what a woman who could have joined the D.A.R. has learned about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" by just paying attention and NOT keeping her mouth shut...
Six years ago, when I started this blog, I decided to focus it on the socially-constructed, political notion of "race." Consequently, I have only occasionally broached other issues, even issues I feel fairly strongly about, such as women's reproductive freedom, Palestinian national autonomy, and rights for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, trans-sexual and queer people, including same sex marriage.
Since I've been teaching courses in gender and sexuality from the sociological perspective in recent years, I've been made increasingly conscious of the rabid homophobic panic that many Black folks seem to feel in the face of the fact that there are millions of people in the U.S. who are GLBTTQ and a statistically representative number of them are Black. Once, during the second lecture of a sexuality course, before anyone had as yet gotten comfortable, I mentioned the word "gay" in passing only to have a young Black male student throw up his hand instantly to announce out of nowhere, "I'm not gay!" I was speechless.
Last night and the night before, I watched two separate documentaries that took the top of my head off. So you know you're gonna hear about 'em. They were both on my local Public Broadcasting channel and they are available online for free even as I write, though my understanding is that they will disappear in fairly short order, so you need to look lively if you're going to get a freebie while simultaneously having your mind blown. I realize this doesn't appeal to everyone, but c'mon now, you're reading this blog. You could invite a few friends over, order some pizza, and watch a double feature. I dare ya. In fact, I double dog dare ya.
If I read in its entirety every email I get about issues around the globe, I would have to quit my day job and get paid just to read. I do usually pay special attention to the work of Hans Bennett of Prison Radio, however. I won't front. I don't read every word he writes. This guy is prolific and I just don't have that kind of hours in the day. But I do pay attention.
The piece I'm re-posting here got the nod for another reason, as well. Several years ago, I posted a photo link on the right side of this blog to a site calling for the freeing of Kevin Cooper. I probably responded to a call for action related to an eminent execution date. I'm opposed to capital punishment regardless. Somebody I usually agree with must have asked for a show of solidarity to keep Cooper alive and I put up the link. And then promptly forgot about it. Like I said, I can't stay on top of everything.
In any case, when Bennett sent this interview, I read it. About time, huh? And, needless to say, it was one more of those Oh-my-God-how-do-these-sh*theads-sleep-at-night? moments. So, I'm putting it here. Take a minute. You need to know about this case.
This article first appeared in TheFightBack, which comes out of Washington, D.C. I heard about the incident it discusses at an NAACP meeting where I live. I then saw the following reposted at the Louisiana Justice Institute. Sigh.
Growing up in a civil rights family in Bogalusa, Louisiana, Chuck Hicks remembers the constant threats. “We were a marked family,” he told TheFightBack, in an extended interview on the eve of the October dedication of the MLK Memorial. It turns out, Hicks’ use of the past tense may have been wishful thinking.
Around 3 a.m. on Jan. 16, Barbara Hicks Collins, Chuck’s sister, heard a loud knock. She opened the door only to find no one there and her Mercedes Benz in flames. It appears an attempt was also made to burn down the family home, where Collins and her 82-year-old mother, Valeria Hicks, live.
On January 27th, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the journalist and Black Panther Party member who spent thirty years on death row related to a case that many feel is a miscarriage of justice, was released into general population at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy. Three days later, he had his first contact visit and kissed his wife for the first time in three decades.
Last Thursday, he had his second contact visit and the following letter was posted by Johanna Fernandez (left above) to share the experience with the rest of us.
"When justice is present, tranquility transcends a land much like the calm, flowing waters of the Niagara. When justice is absent, there is outright unrest; equilibrium in society is disturbed, and progress is paralyzed. Absent justice can be felt as impactfully as the waters gushing from the hoses of police spraying civil rights marchers. It stings. While these raging waters did not kill the civil rights workers, it forcefully halted their functions for the time. Absent justice has the same effect on society. Justice that is selectively present or disparately applied is no less deleterious. Disparate justice leaves a sect of society disconnected and breeds a spirit of divisiveness. Much like a person standing knee-deep in the murky, debris-filled swamp waters of Louisiana, those on the receiving end of disparate justice see what is across from them and know it is within close reach, but experience great frustration knowing they can only get to it if they fight great resistance." ~ Angela A. Allen-Bell, from 'Bridge Over Troubled Waters and Passageway on a Journey to Justice: National Lessons Learned About Justice From Louisiana's Response to Hurricane Katrina' in the California Western Law Review, Spring 2010
At 8:30 a.m. on New Year's Day, the Boxer and I went to a Waffle House on the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi, to have breakfast. We had danced the new year in the night before at our first new year's eve celebration together. And we were headed that morning to hear a message of hope and inspiration delivered by someone like us who has beaten all the odds and is still standing.
