Dialogue

The following comment popped up on a year-old post last night. I have decided to re-print it here because I suspect that it speaks for many people that look like me in this country. Since the writer chose to write this much, I am publishing it all, out of respect for her expression of obvious frustration. This is what One Voice That Matters wrote:

"I guess I must live in a different world than most of the people on these sites. I have no tolerance for people of any color abusing others. I also think that what is fair for one is fair for the other. KKK, skinheads, Aryans are scum. Every now and then they try to surface here. but I know there are 'black' sites that are just as racist, promoting racial violence also.

"I live in a 100% 'white' town.There were never any slaves or plantations or anything of that type of life in this state. Most blacks came here with the Indians and many blacks have roll cards from the Indian ancestors. No 'black' people choose to live here; it is a basic farm and ranch community with very good people. Most just go on with life's daily chores and rarely think about the 'outside' world. Yes, the community is aware of the violence in the big city and most are glad we live where we do.

"North of us is a community of black people and they are basically the same. Farmers and ranchers, good people. They come into our town and shop and we buy produce, cattle, etc., from them. Yes, there is racism from both sides from time to time, but we respect each other as humans. I have no problems with who I live around. I would rather live around those good people in the black community than white trash I know. I usually find that if a black person respects you, they are your friend for life. My mother taught me that long ago.

"My mom tells a story about when my grandmother had a new baby, mom and her siblings were all too small to wash clothes. Their neighbor lady who was black came over and washed all the clothes for the kids. She brought her baby over and mom took care of her baby. Mom said that Granny would do the same for the neighbor. She didn't know what prejudice was as a child. My mom and dad's parents were reeeeallyy poor and so was everyone around them. Everyone helped each other and no one thought anything about it. Mom worked later years with many of the black children she played with and loved all of them, they in turn loved my mom like a sister. I had the privilege as a teacher teaching their grandkids. They were well mannered good kids with ambition to be achievers like their folks. On days they did not want to do the schoolwork, all I would have to do is say Grandma's name and all changed!

"It seems the larger our closest big city gets, the more racism we see. Most of it is coming in from the outside: gang activity with the teens. In some ways we have all lost out with traditions from the old days when times were hard. From the way things look, we are all going to be poor again like the 30's and learn to respect each other like my mother's generation.

"I do not understand slavery or abuse in any culture. I see post[ed] that 'all white people are the same.' No, I am not. Just like all black people, [C]hinese people, [L]atinos are not the same. It would be like saying all dogs are the same. They all have 4 legs and wag their tongue.

"I could care less about Hollywood, New York or what rich people do. I am sad when a child is killed of any color, when someone is disrespectful of the elderly or the unfortunate. I have respect for people with pride in themselves and what they do for the good of the world, no matter the color. My family history is rich with people of many nations and colors. They left me to make a better world for all they believed in and died for coming to America for their chance of a dream. The one I live.

"No, I am not 'rich' in material things but count myself a millionare in the life I was chose[n] to live here in this wonderful nation. I have been discriminated against as a woman, [for] my age, my looks, my lack of wealth, my accent, and, yes, even my color! Even sometimes [for] my intelligence and savvy by hard line men who didn't want to deal with a smart woman. I know that the 'rich' white majority [that] runs this place could care less about me unless I can pay taxes. My one vote won't swing any election and I will never be in a position of 'power' to run this nation but maybe if I can change enough lives in the classroom and build a dream, my one voice will not be wasted."

And this was my response:

I'm a little surprised to find someone commenting on a post about a topic not being discussed too much anymore -- and long after I posted it. I can't help but wonder how you got here, One Voice That Matters. :^)

In any case, I haven't time to write as much as you did.

However, I would suggest several things for you to consider.

First of all, my definition of racism and yours are not the same. If you'll read this post, even older than the one on which you commented, you'll see what I mean.

Secondly, there ARE no states in the U.S. that have not shared our history of racist and ethnic oppression. Pick up "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and you'll likely find plenty there. Or you can tell me the state you live in and I may be able to suggest some other sources. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps an up-to-date list of hate groups in the present, if that interests you at all. And if you look up the prisons in your state, even a quick look at their population statistics will demonstrate how different life is for people of color wherever it is you live. Unless, of course, you're prepared to argue that people of color just do more crimes because...well...they're just like that. But I don't think you would even think such a thing, let alone say it.

You write about how beautifully everybody used to and still does get along in your state, but I wonder what the people of color (African-American, Latin@, and Native American) that live there would have to say about that. I doubt that you know. The fact is that individuals can have loving relationships across "color lines" in this country, but the color lines are the result of White control or they wouldn't exist at all. And anyway, individual loving relationships don't change the institutionalized nature of the oppression against people of color here.

I've never suggested that all White people are the same. But I have written that, because the default position in the U.S. is White Supremacy, all people in the U.S. who look like me are infected with the disease of racism, whether we recognize and acknowledge it or not. Most of us don't admit it. Most of us don't even realize it. But, just like Prego, it's in there. Tim Wise' book "White Like Me: Reflections on Race by a Privileged Son" is very good on this.

Finally, you write that you're trying to change lives in the classroom. Yet you don't seem to be very in touch with the extraordinary and peculiar psychological, emotional, and economic violence that continues to do great damage to people of color from coast to coast in this country (and even beyond its borders). Unfortunately, what this means is that your students (all White, from what you say) are very likely going to wind up with the same old mindset White folks in the U.S. have always had. How could it be otherwise when you yourself have no better understanding than you do?

You sound like a well-meaning person. And teachers know how to learn stuff. Your responsibility, should you accept it, is to get the information you're missing, so you can help us go somewhere new in this country. Before it's too late.

Thanks for writing. I believe you're seeking to learn something already. And if you seek with your heart open, you'll find.
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The poster featured above is available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers Collective.

Passin' It On

I rarely post somebody else's work in any length, but I'm making an exception today of something I received in an email this morning. Perhaps I wouldn't, but I spent last evening until the wee hours watching a video I'm going to post next month about the murder of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party leader, and transcribing his speeches so I could post them, too. The upshot was that I am a little tired this morning, feeling quiet and a little stormy inside, and when I read this, I just wanted to share at least some of it. So here it is:

Some thoughts on "patriotism" written on July 4

by William Blum (www.killinghope.org)

Most important thought: I'm sick and tired of this thing called “patriotism.”

The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being patriotic. The German people who supported Hitler and his conquests were being patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the Latin American military dictators who overthrew democratically-elected governments and routinely tortured people were being patriotic – saving their beloved country from “communism.”

