#came from the plights of WOMEN OF COLOR throughout history

[jewishbarbies]

an executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale was cheering that trump won under an insta post from justine bateman and idk why anyone is surprised when the lead actress has always been balls deep in Scientology

[learrianie]

What We Do in the Past, Echoes in the Future

Given the state of our country right now due to the unjust killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, it reminded me of a short essay I wrote about discrimination last year. It covers from the time of the Harlem Renaissance to 2020. How black people in America continue to face the same prejudice time and time again. This particular essay examines Claude McKay’s poem If We Must Die, Danez Smith’s piece dear white america, and Malcolm X’s speech The Ballot or the Bullet.

Not everyone can be at the protests and it can make you feel like you aren’t doing enough to help. If you’re like me, I constantly question “what can I do? how can I help? We can donate to the organizations, but if you can’t afford it, one of the most important things EVERY ONE can and should do is listen. Stay informed. Learn our history. Change the future.

I’ve included both poems and the speech. The Ballot or the Bullet is long, but I urge you all to read it or listen to it on youtube. It’s a difficult conversation to keep having, but we must keep speaking up for the victims of the systematic racism in this country and continue to fight for justice, by any means necessary.

What We Do in the Past, Echoes in the Future

By Arriana M. Williams

Literature and art have always been powerful tools for expressing and analyzing the human condition. We write as a way to leave something lasting and tangible for the next generation to, hopefully, improve upon society as a whole. When it comes to the marginalized communities of the world, specifically in our country, the role and value of literature becomes essential in understanding the plights and difficulties these people have faced in history and today. By reading the works created by these men and women, we gain a more intimate and personal insight into their struggles, aspirations, and their outlook of the world and their hopes of a brighter future. As cliché as that may sound, it was the ultimate goal of men like Martin Luther King Jr, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and so many more. While these men followed in the footsteps of men like Claude McKay, who defined his perspective of racism in his poem “If We Must Die”, they also inspired those who came after them. Men like Danez Smith, who in his poem, “Dear White America”, addresses the typical perspectives white people have towards those of color in America. Although reading and writing is not a cure-all for discrimination or injustices in America, it is hard to deny that the old adage is true. That those who do not learn history, are doomed to repeat it.

Take for example Malcolm X’s speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet". Given as a response to congress deliberating about the Civil Rights Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and origin. This speech is considered to be one of his best as it clearly and sophisticatedly describes how people of color in America must demand equality regardless of economic class or political affiliation. His message was not aimed towards any specific group of black Americans, nor religious associations. Malcolm X was a very relatable figure in that, the way he spoke was how common people spoke. He was intelligent, but he was not a politician.

The tone of his speeches touched people because of how passionate he was, but also how he was just like us. A man who wanted a better life for himself and his people, a man who was genuine in his convictions. Some people consider him to have been a radical, because he believed that the disenfranchised should demand equality “by any means necessary”. His goal was to urge black people to use their votes as a way to progress their civil rights. To do this, he used some humor to connect to the masses. His use of Muhammad Ali as a metaphor in this speech may have been funny, stating that we should not be “singing” for freedom or treading lightly in this fight. But he goes on to say, “But you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing. But singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Swinging helped him” (Malcolm X 338). His tone grows from humorous to serious because he tries to exclaim that we must come to terms with when enough is enough. Malcolm X gave this speech in 1964, forty- five years after Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die”, but the message remains the same.

Malcolm X was trying to usher his people into a new world, a new way of thinking and living in America. Claude McKay was originally from Jamaica, but when he moved to the United States for higher education, he experienced racism first-hand which inspired him to begin writing poetry. His poem, “If We Must Die”, is written from the perspective of a black man speaking about fighting back when it comes to racism. The final line is the most powerful stating, “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack/Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” (McKay 139). The speaker says that their blood will not be shed in vain and this poem goes on to display themes of the frustrations and concerns with discrimination and with the state of the country. Written in 1919, this poem is yet another example of people of color no longer willing to take the horrendous treatment of them in America anymore. This is a pattern in the pieces of literature throughout the Harlem Renaissance, when the dynamics in the country were beginning to change, after slavery was abolished but before the civil rights movement began. Basically, black people were beginning to fight back against oppression, just like Malcolm X explained in his speech, even decades after McKay’s poem, that people of color must continue to fight back by any means necessary.

Perhaps to a layman on the subjects of racial experiences, maltreatment, or persecution, it would seem like things have improved when it comes to inequality in America. So why are we still reading about prejudice and racism? All of the men I mentioned, Martin Luther King Jr, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X were assassinated in this country. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is still room for improvement. Even during the era of our first black president, men and women of color were still living in fear of many threats. In “Dear White America”, Smith uses metaphors for religion and the justice system in our country as examples of how people of color are often the ones left out of “God’s miracles”. He mentions the issue of mass incarceration of black men and says, “I’m sick of calling your recklessness the law” (315) which is a statement of the epidemic of police involved shootings of unarmed black people. Smith goes on to address the typical “white” perspectives towards people of color in America. Like the, “I just don’t see race” and “Why does it always have to be about race” (315).

The poem is written in a way that the speaker is acknowledging the problems with common, white opinions. That they do not understand the harm they cause, but the speaker is attempting to enlighten them from a person of color’s point of view. The piece progresses from just words that are detrimental and hurtful stereotypes, to the ongoing violence black/brown people must endure in this country. The tone of this poem, as in all of the other works, is angry, the speaker does not want to remain silent and in the ends tells the “white audience” that they will create a new world, one that cannot be stolen, sold, beaten, hanged, or shot and that, “this, if only this one, is ours” (315). It is discouraging that from 1919 to 2019 we are still analyzing these types of experiences in literature, because they continue to be relevant. Many people believe that living in a post- Obama America means racism is eradicated, but all it takes is to open a book, watch the news, or check social media to see that notion could not be further from the truth.

What all of these pieces have in common, are the ways in which literature and assembly of like- minded individuals can open up a space for those whose voices might not be heard otherwise. The written word is a medium unlike any other in the way that it can stand the test of time, to be passed down from generation to generation. While some subjects are incredibly depressing to endure, they remain extremely poignant time after time. With something as complicated as racial issues, we need literature to understand the speakers that came before us. To gain more awareness of how far we’ve come, and how much more we have to work on in this country. From Malcolm X, to the poets of today, the similarities far outweigh the differences in their experiences, which is both concerning and comforting in a way. It is unfortunate that people of color are still facing such ordeals today, but that fact that so many before them faced trials and tribulations, it goes to the strength and power they possessed in order to keep fighting. To keep fighting for equality and the advancement of the people.

If We Must Die

BY CLAUDE MCKAY

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

dear white america

BY DANEZ SMITH

i’ve left Earth in search of darker planets, a solar system revolving too near a black hole. i’ve left in search of a new God. i do not trust the God you have given us. my grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. take your God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent. i want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha, want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah risen three days after their entombing, their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood, their flesh & blood re-gifted their children. i’ve left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your go back to Africa & i just don’t see race. neither did the poplar tree. we did not build your boats (though we did leave a trail of kin to guide us home). we did not build your prisons (though we did & we fill them too). we did not ask to be part of your America (though are we not America? her joints brittle & dragging a ripped gown through Oakland?). i can’t stand your ground. i’m sick of calling your recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers. & in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted, i count the holes they leave. i reach for black folks & touch only air. your master magic trick, America. now he’s breathing, now he don’t. abra-cadaver. white bread voodoo. sorcery you claim not to practice, hand my cousin a pistol to do your work. i tried, white people. i tried to love you, but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch, talking too loud next to his bones. you took one look at the river, plump with the body of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask why does it always have to be about race? because you made it that way! because you put an asterisk on my sister’s gorgeous face! call her pretty (for a black girl)! because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?! because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls! because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled. because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached. because black boys can always be too loud to live. because it’s taken my papa’s & my grandma’s time, my father’s time, my mother’s time, my aunt’s time, my uncle’s time, my brother’s & my sister’s time . . . how much time do you want for your progress? i’ve left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe, where black people ain’t but people the same color as the good, wet earth, until that means something, until then i bid you well, i bid you war, i bid you our lives to gamble with no more. i’ve left Earth & i am touching everything you beg your telescopes to show you. i’m giving the stars their right names. & this life, this new story & history you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard or hang or beat or drown or own or redline or shackle or silence or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin

this, if only this one, is ours.

The Ballot or the Bullet

by Malcolm X April 3, 1964 Cleveland, Ohio

Mr. Moderator, Brother Lomax, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe everyone in here is a friend, and I don't want to leave anybody out. The question tonight, as I understand it, is "The Negro Revolt, and Where Do We Go From Here?" or What Next?" In my little humble way of understanding it, it points toward either the ballot or the bullet.

Before we try and explain what is meant by the ballot or the bullet, I would like to clarify something concerning myself. I'm still a Muslim; my religion is still Islam. That's my personal belief. Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister who heads the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, but at the same time takes part in the political struggles to try and bring about rights to the black people in this country; and Dr. Martin Luther King is a Christian minister down in Atlanta, Georgia, who heads another organization fighting for the civil rights of black people in this country; and Reverend Galamison, I guess you've heard of him, is another Christian minister in New York who has been deeply involved in the school boycotts to eliminate segregated education; well, I myself am a minister, not a Christian minister, but a Muslim minister; and I believe in action on all fronts by whatever means necessary.

Although I'm still a Muslim, I'm not here tonight to discuss my religion. I'm not here to try and change your religion. I'm not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it's time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell whether you're a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you're educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you're going to catch hell just like I am. We're all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.

Now in speaking like this, it doesn't mean that we're anti-white, but it does mean we're anti-exploitation, we're anti-degradation, we're anti-oppression. And if the white man doesn't want us to be anti-him, let him stop oppressing and exploiting and degrading us. Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.

If we don't do something real soon, I think you'll have to agree that we're going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet. It's one or the other in 1964. It isn't that time is running out -- time has run out!