After we ordered our eggs, I went over to the jukebox, as I always do, to play a series of my Old School favorites. Putting in my dollar for six plays, I punched in the numbers and the first one I played -- of course -- was "At Last" by Etta James. As the first few notes rose and moved through the restaurant, I walked back over to the table where I looked down at the Boxer and said softly, "May I have this dance?"
Without a moment's hesitation, he rose, took me in his arms, and we danced in the Waffle House in the broad daylight of New Year's morning, ignoring the cloud of witnesses as if we were the world entire.
When the song ended and we sat down to eat, the restaurant roused itself as if it had been on pause for three minutes. And life went on. For everyone but Etta.
I've seen "Red Tails" now and the Boxer and I give it an enthusiastic four thumbs up. We all watched "Roots" in 1977 and were suitably impressed by the fact that someone would be allowed to portray the nightmare of Black oppression during slavery. Then, in 1985, we all watched "The Color Purple" and were suitably impressed that a movie about Black people surviving their pain could make it to the big time. Now, in "Red Tails," we finally have the opportunity to watch Black people outshine -- and even save -- White people just because they were better at flying and fighting than anybody else doing it at the time. It's a matter of public record, y'all, but who expected to see it done like this?
"Red Tails," the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, arguably one of the most heroic tales of all time and certainly one of the most inspiring chapters in the Black struggle for respect in the United States, opens today at theaters across the country. One would think that such a film would be a slam dunk for attention, recognition and support. After all, it was produced by George Lucas of Star Wars fame (and who better to offer us heart-stopping aerial dog fights?). It was directed by Anthony Hemingway who was part of the directorial team for the award-winning and highly touted television series, "The Wire." And it stars most of the finest young Black male actors in or even near Hollywood of late (including Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr.).
Cast & Director of Red Tails with former Tuskegee Airman Roscoe Brown
But it turns out that's a problem. It features so many fine Black actors, there just weren't any major roles left for White folks at all. Gracious. In fact, the lack of White actors meant that nobody would step up to help Lucas fund it (so it took him twenty years to get it done). Once produced, nobody wanted to distribute it, claiming they didn't know how to go about marketing a movie without appeal to White audiences (and why would White people want to watch a bunch of African-Americans saving White bomber pilots?).
So the deal is this: if "Red Tails" doesn't make a boatload of money, George Lucas takes a financial beating for risking his reputation to make such a film, Black directors like Hemingway will continue to be shut out of the making of high budget movies, and Black actors will remain, too often, tokens of color in stories that forever feature Whites. Lucas, the film, and the Tuskegee Airmen deserve better.
Frankly, I have my concerns about the presentation of this film at this time. I'm concerned that it glorifies war at a time when the American public should be gut sick of dying in and paying for wars, wars and more wars all over the world. I'm concerned that economically and emotionally discouraged young Black men will follow the dashing young heroes on the screen down the yellow brick road to fight today's battles for old White politicians. And I'm concerned that Black folks will turn out en mass, but mostly only Black folks, "proving" yet again that Whites won't pay to watch a movie that's not about Whites.
But all that notwithstanding, I know I'm gonna love "Red Tails." I might just see it twice. And I hope you'll go, as well. With all your friends and relatives. And "like" the Facebook site. And, when the time comes, buy the DVD. ;^)
"The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, master and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.” ~ Dr. Martin L. King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence,” April 4, 1967
A couple of months ago, I received the following email. I don't think it needs comment from me to get the point across, do you?
"Hi. I'm in your Racial and Ethnic Relations class. I recently had an experience and I don't know what to make of it. I had to bring my son to turn in a paper and...as I was walking around campus with my son in his stroller, I started to notice the way people were looking at me. I knew the look because you get it from teachers and co-workers all the time. It's that look people give you when they are associating your race with some kind of negativity. I've been getting that look my whole life so I know it when I see it.