General Augusto Pinochet of Chile: “I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country.”[1]

P.W. Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: “I am not going to repent. I am not going to ask for favors. What I did, I did for my country.”[2]

Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia: “I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.”[3]

Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: “I did what I thought was right for our country.”[4]

I won't bore you with what George W. has said.

At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral lectures to their German prisoners and to the German people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government. To prove to them how legally inadmissable this defense was, the World War II allies hanged the leading examples of such patriotic loyalty.

I was once asked after a talk: “Do you love America?” I answered: “No.” After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink in amidst several nervous giggles in the audience, I continued with: “I don't love any country. I'm a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like human rights, civil liberties, democracy, an economy which puts people before profits.”

I don't make much of a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Some writers equate patriotism with allegiance to one's country and government, while defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national superiority. However defined, in practice the psychological and behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism – and the impact of such sentiments on actual policies – are not easily distinguishable.

Howard Zinn has called nationalism “a set of beliefs taught to each generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands.”[5]...

Strong feelings of patriotism lie near the surface in the great majority of Americans. They're buried deeper in the more “liberal” and “sophisticated,” but are almost always reachable, and ignitable.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the mid-19th century French historian, commented about his long stay in the United States: “It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it.”[7]

George Bush, Sr., pardoning former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in connection with the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal: “First, the common denominator of their motivation – whether their actions were right or wrong – was patriotism.”[8]

What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society. The US is the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism thing may be best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria in history, whereby the crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world's only superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their lives. Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something greater to which their individual lives can be anchored.

So this July 4, my dear fellow Americans, some of you will raise your fists and yell: “U! S! A! U! S! A!” And you'll parade with your flags and your images of the Statue of Liberty. But do you know that the sculptor copied his mother's face for the statue, a domineering and intolerant woman who had forbidden another child to marry a Jew?

“Patriotism,” Dr. Samuel Johnson famously said, “is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Ambrose Bierce begged to differ: “It is,” he said, “the first.”...
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NOTES:

[1] Sunday Telegraph (London), July 18, 1999
[2] The Independent (London), November 22, 1995
[3] Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), October 30, 1997, article by Nate Thayer, pp 15 and 20
[4] Washington Post, May 11, 2007, p.14
[5] "Passionate Declarations" (2003), p.40
[6] ZNet Magazine, May 2006, interview by David Barsamian
[7] "Democracy in America" (1840), chapter 16
[8] New York Times, December 25, 1992

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The poster featured above is available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers Collective.

Coincidences?

On this day in 1776, a small group of property-holding White men sat down together and drafted a list of complaints against the King of England. They were trying to explain to the rest of the world why they no longer wanted him to govern them. One of the complaints read:

"HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation."

Hmmm....

The Art of Re-enslavement

A couple of days ago, I posted about a remarkable woman I've met here in the Louisiana parish where I moved last year. Today, I'm posting about another.

Antoinette Harrell started out just studying her family history. She began with the arduous task of talking to elder members of her family and poring over public records. Then, she had her DNA checked and discovered that she is descended from the Tuareg tribe in Western Africa. But this didn't just become an interesting tidbit for her to discuss at family barbeques. It became the motivating force to send her to spend a month with the Tuareg in Niger, West Africa, reconnecting to her past.

In the process of this personal historical journey, however, Harrell developed an ever deepening sense of what African-Americans have suffered in this country over the past five hundred years. Most people that look like me and even many people of color have long since brushed aside this crucial information.

"Slavery ended over a hundred years ago," they flatly state, as if mildly irritated. "What does that have to do with us today?"

And this is the question Harrell seeks to answer for us all, whether we're ready or not.

The fact is that even if slavery did end a hundred years ago (and Harrell and others argue that it did not), the effects of it, as I've often discussed in my blog posts, don't just linger on, but actually run rampant through the lives of all U.S. citizens. If you look like me, you benefit daily in a thousand ways -- without, as a rule, being forced to realize or acknowledge it -- allowed to live your life as a privileged member of this society (see the video in yesterday's post). And if you happen to be African-American, you just don't access those benefits and privileges. It's that simple.

But that's not all there is to it. Not by a long shot. In fact, I had the rare good fortune to be invited to the premiere of Harrell's documentary, "The Untold Story: Slavery in the 20th Century" at Loyola University in May and, believe me, this is something you're going to be hearing about.

Some years ago, at one of her many speaking engagements on the importance of tracking family history (even the painful parts), Antoinette Harrell was approached by Mae Louise Wall Miller, who told her that she was raised in what amounted to slavery and only escaped in 1963. That's right. Not 1863, but 1963.

Miller's family lived in a remote setting in Mississippi, far from cities or even roads, not being able to read or write and completely cut off from outsiders. The story Miller tells is harrowing and, as she told it at the premiere, you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium.

Miller talked about how they were treated worse than dogs. How they all spent their every waking moment "picking cotton, pulling corn, picking peas, picking butter beans, picking string beans, digging potatoes; whatever it was, that's what you did for no money at all." How the "Boss's" table scraps were tossed into a tub for days and then set out under a tree for them to eat out of like hogs.
How the only drinking water they had access to was from a creek that was green with slime and whatever else might be floating in it. How they never had a spoon or a toothbrush or shoes. How, when they laid down to sleep at night, exhausted, on the dirt floor of their bare-bones shack, her father, Cain Wall, (seen in the photo at nearly 105 years of age) would lie flat on the dusty earth and the rest of the family would lie perpendicular to him, using his body (even when it was bloody) as the only pillow they ever knew. How she was raped so often and so brutally as a child that it left her incapable of having children herself. How they were beaten routinely and viciously and threatened with death if they even thought about trying to leave. How they were assured that if they did break free, the ones they left behind would be murdered. And on one occasion, when Cain Wall escaped in desperation, seeking help for his family, whoever picked him up actually returned him to his tormentors.

"We thought all Black people were being treated like that," remembers Mae Wall Miller now. "So where were we going to go?"

When Miller finally reached her breaking point and ran off in her late teens, she made it to a road where, still bloody from her morning beating for refusing to work, she was picked up by some folks in a horse-drawn wagon. That night, they all returned for the rest of her family.

It was difficult for the Walls to acclimate to the world outside. Isolated for so long, they found it hard to trust people outside of the family. Miller has learned to read and write, but she says her feet still don't wear shoes easily. Nevertheless, the Wall family has moved on and Miller has bonded now with Antoinette Harrell and joined her in her work to make the world aware that the slavery of African-Americans in the United States (also called "peonage" or "involuntary servitude") is far from dead even yet.

