I Read the News Today...Oh, Boy...

I'm working on several posts just now and something weird is going on with YouTube today for some reason. So while you're waiting, I'm gonna give you some links to keep you busy.

1) To start with, you might want to find out what Mike Whitney says really happened to free Ingrid Betancourt from the rebels in Colombia. It involves the payment of $20 million for one thing, but that's not even half of the back story. I wonder what we'd do without new media sources like Counterpunch, Truthout, Znet and the many others that have risen to keep us from being buried in bullshit. If you're not supporting one or more of these to the extent you're capable, then we'll have you to thank when we're completely left to the mercy of Big Brother's NewSpeak.

2) The Field Negro, as usual, has some pithy words on another current news flap: re-visiting the use of the word "nigger" (aka "the n-word"*) by Jesse Jackson, for one, but also creating a tizzy on "The View" when the discussion turned to why African-Americans can use the word, but White folks can't.

(Criminy. I'm not sure anybody that needs an explanation deserves one.)

3) Anyway, a friend and fellow sociologist (and freedom-fighter) tipped me this morning to a piece Hans Bennett did for The Dissident Voice (another of those important and worthy to be supported alternative news sources) containing an interview of Claude Marks, a Black activist who, among others, was arrested and tortured in the 1970's for -- basically -- being a Black activist. Marks has spent decades now making films and directing an archive of materials documenting and describing the use of law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and torture against people of color. Of particular interest to me is the way the system is now going back to thirty-year-old cases, re-arresting people, and taking them back into court using "confessions" already established as having been acquired by the use of physical torture. Does the public have no limits to what it will accept?

4) And lest you think torture and other horrible acts of violence are only visited on those who "deserve" it, Macon D. at Stuff White People Do presents Andrea Gibson's poem about White history. If it doesn't make you sad, then you need to go to the time-out corner until it does.

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* I am letting Ta-Nehisi Coates give me permission to use the word "nigger" when referring to the word. This has been bothering me for years. I maintain that White people must NEVER use the word to refer to someone of African descent -- either directly or indirectly -- even to each other in private and I do my part to make sure they don't. I believe, in spite of the word's history, that it is NOT my business to try to instruct people of color on whether or not (or how) they use it. But when I'm trying to ram home a point in an anti-racist speech or lecture and have to use "the n-word" as a phrase, I feel like I've just reverted to baby talk. I don't even talk baby talk to babies. Thank you, Ta-Nehisi. You freed me a little bit more and God knows, I can always use more Consciousness-raising.

NOTE: The graphic featured above is on postcards available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers Collective.

Blogging for Respect in Media

A few days ago, I posted that I would be supporting the Afrosphere Action Coalition's Respect in Media campaign. The immediate focus of that campaign today? The A&E Network's announcement that they are bringing Duane "Dog" Chapman's show back to the airwaves in spite of his racist rant heard 'round the world just last year.

I am contacting the following individuals and sponsors to protest in solidarity with the AAC community and ask that Chapman not be given a free pass on his behavior. I hope my Faithful Readers will join me and the Afrosphere Action Coalition in the interest of reinforcing how important it is for all media, and most particularly the mass media, to show due respect to all people.

Please tell programming executives at A&E that their support of someone with such demeaning views is unacceptable and make clear to the advertisers listed below how you feel about companies that would support a man with Chapman's so loudly stated perspectives. Giving lip service to a pretense of apology is not, never has been, and never should be enough. Chapman says he doesn't "mean anything" by his use of the n-word. Not that I believe that for a second, but even if it were true, that suggestion would be worse than using the n-word itself. I mean, if he's really so racist that he doesn't even consciously register what he's doing when he uses it, then just saying "I'm sorry" isn't going to wipe it all away.

This is the basic email I'll be sending:

"I realize that the business of television is about money and that Dog Chapman is about money in the bank. However, I protest the return of the Dog Chapman show after his racist tirade last year. I do not believe he has changed. I believe that he is sorry he got caught. It is imperative that television networks support respect in media for all people. Do you imagine that anyone watching that show will NOT have heard about what he said last year? To support this man is to support his viewpoints. And I don't support networks or sponsors that condone rabid racism to make money."

If you're a blogger, please Blog Against Dog today (contacting Yobachi here when you do). If you're not a blogger, it's still important that you participate and encourage others you may know (individuals, listservs, etc.) to do so, as well. It's really not just about "Dog." It's about respect in media.

