansas, a state with a Black population of 16% which is above the national average.

6. Rap artist Timbaland raised money for her campaign.

So there you have it. Hillary seems to have been around just too many Blackfolks to occupy the White House. White America needs to get a whiter candidate that reflects Amerikkkan values such as eating white bread, wearing Elizabeth Ashley attire, saying that Elvis is still alive and listening to knowledgeable radio pundits such as Rush Limbaugh. Next thing you know she'll be eatin' watermelon, slappin' high fives, and sayin' that her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard...

The "Best Places" for White Folks to Live: Where there are no Blacks...

2007-07-31T10:23:00.001-04:00

Every year Money Magazine publishes a list entitled, "The Best Places to Live". The list always includes several indices the magazine claims are "good indicators" for quality of life. Quoting Money: "Some places have everything any family could want - economic opportunity, good schools, safe streets, things to do and a sense of community..."

Buried in the mounds of data Money collects under the heading "Meet the Neighbors" is something called the "Racial Diversity Index" (RDI) which gives June and Ward Cleaver an indication of how "racially diverse" the city/town is. Again, quoting Money: "100 is national average; higher numbers indicate greater diversity". In other words if a city/town scores "100" it is considered very racially diverse as opposed to 5.10 which would indicate racial homogenization.

Others have commented on Money's dubious statistics (see http://internetronin.blogspot.com/2007/07/money-gigo.html). Thus my home city of Baltimore, receives a 760 RDI (!) which means that it is 760% more "racially diverse" than the nation as a whole. In fact, Baltimore is not "racially diverse" since it is (quoting Internet Ronin) "64.34% Black, 31.63% white, 1.53% Asian, .32% Native American, and Hispanics/Latinos of any race make up just 1.70% of the population". Essentially it is a "biracial" city, consisting primarily of Africans in Amerikkka and whites. As Ronin correctly notes, "It seems to me that this so-called "Racial diversity index" is a code word for over-or under-representation of African Americans in a local population and has absolutely nothing to do with 'racial diversity.'"

So what we basically have is a dubious index that is really measuring how many Blackfolk are present (or absent) in a town/city. I looked at the top 10 cities listed in this year's index, Money's "RDI' (in italics) and then the percentage of Blacks in the population (bolded). Here are the data:

CITY "RDI" % Black Population
1. Middleton, WI, 32.8, 1.97%
2. Hanover, NH, 72.4, .47%
3. Louisville, CO, 31.5, .54%
4. Lake Mary, FL, 54.9, .24%
5. Claremont, CA 113.1, 4.98%
6. Papillion, NE, 27.9, .38%
7. Milton, MA, 60.1, .1%
8. Chaska, MN, 26.1, 1.02%
9. Nether Providence, PA, 45.8, 6.12%
10. Suwanee, GA, 96.3, .13%

Doing a little math, we find that the average RDI of these 10 municipalities is 62.1. Money says that "59.2" is the "national average for their selected listed, so hip hip hooray, for 2007 the top ten towns did slightly better than the "national average".

But wait. Let's take a closer look at the presence of Africans in Amerikkka in these towns/cities...

The average population of Africans in Amerikkka in these cities is 1.59%(!). That's right, under 2% and get this, that includes the city with the largest Black population, Nether Providence, PA (African American population = 6.12%). The lowest Black population in the "Top Ten" is Milton, MA (.1%). What Money gives its readers are extraordinarily white towns scattered over the nation which truly are the "Best Places for White People to Live" if they don't want to be around Black folk, who are of course criminal regardless of income and who (gasp!) will lower their property values.

Money, of course will not admit to any implied racism in choosing the towns, but would rather list it under the syrupy sweet category of "Meet the Neighbors" --- something that all good white people fleeing people of color are interested in. It would be interesting as demographics change in Amerikkka to see if increasing Black populations in these hamlets would automatically get them kicked off Money's list. Blacks and Latinos being associated with increasing crime rates is nothing new and Money lets it readers know in a very "civilized" way where these "undesirables" are nearly absent so their white readers will know where to move.

Me? I'm thinking about moving to Chaska, Minnesota (#8 on Money's list) and help increase their RDI. Watch out Chaska, Black man comin' down the street, locks and all to marry yo daughta...

“To my [white] boyfriend, Jesus.”

2007-07-01T17:09:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, I gave a seminar on Black male/female relationships at a Black church. At the close of the workshop, I was signing my books and overheard a conversation between two Black women in their mid 30s or so. I admittedly caught the tale end of their conversation, but heard one of them state emphatically, that, “her boyfriend was Jesus.” I was at first amused by what she said but then started thinking about her expression of love for the Son of God. Why this conflation of the divine with the romantic? How did she depict her “boyfriend” racially? Was he the misleading image of Jesus who has been drawn for centuries as a thin, white, blue-eyed, effeminate male, or did he possess the Black features of the man described in Revelation 1:14,15?

Given the bits and pieces of the conversation, I’d say it was the white boy image of Jesus.

I thought about how so much Black churchianity has become feminized. A few months ago, I participated in a men-only workshop at a Baltimore church entitled “Why Black Men Don’t Go to Church”. It was refreshing to hear Black men tell it like it is regarding their church attendance. I noticed that whenever race or racism was mentioned, howerver as a reason for non-attendance, it was frequently counterbalanced by “true believers” who claimed that Black men were “just sinful” and that the “devil had got a hold to Black men.”

To say the least, these are conversation stoppers and I’ve noticed that church-going Afrikans such as these drive in a race-neutral gear when it comes to talking about Jesus, the church, or anything dealing with their faith. This is especially true when it comes to discussing the social justice ministry of the Black church that historically lead the way for challenging white supremacy in the U. S. and the world. These believers' religion is deracinated and their uniqueness as Black “Christians” obliterated by a culturally gray and colorless profession of faith.

“I don’t care what color Jesus is; I just love him!” is usually followed by shouts of “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!”, and once again, Afrikan culture which is deeply rooted in Christianity and particularly in the Black church is neutralized. I’ve asked Black Christians that if it is true that it “makes no difference what color Jesus is, why not make him Black? Why not remove the white “Lamb of God” from sanctuary walls and replace Him with an image that looks like you and your children who invoke His name.?” These, of course are troubling questions for Black people who swallow hook, line and sinker, the Europeanized version of churchianity that has dominated the world and the minds of people of color for the past 1500 years.

And so I wonder about the Sister I heard at church the other day who asserted that her “boyfriend was Jesus.” Was he white, with pale milky features and stringy blonde hair the way white masters gave him to us on the plantation, and if so, was this her “ideal image” of who a lover should look like? Or, to paraphrase my Sister Gladys Knight, I wondered if she does get a real Black man as a boyfriend, will he be “second” to her idealized image of a blue-eyed skinny guy who has been branded in her brain as the “best thing that ever happened to her”?

I don’t know, but it my wondering is only half correct, it just shows the pernicious damage that a white supremacist view of Jesus has on the minds of my people…

2007-06-20T22:14:00.000-04:00

1782 – Belinda’s Petition is the first recorded instance of an Afrikan in America seeking and receiving reparations from her former enslaver. Belinda petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature and asks for “the just rewards for honest labor” stemming from half of century of enslavement by her enslaver, Isaac Royall. The legislators grant a lifetime pension for her and her daughter from Royall’s estate.

1803 – The Haitian Revolution puts in motion the simultaneous expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase and the demise of Napoleon in the western hemisphere. The only successful slave rebellion in history that took control of a nation, Haiti will be punished for over 200 years by the white world for its successful rebellion against French enslavement.

1814 – The Tenth Article of the Treaty of Ghent which ends the War of 1812 states, ''. . . the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice.''

1825 – Haiti begins paying reparations for land French slave owners “lost” during the Haitian Revolution. Total reparations paid: $20 billion.

1841 – Sengbe Pieh, aka "Joseph Cinque", wins the right to return to his homeland of Sierre Leone from the U. S. Supreme Court after successfully commandeering the Amistad which frees himself and his compatriots from enslavement.

1842 - President John Tyler on December 6, 1842 in his second State of the Union address quotes from the Tenth Article of the Treaty of Ghent, signed by the United States and Great Britain in 1814.

1865 – On January 16, 1865, W. T. Sherman issues Field Order No. 15 that promises “40 acres” to ex-enslaved Afrikans in portions of the Carolinas and Florida. Over the next few months, some 400,000 acres are distributed to the freedmen.

1867 – A bill introduced by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in the 40th Congress calls for confiscating land from the former Confederate States and redistributing it to the freedmen.

1884-1885 – For three months in Berlin, the European powers carve up Afrika with total disregard for ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences in order to avoid European internecine warfare in the scramble for Afrika.

1890 – Callie House creates the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association which petitions the United States government for “pensions” (reparations) for the millions of ex-enslaved Afrikans. On trumped up charges of “mail fraud”, she will spend one year in federal prison. A brilliant organizer and Mother of the modern reparations movement, she gathers 600,000 signatures for redress against Amerikkkan enslavement.

1914 – Marcus Garvey establishes the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and advocates not only a “do for self” ethic but a “right of return” to Afrika by Afrikans in the Maafa. Garvey is considered one of the four great American Afrikan organizers of the 20th century, the others being Callie House, Elijah Muhammad and Martin Luther King.

1920s – Founding of Rastafarianism in Jamaica which provides a theological connection between Afrikans in the Maafa and the Afrikan continent. The religion will become global and has as its core theology the end of white rule (“Babylon”) and the reestablishment of an African world. It will stress repatriation to Afrika by Afrikans in the Maafa.