This is not clever, ingenius, intelligent, funny and entertaining because it's about being Black. It's not. It's clever, ingenius, intelligent, funny, and entertaining, all right. But it's about being human and it just happens to be done by a Black woman. A very clever, ingenius, intelligent, funny and entertaining Black woman. For real. With more available at Awkward Black Woman. Enjoy. And remember you first saw it here. (You're gonna love me for this.)
According to the latest census bureau data, nearly one in two people in the United States (that would be half of us) is now living either in or near poverty. Is this really because they're all just too lazy to do anything about it? Multi-millions of American jobs have vaporized over the past twenty years, now outsourced to other countries or turned into low-paid temporary positions without benefits. Yet the rich keep blaming the workers that made the rich rich in hopes that the workers will keep blaming themselves.
So American citizens -- no longer qualified for unemployment assistance (that's the real reason that the rate has gone down) -- are frantically looking for work or accepting work they know will not take care of themselves and their families. People of Color are more than twice as likely to be shut out of the job market. And many U.S. citizens were already strung out on credit because of trying to keep up the illusion that they weren't poor before the most recent economic setbacks. When are we going to stop kidding ourselves? More people are on foodstamps now because there are fewer and fewer jobs every day which means more and more poverty for more and more people. This is not rocket science requiring fancy economic analysis.
In the film clip above, Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and Barbara Ehrenreich address this situation without ever once sounding sensationalistic or raising even one puff of academic dust. Watch the clip. Show it to some friends. Start a conversation. Let's face reality together.
I recently came across a quote saying something like: "Facing something might not change it, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." My version: "Everything I ever refused to face eventually hit me in the back of the head." I'm just sayin'.
"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous ~ for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship." ~ A. Phillip Randolph, who demonstrated how to make 'em listen
The perception that many people in the United States have is that Africans were helpless victims of their own inability to protect themselves from their "betters" (that would be the White Europeans, of course) and that, as a result, they sort of "deserved" whatever came after that. The 30 million or so who died crossing the Atlantic from abuse, disease, starvation, suicide, or just being thrown overboard so the White slavers (all God-fearing men, needless to say) could avoid prosecution for the crime of being slavers were just collateral damage, as it were. Mutinies on slave ships with the exception of The Amistad have been largely ignored. And the African-American uprisings that have occurred in the past one hundred years have invariably been called "riots" and used to suggest that Black folks are just...well...like that ...you know?
It occurs to me that this is just one example of why White Supremacy is a joke. It also occurs to me that any group that can produce things of this caliber in absolutely every category of human endeavor (especially under the literal lash of unrelenting oppression) will never be utterly bested. Maybe this is why White folks stress so much. Ya think?
On January 14th, 2006, I published the first post on this blog site. It read:
When I wrote the end of last September that I was going to start blogging only on the topic of what I call the "socially-constructed, political notion of 'race'," I really thought I meant a few days later. Apparently, I meant three months later. Regardless, I hope to have a book on race (the story of my life, actually) published this year. Then, I'd like to travel around and tell people what I've got on my mind. But in the meantime, while I work on a couple more books and teach and live my life and all, I'll do this, too.
I did my first piece of research on race in 1963 (I was sixteen) on racial discrimination in the area in which I lived with my college-educated, white-bred (pun intended) parents and four younger brothers and sisters. Years in the prison abolition movement, years on welfare, and years in college and grad school later, I am still learning about "race." And talking about it. Loudly. And writing about it. Passionately.
This concludes the posting of my book-length manuscript, Reduced to Equality: My Odyssey to Renounce Racial Privilege ~ and Find Myself. You may read the previously posted segments here.
2004 (cont'd)
After months of chasing the story, I learned little more than I had known at the beginning. And John Ed’s bi-racial child was born only one month before he eloped with Elizabeth. I don’t know why John Ed married Elizabeth so quickly after Dillon’s birth, if as Pearce suggests, he was in love with Dillon’s mother, so we just have to surmise things. Like, well, maybe he was so hurt by not being able to be with Dillon’s mother and his son that he went sideways into another relationship. But why a Garrard? Maybe Elizabeth, who was, after all, a real looker, was his second choice. Or maybe he wasn’t really in love with Dillon’s mother. Or maybe, since they had talked him out of doing what he really wanted to do -- based, I’m sure, on family “honor” -- he just wanted to piss everybody off and make years more trouble in the family by snatching the granddaughter of a former Governor of the state.