A&E VPs of Programing: Email nancy.dubuc@aetn.com and rob.sharenow@aetn.com

Travelocity: Vollmer Public Relations Amanda Borichevsky
E-mail: amanda@vollmerpr.com

Tylenol: Online Contact Form
Phone 877-895-3665

AT&T: Phone 888-757-6500

Red Bull Energy Drinks: Online Contact Form
Phone: 310-393-4647

The Yellow Pages: Online Contact Form
Phone 877-647-6278

Allstate Insurance: Online Contact Form
Phone: 866-908-2500

LG HD Television: Phone 800-243-0000

Dell Computers: Online Contact Form
Phone: 800-915-3355

Nintendo: Online Contact Form
Phone: 425-882-2040

Subway: Online Contact Form

Blog Against Dog

I would have thought that this whole mess would just go away. I mean, I know that in the U.S. we're given as a culture to some embarrassingly weird tastes. Reality shows pitting human against human in one way or another are all the rage. So, yeah, Duane "Dog" Chapman, the bounty hunter that looks like a professional wrestler who got lost on his way to the rink fits right in.

But a year ago March, his son Tucker threw him a curve. From what I can gather, Tucker went to prison for twenty years on a drug beef in 2002 while he was still in his teens. Then, only four years later (will wonders never cease?) he was released for some reason. Unfortunately, it appears that he hadn't gotten his loose ends tucked in while incarcerated and by the time he'd been out a year, he was in serious need of money. So he taped his dear old Dad during a fatherly chat and sold the tape for $15,000 to the National Enquirer. And this is what "Dog" was caught saying about Tucker's African-American girlfriend:

"I don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore or whatever. It's not because she's black. It's because we use the word 'nigger' sometimes here. I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some fucking nigger heard us say 'nigger' and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over! I'm not taking that chance at all! Never in life! Never! Never! If Lyssa [Dog's daughter] was dating a nigger, we would all say 'fuck you!' And you know that...[I]t's not that they're black, it's none of that. It's that we use the word 'nigger'. We don't mean 'you fucking scum nigger without a soul'. We don't mean that shit. But America would think we mean that. And we're not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that. I can't do that, Tucker. You can't expect Gary, Bonnie, Cecily, all them young kids to [garbled] because 'I'm in love for 7 months.' Fuck that! So, I'll help you get another job, but you cannot work here unless you break up with her and she's out of your life...."

Well, it started out just like "Dog" had feared. A&E took his incredibly popular reality show off the air. Tucker's girl friend started talking about suing him. It must have been veeeeery stressful. "Dog" was apologizing like his life depended on it, but it wasn't helping.

True, 40,000 fans signed a petition asking A&E to put the show back on the air. And in December, Roy Inniss of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) agreed to support the return of the show as well. (Excuse me?!?)

Still, A&E (supposedly) would not relent. In February, however, the network announced that "Dog" the Bounty Hunter will return, after all. The plan is to finish televising the unviewed Season 4 episodes beginning June 24th and then commence Season 5 (with a bang, I assume) on July 16th.

Now, you have to understand that my television is only a DVD monitor and not connected to the outside world, so I don't care about tv in the same way that most people seem to. And I don't even care that "Dog" is a former gang member who has eighteen felony convictions for armed robbery and did time for murder in his youth. Hell, in my hey day, I had boyfriends with worse records. And it's really none of my business that he's raising a houseful of children where he admits that the n word is in regular casual use. I'm sure he's far from alone in that.

But he's going to make a more than ample living chasing people down without the cameras. I see no reason to suggest that his racist rant ought to be overlooked. So I am supporting the Afrosphere Action Coalition's Day of Blogging for Racial Justice in Media on Wednesday, June 18th, calling for A&E to scrap this "star" once and for all. I will boycott the sponsors of the show. And participate in such other activities as Afrosphere organizes to affect the situation appropriately. If you would like to do the same, visit BlackPerspective.net and let Yobachi know right away, so that your blog can be added to the list.

I have no doubt that "Dog" is sorry his thirty-year career has taken a hit. And I don't doubt that if his son hadn't had financial problems, "Dog" would probably never have missed a show. And I don't think for a minute that burying one guy for using the n word is going to change anything about this White Supremacist system in the U.S. So, I guess I'm just doing this out of general principle. It's not personal, "Dog." Just think of it as "business." Kind of like when you chase a guy down for having the ill fortune to get on a law enforcement list (the kind you probably used to be on).

There's a point at which a dog loses his "house" privileges permanently. I think that's the situation we have here. It's okay, "Dog". You're still going to be rich. You're still going to look like a professional wrestler. And you'll still be using whatever language you want to in front of your children (I'm sure). But you're just not going to be a tv star any more. You'll get over it.

Abolish The "N" Word

A friend of mine I don't get to see as often as I'd like tipped me this week to a film clip presentation that can be seen at www.abolishthenword.com It's intense and may be upsetting to some folks for its graphic images and statements, but I highly recommend it. I had to chase the words a bit because, on my little computer screen, they kept falling above or below what I could see without moving to catch them, but after a couple of times, I had clearly gotten the message. Again, I'm warning: it's strong...

