Brainwashed: Challenging The Myth of Black Inferiority

Some of you are sending me some excellent links these days for which I am truly grateful. One example is this trio of YouTube videos featuring Sheryl McCarthy of City University of New York interviewing Tom Burrell, author of Brainwashed: Challenging The Myth of Black Inferiority (published by Smiley Books in February). After watching this interview, I, for one, can hardly wait to get the book.

Tom Burrell Interview - Part 1

Tom Burrell Interview - Part 2

Tom Burrell Interview - Part 3

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NOTE: Read or listen to National Public Radio's interview of Tom Burrell here. And don't miss Burrell's website, whatever you do!

The Long Haul

I'm in something of a funk today. Albert Woodfox still suffers. The little pregnant cat I've been feeding has mysteriously disappeared for more than a week and one of the neighbors said he saw her body on a street somewhere. My knee is aching 24/7 now (despite the glucosamine I take), so I'm walking instead of running for exercise -- reminding me that I'm getting older by the minute. And my to-do list will last a couple of lifetimes, at least.

Still...this little effort of a blog crossed the line of 100,000 hits this week. Admittedly, it took four and one-half years to do it and there are thousands of blogs (at least), I'm sure, that reach more readers than that every day.

But my voice, nonetheless, my tiny candle, flickers yet in the darkness of this present era. And for that, I am grateful for waking up to yet another day.

Albert "Shaka" Woodfox Will Remain Locked Down

On Monday, June 21, the US Fifth Circuit Court ruled to overturn a July 2008 decision that ordered that Albert Woodfox's conviction and life sentence be "reversed and vacated." As James Ridgeway and Jean Casella write in their article below, yesterday's decision was "a crushing blow to prisoners' rights."

What's Next for Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3?

by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

(Published by Mother Jones and Solitary Watch)

Albert Woodfox has spent nearly all of the last 38 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitientiary at Angola. His case has brought protests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who argue that Woodfox's decades in lockdown constitute torture, and from a growing band of supporters, who believe that he was denied a fair trial. For more than ten years, he has been fighting for his release in the courts. But yesterday, a ruling by a federal appeals court [1] ensured that for the forseeable future, Albert Woodfox will remain right where he has been for the last three decades: in a 6 x 9 cell in the heart of America's largest and most notorious prison.

It's been nearly two years since a federal district court judge in Baton Rouge overturned Woodfox's conviction [2] for the 1972 murder of a guard at Louisiana's Angola prison. Judge James Brady's 2008 ruling, which ordered the state to retry Woodfox or release him, brought new hope to the 63-year-old Woodfox, who has been in Angola-originally for armed robbery-since he was 24. A member of the group known as the Angola 3, Woodfox has always contended that he was effectively framed for the guard's murder-and then thrown into permament lockdown-because of his involvement with the Black Panther Party, which was organizing against conditions in what was then known as the "bloodiest prison in the South."

Without drawing any conclusions about Woodfox's guilt or innocence, Judge Brady of the Federal District Court, Middle District of Louisiana, concluded that Woodfox had not received due process at his 1998 trial (which was intself a replacement for a faulty 1973 trial). The main grounds for overturning Woodfox's conviction were ineffective assistance of counsel, which allowed questionable evidence and irregular practices to stand without challenge. Woodfox had argued that better lawyers could have shown that his conviction was quite literally bought by the state, which based its case on jailhouse informants who were rewarded for their testimony. (Woodfox's case was described in full in this 2009 article for Mother Jones [3].)

Judge Brady agreed, and in July 2008 he granted Woodfox's Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, ordering that his conviction and life sentence be "reversed and vacated." But some of the most powerful figures in the Lousiana justice system were committed to keeping Woodfox in prison and in lockdown. After his conviction was overturned, Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell declared [4], "We will appeal this decision to the 5th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. If the ruling is upheld there I will not stop and we will take this case as high as we have to. I will retry this case myself...I oppose letting him out with every fiber of my being because this is a very dangerous man."

Caldwell put his case before the federal Fifth Circuit in March 2009-and in yesterday's decision, he prevailed. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of three federal appellate judges ruled that Judge Brady had erred in overturning Wallace's conviction. Their decision is not only a crushing blow for Woodfox, but also a manifestation of how far the rights of the accused have fallen in recent decades.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals once had a reputation [5] as one of the finest appellate courts in the land. In the 1960s, a small group of Fifth Circuit judges­ -- mostly Southern-bred moderate Republicans -- ­was known for advancing civil rights and especially school desegregation. But today the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, is seen as among the most ideologically conservative of the federal appeals courts. It is notable for its overburdened docket and for its hostility to appeals from defendants in capital cases, including claims based on faulty prosecution and suppressed evidence. The court has even been reprimanded by the US Supreme Court, itself is no friend to death row inmates: In June 2004, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Fifth Circuit was "paying lip service to principles" of appellate law in handing down death penalty rulings.

In addition, the decision in Woodfox's case shows the crippling effects on prisoners' rights of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) which was passed under Bill Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings. That legislation has become the bane of anti-death penalty lawyers and activists, and of thousands of other prisoners seeking to challenge their convictions-a pursuit which AEDPA now renders nearly impossible.

As the Fifth Circuit noted in its ruling, "The AEDPA requires that federal courts "defer to a state court's adjudication of a claim" unless the state court decision ran "contrary to...clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court," or was "based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." And as the judges pointed out, "An unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect or erroneous application of the law."

In other words, the state courts could be wrong, they just couldn't be so far out as to be undeniably "unreasonable." And in the end, the Fifth Circuit judges agreed with the State's argument that "the district court failed to apply the AEDPA's heightened deferential standard of review to Woodfox's ineffective assistance claims." For Woodfox, this means that his time in prison stretches before him with no foreseeable end in sight. His lawyers have promised to return to his case with new evidence, but that could take years, and the outcome might still be the same. In the meantime, Woodfox and fellow Angola 3 members Herman Wallace and Robert King have mounted a constitutional challenge to their solitary confinement [6], which may come to trial before the end of this year. That case, too, will eventually go before the Fifth Circuit-and even a win would mean only a release from permanent lockdown, not from Angola.

This post also appears at James Ridgeway's personal blog, Solitary Watch[7].

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Source URL: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/albert-woodfox-angola-3

Links:

[1] http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=theadvertiser&sParam=33855807.story

[2] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5339513&page=1

[3] http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude

[4] http://a.abcnews.com/Blotter/Story?id=5894181&page=1

[5] http://www.thenation.com/issue/may-3-2004

[6] http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown

[7] http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/

Rock Me Baby -- All Night Long

It would seem somehow irresponsible to write two posts in a row about luuuuuuv and not post a video giving honor to the tradition of songs about the topic. So here's Etta James telling her baby to rock her all night long. And if you thought we get too old for that one day, then pay attention, kiddies, 'cause she'll school you right. Fo' sho'.

What's Love Got To Do With It? - Part 2

Yesterday, I wrote about why I don't advise Black people not to get romantically involved with White people (aside from the fact that, of course, that it's none of my business what somebody else does with their heart...or their genitals). Today, I want to write about some of the reasons I think Black and White people DO get romantically involved. And it's complicated stuff. So I'm not suggesting that this post is going to constitute the last word on the subject. I just want to present a couple of the ideas I've been mulling over for the past few months, since I got personally involved with a Black man. Again.

Before I get started, however, I want to give you a bit of back story. I went on a date with a Black man the first time as a young adult. He was a medical student and it was a blind date. He later admitted to me that the only reason he went out with (and bedded) me was that I was White. An interesting experience, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Since that time, I have dated or had "romantic" relationships with a number of men of color: Asian, Latino, and Black (African, Caribbean, and African-American). I have also been "involved" with White men, including the father of my now deceased son.