It's been a minute since I posted. Had to close out the semester. Whew! Glad that's over. Anyway, here's Nina Simone to prime the pump, let you know I'll be around, clear out my head and lay the groundwork for whatever comes next.
Remember those who grew this food Who picked and packed Who shipped and sold. Bronze rainbow arms Have set this food upon our table.
Remember those who built this house
Assembled, weaved, created Light and warmth and health. Remember those who fought and died To break the king’s command, the slaver’s yoke And slay the Nazi beast. Remember those who walked in darkness Eyes on the gourd and the Trail of Tears, Marching in Selma, martyred in Memphis They can’t kill the dream, Jesús y Maria, Che on his cross in the Andean highlands Shot in the stadium, pushed from the airplane Martyrs for freedom And America. Never forget Our ancient foe His craft and power, His cruel hate His endless thirst Through blood and oil For profit, profit Uber alles. Remember those whose songs of love Restore us still Pablo, Diego, Woody and Giant Paul Mus’ keep on fightin’, Comrades all Remember those who grew this food Who mined and forged Who sang and loved Who fought and died Who made all wealth
All honor and glory, All power and peace Be unto you Be unto you.
_________________________________________________
NOTE: This poem/prayer was originally published in People's Weekly World in March 2006. Updated Nov. 23, 2010 and Nov. 23, 2011. Learn more about Rick Nagin here
This continues the posting of my book-length manuscript, Reduced to Equality: My Odyssey to Renounce Racial Privilege ~ and Find Myself. You may read the previously posted segments here.
2004 (cont'd)
Hugh Lowry White’s father moved his household from Pennsylvania to Virginia in 1790 because Pennsylvania had decided to emancipate its slaves that year and, apparently, old William White had no intention of letting that happen to his household. It’s quite possible, interestingly enough, although there are conflicting stories about this, that old William himself came to the colonies as an indentured servant chased out of Ireland by the British, when the Scotch-Irish lost their take-over attempt. So it would seem on the surface odd that he had become so heartless so rapidly after arriving, but that he had slaves, we know, and that he moved to Virginia, we know, and unfortunately, that’s the kind of information I was often stuck with -- bare-bones facts with no explanation for any of them.
William’s son, James, was a master businessman who quickly distinguished himself as a representative for somebody else’s entrepreneurial endeavor, and then struck out on his own to seek his fortune, which he fairly quickly began to find. Hearing about the salt wells in the region that eventually became Clay County, Kentucky, James convinced his brother, Hugh Lowry White, who had not amassed his own fortune as yet, to move there in 1803 and oversee a salt manufacturing business for the two of them. They began buying up land in the mountains at a price intended to encourage the development of the area, and by 1840, Hugh was the richest individual in the county, owning $88,000 worth of land and holding $105,400 in personal property -- including 38 slaves.
The following article on the "nativist movement" that originally appeared, as far as I know, at Reader Supported News, was written by James Ridgeway, one of the writers I respect most in the world today. The more I think about it, the more important I think it is. Especially as the Occupy movement has developed in recent months, which must, I would assume, make nativists and others who are already agitated, more nervous (and thus more dangerous) than ever.
It is quite interesting, I think, to scan the comments after Ridgeway's piece and notice the range of commentators outside (and sometimes far outside) the box. Which is one of the reasons I'm re-posting it.
Sometimes, I get tired of scaring myself and others. I don't think it's always effective in moving people in the direction we need to be going. Nevertheless, it often seems to me that not to be scared at this juncture is to risk putting oneself in mortal danger. So what are we supposed to do?
Read on, that's what.
"The Threat of America's Nativist Far Right" by James Ridgeway As emerging reports would have it, Kevin William Harpham, 36, who is accused of setting a bomb to go off at the Martin Luther King Jr Day parade in Spokane, Washington, was yet another "lone wolf" terrorist, acting at his own behest and on his own behalf. Even groups on the racist, radical far right that so clearly inspired him are rushing to disown and denounce the indicted man. Regardless of whether he was a "member" of an organised group, there can yet be no doubt that Harpham saw himself as part of a movement – one that has an especially broad reach in the age of Obama, and roots as deep as American culture itself.
There's a new book out in which author Dorothy Roberts explains that what we have called "race" for hundreds of years is, in actuality, not a biological reality. "Race" is also a name that has been used to refer to social, political and cultural realities.