1930 – Founding of Nation of Islam, by Elijah Poole, aka Elijah Muhammad and W. D. Fard encases a Black Nationalist theology in the religion of Islam. The faith will produce Malcolm X who with Muhammad calls for a “repair” of the Black mind because of the damage done by white supremacy

1963 – Queen Mother Audley Moore presents a 1-million signature petition to President John F. Kennedy calling for reparations on the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

1968 – Founding of Republic of New Afrika (RNA) whose constitution calls for five states --- Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina --- to be ceded to American Africans for the establishment of the RNA. Its founder Imari Obadele will be imprisoned and ultimately released as a result of the COINTELPRO of the FBI.

1969 – James Forman, a former executive secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), walks into Riverside Church in New York and demands $500 million reparations for Afrikans in America from white churches.

1987 – National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) founded. It becomes the premiere reparations organization in the United States.

2001- The United Nations World Conference Against Racism declares the TransAtlantic Slave Trade a “crime against humanity” and further opens the doors for legal redress to enslavement, colonialism and white supremacy.

2001 – Publication of Randall Robinson’s The Debt, which presents a powerful argument for reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

2002 – Deadria Farmer-Paellmann sues more than 20 U. S. corporations for their predecessor companies profiteering from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

2003 - Creation of the Ndaba Movement by Dr. Conrad Worrill, National Chair of the National Black United Front. Over a period of one year, five cities in the United States --- Chicago, Illinois, Jackson, Mississippi, Houston Texas, Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta Georgia --- will host mass meetings with Minister Louis Farrakhan and Worrill educating thousands of American Africans about reparations.

2005 – Millions More Movement orgainzed by Minister Louis Farrakhan endorses Reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade.

©2007, Raymond A. Winbush

The Last Slaves of Mississippi?

2007-05-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

I stumbled across this article just today and even though it was published a little over six weeks ago in People Magazine, it shows that the Amerikkkan myth that "slavery ended in 1865" is just that --- a myth. Forms of enslavement continued long after the end of the Civil War in the form of sharecropping, convict labor and persist in the disproportionate incarceration of Black people in Amerikkka's prisons.

The story of the Miller family's enslavement in 1961, is just another example of how enslavement was retained and refined by this nation towards its so-called "ex-slaves". For those of you poor eyesight like me, you may wish to click the reproduced pages below so that they will be more readable...

Spiderman and Roachman: On Being a Blackman in Amerikkka

2007-05-05T06:31:00.000-04:00

Remember Jar Jar Binks?

He was the Stepin Fetchit alien birthed by George Lucas in his Star Wars saga, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. The outrage over this racist and stereotypical depiction of Blackfolk forced Lucas to silence him in the last two prequels, after denying that Binks was a conflation of a foot-shufflin’, buck-dancin’ Rastafarian.

You would think that Hollyweird would have listened to the outcries of those who saw Binks as a racist stereotype, but apparently he’s been reincarnated as the new Spiderman 3.

Two nights ago, I went to its midnight premiere in Baltimore. I had never gone to a film so late in my life and expected to be one of only twenty or so insomniacs having absolutely nothing to do on Thursday night. Not. There is apparently a cult of people who frequent such films, since when I got to the 17-screen multiplex four of the auditoriums showing Spidey were sold out! Arming myself with a large bottle of water, a bag of popcorn and angry because I had left my chewing gum in the car that never fails to keep me awake when I have to do an all-nighter, I entered one of the crowded auditoriums and took a seat about ten rows from the giant screen.

I wanted to see the film, because the early trailers showed Spidey being clothed in a skin-tight black costume, like Elvis Presley in his famous Black leather costumes. As an observer of race and its symbolic manifestations in this racist world, I wanted to see how Alvin Sargent and Ivan Raimi (the writers) would treat the conversion of our arachnid super-hero from red, white and blue to black. I’ve learned that American films are often bursting with racial symbols that are occasionally overt, e.g., Jar Jar Binks, but often symbolic, e.g., Men in Black.

I wasn’t disappointed by the racial symbolism of Spiderman 3.

A mysterious, jet black, creepy crawly substance oozes from a crashed meteorite and transforms the nerdish Peter Parker, played by Tobey Maguire. It hitches a ride on Peter’s motorcycle after he and his girlfriend, M.J., spoon under a full-moon in an oversized spider web hammock spun by Parker. There’s never any explanation given for the substance, but in a very parasitic way it attaches itself to the host’s nervous system and enhances his powers of cognition, speed, dexterity and dancing ability.

This last point is important since essentially, Spiderman becomes a white racist fantasy of a Blackman in America --- Roachman, if you please. He humiliates and beats down MJ (they’re violent), he buys an all Black wardrobe (you know they like flashy clothes), he cool poses after he buys the outfit, and starts eyeing all the women that come his way. Essentially, his new found “blackness” is a double burden --- it makes him “cool”, but it also makes him mean, violent and a misogynistic. The sexually insecure, white, Peter Parker is transformed into a hypersexualized Roachman and sends a symbolic message to the mostly white audience that while being a Blackman can be “cool”, it also carries a terrible price that you should avoid at the expense of your whiteness. It sends a message to the Blackpeople in the audience, that Blackmen though “enhanced” in their melanin-based abilities to sing, dance, and fuck, we are also unable to “carry the burden” of it all and use them recklessly. Like Roachman, Blackmen are always on the edge of being violent and must be controlled, especially when it comes to their sexual responsibility. It is similar to the symbolism portrayed by Will Smith’s character in Men in Black, where his partner, the dour Tommy Lee Jones initially gives Will a smaller ray gun, because he can’t handle the “big gun” (penis) he wants so desperately.

In the end, Roachman regains his whiteness with the red, white and blue Amerikkkan flag waving in the background. Though boring, the storytellers let us know that it’s hard out there for a pimp and white supremacy provides controlled sexuality, gentleness with the opposite sex, understanding, tolerance and non-violence --- the exact opposite of what it actually does in the real world.

As I left the theater, yawning at 2:30 in the morning, I mused on how white supremacy is enhanced and refined by films such as Spiderman 3. I also thought about making a film entitled Roachman: The Adventures of a Blackman in Amerikkka, in which in one of the sequels, my superhero would meet Spiderman and kick his ass…

Was Humpty Dumpty a White Supremacist?

2007-05-04T19:20:00.002-04:00

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”

“The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - - that's all.”

---Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Lewis Carroll’s two most famous books, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, have a warm place on the bookshelves of our children’s bedrooms. Lest we forget however, they were written during mid-19th century Victorian England, and were biting satires on everything from poverty to public school education. The second book of the Alice duet, Through the Looking Glass, presents one of the most enduring characters in children’s literature. Although Carroll did not create Humpty Dumpty, (he was already a well-known figure in a nursery rhyme), he added character to the rather sarcastic and arrogant little egg, who ignored Alice’s warnings that the wall he sat on was too thin and might contribute to a nasty fall.

Humpty’s confusing dialogue on everything from “Jabberwocky” to “unbirthdays” leaves Alice rather bewildered, and reminds me of many contemporary discussions on race in America. Several pundits, politicos and others declare their firm grasp on understanding America’s most troubling problem, and like Humpty triumphantly state that a “word means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.” I am convinced that many of those who discuss words such as “racism” “sexism”, “political correctness” have no functional definition of the very words they use. They rely, as did their intellectual ancestor, Humpty Dumpty on their status of being “the master” and therefore possessing an inherited authority to define words and groups in whichever way pleases them at the moment.

When Alice challenged Humpty, she fought a losing battle; confronted with his unwillingness to listen and ignorance of nearly everything she talked about, Humpty’s “logic” beat Alice at every turn. Like Dumpty, contemporary pundits ask ridiculous questions based on little or no knowledge of the very subjects they discuss. On the issue of Black/White relations, they might state, “Affirmative action is the same as ‘reverse discrimination’, “Africans were primarily responsible for the slave trade.” or “I don’t know what to call you people, ‘Black’ or ‘African American.’” Criticism of the fundamental nature of these statements, can quickly plunge the questioner through the looking glass of “political correctness”, still another favorite expression of those whose brains burn out at the slightest suggestion of reading the history of those with whom they are unfamiliar.

Honest and clear dialogues on race are necessary if Americans wish to address our national agony. These dialogues will trouble those who wish to remain “masters” of words that are being redefined by people who seek to be a part of the great experiment called America. Those who cry “political correctness” nostalgically wish for the days when women kept their place, Blacks were colored, Asians were cooks and Latinos were gardeners. Similar to their intellectual ancestor Humpty, they are scornful of those who dare say that “We the People” includes those once denied access to the fruits of American democracy.

Was Humpty Dumpty a white supremacist? I think not. He was simply ignorant of other persons' experiences and felt that his worldview was the only one really worthy of consideration. That alone can be the seeds that water the weeds of racism. Dumpty’s techniques in glorifying limited awareness of other person’s histories, experiences and worldviews however, are characteristic of racists who insist on staying seated on the very narrow wall of ignorance toward other people.

The Imus Incident: Another Conflict, Another Cycle

2007-04-26T06:33:00.000-04:00

My dear friend Asiba Tupahache is back on the block! She is continuing her cutting edge truth about popular culture and continues her unvarnished look at white supremacy and oppression.

The Imus Incident: Another Conflict, Another Cycle
Asiba Tupahache

Although out of the headlines, the racist insults of Don Imus against the women of the Rutgers Basketball Team are one of the types of incidents that continue to surface in this society and won’t end until the causal issues come to an end. It must end, however. Bad things happen when bad things continue. Bad things continue when the wrong solutions are applied or nothing is done at all. There are those of us who know there is a lot more to do (always has been) in spite of the fact that the matter is no longer amplified in the media

Imus is off the air for now. After so many years of hearing racist speech consumed as entertainment to the American ear, one plug got pulled but look what it took.

We’ve seen blow-ups before and nothing changed. There’s a reason for this. After the dust settled everything went exactly back to the same or morphed into more efficient updated versions of what went on before. The cycle will repeat again unless real fundamental change occurs.