1964 threatens to be the most explosive year America has ever witnessed. The most explosive year. Why? It's also a political year. It's the year when all of the white politicians will be back in the so-called Negro community jiving you and me for some votes. The year when all of the white political crooks will be right back in your and my community with their false promises, building up our hopes for a letdown, with their trickery and their treachery, with their false promises which they don't intend to keep. As they nourish these dissatisfactions, it can only lead to one thing, an explosion; and now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today -- I'm sorry, Brother Lomax -- who just doesn't intend to turn the other cheek any longer.

Don't let anybody tell you anything about the odds are against you. If they draft you, they send you to Korea and make you face 800 million Chinese. If you can be brave over there, you can be brave right here. These odds aren't as great as those odds. And if you fight here, you will at least know what you're fighting for.

I'm not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I'm not a student of much of anything. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican, and I don't even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there'd be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they're already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren't Americans yet.

Well, I am one who doesn't believe in deluding myself. I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.

No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. They're beginning to see what they used to only look at. They're becoming politically mature. They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they see these new political trends, it's possible for them to see that every time there's an election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country. And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own, it is left up to them to determine who's going to sit in the White House and who's going to be in the dog house.

lt. was the black man's vote that put the present administration in Washington, D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how much progress we're making. And what a good president we have. If he wasn't good in Texas, he sure can't be good in Washington, D.C. Because Texas is a lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi, no different; only they lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with a Mississippi accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go and have some coffee in the White House with a Texan, a Southern cracker -- that's all he is -- and then come out and tell you and me that he's going to be better for us because, since he's from the South, he knows how to deal with the Southerners. What kind of logic is that? Let Eastland be president, he's from the South too. He should be better able to deal with them than Johnson.

In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can't they pass something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you're the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they're going to sit down now and play with you all summer long -- the same old giant con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don't you ever think they're not in cahoots together, for the man that is heading the civil- rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got back to Washington, D.C., was "Dicky" -- that's how tight they are. That's his boy, that's his pal, that's his buddy. But they're playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he's for you, and he's got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep his promise.

So it's time in 1964 to wake up. And when you see them coming up with that kind of conspiracy, let them know your eyes are open. And let them know you -- something else that's wide open too. It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get on out of the country; you should get back in the cotton patch; you should get back in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didn't need big jobs, they already had jobs. That's camouflage, that's trickery, that's treachery, window-dressing. I'm not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We'll get to them in a minute. But it is true; you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.

Look at it the way it is. What alibis do they use, since they control Congress and the Senate? What alibi do they use when you and I ask, "Well, when are you going to keep your promise?" They blame the Dixiecrats. What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. The titular head of the Democrats is also the head of the Dixiecrats, because the Dixiecrats are a part of the Democratic Party. The Democrats have never kicked the Dixiecrats out of the party. The Dixiecrats bolted themselves once, but the Democrats didn't put them out. Imagine, these lowdown Southern segregationists put the Northern Democrats down. But the Northern Democrats have never put the Dixiecrats down. No, look at that thing the way it is. They have got a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in the middle. It's time for you and me to wake up and start looking at it like it is, and trying to understand it like it is; and then we can deal with it like it is.

The Dixiecrats in Washington, D.C., control the key committees that run the government. The only reason the Dixiecrats control these committees is because they have seniority. The only reason they have seniority is because they come from states where Negroes can't vote. This is not even a government that's based on democracy. lt. is not a government that is made up of representatives of the people. Half of the people in the South can't even vote. Eastland is not even supposed to be in Washington. Half of the senators and congressmen who occupy these key positions in Washington, D.C., are there illegally, are there unconstitutionally.

I was in Washington, D.C., a week ago Thursday, when they were debating whether or not they should let the bill come onto the floor. And in the back of the room where the Senate meets, there's a huge map of the United States, and on that map it shows the location of Negroes throughout the country. And it shows that the Southern section of the country, the states that are most heavily concentrated with Negroes, are the ones that have senators and congressmen standing up filibustering and doing all other kinds of trickery to keep the Negro from being able to vote. This is pitiful. But it's not pitiful for us any longer; it's actually pitiful for the white man, because soon now, as the Negro awakens a little more and sees the vise that he's in, sees the bag that he's in, sees the real game that he's in, then the Negro's going to develop a new tactic.

These senators and congressmen actually violate the constitutional amendments that guarantee the people of that particular state or county the right to vote. And the Constitution itself has within it the machinery to expel any representative from a state where the voting rights of the people are violated. You don't even need new legislation. Any person in Congress right now, who is there from a state or a district where the voting rights of the people are violated, that particular person should be expelled from Congress. And when you expel him, you've removed one of the obstacles in the path of any real meaningful legislation in this country. In fact, when you expel them, you don't need new legislation, because they will be replaced by black representatives from counties and districts where the black man is in the majority, not in the minority.

If the black man in these Southern states had his full voting rights, the key Dixiecrats in Washington, D. C., which means the key Democrats in Washington, D.C., would lose their seats. The Democratic Party itself would lose its power. It would cease to be powerful as a party. When you see the amount of power that would be lost by the Democratic Party if it were to lose the Dixiecrat wing, or branch, or element, you can see where it's against the interests of the Democrats to give voting rights to Negroes in states where the Democrats have been in complete power and authority ever since the Civil War. You just can't belong to that Party without analyzing it.

I say again, I'm not anti-Democrat, I'm not anti-Republican, I'm not anti-anything. I'm just questioning their sincerity, and some of the strategy that they've been using on our people by promising them promises that they don't intend to keep. When you keep the Democrats in power, you're keeping the Dixiecrats in power. I doubt that my good Brother Lomax will deny that. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat. That's why, in 1964, it's time now for you and me to become more politically mature and realize what the ballot is for; what we're supposed to get when we cast a ballot; and that if we don't cast a ballot, it's going to end up in a situation where we're going to have to cast a bullet. It's either a ballot or a bullet.

In the North, they do it a different way. They have a system that's known as gerrymandering, whatever that means. It means when Negroes become too heavily concentrated in a certain area, and begin to gain too much political power, the white man comes along and changes the district lines. You may say, "Why do you keep saying white man?" Because it's the white man who does it. I haven't ever seen any Negro changing any lines. They don't let him get near the line. It's the white man who does this. And usually, it's the white man who grins at you the most, and pats you on the back, and is supposed to be your friend. He may be friendly, but he's not your friend.

So, what I'm trying to impress upon you, in essence, is this: You and I in America are faced not with a segregationist conspiracy, we're faced with a government conspiracy. Everyone who's filibustering is a senator -- that's the government. Everyone who's finagling in Washington, D.C., is a congressman -- that's the government. You don't have anybody putting blocks in your path but people who are a part of the government. The same government that you go abroad to fight for and die for is the government that is in a conspiracy to deprive you of your voting rights, deprive you of your economic opportunities, deprive you of decent housing, deprive you of decent education. You don't need to go to the employer alone, it is the government itself, the government of America, that is responsible for the oppression and exploitation and degradation of black people in this country. And you should drop it in their lap. This government has failed the Negro. This so-called democracy has failed the Negro. And all these white liberals have definitely failed the Negro.

So, where do we go from here? First, we need some friends. We need some new allies. The entire civil-rights struggle needs a new interpretation, a broader interpretation. We need to look at this civil-rights thing from another angle -- from the inside as well as from the outside. To those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, the only way you can get involved in the civil-rights struggle is give it a new interpretation. That old interpretation excluded us. It kept us out. So, we're giving a new interpretation to the civil-rights struggle, an interpretation that will enable us to come into it, take part in it. And these handkerchief-heads who have been dillydallying and pussy footing and compromising -- we don't intend to let them pussyfoot and dillydally and compromise any longer.

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours? You haven't even made progress, if what's being given to you, you should have had already. That's not progress. And I love my Brother Lomax, the way he pointed out we're right back where we were in 1954. We're not even as far up as we were in 1954. We're behind where we were in 1954. There's more segregation now than there was in 1954. There's more racial animosity, more racial hatred, more racial violence today in 1964, than there was in 1954. Where is the progress?

And now you're facing a situation where the young Negro's coming up. They don't want to hear that "turn the-other-cheek" stuff, no. In Jacksonville, those were teenagers, they were throwing Molotov cocktails. Negroes have never done that before. But it shows you there's a new deal coming in. There's new thinking coming in. There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death -- it'll be reciprocal. You know what is meant by "reciprocal"? That's one of Brother Lomax's words. I stole it from him. I don't usually deal with those big words because I don't usually deal with big people. I deal with small people. I find you can get a whole lot of small people and whip hell out of a whole lot of big people. They haven't got anything to lose, and they've got every thing to gain. And they'll let you know in a minute: "It takes two to tango; when I go, you go."

The black nationalists, those whose philosophy is black nationalism, in bringing about this new interpretation of the entire meaning of civil rights, look upon it as meaning, as Brother Lomax has pointed out, equality of opportunity. Well, we're justified in seeking civil rights, if it means equality of opportunity, because all we're doing there is trying to collect for our investment. Our mothers and fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return -- I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich.

You take the people who are in this audience right now. They're poor. We're all poor as individuals. Our weekly salary individually amounts to hardly anything. But if you take the salary of everyone in here collectively, it'll fill up a whole lot of baskets. It's a lot of wealth. If you can collect the wages of just these people right here for a year, you'll be rich -- richer than rich. When you look at it like that, think how rich Uncle Sam had to become, not with this handful, but millions of black people. Your and my mother and father, who didn't work an eight-hour shift, but worked from "can't see" in the morning until "can't see" at night, and worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our investment. This is our contribution, our blood.

Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who's standing up in America today. We have made a greater contribution and have collected less. Civil rights, for those of us whose philosophy is black nationalism, means: "Give it to us now. Don't wait for next year. Give it to us yesterday, and that's not fast enough."

I might stop right here to point out one thing. Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal.

Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It outlawed segregation.

Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can't label him as anything other than that. And when you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side.

Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law; they are not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I'm telling you, kill that dog. I say it, if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you'll put a stop to it. Now, if these white people in here don't want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell the police department to pull the dogs in. That's all you have to do. If you don't do it, someone else will.