I never chose a date or a mate on the basis of his skin tone, his age, or his accent; whether or not he had good looks, a college degree, a job or even a car; the size of his bank account or his penis. That's just me. I sincerely believe that most of us -- however much we talk smack about "love" -- choose our mates rather particularistically, however, tending to opt for "our own kind" (those from a similar background, similar intelligence level, similar socio-economic status, and so forth). I, on the other hand, tended to go with the moment. And I think there's probably a bit of a wink in that sentence, if you're paying attention.

In any case, I have opted to pick and choose at will. Which has opened a lot of doors for me (and others like me). Keep in mind that I spent the past ten years of my life alone. I don't mean living alone. I mean alone alone. In a single bed. No dating. No relationships. And only a couple of forays into the embarrassing territory of one night stands. So it isn't that I must "have" someone to "feel like" someone. In fact, until recently, it was more like I never really wanted to be romantically involved at all (can we say "is-sues"?).

My point is that I, of all people, am proof positive that we can live happily and well by ourselves, if we're of a mind to. And a romantic relationship in and of itself ensures absolutely nothing in the way of contentment or satisfaction or well-being, other than the possibility of having access to two paychecks to address shared bills. I mean, color me jaded if you want to, but I'm talking about what I see all around me, as well as what I've experienced, not to mention all the research I've read since I started teaching courses in gender.

Additionally (and I mentioned this point yesterday, but I think it's crucial), Black people romantically involved with other Black people, White people romantically involved with other White people, and so on, appear in public and private every day everywhere in the world in relationships that scream "neurosis" on a range of levels, and nobody ever seems to have a problem with this (even when innocent children are being routinely put through a wringer in the process). Nobody says, "Gosh, maybe people should just avoid relationships entirely unless both parties are totally healthy individuals to start with," though this idea makes all kinds of logical sense.

But when a "Black" person (and remember, we're talking about skin tone here) gets with a "White" person (or at least one who passes for White, because how the hell do most of us really know?), we become convinced that the relationship HAS to be neurotic and has NO hope of being healthy in ANY way REGARDLESS of endless indications otherwise. And that's just dopey. As well as unfortunate. Since life is hard enough without trying to tell people they must love and/or have sex with only the person YOU would pick for them.

Nevertheless (as I pointed out already a few paragraphs ago), the vast majority of human beings choose our mates particularistically. We don't necessarily walk around with a checklist on a clipboard, checking off the characteristics a prospective "candidate" for a relationship might or not have, so we can make a decision. But we just go with the path of least resistance. We only allow into our "prospective mate pool" those who meet the gender, race, religion, educational level, socio-economic potential level, and attractiveness quotient we would find acceptable. This is why we don't see more "blending" than we do. Oh, it's there all right. Lots of it. More all the time. But not all that much, when push comes to shove. Because most of us just don't cross the line.

We have help to stay in our places, too. Others (in our group or a different one) do what social science researchers call "border patrol." In other words, they look at a Black woman with a White man on her arm and ask pointedly, "This is your boyfriend?" with just the hint of a pause before the telltale word. And by the hundredth or thousandth time this -- or a similar -- question is asked or statement is made, the "border" becomes as littered with painful debris as the Rio Grande. And the romance can become not worth it.

So why does anyone "cross the [fill in the blank] line?"

"You can't help who you love," we haste to chatter.

But I've already raised the idea that most of us choose pretty carefully and have plenty of help to make sure we do that.

So, why is anyone willing to take on the whole society's wrath and ridicule when there are literally millions of options that won't call down the Dogs of Hell? I think it's personal and political. And I think the personal IS political.

I'm sure there are at least a gazillion reasons a person might decide to be what sociologists call "deviant" (which only means, after all, different from the norm, different from the usual way things are done in that society). And some of them are unquestionably (or at least) neurotic, ill-advised, stupid, hilarious, weird, sad, outrageous and/or predictable. But I would argue that the same thing could be said of a relationship between two people who are NOT being recognizably deviant in their choice. So what's the point of singling out, in particular, Black people and White people "in love with" each other?

I already wrote herein that I wouldn't feel comfortable telling a woman she "shouldn't" be in a relationship with a man, or a gay or lesbian person "shouldn't" love someone with the same genitals, or a Muslim "shouldn't" marry a Jew. But neither could I begin to have a clue for absolutely certain about all the reasons that might be involved in their decision-making. That's why I use the term "complicated." There could be more than one. There could even be many. There is more to mating than "lying back and thinking of England" (what they used to tell women to do who were faced with the ignominious duty of submitting to their husbands' advances). There is more to mating than "chemistry" or arranging a marriage or making babies to carry on the family name(s).

Some of us choose -- bold-facedly and with no apology whatsoever -- the harder road. We choose, knowing the cost, to breech the social compunctions, to commit to a different, better world of possibility, to allow our lives and our bodies to become the battlefield on which the rest of the human race claims the right to fight some of its ugliest wars. We mate as a political act. An act of rebellion. Against any system, any ideology, any historical tradition, any individual that purports to have the final say in our only, most private existence.

And if that makes some people who choose to stay inside their prescribed borders uncomfortable in one way or another, then it is what it is.

What''s Love Got To Do With It? - Part 1

On May 1st, I appeared as a guest on The Context of White Supremacy (C.O.W.S.) radio show. I signaled you that it was going to happen and I was quite excited because I thought we were going to explore the reality of how the socially-constructed political notice of "race" has been used in this country (and around the world) to oppress people of color. And we did. But instead of an open forum on ideas, it rapidly turned into a "let's-put-the-Changeseeker-on-a-spit-and-watch-her-psychological-skin-bubble" exhibition.

Now, I knew this in advance. I mean, I've been around for a few twenty-four hours and I know how to do my homework. So in preparing for the show, I listened to some archived broadcasts and read some of their statements and learned that the panel of questioners (who are quite specifically focused in their beliefs) are an intelligent and angry group of Black folks. And if you've read much of my blog, you know that I don't disagree with the reasonable nature of Black folks' anger. In fact, I raise the issue often.

But acknowledging it and having it directed at you for two solid hours live while being broadcast coast to coast and archived permanently are two entirely different things. And it's something like bootcamp, an experience not for the faint of heart. So why would any White person who is at all educated on the subject want to participate in such a thing?

Tim Wise -- who some people see as the godfather of White anti-racism just now -- has committed himself to appear on the show every month for a year, for example. Why in the world, after even one whopping helping of fixated whup-ass, would he agree to such an exercise? I can't speak for Wise, of course, but I can speak for me. And the reason for me was that I can't say I want to fight oppression if I refuse to look it in the face -- wherever it raises its ugly head -- even in my own life. And who better to point out what I need to examine than a focused group of intelligent and angry Black folks?

Anyway, the bottom line was that instead of talking about oppression in a more general sense or exploring the three hundred eighty posts I've published on this blog over the past four and one-half years, Gus T. Renegade et al decided to focus almost entirely on the fact that I have a bi-racial daughter and wouldn't I say that was a mistake and wouldn't I counsel Black people around the world not to do that or even get in "romantic" relationships at all with White people?

As a mother, this put me in a tricky position at best. I remember when my own mother suggested giving my as yet unborn child to a Black couple (like a litter of kittens?). I was dumbstruck. I was carrying a human being, after all, a manifestation of the expression of a bond, however ephemeral or ill-advised, between a man and a woman in love or in lust or in a historical moment, that I would no more disavow than I would cut out my own heart and eat it for breakfast. Having had an offspring murdered at the age of twenty-two has given me an extremely clear grasp on the value I give to a life I have carried, birthed and nursed. And believe me, it's non-negotiable.