I don’t believe Don Imus’ career is over at all. The likes of Oliver North, some Watergate players, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Furman and Howard Stern have had their setback of temporary American outrage but have their careers and are as popular and or credible as ever. They have either had opportunities presented to them or had the ability to reinvent themselves. As the prevailing thought process stabilizes, which is much more subtle than hate mail and death threats, Imus, as others like him, will be offered opportunities to broadcast or do whatever he wants again. According to a report on MSNBC a radio station in California was going to broadcast Imus’ past shows in protest of his firing in the name of free speech.

The engine of continuation has many components. One is the contradiction between who American tries to project it is, and what it truly is. The ideal is to say it is a society of freedom and democracy when it is truly an environment that profits by and sustains itself by quite the opposite.

The FCC is supposed to uphold certain standards, which was the basis of an attack on what was called some years ago “hate radio”. This call for FCC abuse of airwaves was the correct challenge. Still, the public communication standard of decency is drowned out by the environment’s insistence that Imus apologized and should be forgiven and therefore allowed back on the air having learned his lesson (not his first offense - the past ones were laughed aside). Freedom of speech does not mean shouting fire in a theatre (or I guess more contemporary example would be shouting bomb in an airport). That speech is considered a danger to the public good. The problem is that there is a disconnect when it comes to racist assault being harmful speech to the public.

It took the assault on ten young college athletes to embarrass the corporate sponsors and networks to pull the plug on one individual. What will it take before the racism against native people on team names blows up? Or will American sports fans and consumers of the sponsors who promote the NFL change their minds about such racism being in the American culture? Maybe it won’t since native people are so invisible that even other oppressed people join in the racist team activities and marketing of materials. Native people are ultimately the invisible people. So the fairy tale ideal that says even the powerless of the people have rights that must be upheld or none of us have rights goes into the toilet when it comes to race, money, and dominance.

Before anything warrants attention, a situation in some way must impact those who are perceived as white people or somehow makes them feel caught. That means either the so called white race, money and or dominance – figuratively or literally – is under attack or being threatened, only then America will pay attention.

The hypocrisy and contradiction brings the consequences of who America truly is will define what will occur in the future. There are specific reasons why everything has taken place the way it has with regard to the assault by Imus against the Rutgers basketball team. There is a reason why the women of the team received hate mail. There is a reason why many still don’t get it. There is a reason why this will happen again.

Of course, Imus has apologized, the team has accepted the apology and for the most part it would appear that America has moved on and has probably begun the amnesia machine. I put this incident, one more example of American dysfunction, in the context of the chronic condition to bring about consideration for another point of view among those who are willing and ABLE (some pedophiles just can’t stop their behavior because they are unable just like drug addicts still have to get to the point where they hit bottom or realize they are helpless to the drug of choice – otherwise, they are unable). I will be presenting things that have already been mentioned and discussed of the past few weeks to compare, contrast and put into context of recent history to illustrate the American morbidity of chronic oppression.

1. The condition:

2. How it continues:
a. The participants
b. The thought process/culture/value system
c. The dependency
d. The behaviors

3. How it can/must end

1. The chronic condition:

The chronic condition of America is born out of its origins. It began with processes, belief systems, and actions that resulted in murder, land seizure, genocide, chattel slavery and hegemony. By all this, America was established with a stolen land base and free labor and unless somehow in the American experience all that was wiped away, the process is binding. The truthful nature of all that has happened has evolved into the way America sees itself, which is through an ideal that muffles the truth. If America was to continue and profit by everything is had thus far, the process by which it was founded had to continue. Because this is more than a one-time incident, it can only be described as chronic,

2. How it continues:

The esteem race, power and money, the source of abuse or oppression individually and/or collectively must be at all costs preserved. Even if and when individuals fall, die or go down, the preserving institutions or mainstays of the oppressive society, will be upheld. America has glorified stories of its beginnings with cherished and celebrated ideas upheld by holidays, activities, milestones, social and emotional expectations and institutions to ensure that the belief system stays in place. It is through the belief system that participants form ideas. Out of these ideas, attitudes take hold. From these attitudes, behaviors manifest and normalize.

There are controls (including belief systems) to ensure that oppression is normalized, marketable, and profitable emotionally and monetarily, rewarded and protected. Part of this chronic condition is to ensure that certain people are continually dehumanized so that abuse against them is not perceived as crimes, hurtful, or immoral. It was believed in its purest form that the black man had no rights a white man had to respect. It was all right to say it out just like that at one time. It isn’t said like that anymore but the belief system has evolved so that it doesn’t have to be.

Of course, no one volunteers to be oppressed so a strong element of force, threat and destruction are part of the continuation. The esteem is low through manipulated images, false accusations and dehumanizing disenfranchisement.

Chronic oppression is maintained through race, power, and money. All thoughts, ideations, emotions, institutions, and behaviors must revolve around this precept and define all concepts.

a. The participants

Roles are assigned. All identities are invented to revolve around the dominant oppressor or abuser to accommodate their perceptions and existence. Since the dominant role is defined as a superior race, other satellite identities are invented with false ideas of an inferior race(s) or gender. Money is what makes the ability to exist making wealth and poverty an operational part of the structure. Since the right to dominance and or supremacy of anyone is false and unnatural, all other invented identities needed to enable dominance and supremacy are also false. These identities interact and react through power, powerless and the enabling behaviors. In this society, those who have come to be called white males are provided access and entitlement to everything and everyone else. The identities of others must reflect how the oppressor must be upheld. Since this is unnatural the power to dominate can only occur through force.

b. The dependency

Participants in such a system are co-dependent. Co-dependency is the state where the self-esteem of one depends on another. A person doesn’t feel defined unless they are attached to the esteem or meaning of another. This is not natural and for some reason people come to feel this way due to experiences that did not allow them to evolve in to sovereign human beings. A co-dependent individual can feel let down (and can therefore react in varieties of rages, rejection, escapisms, etc.) when the needed other is taken away or appears to change from what the co-dependent individual needs. There is no co-existence in environments of co-dependency. Only satellites that float around the source of domination will be allowed to exist.

c. The thought process/culture/value system

Typically in an abusive household, the woman is isolated from all friends and family that can attach her to her indigenous identity before she connected with the abuser. This is how the abuser gains unconditional access and entitlement to the victim. The powerless are ridiculed, trivialized, isolated, and emotionally trapped in deference to the powerful.

Since domination, control and oppression of any human being is unnatural, the power to dominate can only occur through force – social, economic, political, emotional, and behavioral force.

The agenda will always be to maintain the system. Appeasements, rewards, trinkets, trophies and recognition will be offered (and accepted) but the end result will be to keep business as usual.

d. The behaviors

While one source can dominate, the system of oppression is populated with participants who interact through co-dependent relationships. Race and gender identity assignments have specific relationships to the dominant race and gender. No one better step out of line. A promise to hire more “black people” has been a typical reaction to past explosions, and while it may have truly happened, black faces in high places means they better do what they are told. All behaviors and rationalizations on the part of powerful and powerless will uphold the pillars of oppression.

3. How it can/must end:

Why does this society refuse to admit the atrocity it has committed? If this society admitted it was a society of racism, aggression, dehumanization many things would have to come apart. This is a good thing but a hard thing.

When situations such as this come to an end, it is because all aspects of the upholding pillars, relationships that maintain behavior roles, identities that result in how everyone involved think of themselves. It must all be confronted, reconsidered, and undone. Or else, the chronic environment and all participants are bound to the truths and the consequences.

=<>=

When the Rutgers Basketball team had their press conference it was stated that they agreed to meet with Don Imus in private at an undisclosed location. What do you think would have happened if the Rutgers team chose not to disclose to the media whether or not they accepted Don Imus’ apology? Did they owe it to the media to say how they felt one way or the other? What if they refused to accept his apology at all? Would people be so willing to call them beautiful young ladies, courageous and all the other flattering names (especially when prefacing comments that Imus isn’t so bad and what he said was wrong but he doesn’t deserve what he got)? Or would they have been called other names like hostile, unreasonable, angry, hell raisers and other silent names?

The media pursued the team as if they owed America comfort because this white man’s behavior cost him his job. The need to protect whiteness is such that when one is taken to task it’s as if that esteem is threatened and the victim can quickly become the villain if they don’t help the offender make the whole thing go away. A white male went down, now somebody has to pay or at the very least, help America feel better about it. America has to feel that the ideal it holds for itself, or at least if it does wrong their critics are wrong, too. America must have an end to the conflicts and the answers better be quick, convenient and comfortable or else.

While responding to his remarks, Imus continued to press that his show was about comedy and he was not a journalist reporting the news. Because he didn’t make the remarks out of anger or drunkenness, it shouldn’t have pointed any fingers of racism at him. He said he didn’t make up the words he said but rather learned them from rappers and people like Spike Lee. In fact he had referenced Lee’s film wherein he heard the words wannabe’s (the ones who looked good and pretty) and jiggaboos (the ones who looked bad and hardcore – “nappy headed”).

He didn’t get it like others (especially the news anchors and journalist hosting discussions). This is typical in chronic abuse situations. However, the fact that he didn’t get it doesn’t take away the results. The expectation was that because it was supposed to funny, the sub-human people shouldn’t have had anything to say. He had access to a live open mike to a massive audience. What is frightening and dangerous is that those who are privileged are free to be woefully and arrogantly ignorant to everything and everyone around them. He didn’t have to think about things like the humanity of those athletes. It was not supposed to hurt – it didn’t hurt him, after all. Once however, their humanity and honor came out in the face of America and before the world there was a collective embarrassment to such a challenge to the moral decency it claims to be. There was no apology for days to follow.