If you don't take this kind of stand, your little children will grow up and look at you and think "shame." If you don't take an uncompromising stand, I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do. And that's the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you're within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don't die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

When we begin to get in this area, we need new friends, we need new allies. We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level -- to the level of human rights. Whenever you are in a civil-rights struggle, whether you know it or not, you are confining yourself to the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam. No one from the outside world can speak out in your behalf as long as your struggle is a civil-rights struggle. Civil rights comes within the domestic affairs of this country. All of our African brothers and our Asian brothers and our Latin-American brothers cannot open their mouths and interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States. And as long as it's civil rights, this comes under the jurisdiction of Uncle Sam.

But the United Nations has what's known as the charter of human rights; it has a committee that deals in human rights. You may wonder why all of the atrocities that have been committed in Africa and in Hungary and in Asia, and in Latin America are brought before the UN, and the Negro problem is never brought before the UN. This is part of the conspiracy. This old, tricky blue eyed liberal who is supposed to be your and my friend, supposed to be in our corner, supposed to be subsidizing our struggle, and supposed to be acting in the capacity of an adviser, never tells you anything about human rights. They keep you wrapped up in civil rights. And you spend so much time barking up the civil-rights tree, you don't even know there's a human-rights tree on the same floor.

When you expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights. Civil rights keeps you under his restrictions, under his jurisdiction. Civil rights keeps you in his pocket. Civil rights means you're asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time any one violates your human rights, you can take them to the world court.

Uncle Sam's hands are dripping with blood, dripping with the blood of the black man in this country. He's the earth's number-one hypocrite. He has the audacity -- yes, he has -- imagine him posing as the leader of the free world. The free world! And you over here singing "We Shall Overcome." Expand the civil-rights struggle to the level of human rights. Take it into the United Nations, where our African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin-American brothers can throw their weight on our side, and where 800 million Chinamen are sitting there waiting to throw their weight on our side.

Let the world know how bloody his hands are. Let the world know the hypocrisy that's practiced over here. Let it be the ballot or the bullet. Let him know that it must be the ballot or the bullet.

When you take your case to Washington, D.C., you're taking it to the criminal who's responsible; it's like running from the wolf to the fox. They're all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world. Here you are walking around in America, getting ready to be drafted and sent abroad, like a tin soldier, and when you get over there, people ask you what are you fighting for, and you have to stick your tongue in your cheek. No, take Uncle Sam to court, take him before the world.

By ballot I only mean freedom. Don't you know -- I disagree with Lomax on this issue -- that the ballot is more important than the dollar? Can I prove it? Yes. Look in the UN. There are poor nations in the UN; yet those poor nations can get together with their voting power and keep the rich nations from making a move. They have one nation -- one vote, everyone has an equal vote. And when those brothers from Asia, and Africa and the darker parts of this earth get together, their voting power is sufficient to hold Sam in check. Or Russia in check. Or some other section of the earth in check. So, the ballot is most important.

Right now, in this country, if you and I, 22 million African-Americans -- that's what we are -- Africans who are in America. You're nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you'd get farther calling yourself African instead of Negro. Africans don't catch hell. You're the only one catching hell. They don't have to pass civil-rights bills for Africans. An African can go anywhere he wants right now. All you've got to do is tie your head up. That's right, go anywhere you want. Just stop being a Negro. Change your name to Hoogagagooba. That'll show you how silly the white man is. You're dealing with a silly man. A friend of mine who's very dark put a turban on his head and went into a restaurant in Atlanta before they called themselves desegregated. He went into a white restaurant, he sat down, they served him, and he said, "What would happen if a Negro came in here? And there he's sitting, black as night, but because he had his head wrapped up the waitress looked back at him and says, "Why, there wouldn't no nigger dare come in here."

So, you're dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He's frightened. He looks around and sees what's taking place on this earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people are waking up. They're losing their fear of the white man. No place where he's fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he's fighting, he's fighting someone your and my complexion. And they're beating him. He can't win any more. He's won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a truce. That's a loss.

Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he's lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America's not supposed to sign a truce. She's supposed to be bad. But she's not bad any more. She's bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can't use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can't use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon- less. They can't use the weapon because each's weapon nullifies the other's. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground. And the white man can't win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it. So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That's not his style. You've got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn't got any heart. I'm telling you now.

I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it, before you know it. It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up -- planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need -- and a lot of heart. The Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He'd just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn't cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition, because they scared him to death.

The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina. You don't need it -- modern warfare today won't work. This is the day of the guerrilla. They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins, took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin' war machinery couldn't defeat those guerrillas. Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a guerrilla warfare. It's not his speed. Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you've got to be mighty naive, or you've got to play the black man cheap, if you don't think some day he's going to wake up and find that it's got to be the ballot or the bullet.

l would like to say, in closing, a few things concerning the Muslim Mosque, Inc., which we established recently in New York City. It's true we're Muslims and our religion is Islam, but we don't mix our religion with our politics and our economics and our social and civil activities -- not any more We keep our religion in our mosque. After our religious services are over, then as Muslims we become involved in political action, economic action and social and civic action. We become involved with anybody, any where, any time and in any manner that's designed to eliminate the evils, the political, economic and social evils that are afflicting the people of our community.

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The black man in the black community has to be re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is supposed to bring him in return. Don't be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket.

The political philosophy of black nationalism is being taught in the Christian church. It's being taught in the NAACP. It's being taught in CORE meetings. It's being taught in SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meetings. It's being taught in Muslim meetings. It's being taught where nothing but atheists and agnostics come together. It's being taught everywhere. Black people are fed up with the dillydallying, pussyfooting, compromising approach that we've been using toward getting our freedom. We want freedom now, but we're not going to get it saying "We Shall Overcome." We've got to fight until we overcome.

The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can't move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.

Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere. He's got us in a vise. So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it's time now for our people to be come conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we're developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don't have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.

The social philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community. We our selves have to lift the level of our community, the standard of our community to a higher level, make our own society beautiful so that we will be satisfied in our own social circles and won't be running around here trying to knock our way into a social circle where we're not wanted. So I say, in spreading a gospel such as black nationalism, it is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man -- you know him already -- but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don't change the white man's mind -- you can't change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America -- America's conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience.

They don't know what morals are. They don't try and eliminate an evil because it's evil, or because it's illegal, or because it's immoral; they eliminate it only when it threatens their existence. So you're wasting your time appealing to the moral conscience of a bankrupt man like Uncle Sam. If he had a conscience, he'd straighten this thing out with no more pressure being put upon him. So it is not necessary to change the white man's mind. We have to change our own mind. You can't change his mind about us. We've got to change our own minds about each other. We have to see each other with new eyes. We have to see each other as brothers and sisters. We have to come together with warmth so we can develop unity and harmony that's necessary to get this problem solved ourselves. How can we do this? How can we avoid jealousy? How can we avoid the suspicion and the divisions that exist in the community? I'll tell you how.

I have watched how Billy Graham comes into a city, spreading what he calls the gospel of Christ, which is only white nationalism. That's what he is. Billy Graham is a white nationalist; I'm a black nationalist. But since it's the natural tendency for leaders to be jealous and look upon a powerful figure like Graham with suspicion and envy, how is it possible for him to come into a city and get all the cooperation of the church leaders? Don't think because they're church leaders that they don't have weaknesses that make them envious and jealous -- no, everybody's got it. It's not an accident that when they want to choose a cardinal, as Pope I over there in Rome, they get in a closet so you can't hear them cussing and fighting and carrying on.

Billy Graham comes in preaching the gospel of Christ. He evangelizes the gospel. He stirs everybody up, but he never tries to start a church. If he came in trying to start a church, all the churches would be against him. So, he just comes in talking about Christ and tells everybody who gets Christ to go to any church where Christ is; and in this way the church cooperates with him. So we're going to take a page from his book.

Our gospel is black nationalism. We're not trying to threaten the existence of any organization, but we're spreading the gospel of black nationalism. Anywhere there's a church that is also preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join that church. If the NAACP is preaching and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join the NAACP. If CORE is spreading and practicing the gospel of black nationalism, join CORE. Join any organization that has a gospel that's for the uplift of the black man. And when you get into it and see them pussyfooting or compromising, pull out of it because that's not black nationalism. We'll find another one.

And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will hold a seminar; we will hold discussions; we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers. And at that time, if we see fit then to form a black nationalist party, we'll form a black nationalist party. If it's necessary to form a black nationalist army, we'll form a black nationalist army. It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death.

It's time for you and me to stop sitting in this country, letting some cracker senators, Northern crackers and Southern crackers, sit there in Washington, D.C., and come to a conclusion in their mind that you and I are supposed to have civil rights. There's no white man going to tell me anything about my rights. Brothers and sisters, always remember, if it doesn't take senators and congressmen and presidential proclamations to give freedom to the white man, it is not necessary for legislation or proclamation or Supreme Court decisions to give freedom to the black man. You let that white man know, if this is a country of freedom, let it be a country of freedom; and if it's not a country of freedom, change it.

We will work with anybody, anywhere, at any time, who is genuinely interested in tackling the problem head-on, nonviolently as long as the enemy is nonviolent, but violent when the enemy gets violent. We'll work with you on the voter-registration drive, we'll work with you on rent strikes, we'll work with you on school boycotts; I don't believe in any kind of integration; I'm not even worried about it, because I know you're not going to get it anyway; you're not going to get it because you're afraid to die; you've got to be ready to die if you try and force yourself on the white man, because he'll get just as violent as those crackers in Mississippi, right here in Cleveland. But we will still work with you on the school boycotts be cause we're against a segregated school system. A segregated school system produces children who, when they graduate, graduate with crippled minds. But this does not mean that a school is segregated because it's all black. A segregated school means a school that is controlled by people who have no real interest in it whatsoever.

Let me explain what I mean. A segregated district or community is a community in which people live, but outsiders control the politics and the economy of that community. They never refer to the white section as a segregated community. It's the all-Negro section that's a segregated community. Why? The white man controls his own school, his own bank, his own economy, his own politics, his own everything, his own community; but he also controls yours. When you're under someone else's control, you're segregated. They'll always give you the lowest or the worst that there is to offer, but it doesn't mean you're segregated just because you have your own. You've got to control your own. Just like the white man has control of his, you need to control yours.