"According to Dorothy Roberts, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century, it's because, despite centuries of efforts to treat race as if it's a biological category, it is no more than social construction -- created to oppress people -- that changes with place, time and perspective."
A couple of weeks ago, Boxer and I went up to the Art and Craft Fair at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Boxer was incarcerated for twenty-eight and a half years in all, the first twenty at Angola, so we spent much of the day just hanging out with guys he's known for decades, guys we carry in our hearts, guys that can't leave when we do.
We didn't go to the last Fair, so it had been a year since we saw them. They wondered if we had moved on with our lives and left them behind, as so many others have.
"We went through some changes," I explained. "We split up for a minute, had some things we needed to work through on our own. But now we're back together and ready to reach out from the center again."
They were glad to see us. But some of them had gone through changes, too.
This semester, I'm teaching a Racial and Ethnic Relations class, which I present more or less as a course in White Supremacy 101. Last week, I showed "Passin' It On," the story of Dhoruba bin Wahad, a Black Panther Party member who was targeted by the criminal justice system and spent nineteen years in a cell until he was finally acquitted and released. Reading the startled reactions written by my students after watching the film, I was caused to think about another Black Panther: Lil' Bobby Hutton.
Bobby was the first recruited member of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, joining in December of 1966 at the age of sixteen. Sixteen months later, two days after Martin Luther King, Jr., was gunned down by a police officer in Memphis, Tennessee, the Oakland, California, police department attacked the BPP office and shot Lil' Bobby more than twelve times when he walked out into the street in his underwear so they would know he was unarmed. Long live Lil' Bobby Hutton and all people who unite to fight those who carry on the traditions and practices of White Supremacy.
In honor of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which celebrates its 45th year this month; in remembrance of all the brothers and sisters (Black and White) who struggled, suffered and died to advance the goals and aspirations of the Party; and in solidarity with those brothers and sisters (Black and White) who remain in the belly of the beast in prisons and jails throughout the not-just, not-legal system in the United States because of their political beliefs and most particularly Albert "Shaka" "Cinque" Woodfox and Herman "Hooks" Wallace who have spent their last forty years in solitary confinement, I am posting this recent interview with Billy X, one of the earliest organizers for the Black Panther Party. Learn more here or here.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article about another White Southerner with a really bad case of "Let-Me-Show-My-Ass-In-Public-Over-My-So-Called-White-Heritage." Apparently, Annie Chambers Caddell feels so strongly about her "White heritage" she has to hang a big Confederate flag in front of her house in a -- get this -- Black neighborhood in Summerville, South Carolina.
Yeah.
And it gets weirder than that.
She has a bunch of drawings on her wall of famous Black men, including among others, Tupac Shakur and Barack Obama (one can only wonder how she made her list of who to...er...hang). And she told a British journalist that she sees no contradiction in the fact that she hung both the pictures and the flag.
I can't imagine why she moved into a Black neighborhood last year with her White-is-right perspective. Maybe somebody left her the house in a will. Maybe she just couldn't wait any longer for her fifteen minutes of fame so she hung the flag a month after she got there. Maybe she's crazy as a bedbug.
But one thing I know for sure: she uses the words "White heritage" without the foggiest clue what they mean. Because if she thought about it, she'd think again.
The United States has shamed itself once again. I am sad beyond words. My heart goes out to his family and to all who suffer in the belly of the beast -- guilty or innocent. We will never stop fighting for you.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has ruled that Troy Davis will die at 7:00 p.m. tonight. Davis was convicted of the shooting death of a police officer twenty-two years ago. I blogged about the case yesterday and the media is blazing with discussion on the issues involved. As I go through my day today, I will be mulling over some questions:
1. How many innocent Black men do you suppose have been gunned down in cold blood by the police in this country over the past twenty-two years without it even being considered a crime?
2. The family says they need closure in the death of their loved one. Wouldn't "closure" include knowing that the actual murderer was held accountable, rather than that he walks around free -- bragging about getting away with killing a police officer -- while an innocent man is sacrified?
3. Doesn't Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm (phone number: 912-652-7308) realize that, since he can personally intervene to save Troy Davis' life -- or not -- public attention to this case and how it's handled will make it political suicide for him to let Davis die?
4. How long are we going to continue begging for relief from a rampant White Supremacist criminal not-just system before it dawns on us that it isn't going to change until we make it change?