Just as elemental in this scenario is the media, which did not use the “R” word regarding Imus’ remarks. Until those voicing the protest used the word and the sponsors pulled out it was only then the media used the word RACIST. At first, Imus words were reported to be “controversial”. I kept listening for the word, RACIST. In addition, corporate media didn’t pick up the protest led by Spelman and other community leaders when their demand for change could have been for the public good yet this same ignoring media wagged a finger asking why the protesters aren’t going after rappers. Rappers should be fired like Imus.

Media plays an important role in this chronic environment. It is the big voice that projects images and ideas for consumption in a way that other forms of communication aren’t able to do. What is projected through media is consumed as fact and truth partly because of the magnanimous way it functions. Media is corporate and so therefore is bound to project what is marketable. What corporate media projects in its big voice enables and enforces the powerlessness of the voiceless.

In addition, one of the many symptoms was the blame throwing to deflect the attention or to minimize what had happened. There was a need to punish or vilify others connected with the protest.

Even though it was the corporate media and Imus himself who went to Reverend Sharpton, he was accused of using this incident to make a spotlight for himself. Reverend Jesse Jackson was also accused of this. Tawana Brawley’s name and the word "hymietown" were evoked to fuel outrage against their protest against Imus’ remarks. What mattered was to throw the past deeds into the discussion to disqualify them especially after Sharpton met with CBS the same day CBS fired Imus. By the way, the firing by CBS is being blamed/credited to the pressure from Sharpton alone by some media agents. If the Reverends were so hypocritical, why have them on the air? Why did Imus go to Reverend Sharpton’s radio show?

It is typical that those impacted by chronic oppression will throw non-issues, insults, and hysteria into conflicts to be combative and confusing. The discussions and efforts will be sabotaged by accusation and upset to distract any effort at getting to the bottom of the problem. The point is to avoid the point and usually, all involved can get dragged into the psychotic fray going all off point and falling into argumentative traps. Buzzwords and code words are flammable and can be hot wired into white hostility and ignorance.

Racist addicts over the years had been gratified by the discourse of Imus talk. The taking down of their supplier of white access and entitlement brought the wrath of the addict causing a backlash of hysterical media and sending hate mail to the team and to those speaking out. Removing an addict from their drug of choice can bring on rage and all associated behaviors.

White rage is no joke. The white lynch mob can take a variety of literal and figurative forms. When the white egocentric world is interrupted, feels offended, rejected or threatened, that white rage can be unstoppable. When the target of white rage is chased there is no law, no reason, no doctrine or nobody that can turn it around. This is why a backlash by white support for Imus will not be stopped. The California radio station (per a report on MSNBC) that’s playing the best of Imus in protest of his firing will not be interested in a changed Imus, but the good ol’ Imus.

The notion of free speech blankets harmful speech only when it involves those who are not considered human. It takes an argument, debate or some other protesting action before the matter can even get minimal attention. Conflict and discomfort from the protest and resistance will be blamed on the victim or whistle blowers.

Perpetrators of other chronic crimes (serial killers, pedophiles, etc) are able to repeat their behaviors based on the freedom they feel allowed by a sense of access to their victims and entitlement to their gratifications giving them freedom and ability to act out their crimes. They can’t (won’t) distinguish or make connections to the harmful results. It didn’t hurt them so it shouldn’t have hurt anyone else. It isn’t the words of Imus alone but this applies to all those who seek enable the behavior by diminishing and trivializing the incident in his defense aka defense of the normalized racism. All the other good deeds, monies raised for charities don’t change anything.

Some years back there was a call to end what was called hate radio. Shock jock was a name given to the offending hosts. I remember the faces of Howard Stern, Don Imus and a “Black radio” talk show host, Imhotep Gary Byrd on a station in NY, WLIB on the front page of one of the New York newspapers. The big story was about the crack down on hate speech being broadcast on the air.

The call to end hate radio at the time was suspect even back then that this was really a move on black radio by another talk show host and activist, Bob Law. Black talk radio was a voice for Africans in America syndicated across the country. Networking and innovative approaches to education were shared. The audiences from various cities were able to talk about what was happening to them, their movements, systemic police brutalities and killings. Histories that had been left out of educational institutions and materials revealed information that threatened the esteem of those in power. TOO MUCH COMMUNICATION!!! Black talk radio had to go.

Don Imus and Howard Stern not only kept their shows, but also kept the format, which became more fired up as new shock jocks came aboard with new shows. The bad boys of radio seemingly got their wrists slapped. It wasn’t the first time Imus radio talk resulted in underserved assault on others. The networks and sponsors looked away or laughed along all the way to the bank. But for certain, the format for WLIB, the station where there was live call in black radio hosted by Imhotep Gary Byrd was replaced by another format. People could still call in, but the discussion and the format was radically changed.

At about that time rappers Public Enemy had a video, “Burn Hollywood, Burn”. Some people had a fit at the mention of Jewish mobsters in Hollywood being responsible for the racist images in the film industry (now these days the History Channel will tell you all about the hold Jewish mobsters had on Hollywood). There were other rappers and others publishing books, writing poetry, etc encouraging the audiences to learn, think and challenge injustice such as KRS1 Boogie Down Productions “You Must Learn”, and Leaders of the New School. Those groups who did not denigrate women were eliminated from the backing given to groups who bragged about getting’ paid, their diamonds, cars and objectified women by the corporate record labels. Eventually a new market for another type of rap and radio took over the major communication media.

It is also a common experience among those in oppressive systems not to be able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate actions (like good touch/bad touch). There were discussions in the media around who is allowed to say what with regard to popular language, which includes racial slurs. It really isn’t difficult but victims of chronic abuse can be so intellectually and logically incapacitated when it comes to common thoughts that very simple ideas can be a great mystery.

What is said, how it is said, the motivation, and the purpose very much matters with regard to the communication. Of course, this requires thought, competence, and moral consciousness. When Spike Lee used terms like jigaboo and wannabees in the film School Daze, the intent was to provoke thought around certain issues. I say this not knowing how to read Spike Lee’s mind, however, the entire context of the film brought about specific ideas.

When Imus used words with no apparent understanding of what was behind those issues against specific people who he does not know, it is very different. Simply repeating what one heard somebody else say is a ridiculous defense. When a bat-wielding individual brutalizes someone on a public street and beats him while calling him a racist epithet, the attack is not cleared of its racist violence because the batboy was a fan of rap and heard the word in the music as his attorney tried to incredibly justify.

Ain’t No New Thing, the title of a poem by Gil Scott Heron illustrates how throughout history so-called white people have mimicked African people in America by copying creative ideas and intellectual property. It is typical that “white” people copy the styles, vernacular and other expressions of the culture. On another level, Lloyd Boston published a book about the historical trend setting fashions of African men, which were borrowed. Dress, music and dance have been copied and imitated time and again. So it isn’t surprising to hear words mimicked and repeated especially when “white males” are young, rebellious, coming into their own testosterone. There were some who even at one time called themselves “wiggers” to make it clear how they wanted to project themselves. All ages and walks of life also used words like “my dog”, “thug”, “peeps”, etc.

However, there is another layer of this “Ain’t No New Thing”. A professor, Dr. Levine, from a California university said in a documentary about white entertainers in blackface that it seemed as though “white people needed to release themselves as black.” Why this comment struck me was because of the contempt that typically merges with the obsession. Frat parties in blackface (complete with a lynched black effigy), parading firefighters in blackface, high school talent shows in blackface were supposed to be fun and the participants at times expressed confusion at the objection and hostility by those who came to their defense. A specific confrontation must be made to examine this toxic relationship between black and white, the conflicts and related triggers.

It isn’t simply a matter of rappers inventing the negative words (which is incorrect), but how and why others choose to repeat them. Stopping or censuring rappers isn’t the answer. That requires a totally different kind of address. But certainly using the fact that one is repeating words used in other contexts is no defense.

If the cause of a symptom is not resolved, the symptom will not go away and can’t be controlled away. Much of the language heard in rap came out of resistance and the telling about experiences that were ignored or suppressed. Demanding that record labels “fire” the rappers is just silly. Remember, the art form started in the parks and communities in the Bronx – not at fancy record label headquarters. Rappers started out by selling their tapes in local and available venues. There is too much money to be made and the corporations are not about to miss out. So simply forcing or controlling a ban on what is not acceptable won’t work. Don’t like the supply? Then stop the demand.

To say America is about power, race and money is to threaten the idealistic notions this society has about itself. Even though there may have been the power to change and manipulate events, the truth cannot be denied. This is pure science. What would happen if there was such a country where brutality, exploitation, violent racism, hegemony and oppression prevailed? What kind of country would that be? America is dysfunction in a specimen jar.

A great society isn’t a perfect society, but rather what it does in the face of conflict, how the conflict is processed and how the conflict is resolved,

What happens in a family of repeated abuse and dysfunction generation after generation? The result of repeated abuse and oppression is the destruction of everything and everyone. The consequences evolve into massive reactions of collective grief, collective rage, collective depression, collective despair and collective desperation out of which come seemingly unexplainable disasters and tragedies. Society will collectively react, miscalculate and continue the cycle so that everything will happen all over again.

We also have a collective ability to make choices to bring about collective change. Chronic oppression requires our participation in the behaviors, relationships and rationalizations. It is clear that such a revolution will not bring big profit shares, uphold invented superiorities or preserve domination so it will take the will and determination of our individual power to once and for all, be free and at peace.

Asiba Tupahache
PO Box 987
Dover, DE 19903
© 2007

On Imus and White Supremacy's Reaction to his Firing

2007-04-14T08:44:00.000-04:00

I've been reading/listening to the news and see that many of us are following the reaction of white supremacists to the firing of Imus. People classified as white always stage a "quiet riot" after Blackpeople "win" anything. After the Civil War it was the KKK, after Brown v. Board, it was Little Rock, after OJ Simpson, they remained adamant that he was "guilty", yet could prove nothing.