You know the best way to get rid of segregation? The white man is more afraid of separation than he is of integration. Segregation means that he puts you away from him, but not far enough for you to be out of his jurisdiction; separation means you're gone. And the white man will integrate faster than he'll let you separate. So we will work with you against the segregated school system because it's criminal, because it is absolutely destructive, in every way imaginable, to the minds of the children who have to be exposed to that type of crippling education.

Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I've ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn't mean you're going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you'd be within your rights -- I mean, you'd be justified; but that would be illegal and we don't do anything illegal. If the white man doesn't want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job.

That's all. And don't let the white man come to you and ask you what you think about what Malcolm says -- why, you old Uncle Tom. He would never ask you if he thought you were going to say, "Amen!" No, he is making a Tom out of you." So, this doesn't mean forming rifle clubs and going out looking for people, but it is time, in 1964, if you are a man, to let that man know. If he's not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can't begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don't go out shooting people, but any time -- brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big -- any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can't find who did it.

Why, this man -- he can find Eichmann hiding down in Argentina somewhere. Let two or three American soldiers, who are minding somebody else's business way over in South Vietnam, get killed, and he'll send battleships, sticking his nose in their business. He wanted to send troops down to Cuba and make them have what he calls free elections -- this old cracker who doesn't have free elections in his own country.

No, if you never see me another time in your life, if I die in the morning, I'll die saying one thing: the ballot or the bullet, the ballot or the bullet.

If a Negro in 1964 has to sit around and wait for some cracker senator to filibuster when it comes to the rights of black people, why, you and I should hang our heads in shame. You talk about a march on Washington in 1963, you haven't seen anything. There's some more going down in '64.

And this time they're not going like they went last year. They're not going singing ''We Shall Overcome." They're not going with white friends. They're not going with placards already painted for them. They're not going with round-trip tickets. They're going with one way tickets. And if they don't want that non-nonviolent army going down there, tell them to bring the filibuster to a halt.

The black nationalists aren't going to wait. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the Democratic Party. If he's for civil rights, let him go into the Senate next week and declare himself. Let him go in there right now and declare himself. Let him go in there and denounce the Southern branch of his party. Let him go in there right now and take a moral stand -- right now, not later. Tell him, don't wait until election time. If he waits too long, brothers and sisters, he will be responsible for letting a condition develop in this country which will create a climate that will bring seeds up out of the ground with vegetation on the end of them looking like something these people never dreamed of. In 1964, it's the ballot or the bullet.

Thank you.

[7r0773r]

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Baldwin’s understanding of the American condition cohered around a set of practices that, taken together, constitute something I will refer to throughout this book as the lie. The idea of facing the lie was always at the heart of Jimmy’s witness, because he thought that it, as opposed to our claim to the shining city on a hill, was what made America truly exceptional. The lie is more properly several sets of lies with a single purpose. If what I have called the “value gap” is the idea that in America white lives have always mattered more than the lives of others, then the lie is a broad and powerful architecture of false assumptions by which the value gap is maintained. These are the narrative assumptions that support the everyday order of American life, which means we breathe them like air. We count them as truths. We absorb them into our character. (p. 7)

***

These, then, are the twined purposes at the heart of Baldwin’s poetic vision. He is not only motivated to transform the stuff of experience into the beauty of art; as a  poet he also bears witness to what he sees and what we have forgotten, calling our attention to the enduring legacies of slavery in our lives; to the impact of systemic discrimination throughout the country that has denied generations of black people access to the so-called American dream; to the willful blindness of so many white Americans to the violence that sustains it all. He laments the suffering that results from our evasions and refusals and passes judgment on what we have done and not done in order to release ourselves into the possibility of becoming different and better people. He bears witness for those who cannot because they did not survive, and he bears witness for those who survived it all, wounded and broken. (p. 40)

***

In the end, we cannot escape our beginnings: The scars on our backs and the white-knuckled grip of the lash that put them there remain in dim outline across generations and in the way we cautiously or not so cautiously move around one another. This legacy of trauma is an inheritance of sorts, an inheritance of sin that undergirds much of what we do in this country. (p. 46)

***

When we memorialize the Confederacy with monuments to Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, what exactly are we commending? It’s never simply the military genius of a general. . . . The Confederate monuments are memorials to a way of life and a particular set of values associated with that way of life. To suggest they are not is just dishonest. The students at Princeton asked a similar question about Woodrow Wilson: What does the university’s uncritical celebration of him commend to us? Again, who and what we celebrate reflects who and what we value. This is why in moments of revolution or profound cultural shifts one of the first things people remove are symbols of the old values. Lenin’s and Stalin’s statues, for example, had to fall, but it is telling that Robert E. Lee continues to stand tall in parks across the United States—even in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer died. (p. 79)

***

An honest confrontation with the past had everything to do with the kinds of persons we understood ourselves to be and the kinds of people we aspired to become. Baldwin’s demand was a decidedly moral one: He wanted to free us from the shackles of a particular national story in order that we might create ourselves anew. For this to happen, white America needed to shatter the myths that secured its innocence. This required discarding the histories that trapped us in the categories of race. “People who imagine that history flatters them,” he wrote in Ebony, “are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.” (p. 82)

***

Even though Baldwin understood Black Power, its condemnation of white America, and its insistence on black self-determination as a reasonable and, in some ways, wholly justifiable response to the country’s betrayal of the civil rights movement, he never rejected the idea, found in this formulation, that we are much more than the categories that bind our feet. We, too, must never forget this insight.

“Color,” as he wrote in 1963, “is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” Color does not say, once and for all, who we are and who we will forever be, nor does it accord anyone a different moral standing because they happen to be one color as opposed to another. But, again, Baldwin is not naïve. He understands history’s hold and the politics that make it so. As he wrote in The Fire Next Time, “as long as we in the West place on color the value that we do, we make it impossible for the great unwashed to consolidate themselves according to any other principle.” It makes all the sense in the world, then, that black people would look to the fact of their blackness as a key source of solidarity and liberation. White people make black identity politics necessary. But if we are to survive, we cannot get trapped there. (pp. 101-02)

***

Baldwin came to understand that there were some white people in America who refused to give up their commitment to the value gap. For him, we could not predicate our politics on changing their minds and souls. They had to do that for themselves. In our after times, our task, then, is not to save Trump voters—it isn’t to convince them to give up their views that white people ought to matter more than others. Our task is to build a world where such a view has no place or quarter to breathe. I am aware that this is a radical, some may even say, dangerous claim. It amounts to “throwing away” a large portion of the country, many of whom are willing to defend their positions with violence. But we cannot give in to these people. We know what the result will be, and I cannot watch another generation of black children bear the burden of that choice. (pp. 112-13)

***

To understand this is to see why the desire to distance oneself from Trump fits perfectly with the American refusal to see ourselves as we actually are. We evade historical wounds, the individual pain, and the lasting effects of it all. The lynched relative; the buried son or daughter killed at the hands of the police; the millions locked away to rot in prisons; the children languishing in failed schools; the smothering, concentrated poverty passed down from generation to generation; and the indifference to lives lived in the shadows of the American dream are generally understood as exceptions to the American story, not the rule. Blasphemous facts must be banished from view by a host of public rituals and incantations. Our gaze averted, we then congratulate ourselves on how far we have come and ruthlessly blame those in the shadows for their plight in life. Gratitude is expected. Having secured our innocence, we feel no guilt in enjoying what we have earned by our own merit, in defending our right to educate our children in the best schools and in demanding that we be judged by our ability alone. To maintain this illusion, Trump has to be seen as singular, aberrant. Otherwise, he reveals something terrible about us. But not to see yourself in Trump is to continue to lie. (pp. 173-74)

***

I have taken the title of this book from a passage in James Baldwin's last novel, Just Above My Head. In light of the collapse of the civil rights movement and the consolidation of the after times with the election of Ronald Reagan, Baldwin offered these words for those who desperately sought to imagine a way forward: “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” Begin again is shorthand for something Baldwin commended to the country in the latter part of his career: that we reexamine the fundamental values and commitments that shape our self-understanding, and that we look back to those beginnings not to reaffirm our greatness or to double down on myths that secure our innocence, but to see where we went wrong and how we might reimagine or re-create ourselves in light of who we initially set out to be. This requires an unflinching encounter with the lie at the heart of our history, the kind of encounter that cannot be avoided at places like the Legacy Museum. 

Irony abounds. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in 2018, in the middle of Donald Trump’s first term. As I have argued, Trump's election represents our after times; all that he stands for reasserts the lie in the face of demographic shifts and political change represented by Obama’s election and the activism of Black Lives Matter. Every day Trump insists on the belief that white people matter more than others in this country. He has tossed aside any pretense of a commitment to a multiracial democracy. He has attacked congressmen and women of color, even telling four congresswomen “to go back to the countries they came from”; scapegoated people seeking a better life at our borders; and appealed explicitly to white resentment. On top of the racist rhetoric, his judicial appointments and his policies around voting rights, healthcare, environmental regulations, immigration law, and education disproportionately harm communities of color. In every way imaginable, Trump has intensified the cold civil war that engulfs the country. 

But to view Trump in the light of the lynching memorial in Alabama is to understand him in the grand sweep of American history: He and his ideas are not exceptional. He and the people who support him are just the latest examples of the country's ongoing betrayal, our version of “the apostles of forgetfulness” When we make Trump exceptional, we let ourselves off the hook, for he is us just as surely as the slave-owning Founding Fathers were us; as surely as Lincoln, with his talk of sending black people to Liberia, was us; as surely as Reagan was us, with his welfare queens. When we are surprised to see the reemergence of Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other white nationalists, we reveal our willful ignorance about how our own choices make them possible. The memorial confronts both Trumpism and those who would never imagine themselves in sympathy with it, with the truth and trauma of American history. It exposes the lie for what it is and makes plain our collective complicity in reinforcing it. 

In his introduction to his 1985 collection of essays, The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin noted that America had become quick to congratulate itself on the progress it had made with regards to race, and that the country's self-congratulation came with the expectation of black gratitude. (This was particularly the case with the election of the country's first black president.) As Baldwin wrote, “People who have opted to be white congratulate themselves on their generous ability to return to the slave that freedom which they never had any right to endanger, much less take away. For this dubious effort . . . they congratulate themselves and expect to be congratulated.” The expectation was that he should feel “gratitude not only that my burden is . . . being made lighter but my joy that white people are improving.” 