So despite the complicated nature of "race relations" in the world today or at any other time, there's no way I could ever tell people not to reproduce any more children like my daughter. Which does NOT mean that I don't see Mr. Renegade's point: that under an international context of White Supremacy where the most powerful nation in the world is the poster child for that White Supremacist system, "romantic" relationships between a person designated as "Black" and a person designated as "White" are difficult at best. So are ALL "romantic" relationships, of course. In fact, the last statistic I saw on average length of marriage world-wide was four years. Hardly an advertisement for strength of commitment.

But Gus T. Renegade believes that no Black person can thrive in a "romantic" relationship with any White person under an umbrella of White Supremacy and that, therefore, Black people should be warned not to get into relationships with, marry or make children with White people under any circumstances. And I was asked repeatedly to co-sign this perspective.

My response? In a perfect world, all "romantic" relationships would be based on mutual respect and affection and a commitment to personal growth in all areas of one's personhood. But in this far from perfect world, most of us are hard put to get through Thursday. So I wouldn't begin to tell people who they "should" or "should not" get with. One of the reasons it was easy for me to stay alone for ten years until recently was that the vast majority of "romantic" relationships I see (regardless of the race or gender of the partners involved) look at least somewhat neurotic from where I sit and I didn't want to sign up for another tour of that kind of duty.

It's true without question that oppression in any form screws up relationships all day long and twice on Sunday (when oppression with a capital O is pushed from pulpits in the name of God). And for a relationship to last more than four years, all kinds of difficulties must be resolved between the participating parties even if oppression of one kind or another is not involved. Adding the element of "race" or "gender" to the mix is guaranteed to create a much deeper level of angst on both sides.

This is the reason that, increasingly, women around the world have come to the conclusion that forming relationships with men is a bad idea for women. While the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" has been around for no more than five hundred years or so, men established themselves in a position of dominance over women as much as seven thousand years ago, leaving many convinced that men are supposed to be in that position, that it's "natural." Consequently, women are stuck with trying to survive under a patriarchal system in romantic relationships with their oppressors. Who, by and large, are frankly, beyond clueless about the situation. As a matter of fact, this arrangement has been in place for so long, the vast majority of women don't get it either. They bow and shuffle and go along to get along and make excuses for striving for new levels of "submission" to their "mates" according to "God's" law and so forth ad nauseum. I see them come into my gender courses semester after semester, only to leave with their personal lives in disarray because of their new level of consciousness.

But do I tell them they shouldn't make relationships with men (as some other women do)? No. I tell them that THEY are responsible for the quality of their lives, whether in or outside of relationships. I tell them that no enterprise worth bothering with -- "romantic" or otherwise -- is going to be easy. And that crossing the "gender" line to mate with a man will require constant vigilance related not only to his socialization as "king" over her and his perception of the meaning of "manhood," but related to HER socialization as "queen" under him and her perception of the meaning of her role as a "woman." When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

And I apply the same principles to bi-racial relationships.

I laughed when Gus asked me if my daughter has sex with White men. Apparently, the point he was going for was that being raised by a White woman would leave her without Black reference points (reminding me of a middle class Black woman who once told me flatly that her children were never going to have a "boom box," that if they wanted to listen to music, they could listen to it in the living room on the "stereo"). But if the reference points my daughter was raised with at home included exposure to African and African-American culture of all types and all manner of people from all over the world, including a number of African nations, then the White reference points with which we are ALL embedded were delivered to her particularly in school in bite-sized chunks from the time she was in kindergarten until she graduated from college. In my role as a college teacher, I see Black young people everyday who've been raised by loving Black caregivers and who are as deeply embedded with White Supremacy as my daughter will ever be on her worst day.

After all -- and Gus seemed fascinated by this -- she had barely learned to write when she handed me a paragraph that read:

“I think Whites do the things they do to Black because Whites want to be better than Blacks and most Whites want to be better than all colored people. Whites think they are the king and queen of the world. I think Whites and Black should have the same rights and should be abel to do the same things. Whites treat other colored people like they are animals. I think it should be stop right now. Blacks should be respected just as Whites are and the same for all the other colored people.”

Where does he think she got that understanding? From an NWA song?

She is who she is. Just as I am. And while I may still be working on my Self on a daily basis in a lot of areas, I think I'm doing a helluva job overall being a Person I feel good about being. And if my daughter is any indication of who I am, then I am proud of myself indeed. Because she's the bomb.

Renegade asked me to see if my daughter would come on a subsequent radio show with me and I said I would ask her. Actually, I thought she would say no hands down because she's one of the most private people I've ever met. But I knew that, regardless of what she said, I would never subject her to the grilling of his troops. She may be twenty-eight, but I'm still her mother. Allowing myself to be attacked is one thing. Inviting her to be attacked -- because I'm her mother -- is something I couldn't live with.

Besides, I've only posted nine segments of my book, Reduced to Equality: My Odyssey to Renounce Racial Privilege -- and Find Myself. That consitutes less than half of it. And I finished it several years ago, so there's been some new developments in my life since then. Because those few segments seemed to be the only information he had taken in, Gus may not have had all the information he probably needed to do the job he seemed to want to do.

For example, neither he (nor any of the rest of the team) ever asked me whether or not I am right now in a bi-racial relationship. And the answer is yes. I stayed alone for ten years, working on my self as an individual. And then, when I finally agreed to date someone, he happened to be African-American. I'm thinking Gus et al would have had a field day with that. Especially since we'd only been dating four months at the time of the broadcast and so were still in a very formative stage.

Regardless, and I kid you not, Gus T. Renegade and Justice and the others really took me places in my consciousness I've never been before. I was so rocked by the experience that it took me a week to process it all enough to do anything else. I went deep and stayed long. And I entered a whole series of dialogues with Boxer that forced us both to look at everything we were doing in an even more rigorous way. So I'm grateful. I can't have it both ways. I can't grow beyond where I already am without breaking new ground. And I can't do that alone.

From the looks of his archives, Gus has stayed busy interviewing others on The Context of White Supremacy. I highly recommend that you check out what he and his compatriots are up to. I guarantee you'll learn much. But keep in mind, it can be dangerous way out there on the ends of the branches where the fruit is.

Tomorrow, I'm going to write another post on the topic of bi-racial relationships. I do think they have to do with more than just "love" or even "lust." I believe, in fact, that under White Supremacy, they are necessarily a political statement. So give all this some thought and join me tomorrow, if you will, for the second part of "What's Love Got To Do With It?"

A-hem. [*clears throat quietly*]

I know I've been among the missing for some time now.

Which of the following do you think is the reason?

• During the last three weeks of the spring semester, students beat a path to my door at an unprecedented rate (regardless of their major or their status or their nationality or whether they were actually my students or connected in any way to anything I have done or even not done on this campus). This constituted a new personal best -- or worst, depending on how you look at it -- giving me GREAT pause when I consider the implications for the future.



• Just about the time I thought I had somehow recovered from this onslaught (which took a few days, to be honest with you), the Powers-That-Be canceled one of the courses I expected to pay my rent by teaching in July, necessitating my commitment to FINALLY teach my first internet course from scratch on four days notice. This requires, of course, daily attention including, but not restricted to filming lecture segments, drafting notes for posting onto the website, and fielding interminable requests for communication from students who, by and large (apparently), have never seen a computer before.