So today, we find that after the white boy gets fired for his racist remarks against Blackwomen, (not just the Rutgers women), white folks accuse Us of being hypocrital when it comes to the use of the "bitch", "ho", and "dawg" to describe Ourselves and place Sharpton and Jackson at the head of the hypocristy.

Now for some facts which are often ignored when we drink the vomit of white supremacy.

1. 28 organizations condemned Imus' remarks (many of them white) and not just Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and Sharpton's National Action Network. The white supremacists want you to think that Imus' firing was orchestrated by Sharpton and Jackson, because *they* are the only two "Black leaders" recognized by a white public woefully ignorant of the rich and varied leadership in the Black community.

2. Sharpton and Jackson have consistently condemned the use of such language by rappers AND the white corporations that pay them to utter this filth. It has not only been Sharpton and Jackson, but Minister Louis Farrakhan who has met, organized and attempted to dissuade *all* rappers from using the degrading language, e.g., "I got a ho in every zip code", used by some rappers, and not all. There is no hypocrisy on *their* part (Sharpton & Jackson) because they have a long history of such condemnation.

3. We need to stop uttering any words that degrade Us. "Nigger", "Nigga", "Bitch", "Ho", "Dawg", etc., and understand that MCA, SONY, Def Jam, etc., are all run by people classified as white with Blackpuppets in front of them, who pay millions of dollars to young Brothers and Sisters who are taken advantage of because they are victims of white supremacy and are deprived of understanding who they are in a white supremacist world. CONDEMN THE WHITE FOLK WHILE YOU CONDEMN THE BLACK FOLKS WHO HAVE CONSISTENTLY OPPOSED SUCH LANGUAGE.

4. The face of hip hop has become Snoop, but what about Dead Prez, "old school" (a term I despise) Public Enemy, Talib Kweli or NYOil? Most of the white folks (and an increasing number of Black folks believing the hype) can't name two hip hop groups/artists who CONDEMN this garbage because they believe that all hip-hop is what the iconic Snoop says it is.

5. STOP USING THE WORDS YOURSELF and CONDEMN those in your company who do. Watch the reaction when you do. It will be an expression of disgust as you tell them why you have rejected the white supremacy that this society forced upon all of Us to degrade Ourselves.

6. The Sharpton, Jackson AND the Blackwomen of Rutgers basketball team *are receiving death threats* even as I write this (see http://wcbstv.com/watercooler/local_story_104002437.html and http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/nation/17077741.htm). If past is prologue, the white supremacists MUST retaliate in response to what has happened to a white male that they adore. Who is the hypocrite? These young women AND Sharpton and Jackson did absolutely nothing but attempt to replace white supremacy with justice. That's all. Period. End of sentence, yet *they* are becoming targets of the same vicious hate that oozes out of the pores of white supremacy's body and are attempting to exact revenge on whom they *PERCEIVE* as the source of thwarting Imus' white supremacy. It is the same ***American*** violence that killed Martin Luther King, who had Fanni Lou Hamer beaten senseless, who hosed down pregnant women in Birmingham, who castrated Blackmen who attempted to escape from enslavement, who raped Blackwomen who defied them and who threatens Our Afrikan Queens who staged the most glorious comeback in NCAA women's basketball history at Rutgers. See the big picture folks and not small and white supremacist "news" you see/hear on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX. It's the vomit of white supremacy, wanting YOU to think that this is all OUR problem and deflect criticism away from the white supremacy that is at the root of this vulgar and racist nation.

7. As the *conscious* Flava Flav would have said, "Don't believe the hype"...

Aren't You Tired of Black People Being Murdered by People Classified as White?

2006-12-02T22:19:00.000-05:00

It's happened again.

Sean Bell, a 23-year old Black man was shot 50 times with 9mm guns by four police officers as he was exiting a club the night before what should have been the happiest day of his life, his wedding day. Two of his friends, attending the bachelor party are in serious and critical condition after barely surviving the barrage.

He was unarmed...

He had no arrest record...

He was getting married the next day...

The officers who committed the murder were put on administrative leave with pay (killing a Black person earns you a paid vacation).

The Mayor of New York has called for a "thorough investigation".

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because even though Sean's case is getting national attention, many police murders never reach CNN.

Look at what happened to Deandre Brunston in Compton California if you can. He was shot 81 times and was also unarmed.

I could name others and so can you.

Aren't you tired of Black people being murdered by people classified as white?

I am, and so was Ida B. Wells in 1892. The mother of Black journalism and anti-lynching crusader wrote this when the killing of Black men and women was occurring nearly every day throughout the United States:

"The lesson this teaches and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he
will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched."

--- Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In all its Phases,
1892

And so was Toni Morrison in 1987 when she wrote in her powerful book, Song of Solomon about The Seven Days:

"There is a society. It's made up of a few men who are willing to take some risks. They don't initiate anything; they don't even choose. They are as indifferent as rain. But when a Negro child, Negro woman, or Negro man is killed by whites and nothing is done about it by their law and their courts, this society selects a similar victim at random, and they execute him or her in a similar manner if they can. If the Negro was hanged, they hang; if a Negro was burnt, they burn; raped and murdered, they rape and murder. If they can. If they can't do it precisely in the same manner, they do it any way they can, but they do it. They call themselves the Seven Days. They are made up of seven men. Always seven and only seven. If one of them dies or leaves or is no longer effective, another is chosen. Not right away, because that kind of choosing takes time. But they don't seem to be in a hurry. Their secret is time. To take the time, to last. Not to grow; that's dangerous because you might become known. They don't write their names in toilet stalls or brag to women. Time and silence. Those are their weapons, and they go on forever."
"You? You're going to kill people?"
"Not people. White people."
"But why?"
"I just told you. It's necessary; it's got to be done. To keep the ratio the same."
"And if it isn't done? If it just goes on the way it has?"
"Then the world is a zoo, and I can't live in it."
"Why don't you just hunt down the ones who did the killing? Why kill innocent people? Why not just those who did it?"
"It doesn't matter who did it. Each and every one of them could do it. So you just get any one of them. There are no innocent white people, because every one of them is a potential nigger-killer, if not an actual one. You think Hitler surprised them? You think just because they went to war they thought he was a freak? Hitler's the most natural white man in the world. He killed Jews and Gypsies because he didn't have us. Can you see those Klansmen shocked by him? No, you can't."

Both Wells and Morrison talk openly about what many Afrikans debate privately: In the face of constant and sustained violence against Black people, when is it proper to use violence to obtain justice?

Opponents of apartheid asked this question on November 28, 1992 when four members of a white country club were killed as retaliation for 24 members of the African National Congress being killed four days previously in a peaceful demonstration in South Africa.

Whenever I hear Afrikans like Sean being killed, I don't just think of him.

I think about his fiance, Nicole Paultre who is also the victim of this latest police murder.

I think about his two fatherless children.

I think about the children that Sean and Nicole will never have.

I think about Sean's mother.

I think about Sean's father.

I think about how such grief and anger continues to be the price Afrikans pay for living in a world where their lives are cheap.

I think about what Ida B. Wells said.

I think about what Toni Morrison wrote.

I think about what the Azanian People's Liberation Army did on November 28, 1992.

I think about the world's largest graveyard, the Atlantic Ocean, where millions of my Ancestors lie buried beneath its waters because of the TransAtlantic Slave "Trade"...

And again I ask, "Aren't you tired of Afrikans being murdered by people classified as white?"

Eleven "Smooth Stones" For the Reparations Struggle

2006-11-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

I love working to replace white supremacy with justice and for me the struggle for reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade is the ultimate way of doing this. In workshops and speeches I make around the country, I tell the audiences that there is no such thing as "racial reconciliation" until atonement has been made.

Roy Brooks in his extraordinary book, Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations argues that there can be no "forgiveness" of the crimes against humanity committed by Europe towards Afrikans unless there is a concomitant atonement for these crimes. A person simply cannot say, "I am sorry for what my ancestors did to your ancestors, will you forgive me?", and expect to receive "forgiveness" no more than if you burn down a person's house, and ask, "I am sorry that I burned down your house, will you forgive me?". You must make restitution for your crimes so that forgiveness can be enacted that can eventually lead to reconciliation.

So what are some practical things that people can do to in the struggle for reparations? I get asked this question all the time, so here is my list of eleven...

1. Read about the History of the Reparations Struggle - If you don't know who Queen Mother Audley Moore and "Reparations Ray" are, are oblivious to what the letters NBUF, N'COBRA, GAC and CURE stand for, and have no understanding of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade, you need a primer on reparations. I mentioned Roy Brooks' book above but add to your reading list The Debt and Should America Pay? They are also good books to get a broad overview of the reparations struggle. Any good worker for justice must be equipped with a knowledge of what s/he is struggling for so they can provide others with strong and fact-based reasons for seeking justice.

2. Join an Organization that Supports Reparations - If you belong to an organization that does not seek justice in the form of reparations you should work to make sure it does. This has been done successfully in the Episcopalian Church, the NAACP and other organizations that may be undecided about the movement. Existing organizations such as the Global Afrikan Congress, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, National Black United Front and Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation are four of the many organizations that see Reparations as a global movement for justice.

3. Ask all Politicians Running for Office if They Support Reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade - Litmus test issues in the U.S. include, abortion, the environment and prayer in school so why not reparations? Write, call or better yet ask politicians running for office do they support reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade? Don't let them waffle in answering the question. A clever ploy for them is to say that they support Congressman John Conyers' HR-40 Bill since many of them believe that it will never be passed out of committee. Follow-up by asking/writing that while such support is admirable, do you think that Africans in America should receive reparations for 250 years of enslavement and 100 years for state-sanctioned racism? Don't let them slither out of the question by allowing them to say they support jobs and education for African Americans. Press them, press them, press them...