Baldwin viewed this demand for gratitude from the vantage point of someone who had lived through and was deeply wounded by the betrayal of the black freedom movement, someone whose recollection or remembrance of that moment involved trauma. In 1979, on the eve of the election of Ronald Reagan, for example, in a short piece for Freedomways, Baldwin wrote of the difficulty of recalling the past. “Let us say that we all live through more than we can say or see. A life, in retrospect, can seem like the torrent of water opening or closing over one’s head and, in retrospect, is blurred, swift, kaleidoscopic like that. One does not wish to remember—one is perhaps not able to remember—the holding of one’s breath under water, the miracle of rising up far enough to breathe, and then, the going under again. . . .” Here Baldwin captures beautifully the cycles of the after times that illustrate how horrific the white expectation of gratitude is. 

Baldwin believed the after times required that we look back in order to understand the choices we’ve made that have brought us to the moment of crisis. We don’t begin again as if there is nothing behind us or underneath our feet. We carry that history with us. In the introduction to The Price of the Ticket, Baldwin formulated his point about beginning again a bit differently. “In the church I come from,” he wrote, “we were counselled, from time to time, to do our first works over.” Here Baldwin invokes Revelations 2:5: “Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” In the mode of poet-prophet, Baldwin called the nation, in his after times, to confront the lie of its own self-understanding and to get about the work of building a country truly based on democratic principles. As he wrote: 

To do your first works over means to reexamine everything. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came. 

��America in the generality, he argued, refused to do such a thing because the exploration itself would reveal that the price of the ticket to be here in the United States was in fact to leave behind the particulars of Europe and become white. That transformation “choked many a human being to death,” because to become white meant the subjugation of others, an act that disfigured the soul by closing off the ability to see oneself in others, and to see them in oneself. Our task, Baldwin maintained, was to understand the history of how that disfiguring of the soul happened and, in doing so, to free oneself and the country from the insidious hold of whiteness in order to become a different kind of creation—a different way of being in the world. (pp. 193-97)

[radcyclething]

Author's Statement:

In entirety, this semester has brought about so much change. It seems that’s the true theme of my writing, as well as life. Everyday something changes and we barely take notice or choose to push out of mind. However, there comes those monumental times in our lives. It dismantles everything we thought we once knew about the world or about oneself. For me and many others my age, it came in the form of the transition from grade school to University. Moreover, just as much as they shape an individual, they also shape the course of history for a community. Throughout the 7 works on this page, a common theme of changes, the pressure that creates them and societal norms within the concept of change are explored. In addition, the prominence of changes can be observed within the semester's initial focus on “Revolution”.

             In the segments of “Making Connections”, the prompt of choosing an interesting pieces of literature introduced that inspired me led me towards “I Too” by Langston Hughes, “Straight Outta Compton” by one of the  90s rap group NWA and “shitty First drafts” by Anne Lamott. I Too spoke to me. I read it again and again. Not because I didn't understand it the first time but because I felt it. I felt those feelings of indignation at being put out because the world canty see your worth. However, I feel that pride in knowing that the fault is not in oneself but those that shroud their eyes of the truth of black success and liberation. In addition, “Shitty First Drafts” fed my confidence and opened me up to a humanistic approach to writing that ignores the norm. Finally, “Straight Outta Compton” was a physical embodiment of the eradication of black criminality as ironically, it employs the emphasis on criminality and fearlessness. In all 3 there's a common theme of a shift from conventionally thinking. These authors and artists reached outside the box and in the meantime inspired me. All were symbols of a turning point in perception and therefore embody change.

Finally, in the segments of Essay portion, the prospects of Reconstruction , Women’s Rights as well as protest is chronicled. The first essay focuses on women’s liberation. This current society is one that seeks to justify women’s plight by saying “At least it's not as bad as before”. This is also true for the plight of the African American people today. The powers that benefit from our oppression can only thrive on the current standing. That's where protesting comes in. Why isnt that encouraged as much as voting? Both are part of the duty of every single city that claims the perks of democracy.

Remember, the very construct of this “modern” world was to keep some down by furthering the success of another group. Women, colored people, poor people are just a few groups that don't seem to fit into this mold of holding power so therefore they are disenfranchised. As you read through this portfolio, my only hope is for inspiration, Just as Langston Hughes inspired me. The reader must understand however that there is hope nonetheless because after all “They'll see how beautiful we are and be ashamed”.

[didanawisgi]

The African origin of heroes, super and otherwise

July 7, 2011

by J.D. Jackson

Historically, heroes – super-powered or not – come in all shapes and sizes. But what about colors? If we allow your standard history book and Hollywood small and silver screen productions to answer that question, the overall answer would be that the color is only one – white. Black heroes, it seems, do not exist.

But nothing could be further from the truth, especially for the sharp-witted student of world history or even popular culture. For such a person – though not without long-lived hard work and patience, intense study and research, and steel-spined dedication – would discover that throughout time immemorial, the Black hero – real and imagined – repeatedly appears and impacts culture as well as individuals who either welcome or disregard his or her heroic appearance, words and/or deeds.

Speaking of words, some scholars now agree that the very word “hero” comes from an African (Black) word and an African god. The 19th century scholar, Gerald Massey, states that the word “hero” comes from the Egyptian, “ma haru,” meaning “the typical warrior” or the “true hero.” Whereas another scholar states that the word “hero” is derived from the Latin name of a Greek word for the African god, Heru or Hor, who most Egyptologists call “Horus the hawk, the avenger.”

Interestingly enough, the hawk is an ancient and sacred bird of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, and what the late but legendary African world history scholar, Dr. Chancellor Williams, calls “Ethiopia’s oldest daughter, Egypt.”

Furthermore, based on the testimony of the Greek historian, Herodotus – often dubbed the “father of history” – and other scholars past and present, the very names – if not the very same gods, Greek then Roman, under different names – of the gods from Greek and Roman mythology came from, or were heavily influenced by, the ancient Egyptian and African mythology which predated them.

Those African-derived Greco-Roman gods would consequently serve as the backbone of today’s multi-billion dollar superhero comic book and movie industry.

Obatala, God of Yoroba mythology.But the unmatched impact of Black heroes, real and fictional, would not stop in Greek and Roman mythology or even in Western society today. It would encompass both Asia and the Far East too. Whereas there is little, if any, hardcore evidence that King Arthur truly lived, in the Asian country of Saudi Arabia, there is evidence that over 1,500 years ago, there lived a courageous, 6th century, Black or Afro-Arabic warrior-poet and lover named Antar.

History has dubbed him the “father of knighthood … [and] chivalry” and “the king of heroes.” Greatly admired by the founder and prophet of Islam, Muhammad, he is still widely celebrated for his poetry and warrior spirit throughout the Arab world today.

Those African-derived Greco-Roman gods would consequently serve as the backbone of today’s multi-billion dollar superhero comic book and movie industry.

Then, in the Far East – China, specifically – during the 9th century, there lived a writer named Pei Xing. Although there is virtually no proof that he was Black, during the Tang Dynasty of said century he wrote what some have called “China’s first martial arts short story,” entitled “Kunlun Nu.” It means the “Negrito,” “little Negro” or “little Black” slave and its hero is an enslaved Black man who can fly and has incomparable martial arts skills – just as in the traditional Chinese martial arts films of the 1960s and ‘70s, if not in earlier and even in modern-day movies.

Then there’s Japan, where this ancient but little-known proverb was found: “For a samurai [warrior] to be brave, he must have a bit of Black blood.” Another version says: “For a samurai to be brave, he must have half Black blood,” meaning one of his parents must be Black.

We also find in Japan a noted Black warrior who historians have called “the paragon of military virtue,” a Japanese general and the first person to bear the Japanese title of sei-i tai shogun – meaning “barbarian-subduing generalissimo.” His name was Sakanouye Tammamura Maro, sometimes spelled Sakanouye No Tamuramaro.

Furthermore, let’s not forget about the only “thoroughly documented amazons in world history,” the women warriors of Dahomey, who were West African women often serving as the king’s bodyguards and who, unlike the Grecian “amazons” and the comic book “amazon,” Wonder Woman, truly lived.

And what about the beautiful, fictional or factual, Black warrior-queen, Califia – after whom the state of California is said to be named; or Nzinga, a lioness-hearted Angolan warrior-queen, who fought against the Portuguese for decades to keep them from enslaving her people? Nzinga lived. Xena, the warrior-princess, did not.

Nor let us ignore the Black steel-driving man, John Henry, who not only – according to legend – beat a steam-driving machine with his hammer in his hand, but – according to one scholar – serves as the model for both Superman and Captain America, who is called the “first avenger” in the trailer for the movie to be released July 22.

Then there’s the Black Frenchman, Alexandre Dumas père, who wrote both “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which both influenced fictional characters such as Mickey Spillane’s private eye, Mike Hammer, Ian Fleming’s super spy, James Bond, and characters created by the cowboy novelist, Zane Grey.

But what about the gun-slinging, outlaw-catching – catching between 3,000 and 4,000 outlaws – greatly feared, highly respected, often disguised, Black deputy marshal – serving for over 30 years – Bass Reeves? Says one scholar, Reeves may have served as the model for both the Lone Ranger and the Rooster Cogburn characters in the novel and movie, “True Grit.”

And let’s not fail to acknowledge the literal and literary hijacking, if not outright theft, by movie productions of African people’s centuries-long struggle against racial oppression, especially the Civil Rights Movement. Examples of such productions, if not parodies, are the “Planet of the Apes,” “Matrix” – an idea which allegedly was written by and stolen from a Black woman named Sophia Stewart – and “X-Men” movies.

And not one movie has been made about the late Henrietta Lacks, whose legendary cells are considered to be the world’s “first immortal cell lines,” reproducing on their own, adding billions to the coffers of medical researchers and research companies, and having been instrumental in the developments of the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization, gene mapping and the possible cure for cancer, if not AIDS. It’s her mutated cells – the He-La cells, if you will – that should be the subject of a major motion picture, or several of them.