• My laptop (the one I was supposed to be retiring anyway) gave up the ghost without notice so that I lost stuff I will probably never remember ever existed (including hundreds of photos I had saved over time for use on this blog), leaving me staring endlessly at the neighbor's pregnant cat that's been trying to finagle her way into my house for the past two weeks with remarkable focus. Do I just give up and let her in, I ask myself -- knowing damned well she's trying to have her babies in my closet or on my side of the bed or somewhere I can't even imagine? Do I just continue to encourage her to adopt the "special place" I created for her on the front porch -- knowing damned well that she's not going to do it regardless of how many times I fluff the towel and leave chicken breast sacrifices beside it (which she, of course, eats, further ensuring that she will be ever more convinced that I am unquestionably the godmother of her incipient offspring)? Do I throw the computer at the cat, thus resolving two issues, while releasing what seems to be a seriously unhealthy or at least unproductive level of frustration? This staring and thinking process is on-going.



• A couple of grown men from elsewhere butted their noses into my life (via a student I sometimes mentor), attempting to assassinate my character by emailing professionals in my workplace with the "information" that I am a freaked-out radical who is dangerous to the students on this campus because I lead them astray and cause them to self-destruct their otherwise halcyon lives by veering violently to the left. This drama entailed multiple interviews with superiors answering questions about a situation I had no control over and didn't know about until after the fact.



• A new organization with a national base has popped up and established itself locally (thanks to another of my students), requiring some attention, especially when its representatives are sitting in my living room.



• Plants have to be re-potted in the spring. And they don't care how much work it is or how much it costs. And they keep me supplied with oxygen...



• Boxer keeps talking me into going places to do fun stuff I used to never do because I was too busy blogging (or whatever).



• All of the above.

If you answered: "all of the above," then you're right. But I am back. With much to write about. And a new home espresso machine to help me write it. TTFN (ta-ta for now). But not for long.

Lions and Tigers and Black men...oh, my!

Lately, I've been thinking about how White people are scared of Black men. Not all White people, of course, but certainly most of them. And not all Black men, but...well...once they arrested Henry Louis Gates (a world-famous, 59-year-old Harvard professor who walks with a cane and was arrested last year on his own porch for being irritated with police for entering his house uninvited), it's hard to imagine immediately just where to draw the line.

Anyway, White folks are a scary bunch around African-Americans ("scary" being Black talk for frightened of pretty much everything pretty much all the time). And the big sociological question, naturally, is why?

I see this a lot. And more recently, I've been seeing it more and more.

A month or so ago, I began to hear rumblings about young Black men getting into trouble on my campus by hanging around the front of the library loud-talking, arguing about sports mostly, blowing off student steam. Girls are encouraged to giggle; guys (in general) are usually allowed to yell. Students, especially over-tired commuter students who work thirty or more hours per week and go to school full time need to let loose one way or the other between classes. But while White males can push each other, leer at girls and make noises at will, Black males are experienced by White bystanders (including librarians and campus police) as "intimidating." So even duly enrolled and tuition-paying Black males listening to an i-pod or eating their lunch were being aggressively rousted and ordered to move, on threat of appearing before the disciplinary committee. And tensions were rising.

One Black administrator I spoke with said the young men should just bite the bullet and leave rather than make standing in front of the library a "Waterloo." My suggestion to him was that if the only two options being offered these students were "Waterloo" or "sucking dick" (yes, I said that), then a resolution was NOT going to be reached. Young Black men (just like every other human on the face of the earth) need to feel that they have a right to exist. Being constantly singled out and "moved along" at the will of authority figures who threaten and disrespect them reduces the personhood of those who are commanded to shuffle quietly away and that will only work so long, if at all.

In any case, while I was considering this situation, I came across Tim Wise's piece on "What If the Tea Party Was Black?" wherein, after outlining numerous examples, he concludes:

"And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis."

Point taken.

Which brought me back around to an email I received in February from Will Capers, whose blog Will Capers' Blaque Ink is WELL worth following and whose post here neatly outlines the opposites of White privilege in a way I've never seen done before.

Capers' email referred me to a piece by Malcolm Trocio entitled "Being Mugged Has Made Me Afraid of Young Black Men. Should I Feel Guilty?" and Capers asked me what I thought of it. When I responded that I wanted to blog on it and welcomed his input, he wrote the following:

It wasn't until a few years ago that I began to feel shame, anger, and depression whenever I hear news about blacks, particularly young black men, committing crimes. From what I've heard from other blacks, they feel the same range of emotions.

There have been crimes committed by white men as well, numerous and heinous at that, but a crime committed by a black man is instantly stapled as proof as to how "those people" are. The media and the news help strengthen the racist stereotype of the young black male that have been around for a few centuries. Sadly, no one within the media or news media will take even an iota of responsibility for this continuous form of racism. Instead, they will shift the blame onto the very people they generalize and stereotype. In the end they help to maintain the hatred and fear society has of the black man, and will do little or no work to ask important questions, do unbiased research and try to clean up the image they help to realize because in the end to them it's what society wants.

As mentioned earlier white men have committed crimes that are large in numbers and heinous in nature, and that too is good for the business of the news media. However, when a white man commits a crime, only that one white man is responsible. Only that one white man must own up to his crime or crimes. The entire white male population in this country or the world for that matter is NOT looked upon as how society looks upon that one, individual white man. That is an example of white privilege.

In the case of the news media some whites who have been convicted or accused of a crime will be reported as having some sort of mental disorder or damaging childhood. It's as if the media wants the public to feel sorry for them and to understand what may have contributed to their behavior. For accused or convicted blacks, it's more silent towards their mental health or childhood and more vocal about their criminal history. Thus, not only strengthening the negative stereotype, but also making it seem as if they were born criminal minded.

For many black men like myself, it's a harsh struggle to live in a world where you are automatically judged for the actions of a few or one. It's a burden to live in a world where hearing about another black man committing a crime or acting deviant makes you feel guilty. Sadly, in white-dominated world, that's the unnatural norm. One black criminal confirms the belief that all black people are criminals despite the fact that there are black men who are constantly trying to prove society wrong. Even though the numbers of black men greatly outweigh the numbers of black men who have fallen astray due to the persistent racism that destroys them in some way, shape or form, the racist stereotypes persist. To that end society feels that those black men who are clearly victims of the continuous oppression cannot be helped, and that society itself must protect itself from them by throwing them in cages or shooting them.

To society the young black male is a beast. Society might consider me to be a "tamed" beast like a pet tiger. Society considers those who have murdered, raped or robbed others as the wild beasts that need to be put down especially if they've harmed one of their privileged citizens. The media will be there to let society know when one of them goes wild. The beast and I will share similar features, one being skin color, and that's all the reason society needs to hate and fear me.

This is hardly the first time I've come across a Black man talking or writing about his frustration with being portrayed continually as the Booger Man. It must be wearing, indeed, to be faced with such judgment as a constant refrain. And we know full well through the media that fear of Black men, especially young Black men -- however unfounded -- can and often does result in an arrest or even the death of a Black man in a New York minute. So here, then, is my commentary on Malcolm Trocio's piece on his fear of Black men.

Trocio opens by calling himself a "socially conscious, bias-free white person" and it occurred to me immediately that this is how White people invariably start off. "Now, don't call me a racist...," they'll begin. Or "I was raised not to SEE color...," they'll say, following the statement with a "but...." And then they'll introduce an attitude that raises my eyebrows up to my hairline. And Trocio is no exception. Calling his fear of young African-American men a "socially unacceptable paranoia" focusing primarily on those sixteen to thirty who exhibit a "'thug' look and mentality," he nevertheless admits that it manages to spread itself to include well dressed or even older Black men. What a surprise.

Then he describes how he was raised around many Black and multi-ethnic children, but "never managed to make a real connection to their social structure." (So it's "not connecting to the social structure" that's the problem, is it? It's the social structure he's afraid of?) And then he does another quintessentially White thing: making a blanket racist statement and attributing it to "human nature."