Harrell has spent literally hundreds of hours crawling through private collections and public documents from the National Archives in Washington, D.C., to the dusty, bat-infested attics of Court Houses in the rural South. She has found Justice Department records documenting cases of White people being prosecuted well into the twentieth century for holding people in involuntary servitude. She has copied more than 30,000 documents: case records, letters from people in bondage, and even letters to officials as high up as the President of the United States from lawyers and other credible sources (including the N.A.A.C.P.) requesting investigation of peonage in sixteen states. She has learned that the Department of Homeland Security now holds former F.B.I. files further documenting such cases under investigation as late as the 1970's. Unfortunately (and not surprisingly, under the circumstances), these files are closed to the public.

Why would they be closed? Well, one reason might be that Harrell and Miller, among others, have brought a class action suit demanding reparations. Not primarily personal reparations, you understand. But reparations to benefit the entire African-American community because of their centuries of unpaid labor, because of the physical, emotional, psychological, and economic devastation from the on-going effects of the past, and most importantly, because individual cases like that of the Wall family demonstrate that the paradigm of White Supremacy still functioning in this country has allowed these effects to continue into the present.

Harrell recommends to nay-sayers that they read Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon. Bill Moyers calls it "truly the most remarkable piece of reporting I've read in a long time."

Antoinette Harrell is off this week delivering food to destitute families in Mississippi. She rarely sits for more than a minute. If you want to know more about her on-going projects and research, including her documentary, "The Untold Story: Slavery in the 20th Century," and most particularly if you want to support her work in any way, you may contact her directly at afrigenah@yahoo.com.
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I was turned onto the Bill Moyers YouTube video featured above by Professor Zero and Macon D. (Thank you kindly.) Photos of Marie Wall Miller and Cain Wall by Antoinette Harrell.

Stuff White People Do

My ego is apparently supposed to be taking a beating this week. Nothing heavy, you understand. But when you were raised to have no self esteem and no sense of your own self worth, the ole ego grows like a weed in that garden.

Fortunately, I have reached a point in my development where my self esteem and sense of self worth are blooming along with my new alamanda vine, so my ego can stand the deflation (though I still feel the pinch and embarrassingly so).

Anyway, I'm probably the last one on the band wagon, having been in cognito, as it were, for the past few months. The blogosphere will fill a vacuum in a minute, I know. But last night, thanks to a comment by Professor Zero, I discovered a new blog called Stuff White People Do. The author is smart, right on the target, introspective and clever. He reads all the same books as I do, watches all the same movies, and shares many of the same opinions. And he's written almost as much in the past ninety days as I wrote all last year.

I was tired when I reached SWPD last night and after about an hour on the site, I decided that I'm no longer necessary to the blogosphere, after all (see what I'm saying about the self esteem and self worth?). Then, I remembered what I had learned the night before (see this post), so I shook off the feeling and just celebrated the blog.

There are a number of wonderful bloggers on my blog roll to the right. If I didn't think my Faithful Readers would get something special from each and every one of the them, they wouldn't be there. But if you haven't read Macon D. over at Stuff White People Do yet, then let me send you on over there post haste.

Just recognize that you're probably gonna be there for a while.

And don't forget about me, okay? ;^)
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The YouTube clip featured above is of Tim Wise talking about the origin of White privilege just like I do -- only better. I first saw it at Stuff White People Do. Of course.

Quote of the Week

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

~~ Zora Neale Hurston in Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography

On Planting Alamandas

The first time I ever saw an alamanda vine crawling up a railing, exploding into big, bright yellow blossoms all over the side of somebody's porch in the morning sun, I knew I wanted one, too. That was more than a decade ago, but I finally did it. I bought one at a garden store yesterday and planted it next to my rustic Louisiana porch this morning, trying to beat the heat and the mosquitoes and the rain I knew was bound to come in the afternoon (again).

As I dug into the clay-riddled earth, hoping against hope that I wouldn't dismember any earthworms or uncover anything weirder than that, I got to thinking about where I was and what I got to be a part of last night and, right there in the sunshine, I had another one of those epiphanies the outdoors so often ushers in.

It all started yesterday morning at the regular monthly meeting of the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., when a man I'd never seen before stood up and made an announcement that there would be a special event last night in one of the African-American churches in a small town twenty miles north of here. The event would be in special recognition of Pat Morris, a latter day Rosa Parks, if you will, who has become the face of the struggle for social justice in this parish over the past four years.

Despite her bachelor's degree in mass communications, she literally cannot get a job here flipping hamburgers (she has tried to apply when a "help wanted" sign was in the window and been told as much). She's been insulted and threatened and offered MAJOR money to sit down and shut up, but she just keeps pushing. How did the money get to be major? Her efforts and the efforts of a seriously adept lawyer have finally put some things in motion that everybody -- especially the local Powers That Be -- had come to think were carved permanently in stone.

Over time (and I'll be writing more about this soon, when the website goes up), the Courts have now demanded that the parish schools have to be brought into full compliance with ALL the orders that followed Brown v. Board of Education more than fifty years ago. That means that the number of African-American teachers has to be raised from 13% to 40%. It means that the parents of students who drove their children to "better" schools at their own expense over the past forty years have to be reimbursed appropriately, as was originally ordered. It means that schools with flooded basements and failed sewer systems and rotting infrastructures leaking asphalt have to be knocked down and replaced, if necessary. Recently, it meant that when a new head coach was needed at one of the local high schools, the best qualified man had to be hired, even though he was an African-American -- the very first time in this parish they've ever hired a Black head coach and that was only done on threat of being jailed for contempt of court after they'd already put a less well qualified White man in the position. The bottom line: a federal judge with an independent monitor reporting directly to him has ordered the school board to ante up once and for all so that every child in this parish can expect to receive the same quality of education, regardless of where they live, how poor they are, or what their skin tone.

In any case, as a result of all this, Pat Morris, as you can imagine, is persona non grata in these parts. She has pushed this envelope like she can't help herself. And she's paying the price for it, just as many before her have done. Local White folks think she's the Devil. Some people of color are literally afraid of even looking as if they're connected to her in some way. And there's also folks of color who think that "rocking the boat" just "makes trouble" and should be avoided to "keep the peace." Hell, there's even folks who sell their votes, including African-American ministers who "help" White candidates get elected in majority Black districts for a "contribution" to one church fund or another. So, even in her own community, Pat has her work cut out for her.

Consequently, last night, a small congregation of maybe forty or fifty people showed up at a lovely church they didn't nearly fill to say thanks to Pat. The music was stomping-good. The testimonials about Pat and her work were loving. And the preacher chosen to inspire and encourage her moved the earth, as far as I was concerned. I was, of course, only one of two White faces in the crowd and surprised, frankly, to see another one. I've gotten accustomed to being even more of an oddity than I used to be.