Truly heroic, African-centered people should make movies about her, her poverty-stricken family and the other Black heroes and she-roes, real and imagined, that may or may not have been mentioned.

For they, like Robert F. Williams – the Black, Marine Corps trained weapons expert and stalwart, armed self-defense advocate and major but little-known Civil Rights Movement activist – clearly indicate that Black heroes do exist, should be studied and known and their lives should be written about and filmed for the small or silver screen by African people. It’s important for us to restore what the Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile, Arthur Schomburg, once said “slavery took away” – our sense of humanity, self-worth and undying willingness to work together and improve the overall dismal plight of the world’s 1 billion-plus African (Black) people – as crafted by anyone’s hand, mind or faith – come hell or high water. Such people are the real heroes – walking, talking and doing superheroes.

This is dedicated to Brother Obadela Williams, who suggested research on this topic over 20 years ago.

Source: http://sfbayview.com/2011/07/the-african-origin-of-heroes-super-and-otherwise/

[thisdaynews]

'We Shall Overcome': California anti-vaccine activists claim civil rights mantle

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/we-shall-overcome-california-anti-vaccine-activists-claim-civil-rights-mantle/

'We Shall Overcome': California anti-vaccine activists claim civil rights mantle

Protesters march through the California Capitol. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

health care

The approach reflected the level of desperation among families staunchly opposed to vaccinating their children.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A chorus of mostly white women sang the gospel song “We Shall Overcome” in the California State Capitol, an anthem of the civil rights movement. Mothers rallied outside the governor’s office and marched through Capitol corridors chanting “No segregation, no discrimination, yes on education for all!” Some wore T-shirts that read “Freedom Keepers.”

But this wasn’t about racial equality. In the nation’s most diverse state, protesters opposed to childhood vaccine mandates — many from affluent coastal areas — had co-opted the civil rights mantle from the 1960s, insisting that their plight is comparable to what African Americans have suffered from segregationist policies.

Story Continued Below

The approach reflected the level of desperation among families staunchly opposed to vaccinating their children — a desperation that peaked Friday night when an activist threw a menstrual cup with what appeared to be blood at several state senators during floor session.

But the civil rights claim shocked lawmakers, especially those representing minority communities that have suffered generations of racism and economic injustice. Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) called it “borderline racist” and said vaccine protesters need to revisit their history books.

“This is misappropriation of a movement that really is not over and proves to be challenging to overcome,” said Kamlager-Dove, a member of the California Legislative Black Caucus. “The whole conversation around vaccinations is actually one about privilege and opportunity. It’s a personal choice. It’s a luxury to be able to have a conversation about medical exemptions and about whether or not you think your child should be vaccinated.”

Hundreds of vaccine protesters galvanized this month against legislation that would crack down on medical exemptions to childhood immunizations. Four years ago, California eliminated personal belief and religious exemptions, which had long been the most common ways to avoid vaccines and still enroll children in school.

Now, California was taking aim at the last option for families deeply opposed to vaccinating their children, following a wave of measles outbreaks across the country. A handful of doctors sympathetic to their beliefs had been providing waivers that allowed parents to keep their kids unvaccinated, including Robert Sears, a member of the famed Sears medical family that had dispensed pediatric advice to parents for decades.

According to the California Department of Public Health, the number of unvaccinated children in homeschooling has skyrocketed since the state banned personal belief and religious exemptions in 2015. Students with personal belief exemptions in California schools were predominantly white and wealthy, according to a study by the American Public Health Association in 2015. Medical exemptions, intended for children with weakened immune systems, have surged since then — and are disproportionately white.

Gov. Gavin Newsom gave the anti-vaccine movement a brief window of hope in the penultimate week of legislative session when he demanded late amendments to the main medical exemption crackdown bill, Senate Bill 276. But the governor ultimately signed two measures to implement the law, which added fuel to the anger of the anti-vaccine movement. Protests continued for four days after Newsom signed the bills, with rhetoric growing ever more extreme.

Activists had earlier rolled out a sign during bill hearings that said “Welcome to Calabama, y’all” — a reference comparing Newsom, a liberal Democrat, to former Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Republican infamous for his defiance against desegregation. After the bills were approved, some held signs stating, “Welcome to Nazifornia,” complete with the Nazi symbol.

The new restrictions target schools with an immunization rate below 95 percent, the level health experts consider to offer “herd immunity.” Anything below that percentage poses a public health risk, making children more vulnerable in the instance of a measles outbreak or exposure to other diseases.

While leaders of the protest movement insist that their ranks are ethnically diverse, data suggest that the schools likeliest to face state scrutiny have a greater share of white students than the California public school average. The 50 public schools with the lowest kindergarten vaccination rates in the state — all less than 50 percent — are disproportionately white, according to an analysis by POLITICO. While less than 25 percent of California public school students are white, an average of 55 percent of students are white across the state’s 50 least vaccinated campuses.

At Valiant Academy of Southern California, less than 5 percent of its 300-plus students have all their required vaccinations, designating it as one of the “most vulnerable” schools according to the Department of Public Health. At the El Cajon school, nearly 70 percent of students are white, according to the California Department of Education.

Community Outreach Academy, a charter school near Sacramento, has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state, with less than half of its students fully vaccinated. There, 98 percent of students are white.

Christina Hildebrand, president and founder of A Voice for Choice, condemned the protester who is facing assault charges for throwing the menstrual cup on the Senate floor. But she defended those who compare the issue to the civil rights movement. She pointed to the gay rights movement and women’s suffrage, asserting that this is about bodily autonomy and parental rights.

“The Legislature is equating it to the black civil rights movement but to me, civil rights movements have happened throughout our history in the U.S.,” she said. “To me, do I think it is comparable to MLK and the civil rights movement? I think we’re probably in the beginning stages of getting to something like that.”

Hildebrand pushed back against those who see a lack of diversity in the movement, saying that has changed significantly since protests began over a similar law in 2015.

“At that point, I agreed. It was people that could afford to come to Sacramento. The middle to lower class can’t afford to take a day off,” she said. “But now I’m surprised they feel it’s white privilege. If you look at the pictures of who came and protested, there was every race and every color there.”

Other political juxtapositions have sparked outrage. After some women were arrested, Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Visalia) joined protesters in comparing the issue to the separation of immigrant parents and children at the border.

Some protesters donned red capes and white bonnets, borrowing a tactic from abortion advocates who compare themselves to characters in “The Handmaid’s Tale” — a dystopian future where women have no rights.

Lawmakers wondered if reactions to the protests would have been different if the participants weren’t mostly white women. What would have happened if, instead, it was dozens of black men standing on chairs, refusing to leave hearing rooms and beating on the doors of the Senate chambers? Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) said on Twitter she’s “never seen so much privilege.”

“I just want to point out, if constituents from my district waged months-long social harassment campaigns against a member, threatened them with death, harassed and threatened their family… then came to the Capitol and disrupted session for hours… they would definitely be arrested,” she said in another tweet.

In addition to being threatened online and physically pushed by an anti-vaccine protester, Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a Taiwanese American doctor who wrote the legislation, faced racist slurs.

One Twitter post included Pan’s head shot in a lineup of three other Asian doctors who are pro-vaccine with the phrase “Authoritarians Unite!” “Notice anything else about them?” the image said.

Actor Rob Schneider, one of several celebrity vaccination opponents, compared Pan to former Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong. “My congratulations to the People’s Republic of Chinafornia Chairman Mao Jr.,” Schneider said in a tweet to Pan.

The California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus condemned the attacks. “For too long, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been seen as perpetual foreigners and generations of contributions from our communities have been ignored. We call on SB 276 opponents to publicly condemn the racism expressed by members of the anti-vaccination movement,” said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), caucus chairman, in a statement.

Pan said he and his colleagues have faced escalating harassment this year.

“It’s unfortunate that’s the kind of tactics the opponents have decided to resort to, perhaps because they don’t have science and facts on their side, so they resort to personal threats and harassment,” Pan told reporters. “I think it’s disappointing that that’s what they have to engage in.”

Angela Hart contributed to this report.

Read More

[historydojo]

    Gil Scott Heron is an American treasure. His music is largely not played on the radio anymore, and this is an accident of time and attention that needs to be remedied. Gil Scott Heron gave voice to many of the wonderful elements of freedom that symbolized the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement fought to establish for all Americans.

Through his music, Gil Scott Heron gave voice to the spirit that was dying in the streets, after the FBI, white supremacists and too-busy American middle class people moved on from opposing the plight of the poor, the minority and the underclass in this country.

This is the third installment on the Subversive Bands series from Historydojo. Please see the first installment here. Find the second installment here.

Gil Scott Heron reminds us not to forget. He sings to us to remember, and through our memory of what was dared by those who came before we can still see the way to be free. Being free is what this whole country is about, really.

Gil Scott Heron was an American treasure.

The anthem most remembered by Gil Scott Heron is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” the message was radical enough that the FBI investigated him for being a subversive.

  The song is wonderful and needs to be heard today, more than ever.

  The lyrics to the song are below. I will attempt to explain some of the connections and references in the song, so that you can appreciate the significance of his genius.

You will not be able to stay home, brother You will not be able to plug in, turn on and drop out You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip Skip out for beer during commercials Because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised

Here the reference to “skag” is a slang term for heroine, which was washing through the ghettos and back alleys of America after the Civil Rights Movement. It was an effective way to neutralize the activism of the 1950’s and 60’s. Years later, it would be revealed that the Federal government and the CIA were importing drugs into the inner city for exactly this purpose. [1]

The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox In 4 parts without commercial interruption The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon Blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat Hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary

The revolution will not be televised

Xerox is of course the major copier corporation that was a darling of the business world in the 1970’s This company symbolized the new modern business environment, because copiers were an amazing thing back then.

Today copiers are more a source of wasted time and frustration, so it gives us context to see how frustrating and irritating life must have been when copiers were a source of relief.

The 70’s were no picnic!

The song continues…

The revolution will be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal The revolution will not get rid of the nubs The revolution will not make you look five pounds Thinner, because The revolution will not be televised, Brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays Pushing that cart down the block on the dead run Or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance NBC will not predict the winner at 8:32or the count from 29 districts

The revolution will not be televised

The references here to the movie stars Natalie Wood, Steve McQueen and the cartoon character Bullwinkle give us a time frame for the song.