"Humans," he writes, "tend to naturally regard skin color as a type of uniform." And it is true that I've been thinking about another blog post I want to write about how I sometimes put on my "White suit" to accomplish certain things, but I don't think he and I are actually in agreement here. He wants us to accept his premise that all humans just naturally wear skin like a banner of where we belong. "Uniforms," after all, imply inclusion in a membership of some kind; an organization, if you will; a group of similarly-situated individuals that patently does NOT include those wearing a different "uniform."

In attempting to paint his family and himself as "nice" White people, Trocio relates two stories of family friends who were Black. He apparently felt very warmly toward these two individuals, but couldn't for the life of him remember the name of one of them, what they looked like (other than Black), or any specifics about them other than their entertaining personalities (hmmmm....), but these men's presence in his life is supposed to balance the rest of what he has to say, which is far longer, far more detailed, and much less positive.

It seems that Trocio (brace yourself here) was once approached by a homeless Black guy in filthy clothing and it scared him almost to death. Nothing happened, you understand. There wasn't even any contact at all. But the homeless guy waved his arms (oh, my gosh!) and tried to stop him one time when he was on his way to an Art Museum and he barely escaped with his...um...life? Sanity? Pocket change?

The homeless guy was shouting "I just wanna be your friend," but as we all know, you can't be too careful with somebody wearing filthy clothes. I mean, didn't that homeless guy know that you may not be able to avoid being poor, but you can still be clean? The incident was described as "almost being mugged," which makes, in my book, about as much sense in this case as calling a movie date "almost" getting married. I'm guessing Trocio doesn't get around too much.

Anyway, he went on to Incident Number Two, involving his "gazelle-like" leap from a train platform after seeing a Black teenaged boy hit a White kid over the head and steal his wallet. The Black kid, according to Trocio, has a couple of buddies with him, so I understand Trocio not jumping in to help the victim. But still, he doesn't mention yelling and says he didn't really even see much because the minute the situation began, he ran away. Again, no contact between him and the Black guys. And he repeatedly calls the victim a "doofy White kid" (for whatever reason), which doesn't seem very respectful, especially since the term suggests that Trocio more than likely would NOT refer to himself in such a way.

The third event (which was, again, I'm afraid, more of a non-event than an occurance since the Black "muggers" that have terrorized Trocio have hardly fit the "Menace II Society" description) was an occasion on a public bus when a young Black man demanded Trocio's winter gloves. His terror this time was so nondescript that Trocio admits he didn't even understand what the young man was saying. Finally, getting the point, Trocio responded loudly (in heroic fashion, I guess, given his earlier responses), "Why would I give YOU my gloves?" At which point the female bus driver (luckily) "saved his behind" by declaring, "We ain't gonna have any of that on MY bus!"

Now, the driver did push the police button. And it was a crowded public space (which I deduce from Trocio talking about the "mugger" standing behind him on the bus, which usually means there are no seats available). But really now, if "almost mugger" number three was as frightening as the ones in the movies, Trocio wouldn't have had the nerve to speak, the driver wouldn't have sounded like an Assistant Principal, and the "mugger" would have been after something besides a pair of gloves (which since they were used, I assume the Black man needed or he wouldn't have asked). Yet this was the closest Trocio has ever come to being "mugged." And being "mugged" (according to his title) is why he's afraid of young Black men.

I realize I've had a more dramatic life than some or maybe even most. But honestly, regardless, I can't relate to poor Malcolm Trocio's post-traumatic stress. I've taken some serious licks at the hands of both Black and White guys at one time or another in my life, so I guess, based on his standard, I could claim terror at the face of anyone with a penis (including Trocio). But I don't. Because those people were individual Black or White guys. They had real problems, no doubt. But they didn't typify all Black and all White men. In fact, for every wacko male I've met (and I've met more than my share for a variety of reasons), I've met MANY guys that were at least trying to be decent, a goodly number you could take home to your mother, and more than a few I would trust with my life (Trocio not being one of them since I'm high-strung as it is and he obviously freaks out pretty fast).

Trocio, on the other hand, while not lumping himself and all his White brothers in the "Tim McVey" or "John Wayne Gacy" pools, fears all Black men, he writes, because the "Gangsta Rap/Thug" culture is meant to intimidate. If this makes no sense to you, don't blame the sentence, blame the idea. (I do, by the way, agree with Trocio that gangsta rap is intended to get Whites' attention, which it does. I would, however, suggest that Whites intimidate African-Americans day and night in this society and, as far as I'm concerned, Black intimidation of Whites is just blow-back. Besides, White money and White production is how we GOT gangsta rap in the first place -- see this YouTube video or this one, both by spoken word artist Taalam Acey).

Trocio closes by trying to make nice. Thuggish clothes, he reminds himself, are worn by lots of folks (including White people) and aren't a good way to judge character. He's also afraid, he admits, of Southerners and hill-folk, too (which includes me on both counts and I'm here to say that, as nervous as he apparently stays, he's right to steer clear of a lot of us, as we tend to make sport of those who flinch too often).

Still, he claims that paranoia -- defined by Dictionary.com as "baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others" -- is a normal reaction to the circumstances he writes about in this piece. If that's true, then it's a wonder any of us is willing to get out of bed in the morning.

He tries, he says, to judge each person as an individual and that would be a laudable stance if he hadn't just written 1100 words about why he can't. But when he finishes with the line, "all people act all ways," I don't believe he means it. Because if he did, he wouldn't have written this nonsense and put his name on it for all the world to see.
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NOTE: The graphic above is by Laurie Cooper and is available as a poster here.

On This Day In History

On this day in 1964, Nelson Mandela stood before the Supreme Court in Pretoria, South Africa, against the urgings of his lawyer, and made the following statement before being sent to prison for twenty-seven years:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realised. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, To Angola We Go!

Yesterday, Boxer and I motored up to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for the spring Arts and Crafts Fair. Most folks also attend the prisoner Rodeo which is always held the same week-end, but I can't support a gladiator-style competition where untrained prisoners bleed and are sometimes permanently disabled in events (such as bull riding) for which they are completely unprepared. All to make money for the prison.

I always have mixed feelings about hanging out with prisoners. And Angola -- with its 5000 prisoners (many of whom are Black and doing ridiculously long sentences) and 1800 "staff members" (some of whom are second and third generation guards and most of whom live on the prison grounds just like the prisoners) -- is larger than many towns in this state. A former(?) plantation, its 18,000 acres are meticulously kept (by its "inmates," of course) and resplendent with flowers. Riding through Angola, with its mile after mile of manicured lawns, always creeps me out, frankly, when you consider the unmitigated, continual anguish of those who are as surely held in bondage as their ancestors ever were.

As we prepared for our first hejira together to the Mecca of this desolate place, where Boxer spent twenty years of his life, he regaled me with stories. One told about a prisoner that just dropped his hoe one day and said, "I'm tired. I'm sittin' down."

"A guard, looking at him, shocked, said, "Whachu mean, you're tired? You better get back to work!"

The prisoner just shook his head and matter-of-factly replied, "I been workin' five hundred years and I'm tired..."

At which point the guard paused a moment, nodded, and said, "Yeah...you right. I 'magine you are tired. Go sit down."

Another story Boxer told was about the first time he was sent to the fields with the others shortly after he arrived at Angola.

It was mid-winter, cold, with a sharp wind blowing and they were sent out to the far north part of the plantation...er...prison to pick spinach. They were given no jackets, no gloves, no boots or caps to ward off the bitter weather, despite, needless to say, the guards on horseback who sported all of the above.