When the envelopes were collected for the "love offering" for Pat, I was embarrassed. I'm dead in the middle of a two month period without income myself. I just transferred my meager savings into the account to pay my current bills. And, though I have slipped her some cash in the past and sustain the organization at a stronger level than most, I didn't have much to put into the kitty.

The fact is, I couldn't afford anything. And being raised a middle class White girl, I didn't want to go to the event because of it. Still, I knew I had to be there to show my support to this woman of valor who is taking it on the chin for all of us. So, I put a tired little twenty and five ones in the envelope with her name on it and drove up to the church.

When the collection was taken out to be counted, I stood there thinking about how small the crowd was and how little my contribution and how likely it was that most of those in attendance wouldn't have much to give either. But when they announced the results, the tally was over five thousand dollars. I was speechless. And grateful. Grateful that I got to be a part of that, that I got to see that outpouring of support for this woman who SO deserves it, that I got to be reminded that this is the way it's always been done.

Later, I was talking over chicken wings and cake in the fellowship hall with another woman I respect greatly. I don't know why, but for some reason, being around Glinnis always makes me feel kind of silly and superficial, like I have a LOT to learn about a LOT of things. Anyway, I was telling her how strapped for money I am right now and how, because of that, I didn't feel able to participate in a food drive a mutual friend is running for rural families in Mississippi. I hastened to add that I normally give substantially to feed Haitian street kids (as if I needed to validate my existence in some way). Then, digging myself ever deeper in my cognitive stew, I mentioned that, anyway, there are hungry people right here in the parish we're in. Which was not the point in the first place.

Sheesh!

"Why don't you just quit beating yourself?" she asked, shooting me a look that was harsher than her question, a look I couldn't immediately discern.

Then, this morning, swatting at mosquitoes and wondering if my knees would hold out long enough to plant the alamanda, it hit me. It's taken me more than a decade to realize my dream of having an alamanda vine planted by my front porch. But it's there now. And even though I'm just renting, aren't I just renting my body, too? I mean, nothing is permanent from what I can tell. And even if I move someday, the plant can go on blooming, a marker, as it were, to my having passed this way.

Nobody expects me -- or anyone else -- to do it all. It's not necessary, for one thing. And it's not possible, for another. In fact, it's an ego trip to see oneself as imperatively central to any effort for social change. Or anything else, probably.

If I do whatever I can with whatever I have wherever I am, I'll be doing my share and that's all that's important. It's not about me, after all -- how I feel or what I do or even what others think of me or of what I do. It's what we do together that makes it possible for us all to survive and the grand unfolding of history to continue.

Speaking of Africa...

Yesterday, surfing the web for the first time since I moved last week, I decided to stalk my favorite website builder's work and came across a call for applications for the Focus Features Africa First Short Film Program. The application period opened May 12th and closes July 15th, so if you don't have an idea you've already fleshed out pretty seriously, it's probably too late. And the competition is only for African filmmakers. But you never know.

The Focus Features Africa First Short Film Program will award up to five (5) emerging African filmmakers $10,000 (U.S. dollars) each towards the pre-production, production, or post-production of their short film. Winners will also participate in a three-day workshop in New York City. So, if you or someone you know would be interested in this opportunity, I hope you'll pass along this information right away.

We Need A Freedom Charter

On this day in history in 1955, the South African Freedom Charter was adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown near Johannesburg. Three thousand delegates -- men, women, and children -- representing the African National Congress, the Indian Congress, the Coloured Peoples Organization, and the Congress of Democrats met that day for the reading of the Charter, which was then signed. (For more, visit this site.)

The Freedom Charter said, among other things, that the people shall govern; that all national groups shall have equal rights before the law and shall enjoy equal human rights; that the people shall share in the country's wealth and that the land shall be shared among those who work it. It began:

“ We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people . . . .”

Perhaps we need a Freedom Charter in the United States. If one was drafted, would it be dangerous to sign it? Would you sign?

Quote of the Week

On this day in 1903, Eric Blair was born in Bengal, India. Never heard of him? He wrote under the name "George Orwell."

Many folks say he was anti-communist. Actually, he was anti-totalitarian. Which is why he was opposed to Stalin (see his allegory Animal Farm), but also why he set his famous book 1984 in England. He was warning us. Are we listening?

Whether talking about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," the art of doing "gender," or what the *bleep* is going on in Washington, our quote of the week is:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." ~~George Orwell

George Carlin on White People

He had his problems, as we all have. But he told us as much Truth as he could figure out. And made us ask for more.

George Carlin
R.I.P.
1937-2008

I'm Going To Vote Republican (NOT)!

I'm in moving mode (again), taking my happy self from one apartment to another here in the same community. This means I've been offline since Wednesday and they're not hooking me up until Monday. Which is more or less like having my oxygen cut off. But my "new" place looks like a Louisiana camp. It's all shaggy and grey outside and has an unpainted front porch and a back deck with a frame for a porch swing. Needless to say, I'm excited about it, even though it means being out of synch with the rest of the blogosphere for a few days.

In the meantime, my buddy Anna sent me this video clip, so I'm passing it on to help my Faithful Readers start the weekend with a chuckle. When you watch it, keep watching through the credits until you see the Grandma re-appear. And keep on keepin' on. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

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

Question

I was interviewed by a student today for her Senior Thesis. I agreed to post a question for her here to hopefully generate some not necessarily scientific discussion. The question is:

What effect, if any, do you think the mass media -- including MTV or new media forms (such as blogging) -- has had on U.S. culture related to bi-racial dating and relationships involving African-Americans and European-Americans, in particular?

What's Going On? Lies.

A few minutes ago, I came across this YouTube video posted by Carmen D. and I just had to pass it on. It hurts to think about how the photos and film clips of Vietnam could now be photos and film clips of the war du jour (is it Afghanistan, is it Iraq, is it -- God/dess forbid -- Iran?). How come? Because The Powers That Be tell lies.

I've posted this poem before, but it's been quite a while and it's one of my favorites.

~~Lies~~
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Telling lies to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God's in his heaven
and all's well with the world is wrong.
The young know what you mean. The young are people.
Tell them the difficulties can't be counted,
and let them see not only what will be
but see with clarity these present times.
Say obstacles exist they must encounter
sorrow happens, hardship happens.
The hell with it. Who never knew
the price of happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error you recognize,
it will repeat itself, increase,
and afterwards our pupils
will not forgive in us what we forgave.