Today the references could just as easily be for Michael B. Jordan and Scarlett Johannsen, and the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants.

He references “the nubs” being removed by a new razor, a claim made by Gillette in the 70’s. Pushing the cart down the block and sliding color TV’s into stolen ambulances are references to the Watts riots that were broadcast on TV.

Read the FBI files on Gil Scott Heron here. Yes, he had an FBI file…

The desperation and anger of African Americans being displayed as criminality fed into white bias against African Americans and justified their white flight into the suburbs. [2] Heron is explaining to us all how these divisions are sown by corporations and media outlets, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Heron is being cynical, referencing popular culture as a distraction from the reality of political freedom, or the denial of it. He is calling out to us to wake up from our televised halcyon daze and see that modern culture is lulling us into passive acceptance of superficial dramas over real political change.

Our obsession with personal appearance, weight loss, celebrity and cable news “alerts” are all examples of how mass media deludes the people into seeing a false reality and distracts from seeing the real oppression all around us in the form of social control. [3]

Mass media deludes the people into seeing a false reality and distracts from seeing the real oppression all around us in the form of social control.

This is when the song really picks up steam.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down Brothers in the instant replay There will be no pictures of young being  Run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process There will be no slow motion or still life of  Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a red, black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving For just the right occasion Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and  Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant and Women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day

The revolution will not be televised

Kwame Ture

Here Gil Scott Heron references Roy Wilkens, director of the NAACP in the 1970’s. Wilkens was seen as impotent in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, as any leader might when following the legacy of men like Martin Luther King , Jr. and Kwame Ture.

References to Dick and Jane recall a popular book of the day, used to teach young white children how to read in school.Heron jokingly applies a slang term about sex, “getting down with” to this reference to highlight the simplicity of Dick and Jane, and how education insulates students from the reality of their world in favor of an idolized view of the world.

Instead, he urges black people to look into the streets, “for a brighter day:”, than in the textbooks provided by a system that encourages passivity and loyalty to a system that dis-empowers African Americans throughout history.

Black People will be in the street looking for a brighter day.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock News and no pictures of hairy armed women Liberationists and  Jackie Onassis blowing her nose The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth

The revolution will not be televised

In this stanza, Heron runs through a list of popular artists that were singing at the time. This is a jab at the corporate take over of music that occurred after the turbulent music of the 1960’s. The radical young activists who attended Woodstock and the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967-68 were now parents, with mortgages and money to listen to music in their homes, and were courted by companies looking to profit from carefully presented and controlled artists, rather than the organic artists of the decade before.

The revolution will not come from careful corporate music groups, Heron declares.

He was right.

  The revolution will not be right back after a message 

About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people

You will not have to worry about a germ on your Bedroom

a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl

The revolution will not go better with Coke

The “white tornado” was a slogan for the household cleaner Ajax, and the term white lighting ins slang for home made liquor, or moonshine. The rest of the references continue in this same vein, commenting on how advertising distracts us from the real hardships of racism and inequality by solving our household chores and making our lives easier through consumerism. Gil Scott Heron’s message is that consumerism will steal our freedom by lulling us into a false sense of security.

The Lie: Racial Injustice does not go better with soda pop.

The revolution will not fight the germs that cause bad breath

The revolution WILL put you in the driver’s seat

The revolution will not be televised

WILL not be televised, WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

The revolution will be no re-run brothers

The revolution will be live

Gil Scott Heron was a national treasure. He was a real patriot. He was a patriot because he spoke up about the danger that surrounds us, conspiring to steal our freedom. He warned us against the false prophets of consumerism and celebrity. Today, more Americans are aware of the political belief of Kanye West than can even name their elected Representative.

The revolution has not yet come.

When it does, it will be covered over with news alerts and cable news coverage of salacious misrepresentations and attacks upon the character of those who lead it.

Gil Scott Heron warned us.

We cannot pretend we did not know.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/report/intro.html 

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-flight-alive-and-well/399980/

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-to-combat-fake-news-and-disinformation/

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Subversive Bands, Part Three: Gil Scott Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Gil Scott Heron is an American treasure. His music is largely not played on the radio anymore, and this is an accident of time and attention that needs to be remedied.

[notbemoved-blog]

Lighting a Candle instead of  Cursing the Darkness

First in a Series on the Federation of Southern Cooperatives

It’s been more than six months since I published my last blog post, which announced the publication of a friend’s new book about the Jackson Church Visits—Sanctuaries of Segregation—and recounted the story of my encounter with John Anderson, whose seating of four Black women in the, until then, all-White St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, broke the color barrier and opened up new possibilities for respectful dialog on the race issue. The re-posted blog was called “A Legacy of Hope” and its reposting coincided with the first 100 days of our current President’s Administration. 

I needed hope then and I need it now, given all that has occurred in the ensuing months. [We are approaching Day 300 and as far as I can see, things have gone from bad to worse.] At the time of that last blog, I decided to take a break from adding to the chatter of the blogosphere, since none of it seemed to be making much difference in the direction our democracy was headed. 

Instead, I decided, I would concentrate on the work before me. In May, I was commissioned to develop the 50th Anniversary commemorative booklet for an economic justice organization called The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which has struggled mightily for the past half century to increase opportunities for the working poor through cooperative development, primarily in agricultural communities throughout the Southern United States. The project had an incredibly ambitious timeline, which I agreed to, in part, to keep my mind focused on the deadline and drop all need to think about the deteriorating political situation. 

The result, which was released in August at the Federation’s 50th Anniversary celebration in Birmingham (AL) is a wonderful compilation of the Federation’s 50 years of service to some of America’s poorest citizens. For the next several months, I will highlight excerpts from the booklet, particularly from my “Brief History of the Federation: 1967- 2017.” It is my way of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. Here is the first installment of this series.

  Preface

The 50-year history of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund is one of service, struggle, and empowerment. Against overwhelming odds, this organization—and those who energize it—has offered hope and sustenance to some of the most economically impoverished people in America. They also happen to be some of the most resilient people, willing to try new forms, new models, new approaches because the ones they were taught to idealize did not work for them. They also happen to be mostly Black farmers and agricultural workers who have tended to the crops and livestock in the American Southland for generations, dating back to when their forebears were enslaved. They know what they’re doing; they just need the freedom and the capital to do it. This has been their plight: to live in the richest nation on earth, amidst some of the most fertile soil on the planet, and not have enough to eat, not be able to feed their families, and not for want of trying. Governmental policies, cultural intransigence, and powerful elites have conspired to insist that they either live poor or leave. Many did leave and headed North or West to crowd the cities and overwhelm those urban landscapes. Others decided to stay. This was their home, after all. They would stay and try to find a new way of survival. Cooperatives offered the best opportunity. By banding together with others, perhaps they could make a go of it; perhaps they could change the dynamic of an oppressive culture; perhaps they, too, could grab a piece of that elusive American Dream. Perhaps . . . .

 In the Beginning

The 1960s were a decade of great turmoil. American life was being turned on its head. Protests and demonstrations about racial segregation had finally pushed their way onto the front pages of newspapers across the country and into the halls of America’s political establishment. Questions about how we could all live together as free and equal people were at last given serious consideration. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were direct, tangible results of the clamor for change. Federal power was wielded over intransigent Southern states that had found ways, despite existing law, to disenfranchise their Black populace—often comprising upwards of 30 to 40 percent of the residents of many Southern states.

 These aggrieved people, who formed the backbone of the South’s agrarian economy, were impoverished despite centuries of planting, nurturing, and harvesting the cash crops that made the South wealthy: cotton, sugar, and tobacco.  Enslaved on these shores for their first 250 years, then emancipated, shockingly, without a plan for their survival, these Southern Blacks adapted to a changing political environment that left them without land to live on or homes to live in. The promise of “40 Acres and a Mule,” which could have given them a fresh start, evaporated in the recriminating politics that followed the American Civil War. For many, the only option left was to agree to till the land of their former enslavers, for what would come to be known as “slave wages”—cents on the dollar for a full day of backbreaking work in the torpid, Southern summer sun, and rickety shacks to live in on the landowner’s plantation. This was freedom?

“This has been their plight: 

to live in the richest nation on earth, 

amidst some of the most fertile soil on the planet,

 and not have enough to eat, 

not be able to feed their families, 

and not for want of trying.”

This system of sharecropping continued for the next 100 years as Jim Crow laws replaced the more liberal Reconstruction policies and Blacks lost power and social status to the entrenched landowning gentry. It might have continued had several developments not occurred: the modern civil rights movement and the industrialization of modern agriculture. The mid-20th-century civil rights movement was years in the making, the result of endless yearning for a better life. Its gains, however, were mostly social (integration) and political (voting rights). Although economic justice was always a part of the dialog—the 1963 March on Washington, was, after all, titled the March for Jobs and Freedom—somehow it always took a back seat to the more pressing demands of political and social equality. 

But economic issues were always at the forefront of poor peoples’ minds. As Federation stalwart and social activist Carol Prejean would later say, “For us, this was survival!” How to find enough to eat, to keep a roof over your family’s head, to save for a rainy day, these were daily concerns of the Southern rural poor. The 1950s and ‘60s were a time for searching for new models to help replace those systems that had failed to generate subsistence, let alone security. Some who came South hoping to help with literacy and voting rights realized quickly that, although important, these things took a back seat to the day-to-day struggle for survival. Economic issues were more pressing than purchasing a hamburger at the local Five and Dime. Where was the dime supposed to come from? As Ezra Cunningham, another Federation enthusiast from Alabama would famously say, “You Can’t Eat Freedom!” and, “A Ballot is not to be Confused with a Dollar Bill.”

Cooperatives Offer Hope as Agriculture Changes

One of the new forms uncovered during this period of discovery was the cooperative business model. Cooperatives offered Black farmers of the 20th-century rural South the same opportunity that they offered to the 19th-century English weavers of Rochdale—the opportunity to band together to create a new system of support and empowerment; a chance to be a full partner in a community enterprise; a way of helping one’s self while helping others. Cooperatives were models of democratic governance. In that sense, they were incubators to help those left out of the political process to see how true democracy worked. By participating in the cooperative enterprise and voting for one’s elected representatives to the cooperative’s board of directors, people once struggling alone suddenly had a way forward. They understood that their vote mattered, that they were participating in something larger than themselves and their own struggle for survival. Although that struggle was still real, at least they were struggling with others like themselves, working together to build something that would help the entire community. It was exhilarating; it was empowering; it was life-affirming. Suddenly, all of the things they had been struggling for—food, housing, employment, health care, education—seemed possible.