Boxer, new to the drill and unbroken, looked down the football field long row of plants he had just been assigned and said, "I'm not doin' it. It's cold out here. You sent us out here to work like slaves with no warm clothes and I'm not doin' it. Call me a cab!"

Why they didn't just march him off instantly to be given a proper "attitude adjustment" in a darkened cell somewhere off to itself, I don't know. It's fairly standard practice. But they didn't. And the others quickly picked up the refrain. In a bit, the bus rolled up and the men were re-loaded and returned to the dorms, with Boxer going to the infamous Camp J (also called "the dungeons"), where he was locked in a one-man cell.

Every week or so, they would appear at the bars of his cell with a "Ready to go to work?" Solitary lockdown isn't for everybody.

"Is it spring yet?" Boxer would ask.

And when told no, he would politely decline the offer of "freedom" from the cell. Again.

I met some of his long-time friends yesterday. A couple of them didn't know what had happened to him or where he went. He's been gone from Angola since 2000 and from the prison system since early 2008. But when a prisoner is moved, it's typically done rapidly and without notice, so maintaining contacts can be tricky. One learns to roll with the punches, as it were, to have the fewest possible expectations of life, to maximize patience, to let go of frustration -- in order to survive with one's physical, mental and emotional health intact to whatever degree possible.

I was reminded of the sociological concept of "master status." Your master status is the principle role you see yourself filling. For example, I spend a LOT of time teaching and mentoring and relating to students; I'm an activist on my campus and in my community; but I think of "writer" as my master status. I revel in not teaching for a while. I engage in activism on the basis of whatever is happening to which I must respond. But when I don't write for two weeks, I get edgy. I'm a writer.

In prison, the role of prisoner (with all that entails) becomes like a creeping rot on the soul of the individual. The man or woman who spends any time at all locked up -- let alone a long period so treated -- is modified in some very characteristic ways. But if a prisoner can embrace a master status other than prisoner while incarcerated, they are, while unquestionably shut down in a thousand other ways, still able to hang on to a greater portion of their humanity. Boxer, of course, was a winning boxer and later a trainer of other winning boxers. And in a system where wardens spend real cash on their boxing teams, pitting them in competition state-wide, this was a very cool master status indeed.

One of the men I met yesterday is Jeffrey Lewis (far left in the photo above), who's been down a long time for a double manslaughter conviction and was refused parole for having a juvenile record (which he does not, in fact, have). Apparently, the latest addition to the "how-we-gonna-keep-'em-down-on-The-Farm" repetoire is having a juvenile record. Consequently, for example, a 76-year-old man who went up for parole the last time the Board met was refused release because he had a juvenile record. Which means exactly what at this late date? It's stuff like this that makes me incapable of walking away from the prisons once and for all, no matter how much of a bummer they are. What kind of society allows such a system to brutalize people in such cruel and arbitrary ways and doesn't feel in any way responsible for its actions?

In any case, Lewis has been involved with the hospice program at Angola for seven or eight years now, a program that has been ruled the number one such program in the country for five of the past eight years, from what I understand. Nationally-recognized photographer Lori Waselchuk has put together a traveling exhibit on the program entitled "Grace Before Dying", which I'd like to see brought to my university, if possible. And Lewis' master status, it occurs to me, is that of "hospice worker," which has enabled him to avoid having "prisoner" be his primary personna, in spite of his being at Angola now for a very long time.

I also met Michael Johnson and Daniel ("Phantom") Washington, two really extraordinary artists that reminded me of an idea I once had and have now rebirthed: a brokerage to handle prison art from a catalog or online website. Prisoner artists are always hamstrung by their inability to access basic art supplies, training, and exposure to other art and artists to stimulate their muse. Because of this, much prisoner art is constituted of drawings and has a particular (however accomplished) tone to it. But some artists -- inside or outside of prison walls -- just have that "x factor," that inexplicable quality that stops the viewer in his or her tracks. And Johnson and Washington are two such artists.

Johnson's painting of an arrogant Black man walking away from a dejected Black woman sitting on the side of a bed has all the earmarks of an artist with an extraordinary internal eye for the human condition embodied in and expressed by the human form. Unfortunately (and this is not peculiar to prisoner artists), Johnson has had to pander to the tastes of the folks who attend the Angola Arts and Crafts Fair -- running in the direction of children in straw hats looking at a sunset -- to the detriment of the development of his edgier and far more interesting capabilities.

Washington's nod to the hoi polloi manifests more as nicely done oil or acrylic (I never figured out the difference) studies of famous and beautiful women (why am I not surprised?). But the one I was compelled to charge (shit! I'm trying so hard not to do that these days!) and bring home where it's hanging now on our bedroom wall is a butt-kicking 24 by 30-inch painting of three women. The two in the back, under a large umbrella, are so shadowed as to look almost gone, like apparitions hovering in the background, though just behind the principle figure, which is a disgusted-looking Black woman staring aggressively into the eyes of the viewer with such potency as to leave one fixated. The strength of the piece, as well as the use of color, line and shadow, is so highly developed as to suggest the artistic breakthrough of a real talent in my mind, though what little understanding I have of what makes art "good" has come largely as a function of just hanging out with artists and loving art.

Regardless, the work of these two men is pushing me to encourage them and to create an online window to the world for them in the way of a website that would offer their work (and that of others). Obviously, I don't need something else to do, but what the heck, right? I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'd be honored to have a role in introducing interesting and extraordinary artists from inside the walls, so I wouldn't be doing them any favors.

In the meantime, meeting and talking to these and other men at Angola reminded me also of a quote I found decades ago. I came across it again last week and now I feel urged to reproduce it here:

"There will come a dreadful time in the shame-ridden history of Mankind when The Kings of the East will meet The Kings of the West on the Vast Plains. A battle for Ultimate Justice shall be waged, as all Life trembles in the Confusion between Good and Evil; while the blind existence of Mankind violently struggles and desperately searches in deep ignorance for the Final Truth. That Truth SHALL BE FOUND, but the knowledge of it will only exist in the Sinful Soul of Mankind, as the Spirit of Life rapidly descends to the Netherworld, vanishing from all memory. Nothing shall remain of Mankind's cruel glory and false pride in their greatly mistaken theories toward Civilization and in Scientific Advancement. For even as the Seed Of A Fruit creates a Tree that independently GROWS;...in Full Bloom, the same Tree will shed its Fruit and discard it down to Earth...and so also will Mankind's technology come to outgrow its need for Mankind. But at this End, the Harvest will turn rotten; and when the Last City erupts in its Final Blaze, it will THEN be revealed that only those who have risen ABOVE the Qualities of Mankind shall survive..." -- A.U.P.S. (circa 7000 B.C.), Thudamen*

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*The Thudamen is the sacred book of the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians. This quote comes from the chapter called "The Fruits."

Glen Ford: White Nationalism on the March

I rarely re-post in its entirety anything by anyone else in this space and I have very consciously NOT weighed in on the Tea-Partyers issue to prevent a meltdown of my last two nerves, but this piece by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report is just too on target not to spread. Kudos, Glen. I couldn't agree more.

White Nationalism on the March
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The campaign to bring White nationalism, the founding ideology of the United States, fully out of the closet, kicks into a higher gear on the Right’s anti-holiday, April 15. Newt Gingrich and the various tribes of White Rightists unveil their “Contract From America,” a scaled-down version of the manifesto the Republicans rallied around to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1994. The 2010 “contract” is leaner, built for mass Caucasian consumption. It is written largely in code, the language of obfuscation that American racists speak in an attempt to hide their white supremacist beliefs from others – and, in many cases, from themselves. Indeed, much of American mass political speech is conducted in code, allowing white people to identify each other through terms like “middle class,” “family values,” “taxpayers,” “patriots,” “law-abiding” – terms which, although literally applicable to people of every ethnicity, are understood to mean “good white American citizens.”