A Bright Spot

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about Louisiana. It was pretty sad and a little overwhelmed-sounding, I imagine. But it's not all there is.

The fact is that in this dark forest of racial oppression and racial tension, there are points of light and you never know when one will pop up unexpectedly. One day, after class, for example, a European-American woman student who might be in her thirties or even her early forties, walked up to me with a big smile and stuck out her hand.

"I saw your presentation on 'What is Racism and How Do I Know If I Have It?'" she said warmly, "and I've signed up for one of your classes in the fall. I'm quite passionate about racism and social justice and I'm really looking forward to hearing more of what you have to say!"

She caught me so off-guard that I didn't immediately know what to respond aside from the usual superficial rejoinders. But I was delighted.

Then, as we headed for different doors, I turned and asked, "What was the process by which you became 'quite passionate about racism'? How did that happen here in Louisiana?" And we parted.

A week or so later, I got an email from her with an attached entry she had apparently written in her journal in 1993. When you read it, you'll see that even in Louisiana, there are other people who look like me who are thinking about and willing to work against the status quo. She gave me permission to print her journal entry on this blog (modifying it slightly to protect her privacy). And here it is:

"I have been thinking about racism a lot lately. Serbia and Bosnia, Arabs and Jews, Rodney King and Reginald Denney, Maya Angelou, CNN and the 700 Club have me in a pre-apocalyptic spin. I headed for [another country] this summer, looking for a place away from the hate and violence, a safe haven for my family where people are colorblind and everyone is treated with respect…Like I said, I have given racism a lot of thought and I have begun to question my own attitudes about race. How do we become racists? Is it genetic? I cannot answer that question, but I can remember the day, the moment, I became a racist.

"I grew up in…Louisiana. The [Louisiana] I remember as a child in the 1950’s was an idyllic place when seen from inside a glorious bubble of ignorance. There were water fountains that said “whites only” and “colored only” but I just thought they were talking about sorting laundry or something, which was how mom did it. Mom told me once that we couldn’t sit in the balcony of the movie theatre because the balcony was for colored people only. Well, I knew right then that colored people were special people because the balcony was the most exciting looking place I had ever seen and it had to hold the best seats in the house. I wished to be colored too! I was an ignorant child.

"When the Klan burned down our ironing lady’s church…, I thought it was a mean thing to do but I never gave it another thought. The Klan even had a meeting right in our neighborhood which made my parents really nervous and scared, but from inside my bubble of bliss, while it made no sense, it did not interrupt my life. I just forgot about it.

"That old bubble of bliss kept me happy for years until one day when Mom and I were taking our housekeeper…home. I must have been eleven or twelve years old when I made my first racist comment. I wasn’t talking about people, I was talking about crickets and how they scare me “’cause they’re black and creepy.” Well, as soon as [our housekeeper] was out of the car my momma let me know what an insensitive, racist comment I had made. 'How could you say something is creepy just because it is black?' she said. “Don’t you have any consideration for [other people’s] feelings? I even asked you to repeat yourself because I couldn’t believe you would say such a thing!” My bubble burst and a terrible understanding poured in over me, thick as syrup with ancestral guilt. I knew racism.

"I wished I could disappear that day because I would never have wanted to hurt [our housekeeper], she was special. [She] came to us when I was sick and had to stay home from school for a long time. She was a nurse’s aide at the hospital and she was really smart and beautiful with dark chocolate skin and a face that reminded me of Dionne Warwick. Best of all about her was that she knew me, really knew me at my very worst, and she still liked me. (She knew me well enough to know that I was only talking about crickets.) I hoped she loved me because I loved her.

"I believe I became a racist that day because I started to notice what color people were. I started to be really careful not to talk about black things in front of brown people. I started to single out anybody who was colored for extra acts of kindness so that they would forgive my “colorblind,” insensitive past.

"The whole world seems to be going racism crazy now; I do not think I can escape it. It is in everything I see and hear, in all of its many guises: fear and anger, charity and guilt. It just bubbles out from the lips of newscasters, preachers, politicians, poets and everyday people, spreading like some creeping ooze in a sci-fi movie, consuming our minds and our souls. Even in my wonderful hideaway place [outside the U.S.], I was told that my daughter’s friend should not come to visit because she is [B]lack and some people in the village who don’t like [B]lacks might hurt her feelings. I am not going to pay attention to them. We will have my daughter’s friend come for a visit not because she is [B]lack, but because she is a friend. My daughter is neither colorblind nor racist; she still sees people in all the wondrous colors of who they really are. I envy her freedom."

This is an excellent example of the kind of inside work TheFreeSlave and I recently posted about as being necessary to the process of becoming a whole human being and an ally of those who are oppressed. I am grateful to know and to be caused to remember that the tipping point may be closer than it seems. I am dreaming of a new world where babies are fed and people laugh and dance together and be all that we're here to be.

______________________________________________________

The poster featured above is available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers collective.

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.

Is It Is or Is It Ain't?

As far back as I can remember, I have always had a baseline in my critical thinking process and it is this: facts win.

I'm not sure I ever really believed in Santa Claus, for example. I may have, but I must have been very, very young at the time because it didn't take me long to figure out that there were closets we weren't allowed to look in after a certain point in the fall. And there was a reason for that. I didn't get any less excited about Christmas. I just understood that Mom and Dad were footing the bill. I was okay with that. I didn't care who gave me presents. I just wanted presents. Santa was an entirely expendable idea.

Through the years since that time (and there have been more than a few of them), I have pretty much stuck to this baseline.

I might believe something that is patently untrue, but I won't typically believe it long. For one thing, being in denial about one thing or another has kicked my ass enough times that I have learned the hard way that this is an ill-advised perspective.

Besides, it is what it is. I've been told this is a Navaho line and I, for one, use it a lot. It is what it is. You can believe in Santa if you want to, but it doesn't make Santa real -- even if you believe really, really hard. And while believing in Santa may not do much damage, believing some fictions can.

Sociologist W.I. Thomas discussed why. He wrote that when we believe something is true (even when it is NOT), it can become true in its consequences. In other words, if I come into the classroom with an automatic weapon, giving my students to understand that I've lost my mind and I'm taking myself out and them with me, all hell is likely to break loose. First, they may not believe me. "Is this some crazy explanatory stunt?" they might ask themselves. But if they decide I'm serious, conseqences will ensue. Some will rush for the door. Some will rush for me. Some will hit the floor or jump behind their classmates. And according to the movies, somebody might wet their pants.