4. Organize a Study Group in Your Community on Reparations - This is already being done in communities around the Afrikan world. It is easily done and can meet once per month to discuss developments in the reparations struggle.

5. Keep Up with Current Developments in the Reparations Struggle - You will not find Katie Couric, Brian Williams or Charles Gibson bringing the latest news on reparations to mainstream (white) media. Rather there are excellent sites, e.g., Restitution Study Group, Africa Reparations Movement, Millions for Reparations and Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation. Too often we "believe the hype" we hear on conservative talk radio, rumors and outright lies from opponents of the reparations struggle. Get your own information from reliable sources. The internet makes this surprisingly easy.

6. Lobby for local "slavery disclosure resolutions" that will aid in the development of lawsuits against governments and corporations that profited from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Nashville were pioneers in passing ordinances supporting, Congressman John Conyers' (D-MI) HR 40 and corporations complicity in the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. These efforts were successful in educating local lawmakers about the importance of understanding history in their respective districts and its connection with the present status of Africans in America.

7. Understand the International Dimensions of the Reparations Struggle - The struggle for reparations is not confined to the United States. Movements in France, Jamaica, S. Africa and Canada are mounting efforts to litigate multinational corporations and governments that profited from the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Acquaint yourself and others with the UN World Conference Against Racism's Final Declaration which states that the TransAtlantic Slave Trade "was a crime against humanity".

8. Have Viewing Parties of Films that Document the Current Exploitation of Africans in the World - Two films that should be widely seen are Life and Debt and Darwin's Nightmare. Both films show how the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, sale of illegal arms and HIV-AIDS are all linked in the historical exploitation of African people and continue today in even more horrific ways. A viewing party with discussion can serve as a "reparations class" for those who have not connected the historical and economic dots about the continuing impact of enslavement on Africans.

9. Immediately Write a Rebuttal to any Article that Opposes Reparations - Opponents to reparations take themselves seriously and are obsessed with spreading lies about the reparations struggle. Their emotional rather than fact-based arguments are easily countered, but if they remain unanswered the become "half-truths" and take on a life of their own. I make it a point to "search and destroy" at least two of these "letters to the editors" or "editorials" per week so that they do not grow like intellectual fungus. To quote suspect European Mark Twain, "A lie will go halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

10. Become Thoroughly Acquainted with Current Commissions Studying the Impact of Enslavement and its Aftermath on Afrikan people - The Illinois Transatlantic Slave Trade Commission, The Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice and the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission Report must be studied by all who want to understand the direct links between white supremacy's hoary legacy and the African world. The work of these committees reveal the sordid history of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and its aftermath. These commissions' historical roots can be traced to the Organization of African Unity's 1993 Commission on Reparations that analyzed the continuing legacy of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade on the African world. The Abuja Proclamation said that, "Convinced that the pursuit of reparations by the African peoples in the continent and in the Diaspora will itself be a learning experience in self-discovery and in uniting experience politically and psychologically. Convinced that numerous looting, theft and larceny have been committed on the African People calls upon those in Possession of their stolen goods artefacts and other traditional treasuries to restore them to their rightful owners the African People.

Calls upon the international community to recognise that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the African peoples which has Yet to be paid - the debt of compensation to the Africans as the most humiliated and exploited people of the last four centuries of modern history"

11. Tell Others About These Eleven

So there you have it: eleven practical things you can do for the Reparations struggle. Eleven practical things you can do to replace white supremacy with justice...Eleven Smooth Stones...

Catch A Fire

2006-10-30T21:26:00.000-05:00

"Catch a wind, catch a rainbow, catch a fire
Catch a fire, catch a fire
Catch a wind, catch a rainbow, catch a fire
Catch a wind, catch a rainbow, catch a fire
Catch a fire"
--- Bob Marley, Catch a Fire

I eagerly anticipated Catch a Fire, the fact-based story of South Afrikan, Patrick Chamusso who was politicized by his own experiences with the brutal white supremacist regime during the apartheid era. I had seen the previews and hoped that the film was not just another white-washed "apartheid light" portrayal of the most brutal system of white supremacy visited upon Afrikans.

I'm always nervous whenever there is a film about any aspect of Black suffering since the depictions invariably show the iconic "white savior" of Afrikans, e.g., Mississippi Burning, the forgiving Afrikan sufferer, e.g., The Green Mile and a "soft approach" to what actually happened in the lives of Afrikans in the film.

Unfortunately, Catch a Fire included all of the above and threw in other hackneyed themes for good measure. Even though stories such as these are loosely based on fact, they rarely show how absolutely brutal the oppression of Afrikans was. The "PG-13" rating was my first suspicion that I would be going down this road, yet again. It's like making a "G" rated film about the Holocaust or having a film entitled "Auschwitz, the Musical". It won't happen, and when you think about it, there have been very few films, if any that shows the murderous brutality of whites perpetrated on Afrikans. Enslavement, Reconstruction, Apartheid all get a "light" treatment by Hollywood. I believe the reason for this is because the primary concern of the producers is to make white people feel good when they leave the theater. Thus Joe Slovo, one of the most outspoken critics and organizers against the S. Afrikan regime is depicted prominently in the film, most likely because his daughter was one of the producers.

Why pick this story? Because it shows that all whites aren't bad, Afrikans are forgiving and there's "racial hope" for all of us. It's "Racism Lite" if you please, with little attention to an on-screen portrayal of how monstrous whites were toward Afrikans.

I'll spare you the ending, but "Catch a Fire" ignited very little in understanding how white supremacy operated and still operates in the lives of Afrikans.

Is the "Fix" On?: Voting Fraud and the November 7th Election

2006-10-24T22:21:00.000-04:00

I hope I'm wrong about what I'm thinking...

I hope I'm wrong that on November 7, 2006 massive voting fraud will take place in the United States and that Afrikans in Amerikkka once again will be disenfranchised as they were in the 2000 and 2004 election.

I hope I'm wrong that the mysterious computer code alleged to be the key to hacking the new Diebold voting machines which anonymously appeared at the office of former Maryland State Legislator and long-time critic of voting fraud, Cheryl Kagen last week is only one of a kind.

I hope I'm wrong that this computer code and similar ones may be used to suppress the vote of Afrikans and others in the United States on November 7.

I hope I'm wrong that even conservative news commentator Lou Dobbs says that "American democracy is at risk" because of faulty voting machines.

I hope I'm wrong that the "fix" is on and that on the morning of November 8, 2006, people in the United States finally understand what *total* disenfranchisement from the electoral process is --- something that Afrikans in Amerikkka have experienced, fought and died for since 1870 when the 15th Amendment to the Constitution "guaranteed" their right to vote.

We'll see...

Darwin's Nightmare

2006-10-22T09:51:00.000-04:00

Yesterday at the Washington Chapter of the National Urban League members of the Global Afrikan Congress showed the film Darwin's Nightmare. It is one of the most powerful films I've ever seen and shows the intimate relationship between white supremacy, the economic rape of Afrika, the spread of HIV-AIDS, the sexual exploitation of Afrikan women and children, globalization, how Chrstianity is used to further the aims of white supremacy and the arms race. To be sure, the film is depressing, but it is a powerful indictment of how Europe continues to underdevelop Afrika.

If you have a chance to see the film, do so. It is a study in the madness of white supremacy and its must vulnerable children. For more information on showing the film, email a request to info@gacnar.org.

Reparations in a Nutshell

2006-10-03T05:56:00.001-04:00

Mary Mitchell, an Afrikan columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, has written one of the most compelling AND succinct articles on reparations for enslavment I've ever read. If you know *nothing* about reparations, which many reparations opponents are too ashamed to admit, here is a "Reader's Digest" version of "Why Reparations for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade?" for you...

Slavery was the Black Holocaust, so Treat it with the Same Respect by Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times

fortunately, this is not a novel view, nor is it one that has only been expressed by white people.

Nearly a decade ago, the former Nairobi bureau chief for the Washington Post, Keith Richburg, caused quite an uproar when he allegedly told a white colleague that "it was better to have been brought across the ocean in leg irons than to be stuck now in modern Africa."

Blacks routinely portrayed in negative light

That anecdote -- retold across black America -- was included in Richburg's book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, and has been a mantra of some black intellectuals ever since. And truly, given the horrific problems Africa has faced -- now being ravaged by HIV/AIDS -- only the most romantic and those on a mission of penance would leap joyfully at the prospect of relocating to Africa.

But a black person at least has an inherent right to make such a statement.

Where does a white person get off telling black people how they benefitted from their ancestors being slaves?

Still, I'm not surprised that at this juncture of the reparations debate, the "there's-no-better-place-to-be-impoverished-than-in-the-U.S." argument has found its way into a mainstream newspaper that reaches countless black households in Chicago and in the suburbs.

I wouldn't address such lunacy except that it was given voice in a newspaper where I have worked for 15 years. That angers me. And it raises a question about the liberties everyone feels they can take when it comes to black people.

I support free speech, but it seems to me that we are slipping back to the time when blacks are routinely portrayed in such a negative light in media that we might as well be back in the '50s. Really, had a black writer argued in mainstream press that Jewish people are better off because of the Holocaust, I don't believe his or her article would have seen the light of day.

It doesn't matter how successful Jewish people are today, the fact is, the Holocaust was an unimaginable tragedy. And for a black person to argue that the Holocaust had some hidden benefit for the modern Jew would have been seen as an obscene and explosive argument.

Frankly, I don't believe it would have gotten past an editor.

Slavery was the black Holocaust, and whether people agree or disagree with reparations, this unimaginable tragedy for blacks should be treated with the same respect. But slavery is rarely treated in the same sacrosanct fashion with which the Holocaust has been treated in this country. Indeed, Jewish people are free to say whatever they want about the Holocaust and slavery. But blacks who dare utter a disagreeable word about Jewish people -- period -- are labeled anti-Semitic.