Corporate media almost universally describe the Tea Partyers as “anti-government” – which is nonsense. They oppose the government providing assistance – economic, legal, educational, real or imagined – to those that are “undeserving,” which in their world consists mostly of folks that can be defined by race, language or religion (using code words, when required by polite society). Naturally, the average Tea Partyer – when sober – will deny having “a racist bone” in his body, but any group whose unifying characteristic is daily engorgement on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck is, by definition, racist. Anyone who tries to tell you different, is far too tolerant of bigoted behavior, assumptions and speech to be anything but a closet racist, himself.

Tea Partyers live in a world of throbbing hatreds that render them damn near incoherent.They shout and hoot and holler in fevered support of political statements with which they cannot possibly agree. For example, the highly popular “Limited Government” plank of The Contract states: “The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders.”

That means, the government should provide only police, criminal justice and public safety services, and a national defense. No public schools or publicly supported colleges, no tax breaks for homeowners, none of the public supports that “middle class,” “law-abiding,” “patriotic,” “taxpayers” with strong “family values” have been demanding for themselves for the last 65 years. (“And don’t you dare touch my Medicare!”)

Any “movement” that actually believed in as shrunken a government as The Contract describes would be either very rich, or very tiny. The plank only begins to make sense when understood as a kind of scatter-shot code talk for restricting government assistance to “worthy” Americans, and cutting the flotsam and jetsam people loose.

What the Tea Partyers really oppose is a social contract among all the resident peoples of the United States. In this, they are indeed the direct political progeny of the Founding Fathers and the great mass of white settlers, who found the very concept of full U.S. citizenship for Africans and Native Americans monstrously repugnant, a devaluation of their superior white selves. Racism in the national womb prevented the United States from forging a genuine social contract between whites and Others. More to the point, white people rejected any relationship that did not recognize and maintain white supremacy. This was to be forever a White Man’s country, expanding as far as might and money could take it – but white, white, white.

The white nationalists want their white nation back. But they can’t have it. And, since there can be no bargaining on that issue, there is no reason whatsoever for Blacks and browns and people of good will to engage or humor the Tea Party’s white nationalists. There is nothing to concede to them, and nothing they can offer us to which we are not already entitled.

Prominent peace activists are eager to engage the Tea Party, in search of common ground in opposition to government waste through war. It is true that Tea Party darling Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican and former presidential candidate, fights as hard as anyone on The Hill against bloated military budgets. But the anti-war movement will soon discover that all but a sliver of the Tea Party crowd are belligerent hawks, as racist in their global worldview as in their domestic outlook. Just as they reject a national social contract with non-whites, they reject any compact with other peoples of the world, particularly the non-white ones. White American nationalism is warlike, expansionist, and proud of it – a grave danger to the survival of humanity.

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NOTE: BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Whacha Gonna Do?

Most of my Faithful readers know by now that I live in Louisiana. Boy-oh-boy, I'm tellin' ya. It's interesting.

Don't get me wrong. I tell folks hereabouts all day long that White Supremacy is the default position everywhere in this country, not just here. And that's a fact, Jack.

But it is true that they're subject to do stuff like train folks in hand-to-hand combat here in preparation for an attack by "terrorists." And it's true they will organize against the possibility of Black folks participating here in the political decision-making process. And it's also true that "law enforcement" in this state alarms even law enforcement officers from other states and that, when the Justice Department is called, the locals threaten to sue those who ratted them out. (As if...? I mean, how could they hope to defend brutality witnessed by other cops who were so horrified, they left town and called Daddy?)

So whacha gonna do?

You're gonna head down to N'Awlins for the French Quarter Music Festival yesterday afternoon, that's what, and spend hours shakin' to the sounds of, among others, the Rebirth Brass Band. Oh. yeah.

Racism = Prejudice + Power, Part 2

Earlier this week, I had an appointment in a doctor's office and while there, I inadvertantly let it be known to a young White woman receptionist that I teach courses on race. I should know better. In fact, I do know better. Every time it happens, I swear to myself it will never happen again. But it does. And it's amazing how fast the "conversation" goes sideways.

In a matter of only a couple of sentences, she had already managed to drop the bomb I so often hear from folks like her: "Well, in my opinion..." (as if I would ever in a million years ask for it) "the problem these days is with Black people. They're WAY more racist than Whites and all they want to do is just sit up on their porches and live off the government..." I forget exactly what came after that. Thank goodness. But I remember gritting my teeth all the way home.

I tried to help her get a broader view (ha!), but was so unsuccessful (needless to say) that her final volley (as she flounced away flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder) was, "I guess you'll have to ask your Black President about that!" Oof.

"It's okay," I said to myself. "I've been meaning to write about Black "racism" ever since several Anonymous comments appeared in January on a blog post I wrote back in 2006. The commentator(s) argued that African-Americans are seen as "real" Americans (as opposed to other minorities who are, it was posited, not seen that way). They also have powerful representative organizations and greater media representation than other minorities, Anonymous went on. So what did I think of what this Asian person had to say on the topic?

As the night wore on, Anonymous' comments became more and more irritable and esoteric. If the powerless can't be racist because they don't control the social institutions that prescribe our lives, then would that mean White women couldn't be racist...or how about somebody with only one great-great-grandmother who was White? Could they be racist? Does racism only exist where White people are? And do African-Americans benefit from U.S. world economic and political power just like all other Americans when that power is so disproportionately used against people of color around the globe?

I was caused to think of the types of questions I sometimes field in Introductory Sociology classrooms. They can't help it. They really don't (want to) know. The problem is that they ask the questions anyway, as if they did. Sigh. I don't mind answering. It's my job. But it would help if I didn't so often feel I was talking to the walls.

In any case, I'm going to have another go at it, using the questions above and the article referenced by the commentator(s), which is "Black Racism: the Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name". The piece appeared in 1998 in Front Page Magazine (an online manifestation of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank). The author, Ying Ma, is, among other things, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, which was featured in the films "America: Freedom to Fascism" and "Zeitgeist, the Movie". The CFR has been the subject of some controversy fueled by the suggestion that it's implicated in planning toward a one-world government. Ma was also instrumental in working to see the infamous Proposition 209 passed in California, gutting affirmative action in that state.

So here's Part 2 of "Racism = Prejudice + Power."

The bottom line (assuming that's the place to begin) is that Ma missed the point. Entirely. I've never said African-Americans aren't prejudiced toward Whites or members of other groups. Why in the world wouldn't they be under the circumstances? Things that happened to me as a child have affected my attitude toward authority figures, for example (just as things that happened to Ying Ma during her childhood have affected how she sees Black folks). But since so many of us have such factors in our lives, why is it so difficult for others to understand why African-Americans carry so much rage -- especially with the on-going nature of their continued violation as individuals and as a people?

African-Americans are pissed. And rightly so. This blog is a veritable compendium of statistics and anecdotes and analysis and explanation concerning why it is utterly rational for them to be pissed all day long. Some of them are prejudiced against Whites (meaning they don't like them in advance on general principle). Some are just disgusted by White privilege (and the many Whites who wield it while swearing that they don't see color). Some are distrustful of Whites (particularly those Whites who say at every opportunity, especially around Black people, "Some of my best friends are Black..."). Some are hostile toward Whites since many Whites (and even many other minority individuals such as Ma) are so unendingly hostile toward them. And frankly, some are downright dangerous toward themselves and others. (Though it should be noted here that one White serial killer never seems to make the rest of us say, "Oh, those White people -- they will go off half-cocked...")