When I show them that the "weapon" is a squirt gun and tell them that I just wanted to illustrate W.I. Thomas' theory, the ones left in the classroom will take their seats, shaking their heads, maybe even disgruntled. But the one who pee'ed his or her pants will still have wet pants -- even though the threat was not real. Capiche?

I'm forever running into students who want to "argue" with my "opinions."

"I don't agree with you (or the book or the research or whatever)," they will say.

And I ask them what they are basing their disagreement on. I have no vested interest in "being right." I have great concern about knowing what's real, what's true, what's really going on instead of what we think is going on. So any student (or friend or colleague or blogger or anyone else) who can demonstrate how my understanding of x is flawed is appreciated. But I tell my students from day one that they better be prepared to bring it. I base what I say in the classroom on forty years of personal study, on centuries of recorded history, on replicated scientific research based in solid theory, on seven uninterrupted years of graduate school, and I'm not interested in "arguing" with somebody's knee-jerk opinion based on...oh...whatever they learned from Uncle Joe at the family picnics (especially when it becomes readily apparent that Uncle Joe was basing his opinions on a tract he picked up at church or a case he once heard about from a guy at his local bar involving this Mexican guy who makes more money than him).

I'm not trying to be rude here, but you'd be surprised how simple things get when you just require that people be accountable for what comes out their mouths. So one of the central ideas my students learn, no matter what the topic of the course, is that they need to know what they're talking about.

Unfortunately, it's often difficult to get this across to the rest of the world.

So we have legislators in Louisiana right now about to decide (again) that creationism (the literal Biblical presentation of how the Earth and the human race came into being) is just as valid an idea as documentable evidence to the contrary. These are, according to virtually the entire State House of Representatives here, just two differing opinions and therefore equally reasonable to study in schools. The problem with this, of course, is that when you do that, you teach children (without them even knowing that you're doing so) that an opinion based on "faith" (I just know that I know that I know) is as reasonable a perspective as one based on "fact" (reality). And once you have established that, then an 18-year-old who's never read a single book all the way through, who's never seen anything but the town she was born in, whose experience of life has been totally prescribed by conservative politics and religious television programming, can believe that her opinions are just as valid as those of someone who has worked hard to find out and document the way things really work.

The result of this kind of "individualistic" "thinking" is that it allows anybody to believe anything without having to prove anything. And endless arguments between fact and fiction can then take the place of critical analysis wherein differing interpretations of the facts are argued.
________________________________________________
The Ricardo Levins Morales poster featured above is available from the Northland Poster Collective.

How Could That Have Happened?

How could two really astounding women poets of the twentieth century have been born on the same date, I wonder? I mean, what was it about that date? Were the stars in some kind of peculiar alignment? According to The Writers Almanac, which I visit online daily, two remarkable women were born on this date: Gwendolyn Brooks in 1917 and Nikki Giovanni in 1943. Perhaps Giovanni looked at the Earth from wherever babies wait for the go-ahead and decided she wanted to tumble into Gwendolyn Brooks' wake. But whatever, it gives one pause. And presents the unusual situation of having TWO stellar individuals to highlight.

The first date I ever went on with my daughter's father was to see Gwendolyn Brooks read from her work in 1981. At the time, all I knew about her was that she was the Poet Laureate of the state of Illinois (where we were) and that she was the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. I wasn't so far removed from my poetry-writing days myself (though hardly deserving of having my efforts called "poetry") and during the question and answer period, I had the audacity to raise my hand and put this icon on the spot by asking, "If you could only give us one line to take with us when we leave here, what would it be?"

Brooks didn't flinch. She just paused for a moment, as if reaching inside herself, and said resolutely, "Conduct your blooming in the noise and the whip of the whirlwind." I've been doing that, clinging to that fragile connection between myself and her, ever since.

Here's one of her shorter pieces, but if you have a minute, you can read "The Lovers of the Poor", as well.

~~My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell~~

by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread

In little jars and cabinets of my will.

I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid,

Be firm till I return from hell.

I am very hungry. I am incomplete.

And none can give me any word but Wait

The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;

Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt

Drag out to their last dregs and I resume

On such legs as are left me, in such heart

As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive

To honey and bread old purity could love.

After serving in the revolution of the 1970's with Giovanni (in different battalions, if you will, but the same war), I got reacquainted with her when I created a book for a group of inner city African-Americans teenagers. I included her famous Ego Trippin' and also the following one. And if you watch the YouTube clip after you read, you'll see where her revolution has taken her.

~~Revolutionary Dreams~~

by Nikki Giovanni

i used to dream militant

dreams of taking

over america to show

these white folks how it should be

done
i used to dream radical dreams

of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers

of correct analysis

i even used to think i'd be the one

to stop the riot and negotiate the peace

then i awoke and dug

that if i dreamed natural

dreams of being a natural

woman doing what a woman

does when she's natural

i would have a revolution.

On Freeing Ourselves

In my last post, I mentioned that I sometimes ask myself, "How am I a slave? What oppressions have I internalized that keep me in bondage today?" Later that day, I read and made a brief appreciative comment on a remarkably insightful post by TheFreeSlave. He, of course, being a deep-thinking kind of guy, asked me in response to my simple thanks a question about how we can advocate individual personhood without sounding as if we support some version of what is popularly called "colorblindness." My response to his response (sorry about that, Faithful Readers, you know how it is) follows, modified slightly to make it read more sensibly. I strongly recommend that you read TheFreeSlave post first in the interest of having any idea whatsoever what I am talking about. I think you'll be glad you did. In fact, I have permanently ensconced a link to the post in question on my blog roll to the right under "On Freeing Yourself." Then, proceed with caution:

To me, TheFreeSlave's post moves the consideration from the arena of "politics" (having to do with the use and distribution of power) to the arena of "spirituality." Don't misread me here. I don't mean warm-and-fuzzy-esoteric-new-age-mumbo-jumbo type stuff. I mean down-deep-in-the-gut-where-the-rubber-meets-the-road-and-the-individual-psyche/biological-being-meets-history type stuff. In the end, what I call my spiritual being gives birth, I think, to my political perspective (which is how I see the personal and political as connected). Being one's whole, unmitigated, unapologetic Self (again, for me) does not, then, wash all the "color" out of the visible image, but rather actually heightens the color (continuing the metaphor). It shines the light of acceptance of all beauty on each individual image.

