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The
Demise of Black History Month
Or
Denying the Justice of Reparations
By Junious Ricardo Stanton
On
February 22 I went to a county facility to attend a seminar and
was shocked to see they had St. Patrick's Day Shamrocks up
already. As I wandered through the building looking for the
conference meeting rooms, I saw nothing denoting Black History
Month. I thought about it once I got home and it dawned on me
since the historic 2001 Durban Conference on Racism and
Xenophobia, there has been a falling off of acknowledging and
celebrating Black History Month. I suspect this is the result of
deliberate political decisions based upon not wanting Africans
in AmeriKKKa to rally around the issue of Reparations and to
minimize racial antagonism and hostilities as AmeriKKKa mounts
it's imperialist agenda under the guise of a War on
Terrorism.
As
most of you know Black History Month is an outgrowth of Negro
History Week which was initiated by the venerable ancestor
Carter G. Woodson who founded the Association For the Study of
Negro Life and History. In 1926 Woodson lobbied and organized a
week to stress the study and appreciation of African people's
accomplishments in AmeriKKKa during a time when white AmeriKKKa
was still teaching black folks had no history, we came from
nothing and contributed nothing to the human cultural mosaic.
Woodson was a stalwart at debunking Euro-centric lies and
documenting the ingeniousness of African people. His efforts to
encourage us to honor ourselves and our accomplishments took
root and in 1976 Negro History Week was expanded and renamed
Black History Month.
In
their effort to keep us in a state of culturally induced amnesia
and self-hatred much of the material culled for study and
promotion by whites ( and their Negro sycophants) in their books
and educational systems reinforced the existing status quo of
Eurocentric white supremacy. For example they fiercely resist
the Afrocentric movement's efforts to reclaim Kemet as an
African civilization. To give us heroes they hold up for
emulation people like Crispus Attucks and Colin Powell but not
Nat Turner or Sonny Carson. They promote Frederick Douglas but
not Martin R. Delaney. They lionize Ralph Bunche but not an A.
Phillip Randolph, Charles Houston, or Elijah Muhammad.
In
2001 white supremacy was on the ropes as never before. The
Reparations movement blew up and went international. At the
United Nations Conference Against Racial Discrimination and
Xenophobia in Durban, South Africa. Africans from all over the
world converged on Durban with the sole purpose of having the
trans-Atlantic Slave Trade declared a Crime Against Humanity and
setting the stage for dialogue about restitution and reparations
for the Maafa. The U.S. and Israel pulled out of the conference
with their tails between their legs lamely refusing even to
engage in dialogue, thus aligning themselves against truth,
justice, and reconciliation. Africans worldwide felt a sense of
empowerment as our issues were pushed to the forefront for the
first time on a global stage. Then came September 11 and our
issues were kicked to the curb as Bush and Co bum rushed their
fascist agenda to expropriate the world's oil and energy
supplies under cover of the media induced psychological trauma
of 9-11.
Immediately
after 9-11 the focus shifted to toeing the Bush Line, "You
are either with us or against us." His rhetoric allowed
AmeriKKKa to duck and dodge the pressure activists were bringing
for AmeriKKKa's role in the slave trade, her subsequent policies
of racial caste and oppression. Bush and the media shut our
issues down along with any dissent against the administration's
launch of their campaign of perpetual war. Remember during the
2001 Christmas season there were almost no references whatsoever
to "Peace on Earth Good Will Towards Man" because the
media played up the revenge factor so Bush & Co. could bomb
Afghanistan to smithereens. Clear Channel, the media giant that
owns over 1200 radio stations, even put out a memo forbidding
the playing of peace songs following 9-11. And on it went.
In
order to galvanize support and minimize any issues that could
derail Bush's psychological ploy to unite the nation behind his
fascist agenda Black History has been curtailed. Except for last
year's HBO's The Middle Passage and this year's HBO's Slave
Narratives very few programs were aired nationally seriously
examining AmeriKKKan race issues or history.
Ironically
as hyped as Africans were in 2001 following the Durban
Conference, we allowed 9-11 to take the wind out of our sails
and we dropped the ball by failing to keep our issues front and
center. Part of this is because of the intimidation factor,
being overwhelmed by the pro-war PR and media propaganda; not
wanting to be singled out as unpatriotic. However we must
remember AmeriKKKa has never embraced us, or had our interests
at heart, never not even during the so called Civil Rights era.
Racism
and xenophobia are on the rise as the war drums get louder. Many
of us are waiting to see just how the war and AmeriKKKa's morph
into a police state will play out. We can not sit on the
sidelines, we must be active resisters! What we fail to realize
is, we of all people (along with the Native Americans) have
experienced both overt and subtle terrorism at the hands of
AmeriKKKan white men and women! This is an integral part of our
experiences and history in AmeriKKKa. Not to acknowledge this is
to negate our history.
We
must tell and share this story, not only during the shortest
month of the year, no disrespect to Carter G. Woodson and the
Association For the Study of Negro Life and History, but every
day. As we have seen during the recent Lott debacle, racism and
deceit are still the order of the day. We can't afford not to
celebrate our history of struggle. If we become too complacent,
lulled into being lethargic, given AmeriKKKa's history of
genocide against us, we may not survive to create history for
our great grandchildren to study.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
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posted 23 February 2003
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