But using the definition of racism that it is prejudice PLUS power, African-Americans simply can't be racist. They can't be White either. And I can't be a Republican. So what? These are words. So, in the extreme, a Black person who murdered a Chinese person while screaming the word "Chink" would be guilty of a hate crime, but would not be (using my definition) a racist. That's all.

Not that all Blacks are warm and fuzzy, I hasten to add for the umpteenth time. Ma is a veritable prickly pear after just eight years of meanness at the hands of other children and she's ready to call all Blacks profligate. She uses the term "horrific" to describe such nightmares as being called "Ching Chong" or "Chinagirl," and being laughed at or beaten up on the way home from school.

Now, I'm not heartless. I was abused as a kid and I know that's no picnic. It's hard to be a kid anyway -- with all the attendant fears and insecurities -- let alone he or she takes additional licks at anyone's hands. I've been told some gut-wrenching stories about growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China (with no Blacks involved).

But I'd like to see what she'd do with a good old fashioned ass-whuppin' by a couple of stick-wielding cops in an alley or maybe being followed around every store she enters for her entire life no matter how she's dressed or being kept out of the fancy schools and neighborhoods she's had NO problem getting into because she wasn't Black. And for sure, I'd like to see what she'd do with 500 years of vicious institutionalized torture and terror that had not yet ended.

See, that's the part she misses. The institutionalized part. The part that's played by power. Not the power to have your own organization UNDER the social institutions and forces that "let" that organization operate. Not the power to force your way into the media to the extent and in the ways that suit the social institutions and forces that monitor and maintain the status quo of African-Americans' experience of life as less than full citizens. Remember Henry Louis Gates' arrest on his front porch last year? That's an indignity Ma is not likely ever to experience. Though she would be quick to suggest, I'm sure, that she'd never be arrested because she wouldn't do anything that would get her arrested (the implication being that the 80-year-old Dr. Gates is Black and -- famous or not -- probably couldn't help doing whatever got him handcuffed).

Because Ma and her family immigrated to the U.S. and moved into a poor Black neighborhood when she was ten years old, the typical American ethnocentrism ("America for Americans, goddam it! You furiners get out now!") wore a Black face. Ma's Ivy League education doesn't seem to have helped her to recognize that. Either that or she's decided (for whatever reason) to give White folks a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

White folks robbed the indigenous Americans of this continent, brutally used and abused Asian people in the U.S. (and in Asia, which they continue to do, as Ma points out), made themselves rich holding millions of Africans in bondage while being responsible for the deaths of millions more, are recognized world-wide for maintaining the most wide-ranging characteristically racist system in the history of the human race and still want to dare anyone with a darker skin tone to try to come here. Yet her article makes it sound as if the only Americans with which Ma has had any problems were Black. Gee. That's surprising, given what history and the statistics tell us.

The fact is that people of African descent (which includes, of course, everyone in the world, but that's a topic for another day) learned to be hateful from the White folks. This phenomenon is called "taking on the language of the oppressors" and oppressed peoples do it all the time. Even some Jews in World War II concentration camps put on cast-off Nazi uniform jackets and brutalized others, trying to identify themselves with the power. This doesn't excuse it; it's just an attempt to explain it.

It should also be noted that White people (good grief! I hate repeating myself over and over, but some things bear repeating) set up the social institutions in this country in the first place and have continued to run them ever since. So every single problem we have in this country is directly or indirectly attributable to that simple fact. Face it or not, folks. White-controlled social institutions -- including the family, education, religion, politics and the economy -- are the base foundation from which everything else (bad or good) emanates. Holding Black folks responsible for practices, attitudes, and systems they had NO part of setting up and have not ever even had the least part in running is (1) blaming the victim and (2) sweeping White power under the rug.

Interestingly enough, this is EXACTLY the world view the White Supremacist system (it's a system, folks, not a person or group of persons) wants folks like Ma (and everybody else) to espouse. It works to keep White Supremacy in place to convince as many as possible (including as many people of color as possible) that Black folks are the problem. That Black inferiority is endemic to their nature. That they can't help it. That White people and their institutions and their "values" (such as money being more important than life, for example, or the idea that torture is reasonable to accomplish one's agenda?) are just superior to all others -- especially any that might be conceived by anyone else.

Another explanation, which Ma refers to begrudgingly just before brushing it aside as irrelevant in the end, is Dollard's frustration-aggression theory. The Black kids that made Ma's life so difficult back in the ghetto knew even before she did that someday she would get to leave. She was eighteen. She writes that she "left this ugly world for a beautiful school far away" and never returned. The image of the bright young African-American children standing inside the walls of their institutionalized fortress of oppression watching her board the train for bliss makes my heart weep. But she doesn't get it.

Ma suggests that this cruelty to her people (apparently only at the hands of Blacks, though I remember that during the year I dated a Korean man, the only shout of "Chink" I ever heard came from a carload of White boys) is ignored even by Asian activist organizations because it's deemed not really that bad. She suggests that poor, innocent, elderly and very young Asians don't typically complain because they have language deficiencies, are smaller in size, and fear reprisal -- especially in the form of violence.

Further, Ma suggests that "Asians are unlike blacks who got to where they are in politics by being confrontational," completely ignoring two crucial points. First of all, African-Americans (not unlike the African National Congress in South Africa prior to Nelson Mandela's imprisonment) are almost always ignored unless they're violent (which allows White folks in power to "punish" them while further noting their "natural" violent tendencies). And second, there are many incidents of Asians being wildly violent including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Chinese occupation of Korea as only a couple of examples.

Actually, California law enforcement bodies report that more than 500 Asian gangs now exist in that state and the vast majority of the terrorizing they do is in the Asian community. Yet Ma doesn't once mention this or take anyone to task for it, though many of the gangs had already formed and were widely operant when she wrote the piece in question.

As I already mentioned, Ma does admit that Asian activist organizational leaders acknowledge other factors. They suggest, for example, that competition over limited resources, lack of jobs, and institutionalized economic disparities between African-Americans -- still relegated to the back of the economic bus in this country -- and Asians, treated inappropriately as "outsiders" under and by a White-controlled system, but much more mobile in terms of access to opportunities in general as individuals and as a group.

Ma even quotes Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, as saying that "much of the hostilities are due to blacks' jealousy of Asian economic success, a sense of alienation, and the self-perpetuating belief that blacks will always lose out in the racial equation in America." Nevertheless, this is not enough to resolve Ma's angst or lessen her bitterness.

Her suggestion that Black hostility toward Asians is reminiscent of Nazi attacks on the Jews, African attacks on immigrants from India, and Indonesian more recent attacks on Chinese immigrants to Indonesia completely disregards the fact that in all of these cases, the tormentors were or are in power over their society at the time -- which African-Americans are not and never have been. Does she really think this is not relevant?

Ultimately, Ma tidies up her vitriolic diatribe with a hat tip to the idea that minorities should not fight among themselves, but should rather fight against racial discrimination. This goes without saying, I guess. But if her misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what happened in her own life and how it has affected her on-going perception of racial reality in this country is any indication, then we're unlikely to see that idea develop much any time soon.

We might have imagined that her education and what I must suppose to be her current level of social mobility and economic well-being as compared to the children who made her childhood so difficult would have softened the edges somewhat somewhere along the line. But they haven't. We might have imagined that she would come to see more clearly over time the actuality of African-American day-to-day existence as less than full citizens in the land of their birth. But she hasn't. And this is pretty typical. Because it suits the White Supremacist system (and those who support it) to have Asians and African-Americans at juggernauts. It works to maintain the status quo for various minority groups to see each other as enemies. It's called "divide and conquer" and it's the oldest okey-doke in the book. Funny so few of us get it.