A rose garden can be lovely, but the kind of garden I like best is an explosion of all different kinds of flowers: different colors, shapes, heights, sizes, scents, etc. Each flower is beautiful because of the characteristics of the specific group it represents. No flower in such a garden is the only one of its type, though every flower is different in it particularistic manifestations of its group characteristics. Such flowers don't jockey for position, don't hold knock-down, drag-out battles to establish hierarchy, don't engage in sneaky, underhanded and manipulative attacks (either publicly or privately) out of ego or greed or ignorance. They just bloom and shine and pass the bees and butterflies one to the other.

Admittedly, though there is such a thing as weeds, humans are grossly more complicated than flowers. But I think that's part of what TheFreeSlave gets at so well in his post. We complicate the shit. We make it ugly. "Fighting the good fight" (if you will) often creates people and groups not wildly different from each other in important and frequently negative ways. And, of course, capitalism has left virtually all of us all but ruined as keepers of the flame of life.

Do African-Americans need to band together to survive and bring about change? I think so. Do women and men need to educate themselves about the patriarchy and take organized action against it (again to survive and bring about change)? I think so. Do immigrants and poor people and prisoners (and others) need to see themselves as similarly situated and act accordingly? I think so. But that does not negate the Truth inherent within TheFreeSlave's post.

"Resigning" as a White person (something I did some time ago, I guess, when I started using the term European-American and then started referring to other European-Americans as "people who look like me") does not mean I stopped honoring the beauty and experience of people in general and people of color as definitive groups, in particular. But it means that I see all Life (and not just all human life) as sacred. In order to do that, I must be fully Conscious. Conscious of others' struggles (because of the socially-constructed political notions of "race" and "gender." And Conscious of any ways in which I have participated on any side of those struggles -- in order to be healthy mySelf. This is obviously a lifetime process of Becoming. But it's the bottom line for me at the end of the day.

I am not antagonistic toward and don't have any argument with those who feel that they must be in a different space at this point in time. In fact, I often support them uncategorically. There's a reason that, in the only photograph we have of Martin and Malcolm together, they're grinning like delighted children. We don't have to be clones to be effective or to be allies.

And I am incredibly Conscious that enemies stalk the Earth, that there are many humans who do not support Life and the other perspectives that rational, loving people naturally support. I do not make them enemies. They make themselves enemies. They may destroy Life on Earth, if they are allowed to do so. I am going to do what I can to stop that process and nurture Life instead. And my full Self represents a number of groups and experiences of which I am an amalgam. But I am also an individual and stand individually responsible for everything that emanates from my center.

It's not easy to make sense of all this, but it is reality, to my mind, and therefore, a crucial aspect of the dialogue that will carry us into a sustainable future, if there is to be one.

_________________________________________________________

The image featured above appears on posters, prints, t-shirts, bookmarks and stickers produced by the Syracuse Cultural Workers.

General Harriet Tubman

On this day in 1863, Harriet Tubman led a band of African-American soldiers in an onslaught described eight days later on the front page of The Commonwealth, a Boston newspaper, as follows:

"Col. Montgomery and his gallant band of 300 black soldiers, under the guidance of a black woman, dashed into the enemy’s country, struck a bold and effective blow, destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom, brought off near 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property, without losing a man or receiving a scratch. It was a glorious consummation.

"After they were all fairly well disposed of in the Beaufort charge, they were addressed in strains of thrilling eloquence by their gallant deliverer, to which they responded in a song. 'There is a white robe for thee,' a song so appropriate and so heartfelt and cordial as to bring unbidden tears.

"The Colonel was followed by a speech from the black woman, who led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted. For sound sense and real native eloquence, her address would do honor to any man, and it created a great sensation...

"Since the rebellion, she has devoted herself to her great work of delivering the bondman, with an energy and sagacity that cannot be exceeded. Many and many times she has penetrated the enemy’s lines and discovered their situation and condition, and escaped without injury, but not without extreme hazard..."

For more about this remarkable story, visit this site.

My favorite Tubman quote: "I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed more if they knew they were slaves." And rather than putting that on others, I read it and ask myself, "How am I a slave? What oppressions have I internalized that keep me in bondage today?"

"See" You Next Week?

For those of you in the New Orleans area, I will be on television Tuesday morning, June 3rd, at 9:30 a.m. on NOA-TV, Channel 76. The show is called "Knowing Your Family History" and is hosted by Antoinette Harrell, an expert on geneology and the practice of peonage (present day slavery). Harrell's personal ancestral exploration uncovered her descendance from the Tuareg tribe in West Africa who she visited for a month after discovering her connection. I'll be posting more on Harrell's work next week, but in the meantime, I wanted you to look for us on Tuesday, if you can. I'll be talking about how I learned several years ago that I have ancestors who became millionaires in the early 1800's in Kentucky and Virginia by the brutal use and abuse of hundreds slaves of African descent. (You can just imagine how I received THAT news.) My understanding is that the show will appear at least a couple of times per week for the rest of June, but I don't know the exact times. And if I can work it out, I'll put a film clip on YouTube, as well.

Countee Cullen

On this day in 1903, Countee Cullen was born. A romantic poet in the fashion of Keats, Wheatley, and Dunbar, Cullen was one of the talented young African-American intellectuals who formed the backbone of the Harlem Renaissance. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa from NYU, Cullen went on to earn a Master's degree in English and French from Harvard and won more major literary prizes than any other Black writer of the time. And he married the only daughter of W.E.B. DuBois in one of the most lavish weddings in the history of the African-American community in New York. In memory of the beautiful who lived and died before us, here is one of his poems:

~~From the Dark Tower~~

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not always countenance, abject and mute,

That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

Not everlastingly while others sleep

Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,

Not always bend to some more subtle brute;

We were not made to eternally weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark

White stars is no less lovely being dark,

And there are buds that cannot bloom at all

In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,

And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Free the Angola 3!

Thirty-six years ago, in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, one of the most notoriously bloody and unjust prisons in the United States, two African-American men, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, helped to form a chapter of the Black Panther Party. Ill advised, under the circumstances of their incarceration? Probably. But they were committed to address the system of sexual slavery that lay at the base of abuse and rage so intense among the population that there was on average a murder a week inside the walls. The organizing capability of the Black Panther Party inside prison, however, was even more threatening to the Powers-That-Be than similar activities in the street at that time.

Then, the killing of a White guard in a dormitory housing two hundred men gave the administration just what they were looking for. Despite the fact that authorities had bloody fingerprints and even the knife used in the attack, all evidence was set aside uninvestigated in the interest of neutralizing Wallace and Woodfox who were charged, convicted, and put into solitary confinement for the crime. They have remained in "the hole" ever since (see their site, the Black Panther Party site, this article, or this one). The case was so rife with contradictions that a third man, Robert King Wilkerson (who was not even in the prison at the time of the stabbing), also got scooped up and placed into solitary confinement for the crime without ever even being charged with it. He was released in 2001 on a separate matter, but has not forgotten those he left behind.