The Civil Rights Movement occurred just when the South was experiencing a revolution in agricultural techniques. Mechanization and chemical fertilization and weed killing were dramatically changing the way crops were tended, particularly cash crops like cotton, sugar, and tobacco. No longer were armies of plantation laborers necessary to plant, chop weeds, and pick the crops. Combines and chemicals could do the work previously relegated to hundreds of day laborers or sharecroppers. The humans who had meticulously tended these cash crops were being turned out of their homes, no longer needed by the plantation owners who had paid them penny wages and housed them in hovels. For landowning Black farmers, the cost of equipment and fertilizer to employ these new techniques and technologies was often prohibitive.

Some historians assert that it was precisely because of the civil rights gains of the mid-1960s that African Americans were being pushed off the land. The Voting Rights Act, in particular, opened up new opportunities for Black political power, and many Southern counties were what we now call majority-minority counties. Blacks had the power to sway elections and even put their own candidates into the mayor’s office or the chief of police’s squad car. Whites who had dominated Southern politics were not about to turn over the reins of power without a fight, so they pushed people off of the land for the slightest provocation—attending a political speech or registering to vote—in the hope that they would just pack up and leave. In addition, most White-owned banks discriminated against Black farmers seeking loans, which then forced loan defaults and foreclosures and displaced thousands. But where were they to go?

Many fled the Jim Crow South, expecting to find better jobs and better lives elsewhere. They flooded northern and western cities. Depending on where the trains took them, they ended up in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, and various stopping points along the way. From 1940 to 1970, five million Blacks left the South seeking better lives in other parts of America. It became, as we now know, one of the greatest migrations of people in the history of the world. These shifting populations would put unbearable strains on the infrastructure of these urban centers until they, too, would explode under the weight of racial and economic stress.

Others wanted to stay where they had been born. They wanted to take the chance of building their lives in the rich soil that was the rural Southland. “Bloom where you’re planted.”  They wanted to create opportunities and institutions for themselves and their families that would be better than those their forebears had been able to conceive. They wanted to build something that would create a legacy for the future. This, really, is where the story of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives begins. 

NEXT - The Start of the Southern Black Cooperative Movement

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The Obama Presidency and the Limits of Hope

Words by: Anthony Browne Ph.D.

From The Source Magazine Issue #271 | 2017

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama made history as the first African American elected President of the United States of America. The campaign slogans ‘Yes We Can’ and ‘Hope’ and an agenda for change galvanized his supporters and many cried tears of joy, shared hugs and high fives or proudly wore Obama paraphernalia. Given America’s racial history, most African Americans never believed a Black man would break the presidential color barrier in their lifetimes.

Many saw the election as fulfilling the promise of the civil rights movement and representing a new era filled with possibilities for progress in the struggle against deeply entrenched racial inequality. Obama was elected during what has been termed as America’s greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then, as now, African Americans bore the brunt of the pain. During the recession which started in 2007, African Americans disproportionately lost jobs, homes to foreclosure and money in the stock market. Obama’s campaign especially among African Americans created high expectations–but after eight years, Obama leaves office with a mixed legacy particularly on issues of race.

Many Americans became aware of a young Senator Obama from Chicago during his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and through his books Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Obama represented a different kind of politician who possessed charisma, soaring rhetoric, a unique bi-racial biography, and a telegenic family that symbolized the best of African American culture. The president also embodied a sense of cool through his swagger, ability to quote Jay Z lyrics and use of hip hop phrases. While first lady Michelle Obama demonstrated her cool factor in viral videos that showed skills at hip-hop dances and through a verbatim sing-along with the rapper Missy Elliot. America had never witnessed such a display of Black cool, intelligence and humor in the Oval Office.

On the night of the 2008 election, many white commentators argued that Obama’s win heralded a new “post-racial” period in America where race would no longer be a factor in determining opportunities. In fact, they asserted that the country had moved beyond race and that the election signaled a new era of equal opportunities. African Americans, on the other hand were generally much more cautious. That America’s 400-year history of racism and white supremacy was solved through the election of Obama struck African Americans as wishful thinking at best. Perhaps a more telling indication that the country was far from being post-racial was that Obama received 43% of the white vote in 2008 and 39% in 2012. In other words, in both elections the majority of whites voted against Obama which ominously pointed to persisting and deep-seated anxieties about race and loss of status that would eventually become a white backlash. This myth of post-racialism was immediately exposed as Americans witnessed a steady barrage of blatantly racist language, sexist and misogynistic stereotypes, memes and videos that mocked the president, the first lady and their daughters. America’s history has shown that white backlash movements—against Reconstruction or the long civil rights movement–tend to follow periods of racial progress. The reemergence of mainstream overt racism during Obama’s presidency was the latest example of this phenomenon as many whites feared losing their country. Most notably, Tea Party activists and New York real estate mogul Donald Trump promoted the conspiracy that Obama was not born in America and, therefore, not a legitimate president. These groups viewed Obama as a constant reminder that their control of a supposedly declining America was slipping away and attacked immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, social welfare spending as threats to their way of life. Throughout much of his political career, Barack Obama held the enduring belief that white America could rise above racism and he therefore avoided discussions about their accountability for centuries-long Black inequality. In fact, one study found that Obama spoke less about race during his first term than any Democratic president in the last 50 years. This deliberate strategy surely was instrumental in his successful elections to the U.S. Senate and the presidency. But it prevented him from effectively dealing with the history and current effects of structural racism in explaining continued worsening inequality for Blacks in employment, housing, education, criminal justice, health, wealth and income. When he did discuss the plight of African Americans, especially in the first term, it often took the form of lectures that reinforced racist notions that Blacks were somehow solely to blame for the condition of their families and communities because they either did not work hard enough, raise their children properly or lacked the right values. The emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement during the administration of a president that largely avoided issues of race was particularly ironic. The movement was in response to several high-profile murders of African Americans at the hands of police and vigilantes. The seemingly unending collection of videos and social media recordings of the deaths of Black men and women was a tragic reminder of how race continues to shape Black life. During Obama’s second term, widespread protest as well as several uprisings across the country forced the president to reluctantly discuss racial inequality in policing. Black Lives Matter activists took the lead in making the country confront the intersection of race, gender and police misconduct. Young activists made the country uncomfortably aware that police abuse is not an anomaly but rather a national pattern that continues to disproportionately impact African Americans. As such, thousands were spurred by the deeply unsettling images to engage in protest. Americans witnessed perhaps for the first time since the freedom rides, sit-ins and marches of the civil rights movement, a joining together across racial lines of a nascent movement demanding far reaching reforms against the racial double standard in policing.

African Americans have a long history of advocating that presidents address the economic and social conditions facing the Black community. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the leaders of the NAACP, abolitionist Fredrick Douglass, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to name a few, had all sought audiences with the presidents of their time. But during the Obama’s first term, as the wealth gap increased and Black unemployment and poverty remained high, African American leaders with few exceptions were largely reluctant to publicly demand that he forcefully address the dire conditions facing poor and working class Black communities. Due to the constant attacks by conservatives and racist activists, the Black community closed ranks to support the President even as many privately wished he would do more. These leaders believed that Black concerns were being taken for granted especially as those groups who did not vote for him used protest, media campaigns, and the ballot box to compel Obama to deal with their concerns. To push President Obama to address concerns in their communities a small group of African American leaders and organizations called for the implementation of policies that would directly target the ongoing causes of Black inequality. Namely, the harsh impact of unemployment, mass incarceration, discrimination, police abuse and failing schools on African Americans. However, Obama’s infamous reply was that he was president of all Americans and not president of Black America. The president’s dismissive response to African Americans who overwhelmingly voted for him—some 95% in 2008 and 93% in 2012– suggested that they were not citizens whose concerns should be addressed. The snub came in stark contrast to the president’s treatment of other groups whose issues he would come to embrace. The announcement of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative during his second term was arguably the only program that could be described as primarily targeting African Americans. It was designed to provide mentorships, summer jobs and other supports to African American and Latino boys. Despite the well-meaning nature of the initiative, Black women rightfully raised concerns about the exclusion of Black girls and women who were from the same families and communities and were experiencing disturbing levels of educational performance, unemployment and involvement with the criminal justice system. To his credit, in response, the president began to speak about the dire conditions that too many women and girls faced. Critics further added the emphasis should be placed on polices that close persistent racial gaps in education, employment and income rather than reforming young African Americans. The president’s shortcomings on polices that address specific concerns of African Americans notwithstanding, there were a number of accomplishments during his tenure: the Affordable Care Act provided healthcare to 20 million people; marriage equality for gays and lesbians; The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restored protections against discrimination in pay; The DREAM Act provided a path to legal status for undocumented young people; the massive stimulus package included bailouts and money for social programs and jobs helped to reduce the impact of the Great Recession; full diplomatic relations with Cuba were restored; Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court; the administration wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the cabinet contained the highest number of African Americans and women of any administration in history.

President Obama’s historic presidency will be debated and analyzed in the years ahead. Under very difficult circumstances he was able to achieve several major accomplishments. But in retrospect, he could have accomplished much more had he been more forceful in using the power of his office to educate Americans about the continuing importance of race while putting forth policies that attacked structures that perpetuate racial and economic inequality. White supremacy thrives in an environment that feeds on the myth that whites work harder, don’t rely on government and are more law abiding than Blacks and other groups. Obama could have started a national conversation on government’s role in perpetuating economic and social privileges. These difficult conversations would have educated Americans about their history and shared responsibility to address wrongs while laying the groundwork for substantive policies to close the racial divide. Instead, President Obama will transfer power to a man who has promised to undue his agenda. It is a sobering reminder that who holds office matters; and that major progressive changes in America occur when elected leaders are forced to respond to movements in the streets.

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