More important, who can speak with certainty as to what level of progress Africa would have reached, absent colonization by racists and mercenaries?

Who can say the type of society that would have evolved and the contribution that society could have made to the world had the continent not been stripped of its resources?

And I'm not so sure that most Africans who have endured the worst of times in their own land wish to come here and endure the disgusting racial attitudes against blacks that still exist in the Unittes.

Slavery not just free labor

If that were the case, Nelson Mandela, and hundreds of other political prisoners, would have caught the first boat out of South Africa when that country's apartheid government ended and the prison cells opened after 27 years. Instead of South Africans fleeing here, we saw black intellectuals from across the country making the reverse trip back to Africa -- sitting in first-class seats.

I think some of us need to be reminded that slavery wasn't simply a matter of Africans not being paid for their labor.

As noted in The Slave Community, a historical text by John W. Blassingame, slaves were "constantly exposed to the whims and passions of every member of the family; from the least to the greatest, their anger was wreaked upon" them.

Blacks will never have it so great here that they forget the torture, rape and murder of their ancestors who survived American slave ships, any more than Jewish people can forget the torture, rape and murder of their ancestors in German concentration camps.

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Reparations: Attacking the Misconceptions and Acknowledging their need in Today's world - Opinions

2006-10-03T05:50:00.000-04:00

Reparations: Attacking the misconceptions and acknowledging their need in today's world - Opinions

Is Bush an Idiot?

2006-08-21T20:51:00.000-04:00

Of course he is, but I'm not the only one who is saying it.

Suprisingly, conservative Republicans like Joe Scarborough are increasingly voicing their views that the Commander in Chief is more like the "Idiot in Chief".

Scarborough said, "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

I agree. It takes complex thinking to do any management job and even more complex thought to be the President of the United States. We know Bush was an affirmative action "C" student at Yale and if he would have stopped there, his intellectual capacity (or lack thereof) would not have cost thousands of lives in Iraq and hundreds of lives during Katrina.

The man just is not smart enough to govern and finally pundits such as George Will and William Buckley, defenders of all that is Right in America, are voicing their opinion on Bush's feeble brain power.

Like others, I have watched Bush commit egregious grammatical errors that compared to Dickens' Micawber, take the idea of a word salad to new heights. People laughed at Clinton's "wonky" meetings of intellectuals who came together to discuss everything from the economy, to global warming to the Middle East. Bush couldn't hang in such gatherings because he seems unable to roll over an idea in his head and look at the world as a complex set of political, economic and social interactions all affecting one another.

He's just an idiot and now white conservatives are saying what Black folks have known all along...

GOP Fears Cynthia McKinney Campaign "Rope A Dope"

2006-08-07T21:22:00.000-04:00

I just read a brilliant article (below) and received permission from its author, Mary Alice Miller of the New York Chapter of the National Black United Front (NBUF) to reprint it here. It is concerning the most important political race tomorrow (forget Joe Lieberman, everyone knows that he's gonna get whupped good tomorrow) the runoff election of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia. She is *totally* "unbossed" and "unbought" to echo the late Shirley Chisholm's 1972 Presidential campaign slogan and the election is a clinic on how Black stooges for Zionists, a lukearm Congressional Black Caucus and weak-kneed Democrats can be defeated by one of the strongest Black stateswomen occupying public office in the United States.

Here is the article in its entirety...

August 4, 2006 Dekalb County, GA

WHY BLACK NEW YORKERS SHOULD SUPPORT CYNTHIA MC KINNEY’S CONGRESSIONAL RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN
by

Mary Alice Miller
National Black United Front (NYC Chapter)

REASON #5

GOP FEARS MCKINNEY CAMPAIGN “ROPE –A – DOPE”

Despite the Georgia Republican Party’s best efforts, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is running a strong campaign.

The GOP has tried everything: financing her competitor’s campaign, vilifying her in the press, open primary crossover voting, promoting outright lies.
McKinney remains undeterred.

Sensing a McKinney victory, the GOP is hedging its bets. After Hank Johnson’s dismal showing in Monday night’s first televised debate, even the most rabid ‘anyone but Cynthia’ proponent had to admit their candidate has serious flaws. Recognizing it is too late to front a more competitive/ competent candidate, the GOP is dusting off another old strategy: reverse psychology.

Talking head Bill Shipp, a Georgia democrat who positions himself as left of conservatives, has introduced a “GOP conspiracy to resurrect McKinney”.
Shipp lays out several elements to support his claim:

1) After fronting former judge Denise Majette (an African- American) in the 2002 4th Congressional District race against McKinney, and doing everything short of worshipping the Devil in order to get her elected, the GOP purportedly convinced Majette to abandon the House seat in order to mount a doomed run for the Senate. According to Shipp, the republican goal was to remove Majette as an obstacle to McKinney’s return. (An alternative view considers the cold shoulder treatment Majette reportedly received once she arrived on Capitol Hill. The cloud of being elected by Republican ‘anyone but Cynthia’ crossover votes instead of legitimate Democratic votes followed Majette throughout her 2-year tenure.)

2) Shipp claims that the Republican-led state legislature and the Bush Justice Dept. reconfigured McKinney’s congressional district in a way that increases the strength of her base- to prove how much elephants cherish her. (Congresswoman McKinney’s district was redrawn after the 2000 census. It was also recently redrawn mid-census, just prior to the current 4th district election season. Adding 10 new voting precincts mid- election to McKinney’s district introduced her to a new constituency at an awkward time. McKinney was not moved. She took pleasure in embracing new constituency, strategically focusing her message to the five new voting precincts with substantial black democratic numbers.)
3) Shipp claims the specter of McKinney losing is driving the far right nuts.
(Reverse psychology is an old tactic. The truth is the specter of a McKinney victory is driving the far right nuts.)

How could Republican strategists have been unprepared when McKinney nearly lost the Democratic primary in July, claiming they are counting on her help in November? Georgia republicans aggressively interjected themselves into the Democratic election, thanks to open primaries.

The Grand Ol’ Party can’t have it both ways. Either the GOP wants to unseat McKinney or they don’t.

Believe Shipp when he states “If McKinney wins the runoff, the Republican direct-mail campaign will center on her in the fall.”

The GOP should not fool themselves. McKinney cannot be controlled by remote. She cannot be goaded into juvenile name-calling. She cannot be manipulated into working against her own best interests.

Stereotypes can be deceiving. When Muhammad Ali was in the prime of his boxing career, he was perceived as a ‘dumb jock’. All brawn, no brain. With the introduction of his brilliant rope-a-dope strategy, Ali showed the world that black athletes could employ critical thinking skills in order to succeed.

McKinney is a product of history. S he stands on the shoulders of our Ancestors. The courage to challenge inequity (and iniquity) is in her DNA. While the GOP is throwing sticks and stones, setting up roadblocks, and spreading disinformation, McKinney conserves her energy. She strikes unexpectedly, with force.

Do not be fooled by GOP talking heads. Shipp’s reverse psychology strategy is simply a ploy to prepare the psyche of good white folk for yet another McKinney victory.

New Yorkers, if you believe Representative McKinney should remain in Congress (and a strong member of the Congressional Black Caucus), express your support. The McKinney Run-Off election is August 8, 2006. She needs our support.

Send donations to Cynthia McKinney for Congress
P.O. Box 371125
Decatur, GA 30037

You may also donate on-line at http://www.cynthiaforcongress.com/donate.php.

Mary Alice Miller
National Black United Front (NYC Chapter)

White Media: ((((yawn...)))

2006-08-03T10:18:00.000-04:00

If you want truth and accuracy about 1) what is going on in Lebanon 2) what is going on with reparations 3) what is going on in the world in general, DO NOT, I repeat do not rely on the white-controlled media. It is agonizingly boring to listen, read and watch white media continually distort everything from the war crimes committed by the Israelis in Lebanon, to their neglect in reporting one of the most important elections in recent African history, the Congo.

With all white media, everything is measured in degrees and so I tend to listen/read several outlets (except for the mind-numbing and stupid Fox "News" network) and make up my own mind about what is really going on in the world. Unfortunately, most Americans get their news from TV and rarely go beyond what the talking heads say to them each night.

I don't want this to be another missive about white bias in the media, there are tons of articles that already deal with that. What I want to provide are a few links for getting accuracy when you simply want to know what is happening with people of color around the world. Here they are:

FOR EVENTS IN THE SO-CALLED "MIDDLE EAST":

Read the English version of Aljazeera at: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E4D19123-9DD3-11D1-B44E-006097071264.htm

Read the African-Arab Forum at:
http://africanarabforum.net/mos/index.php

A good website that you can "shop" for news on the Middle East by country is:
http://www.al-bab.com/media/newspapers.htm

FOR NEWS ABOUT REPARATIONS FOR ENSLAVEMENT:

National Coalition for Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA)
http://www.encobra.com/

Reparations Central
http://www.reparationscentral.com/

Resitution Study Group
http://www.rsgincorp.com/

FOR NEWS ABOUT THE AFRIKAN WORLD:

AllAfrica.com
http://allafrica.com/

The Final Call
http://www.finalcall.com/

The Chicago Defender
http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/local.cfm?ArticleID=840

Like President George Clinton says: "Free your mind and your ass will follow."

"Condoleezza Rice: Midwife From Hell"

2006-07-30T08:05:00.000-04:00

Every once in awhile, you hear and read something that totally captures what you feel about a person or an event. Matthew Rothschild's article calling Condoleeza the "midwife from hell", is exactly how I felt when I heard this Black stooge of Bush say that the Lebanon represented "the birthpangs of a new Mideast" at her speech in Rome last week.

