Lauryn Hill: "The Mystery of Iniquity"

An Open Letter To Chokwe Antar Lumumba

I know we're not connected in any personal sense, Mr. Lumumba, but writers sometimes feel compelled to wax eloquent or even intimate to and about humans they probably will never meet. I make no apology for butting into your business. I love you from a distance and I'm going to tell you why.

Albert Woodfox Speaks To The Experts

This past weekend, I visited Albert Woodfox for the umpteenth time in the last five years. All but one of the visits have been at the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, Louisiana, five hours from where I live.  At the beginning, it was a grueling trip because I wasn't used to it and I have to go up on Saturday and come back the following day for a total of ten hours behind the wheel in one weekend. Sometimes it rains and once, it poured all the way up and all the way back.

I know I could take someone else along, but visiting somebody that's been in solitary confinement for what has now been forty-two years is emotionally draining and I don't want to have to be nicer than I really am for two solid days when I've been visiting people in prison since 1971 and every visit eats my lunch.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, R.I.P.

"There are prisons made of brick, steel and mortar. And then there are prisons without visible walls, prisons of poverty, illiteracy and racism. All too often, the people condemned to these metaphorical prisons -- poverty, racism and illiteracy -- end up doing double time. That is, they wind up in the physical prisons, as well. Our task, as reasonable, healthy, intelligent human beings, is to recognize the interconnectedness and the sameness of all these prisons, and then do something about them." ~ Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Trombone Shorty: "You and I (Outta This Place)"

I don't really like to post music that isn't accompanied by a kick-ass video. But I picked up this cd the other day and the second cut almost made me pull the car over so I could focus on the words.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to get through to people -- in a classroom, around a table in a restaurant, chilling with students at the library, standing around at a cocktail reception for a bunch of middle class writers and their upper class aficinados -- I look at the expressions on the faces around me and wonder how I wound up in this place. I don't mean Louisiana. I think I've figured that out. I mean this place where I seem to be speaking some language I brought with me from some former life or other planet. The troubled blankness in my listeners' eyes, the confused tilt of their heads as they try to decipher what the hell I could possibly be talking about, the wary caution of their demeanor if they happen to be Black around White people and I start doin' my thing -- I look from face to face to face and check the body language, all the time my mouth goin' a mile a minute while the oxygen leaves the room.

Then I read a post like Lindy West's or run across a film clip of a young Black woman owning her space or I hear a song like this one and I know for sure that I'm just one of millions of men and women of all body types and skin tones and nationalities and sexual orientations and religions (or lack of religion) that threaten the system by our very existence whether anybody gets us or not. Yeah.

Amnesty International: Free Albert Woodfox Now!

A billboard campaign to mark the 42-year commemoration launched in New Orleans yesterday. This statement was released yesterday by the Campaign to Free the Angola 3: As we mark the 42nd year since the tragic and as yet, unsolved murder of Angola correctional officer Brent Miller, and the 42nd year since Albert Woodfox was first put in solitary for a crime he didn't commit, we are confident that it will be the last.  We remain hopeful that the 5th Circuit will finally side with justice and affirm Judge Brady's second decision to throw out Albert's conviction once and for all.  Although he will then have to petition for bail and potentially face a retrial, freedom will not be far behind.  With the civil case only months from trial, thousands of others who languish in long-term solitary could soon have the necessary legal precedent to challenge their conditions as constitutionally cruel and unusual.

Loretta Ross: On the Origin of the Term "Women of Color"

So-called "White" people (whatever "White" is perceived to be) have a tendency to discount whatever People of Color say or even People of Color themselves before they open their mouths. Listen (really listen) to Loretta Ross for just three minutes and you'll see why that practice is stupid and even, quite possibly, dangerous. This woman obviously brings great intelligence, insight, and analysis to the table. She should be at the table more often and much, much more publicly.