"Black.White." (Part Two) or Keep My Name Out Your Mouth

As if on call, shortly after being exposed to the up-coming reality show that will appear soon on FX and about which I have my usual Why-Am-I-Not-Surprised attitude [see my "Black.White." (Part One) entry posted below], I received an email from a student with a bit of film attached. It was a story presented recently as part of a standard newscast on WHAS-TV in Louisville, Kentucky, and it reminded me of the cluelessness of the White family on the FX show.

According to the news report, Paul Dawson, a forty-something European-American honors English teacher at Valley High School in Jefferson County, Kentucky, stumbled and tripped over his tongue during class one day when he instructed an African-American boy to get away from the classroom door by saying, "Sit down, niggah!" He claimed on the broadcast to have been just using the vernacular that he has heard the kids themselves use so much. In fact, he said several times in a row at one point in the interview, "Why is this word used so frequently? I'm trying to understand..."

The difficulty, I would suggest to Mr. Dawson, an English teacher for twenty years and, therefore, we might assume, fascinated by words, is that "niggah" is so much more than just a word. A history lesson might be in order here.

When Europeans realized how rich they could become by jingling a few gold coins in brigands' faces on the west coast of Africa to "buy" captured humans that could be literally worked to death for free, they were fairly dazzled by the potential of it all. In short order, they had enlisted the aid and support of the religious community (as in "these heathens, if they indeed have souls, which they may not, will be better off forced into Christendom anyway than allowed to live their lives as they might choose"). Soon, the social scientific community, as well, had joined the refrain, declaring that the social world, just like the jungle, is always ruled by the fittest--or at least by those who can, by any means necessary, force their will on others.

Using this type of reasoning, if reason had anything to do with it, the Europeans involved in this process did not see--or did not want to see--Africans as humans with homes and families, with cultures and religions of their own, with languages and traditions that had been consistently in place for many hundreds of years. So the investors, in the interest of turning people into "property," decided to erase all that they didn't want to see. Instead of acknowledging, then, that the Africans were Ibo and Fulani and Mangbetu and Maasai, the Europeans simply called them after the Niger (which means "black") River, that stretches 2500 miles through West Africa. So the captured Africans became "Negroes."

In the southern United States, of course, where a heavy dialect of the English language rather quickly developed among the slaveholders, the "Negroes" soon became "Niggrahs" or more colloquially, "niggers." I personally believe that this is why European-Americans didn't grouse too much when African-Americans went from calling themselves "Negroes" to calling themselves "Blacks" in the sixties. It was more of the same, if you will, especially since it had been Europeans that called them "black" in the first place, regardless of the "I'm Black and I'm proud" movement. It was when "Black" people began using various forms of the term "African-American" that White folks got edgy because, I think, it takes the lost Africans back to a grand heritage (read your history), a heritage that was stolen on purpose to make them more manageable.

What Mr. Dawson doesn't apparently understand about the word "niggah" is that White folks have used up all their word-using privileges when it comes to the n-word. They just can't use it any more unless they earn the right somehow (as bestowed on the occasional European-American by people of color who love them) and, even then, they'd better be very, very careful how and when they choose to do so. Which they know very well, if they've reached that level of inclusion.

It didn't surprise me that Bruno Marcotulli (the White man made up to be Black for the FX reality show) was anxiously waiting for some African-American to call him "Niggah" so that he could use the word, too. This is a club that is closed to men who look like Marcotulli. And he feels that rejection, that "don't-be-ridiculous" barrier. And with White guilt and White low self esteem and the need many Whites feel to be everywhere at once and wherever they please, he longs to slap hands with a man of color and be included. Just like Paul Dawson does.

But this club is members-only. This is a club made up of people who have suffered so much for so long that no other name could probably ever encompass all the history that it carries within it. History that is rich and deep. History that talks about rising above all violence and all pain and all agony and all shame at all cost to stride into the future anyway. Like transforming the field holler into the blues which eventually became the base for all the musics from R & B and rock and roll to jazz--heard now around the world--African-Americans have squeezed their milleniums of shared history into artforms...and a word.

When Richard Pryor came back from Africa with the statement that "there are no niggers in Africa," he was right, of course. Because that's not where the members of this club reside. They're strictly U.S.-born and bred. With the indomitable spirit of Africa in their souls, but their feet on U.S. soil. Pryor once quipped that Black men hold onto their privates because that's the only thing they have left that hasn't been taken from them. But I would argue that there are other things, as well. And that's their history, their monumental strength and accomplishments in the face of overwhelming odds, and their name--whatever it is they want to call themselves--whether it's understood (and can be used) by the White man or not.