It would seem that the suffering of Lebanese during the past two weeks, would awaken in Rice some ancestral memory of the suffering of Black people in the United States, but it hasn't. Indeed "Condi" as her recovering alcoholic boss refers to her, is a right wing white man caught in the body of Black woman. Even her predecessor, Colin Powell sought redemption by handing in his resignation to "the worst president in all of American history" as referred to by the "dean" of White House reporters, Helen Thomas.. Rice, while obsessed with ambition, is clearly following in her boss's footsteps as being one of the worst Secretaries of State in history as well. The tragedy of Rice is that the face of "foreign policy" of the United Snakes of Amerikkka is now a Black woman, just as when Powell worked for this administration it was a Black man.

How ironic. Afrikans in Amerikkka have always brought a moral high ground to the policies of this nation both domestically and internationally. Malcolm X's world view of the situation of Afrikans, Martin Luther King's protest of the Vietnam War and more recently, Afrikans uniting to to get the TransAtlantic Slave Trade declared a "crime against humanity" at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, are in this tradition. Not only has Rice abandoned this tradition, she seems incapable of producing a foreign policy philosophy that is independent of the "cowboy diplomacy" of Bush that Time Magazine says has been declared dead.

She is indeed the "Midwife from Hell" and has aborted morality in her role as Amerikkka's chief diplomat.

Bush Goes to the NAACP

2006-07-21T06:23:00.000-04:00

I always have mixed emotions about the NAACP.

I am a member of the organization, have attended (and spoken) at their conventions, yet still harbor conflicting views about its policies. It's not about the organization's rich history of "civil rights" struggles. It's not about the organization's power to capture headlines on areas of racism still present in Amerikkka (you will consistently see me spell "America" with 3 Ks so that one is mindful of the racism still being tolerated in this country's history). Rather, my reservations about the organization lie in its unholy alliances with groups and corporations that harm the African community in the United States.

Take for instance the NAACP receiving large donations from tobacco companies. How can the civil rights organization justify such "fund-raising" while smoking-related disease disproportionately affects Africans in Amerikkka? The same goes for it receiving large "donations" (really cheap advertising) from the liquor industry, while alcoholism runs rampant among the very people it claims to be helping.

So with all of that in mind, I watched Bush pay a reluctant visit to the NAACP convention this week in Washington DC. Before yesterday, Bush had never spoken to the convention and was the first "president" (I use this term loosely to describe his theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections) since Warren Harding not to. The delegates were non-plus in its reception of Bush and gave him their loudest applause when he mentioned how alienated the Republican Party was from Black folk.

As I listened to his address I was again impressed by how stupid the man is and his usual folksy charm and rhythm before staged white audiences, didn't work with the Black folks there. That was what I was most proud of when I heard the weak applause for his gratuitous remarks about racism's history in Amerikkka.

For me, it is simply unimportant that Bush appeared before the convention because nothing was accomplished other than to say he was there. His low ratings in the polls makes it "safe" for him to talk to Black folks now without alienating the few white folks he has left in his column.

What would be important is for the NAACP to revisit its history of dubious alliances with unholy groups. My Dad was fond of repeating the adage that, "if you lie down with dogs you will get up with fleas." In that context, the NAACP has an infestation of fleas that it needs to get rid of which includes liquor and tobacco companies and its accomodationist positions with white allies who have always hampered the group from speaking with an unmediated voice. This was a primary issue when W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the founding members of the NAACP quit the organization in 1934 because of what he felt were weak positions taken by Walter White's more conservative views of desegregation. The NAACP under Bruce Gordon's leadership will hopefully reorder its priorities so that it will be uncompromised on all fronts.

Back on the Block with Reparations

2006-07-20T21:40:00.000-04:00

I deliberately stopped updating my blog because of events in the world during the past six months that are simply apocalyptic in nature. I wanted to look at many of them and simply see how some of them have/are played[ing] out. The Israeli invasion and destruction of Lebanon spun by most western media as an attempt to "free two Israeli soldiers" is about as unbelievable as Bush speaking today before the NAACP. More about this in a separate blog.

Viewing Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth a couple of months ago got me to thinking that there are simply far more important things happening on the planet that should be addressed by the entire world. It is not an exaggeration to say that most of the major environmental and social problems in the world are because of Eurocentric thinking and influence at every term. I am even more convinced that people of color and particularly Afrikans, are the "soul" of a diseased body and that they must "fix" a world that is rapidly deteriorating because of white supremacy's stranglehold on everything that really matters.

I look at shit-faced grinning Bush being the puppet of so many people who are far more wickedly clever than him. Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Zionists, Blair and so many others reinforce the history of this idiot that he destroys something that is relatively intact, doesn't know how to put it back together and then removes himself from the scene. Just think, three years from now he will be history, but the destruction that he has wrought on the world will be felt for generations to come.

On a more upbeat note, the AP story about the series of reparations victories is one of the more accurate pieces written about the reparations struggle. I am proud of the work done by my friends, colleagues and activists on the greatest unpunished crime the world has ever known --- the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. I've been musing lately about how reparations activists can incorporate in their message the need to repair a world that is literally dying under the weight of white supremacy in the nine areas of white supremacy discussed by Frances Cress Welsing and Neely Fuller. I will be talking about this much more, but for now:

I'M BACK ON THE BLOCK!

Coretta Scott King Joins the Ancestors

2006-02-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

I'm writing this from Columbus Ohio and watched part of Coretta Scott King's funeral on TV. Four Presidents --- Bush I and II, Clinton and Carter were there, and it was truly an amazing spectacle. I always admire people who speak truth to power regardless of the circumstances they're in, and Joe Lowery did that when he dissed Bush II's lies about "weapons of mass destruction"...I really liked that...

Coretta's homegoing marks the beginning of the independence of the King children. Coretta and Martin never saw their grandchildren because there were none. It will be interesting to see if they marry, adopt or have children and forge a new era in the King legacy. My bet is that Dexter will marry first and that Bernice will be married within two years...we'll see...

Reparations for Enslavement and the Blackside of Things

"A Moment of Silence" by Emmanuel Ortiz

A Moment of Silence

Emmanuel Ortiz

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Beyond the Bricks: Challenging the Challenges Faced by African American Boys

21 Reasons Why Black Organizations Fail

Book review: 'The Warmth of Other Suns' by Isabel Wilkerson - latimes.com

Setting the Record Straight A Response to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates Lets US off the Hook in 'slavery blame game'

Henry Louis Gates Lets US off the Hook in 'slavery blame game'

Mad TV - Nice White Lady

Audacious idea: an overhaul of Black History Month

What If Sarah Palin Were Black? | | AlterNet

Mike Barber: Belinda's Petition a Perfect Primer on the Subject of Reparations

Mary J Blige - Hope For Haiti Now

Olbermann Slams Limbaugh And Robertson For Sick Comments

Avatar, Africans and Racism: Some Brief Reflections on James Cameron’s Tale about White Supremacy

HP computers are racist

Excerpt: Harlem Children's Zone

Dracula and Racism: Some Reflections on the Contemporary Fascination with Vampires

Nappy Ass Hair

The Black Funeral of Michael Jackson

The Prophecy of James Baldwin on Michael Jackson

Welcome Home, Brotha Michael...

HR40: Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans

Chances of Being Paid for Past Injustice Look Up

Information on the Spanish Reparations Movement

Father of Reparations Movement Joins the Ancestors

Bakari Kitwana: Did John Hope Franklin Want $100 Trillion for Blacks?

Ray Winbush's Belinda's Petition Now Available for Purchase!

'White people with blue eyes' caused financial crisis

A New Cartoon about the NYPost.

Yet Another Indicator of the Myth of a "Post-Racial America"

Belinda's Petition...Coming soon...

When Are We Going To Get Over It?

COMMEMORATION, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION: A FEW WORDS ABOUT RIGHTING HISTORICAL WRONGS

Grandson of Enslaved Africans...

A White Person Who Favors Reparations for Enslavement

A Concise History of White People's Relation to Black People in the United States

'Twas the Day of Election

"Twas the Night Before Election"...

The Racial DNA of The United States of Amnesia

What "Bradley Effect"?

IT'S ALIVE!!! John Muckain and Sandra Palinothology's Racial Frankenstein Monster

Calling Barack Names or "Keep the nigger out of office"

Racism and the Election: Slithering into November 4...

Whipping Black Professionals in America...

Thus Spake HiLIARy Clinton...

Black Bogeymen, Barack and the 2008 Presidential Vote

Jeremiah's Right!

Toni Morrison's "The Seven Days" from the Song of Solomon

172 Bullets in Three Black Bodies...

The White Man's Burden is Not the Black Man's Responsibility

Mammy Goes to Washington

Massa Bill, Missus Hillary and Oh

Lotioning Up Black Boys

The Slave Side of Sunday - Anthony Prior

The Big Payback?: Reparations in South Afrika

Al Qaeda's Ayman Zawahiri, Speaks Directly to Afrikans in Amerikkka

"You kill a dog, you go to jail. You kill a little Black boy and nothing happens."

Jenacide

PETAA: People for the Ethical Treatment of All Afrikans

Is Hillary Clinton White Enough to Be President?

The "Best Places" for White Folks to Live: Where there are no Blacks...

“To my [white] boyfriend, Jesus.”

Some Key Dates in the Reparations Struggle for Afrikans©

The Last Slaves of Mississippi?

Spiderman and Roachman: On Being a Blackman in Amerikkka

Was Humpty Dumpty a White Supremacist?

The Imus Incident: Another Conflict, Another Cycle

On Imus and White Supremacy's Reaction to his Firing

Aren't You Tired of Black People Being Murdered by People Classified as White?

Eleven "Smooth Stones" For the Reparations Struggle

Catch A Fire

Is the "Fix" On?: Voting Fraud and the November 7th Election

Darwin's Nightmare

Reparations in a Nutshell

Reparations: Attacking the Misconceptions and Acknowledging their need in Today's world - Opinions

Is Bush an Idiot?