Sharon Jones: "This Land Is Your Land"

I have no idea how I avoided hearing about Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings for so long. This woman is a musical force of nature and apparently has been for decades. Here, she uses her version of a famous Woody Guthrie song to remind us that just because White Supremacy is the ideology we've all been raised up under doesn't mean People of Color -- and many people who look like me -- don't know it's a lie, no matter how hard those with the power-to-define work to convince us otherwise.

Insofar as we're living on it, this land is your land and my land. In actual fact, the land (like the air and the oceans and the sky and all that is) belongs to all that lives. We just get to live on it, be sustained by it, and enjoy the privileged vocation of taking care of it together so it can receive, give birth to, and sustain future generations of life.

Hit it, Sharon.

Aamer Rahman's Take On "Reverse Racism"

Having trouble believing that the oppression is institutionalized? Well, let's try looking at it from a little different perspective...

Institutionalized Oppression: the American Way?

Having taken a fresh look at institutionalized oppression by re-posting Lindy West's essay on "hipster racism" a few days ago, I'm gonna release a flurry of body punches now on some more very touchy issues related to the socially-constructed, political notion of "race." Institutionalized oppression, by the way, occurs when one group holds another group (or even more than one group) in a position of reduced status for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation means taking advantage of people because you have the power to do so and the whole point of it is the range of benefits (especially economic benefits) that result from the arrangement. In other words, White Supremacy ensures that White people as a group get the most of the best and the least of the worst in the U.S., while People of Color wind up with the most of the worst and the least of the best in that society.

Does every member of the dominating group benefit equally and in all the same ways? Not necessarily. But they all benefit. Does every member of an oppressed group suffer equally and in all the same ways? Not necessarily. But they all feel the lash (pun intended) in ways the members of the dominating group don't typically like to and don't have to acknowledge.

Why don't oppressors have to acknowledge what's going on? Because the oppression is actually embedded in the social institutions: the systems we call family, education, religion, politics, and economics. So people who call themselves "White" can ignore it and pretend that, because they don't indiscriminately use the "n-word" in public (for example), they're not part of the problem. They're good people. How could they be "racist?" And because we're all -- Black and White -- socialized on the same page, People of Color are affected in a whole series of ways by the constant barrage of physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic reinforcements that produce results used to "prove" their inferiority. (A phenomenon sociologists call "internalized oppression" exacerbated by the widespread practice of "blaming the victim.")

The social institutions keep the ideology of White Supremacy so firmly in place, we have come to view it as "natural." So, we think that whatever White people do is well-meaning and basically positive, while whatever People of Color (and especially Black people) do is unacceptable, embarrassing, and basically negative.

You might want to read these with a little space in between. The first two are pretty intense.

Lindy West: "A Complete Guide to 'Hipster Racism'"

After two solid months of reading nothing to speak of but Facebook and "Tales of the City" by Armistead Maupin because I moved from one apartment to another -- downsizing by half -- while I was working fifty hours per week on my day job and keeping my hand in on some political organizing and some more stuff...I read this today (which I thought would knock me out and it did). There's nothing to do but re-post it here and hope nobody gets mad at me.

I considered letting it kick off a new feature under the category title of "Wish I Wrote This." But -- obviously -- I wish I wrote this because I'm re-posting it. With almost 3000 comments on Jezebel (where this appeared on 4/26/12), West doesn't need my help to put this out in the blogosphere, but I just want to make sure My Faithful Readers (who keep coming back even when I'm hiding out), get to see it. You're gonna like it. And some of us might learn something.

Quotes To Live By

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva on Racism Without Racists

Just before the last Presidential election in 2012, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva -- Chair of the Sociology Department at Duke University and author of Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America -- was interviewed by Mark Anthony Neal on his show "Left of Black." What Dr. Bonilla-Silva has to say is probably even more important now than it was then.