With the work of Wilkerson, the Innocence Project, some lawyers out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and Color of Change, pressure has been building to have Governor Bobby Jindal investigate this on-going travesty. These men have suffered for thirty-six years for a crime their persecutors KNOW they didn't commit (why else would they refuse to release the fingerprint cards for the two hundred men with access to the dorm where the murder took place, one of whom would more than likely turn out to be the actual murderer?) 25,000 supporter's signatures have already been collected to announce our interest in pushing this matter. The Louisiana House Judiciary Committee is set to review the case in June. If there's anything you can do to reach out to or on behalf of these men or to support the effort to release them, now's the time.

Call the governor.

Herman Wallace
#76759 Camp D, Eagle 1
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola LA 70712

Albert Woodfox
#72148 Camp D, Eagle 1
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola LA 70712

Why Am I Not Surprised?

The U.S. Supreme Court made a decision yesterday that protects workers who report racial discrimination from retaliation by their bosses (see this). Does that seem like a no-brainer to you? It seemed that way to the lower courts, as well, that ruled in favor of Hedrick G. Humphries, a man who was fired by Cracker Barrel for bringing a legal complaint about the racially-motivated firing of another worker. Cracker Barrel, of course, appealed. The Supreme Court doesn't typically weigh in unless lower courts disagree, so there was real concern that the high court was going to roll back protections, remaining consistent with their now infamous ultra-conservative stance.

When it came to the vote, however, 7 of the 9 Justices agreed that the lower courts had been correct. I am, needless to say, delighted.

Who were the two Justices that voted AGAINST Humphries and FOR Cracker Barrel? Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Which is the reason for the title on this post. Clarence Thomas is an embarassment on so many levels, he reminds me of a poem by Richard Shelton:

~~THE CREEP~~

his compass has no needle
he is everywhere at once
arriving at the wrong moment
dragging an embarrassed shadow

if he does not come by he will call
if he does not call he will come by
if he comes by he will not leave
and if he leaves he will return
too soon it takes several weeks
to spend an hour with him

he is the one subject of all
his conversations but his life
is garbled like a bad translation
his mind is a series of interruptions
his voice an insult to silence

he is needy he wants
to tell you about himself
wants to hang himself on your wall
like a coat somebody forgot
just hanging there you can't
wear it can't throw it away
and each time he returns for it
he will forget it again

at parties he violates your space
when you step back he steps forward
when you look down you feel guilty
his shoes are ashamed of his feet

ambition's blue vein twitches
in his eyelid he wants
to be famous for something
for anything to sign autographs
to be recognized wherever he goes
and eventually he is

On Emancipating Minds -- Our Own and Other's

I don't want to give anybody the wrong idea. I've assured my students here in Louisiana that institutionalized oppression in the form of racism is, unfortunately, alive and well throughout the U.S. culture. The default position in this country, I tell them, is White Supremacy. From coast to coast. Even for those -- Black or White -- who have money. (Can you imagine a major White actor being sentenced to three years in prison for being convicted of the misdemeanor crime of not filing his taxes -- like Wesley Snipes just was?) Even for those -- Black or White -- who have advanced degrees from college. (African-American men are four times more likely to be unemployed than European-American men at every educational level.) It's not just in "The South," I promise you.

However, many people in Louisiana don't try to hide it as readily or as well as they do elsewhere. They aren't more racist, you understand. They're just less apologetic about it. They see it as natural. Even reasonable. And African-Americans here have been down so long, they think they prefer segregation to having White folks all up in they business. I don't blame 'em. Sometimes I don't want White folks up in my business either and I'm White (as far as I know).

That's what has bothered me most about Louisiana so far. There's much I love about it. People are often gracious. Almost anybody will feed you. Virtually everybody will invite you to church. Laughter is common. Music is lively. The food is famous. And people kiss you on both cheeks. No place is perfect, after all. But the n-word, as I mentioned the other day, is so common that I've been left off guest lists to avoid a possible scene. (Note: I'm the one left off the guest list.) Once, when I engaged a Black man in a conversation about a business matter, his White employer marched up, joined the conversation, and then summarily dismissed the African-American with a curt "Don't you have something to do?" despite the fact that we were standing in the space where he did his work. On another occasion, I was blessed with a whole collection of racist materials (including an Imperial Klans of America patch and a copy of The Turner Diaries) that a casual acquaintance had skanked from a former cop. At least half of the people of color I've talked to here have warned me in no uncertain terms to be VERY careful who I offend (as if I have any control over what goes on in other people's heads, past just shutting up entirely -- the tack most folks like me apparently are expected to take). And my least favorite moment so far occurred when I was at one point (and I swear it) called "Boss Lady."

I even had an African-American student write me an infuriated note after the grades went in because the F he received (that's going to destroy his chances to keep his athletic scholarship) was MY fault. That poor child was so ill prepared for the idea that he would actually have to do the work in the course that he was incredulous at my behavior in holding him responsible. I tried to work with him all semester, giving him all kinds of encouragement, setting him up with a study group, outlining exactly what would be necessary for him to do to make sure he passed the course, and I could tell he wasn't making the needed effort, but I couldn't figure out why. In the end, he simply didn't believe I was serious. Now where do you suppose he learned that? Black students here are by and large relegated to schools that make little if any attempt to teach even the most basic skills, are trained to believe that their only hope is in sports, and ultimately become convinced that they are incapable of even adequate academic performance, in any case. And that just eats my lunch. Yes, I know it goes on everywhere (which makes it okay how?), but I've never seen the level of self-doubt that I see in people of color here. I'm told it's worse in Mississippi, but I can't speak to that, not having lived there.

This sad reality recently caused me to realize that I now see my primary mission in education NOT as trying to raise European-American consciousness related to "race" (which I used to think), but rather to reach young African-Americans and unmask the lies they have been told as truth about themselves. I mean, I always saw this as important, too, but I used to reverse these two commitments. No longer.

Bob Marley wrote: "Emancipate your mind from mental slavery. Only we ourselves can free our minds." And he was charging all of us with this responsibility. It's no mean trick to shake off the dead hand of history (as Walter Mosley called it here) when the whole society with all its authority, culture, and media machine is ever wrapping chains around anything that moves. But some of us have not only the responsibility to emancipate our own minds, but to feed others that they, too, might free themselves. Of those with much, it is said, much will be required. What is much? It's all relative, now isn't it?


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The poster above can be found at Northland Poster Collective.