Prison: The Not-So-Secret Industry

Source: Online-Paralegal-Degree.org

Montgomery, Alabama: Then and Now

Mural at Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial Center 

Another Martin Luther King, Jr., Day has come and gone. There was a time on this blog when I posted on every holiday or historical point of interest related to the socially-constructed political notion of "race." There was a time I just "had to" weigh in on every news story featuring a Black person, especially a Black person victimized by White Supremacy. But after 571 posts, it occurs to me now that I've pretty much said a lot of what I have to say. And the same shit keep happening over and over. Other people will cover that stuff and, by and large, I just comment on it on Facebook. Today, I have options. That doesn't mean I'm done as a blogger (obviously). It just means I've come to realize that this process has morphed (as everything does) and I have developed my own little niche in the blogosphere. Or at least that's the way I see it.

Sometimes, I'm busy (as most of us are). Sometimes, I'm going through something (as everybody does from time to time, some of us more often than others). Regardless, if you want to know what I think about some aspect of "race," a summary perusal of this site can help you find it on here somewhere.

But since I think about oppression rather a lot and oppression related to "race" more than most -- especially more than most folks that look like me -- I do still (and probably always will) find things I feel the urge to write about in this manner. Recently (January 18th, to be exact), I found myself in Montgomery, Alabama, and made it a point to tear myself away from the business at hand long enough to make my own little civil rights tour in honor of Martin and all the other predecessors in this on-going struggle for justice. This post is the result.

Akua Taylor: Approve

There's a difference between affirmation and denial. People that go around announcing statements they wish were true but that aren't are in denial. On the other hand, people that announce (to themselves or others, verbally or in writing) statements that are true release a power to make those truths visible. It's seeing the big picture. But it's work to learn the difference. You have to develop the ability to be honest with yourself. And that took me a while.

Take me, for example. If I say over and over that I'm in perfect physical health, knowing I have diabetes, I'm in denial. Yet, when my son died two weeks before his 23rd birthday, I wrote: "Every ending is a beautiful new beginning." Which is a true statement. And a completely different perspective than is the average way of looking at things.

Similarly, many of us have been infected with psychological viruses that make us believe we are worthless, ugly, and incapable. These destructive viruses keep us in denial about our true worth and our ability to recognize it. Year after year, layers of negativity form throughout our bodies, minds, souls, and spirits, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy of helplessness, hopelessness, and shame that hides what lies at the center of our being. Akua Taylor has an app for that.

Step Up! Be the Change!

Sniffing around on YouTube, I found this by Amir Bilal and the Pakistan Youth Parliament. The desire for a better world. It's everywhere. It's everywhere.

Hopeful Note #2: Guerilla Gardening

Creative thinkers like Ron Finley are prepared to lead us to a different world. A world I can hardly wait to see. Even if it's in another life.

Hopeful Note #1: The Election of Chokwe Lumumba

I'm opening my ninth year blogging on White Supremacy and the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," by referencing some truly hopeful notes at this point in our history. The first hopeful note is that Chokwe Lumumba, former Vice President of the Republic of New Afrika and co-founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, was elected Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, last June. The event registered not only nationally, but around the world. And The Jackson Plan is now capturing the interest of a wide range of knowledgeable people -- experts and otherwise -- who want to imagine the possibility of forward motion to a better community and a better world for everybody.

Posted above is a YouTube video of Larry Hales of the Workers World Party offering his take on the historical context and the importance of Lumumba winning the election and the possibilities inherent within the Jackson Plan.

28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors

The handout on "28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors" to which I'm linking here was developed and written by Debra Leigh, an organizer with the Community Anti-Racism Education Initiative at St Cloud State University in Minnesota. If you find yourself arguing with Leigh's list, saying (or even thinking) things such as appear on the bingo card above that shows us how White folks typically derail the conversation on White Supremacy, that's not good. In fact, if you are winning at Derailment Bingo, you're losing at life.

If the shoe fits, admit it. If it pinches, celebrate the fact that you noticed and take. the shoe. off.