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Lets Grow Up and Move On
By Junious Ricardo Stanton Vernon Johns, a human rights activist and
Baptist minister who in many ways set the stage in Montgomery,
Alabama for the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a civil
rights icon, always quoted one of his father's sayings, "If
you see a good fight, get in it."
I've been watching the pissing contest
between Lil Joe (representing the Left) and Elder Osiris
(representing the nationalists) with some interest and mixed
emotions. While it certainly is not what I would call a good
fight, it does have implications on the intellectual health and
ultimate survival of our people. There is a part of me that
feels impelled to join in and add my two cents to it while
another part says leave it alone, it’s not worth it.
If the verbiage between these two brothers
wasn't so pathetically revealing it would really not be worth
getting into. However as I said, the intellectual well being and
survival of our people is a stake. When I say their arguments
are pathetically revealing, I am not attacking either one
personally or intellectually putting down either brother both of
whom I believe means well.
However, as they say, the road to hell is
paved with good intentions. The point is their arguments are old
hat and many of these issues have been addressed and researched
quite well by elders in the previous generation; specifically
Harold Cruse in his seminal work The
Crisis of The Negro Intellectual. It's as if we haven't
learned anything from our past. Name-calling or assuming
positions of intellectual one-up-man-ship will not save our
people, nor will it ameliorate the conditions we grapple
with.
Elder Osiris’s esoteric postings confuse
many of the readers who lack his sources of information and Lil
Joe’s Marxist rants about black revolutionaries overthrowing
the capitalist system do not jibe with reality. I’m writing
this based upon the assumption both Lil Joe and Elder Osiris
have the best interests of our people at heart and are open to
suggestions.
I suggest they both revisit Harold Cruse's
work and re-examine their positions' inherent contradictions and
unresolved issues and juxtapose them against the pathologically
insane conditions African people around the world have been
subjected to and then ask themselves will intellectually
cannibalizing another brother ameliorate these conditions?
The Leftists worshiping at the alter of
Marxism call themselves "revolutionaries" although one
would be hard pressed to identify any real revolutionary action
going on in AmeriKKKa unless you count talk as action. They do
however make some valid points we nationalists should consider,
such as the patriarchal orientation of religious nationalistic
movements like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of
Islam.
Likewise the Leftists should be honest enough
to admit Marcus Garvey did have women in prominent roles in many
of his UNIA ACL local chapters. However we must also hold the
mirror of truth up to the "Leftist Revolutionaries."
According to books written by female Black Panther Party
members, patriarchal gender chauvinism existed in their
organization also.
Some would say the Black Panthers don't
really count as a revolutionary organization because they
weren't originally founded on "revolutionary
principles" and were more of a grassroots stop gap
organization working to gain respect and credibility in the
inner cities and forcing the government to do right than
building a revolutionary infrastructure.
The Left is quick to call nationalists
homophobic and to a large degree they are correct, however I
don't see where the left’s embracing and acceptance of
homosexuals has furthered their "revolution" one iota.
In fact the left for all its recent pre-emptive assaults on the
nationalists have nothing going for themselves that I can see.
The ultra right has kicked their butts and left them wounded and
whimpering for mercy as AmeriKKKa aggressively careens towards
fascism.
Of course no real revolutionaries would
broadcast their plans before hand so we wouldn't know if they
were planning a comeback or not. Perhaps attacking the
nationalists is a form of ego compensation since the left has
been so ineffective and acquiescent about AmeriKKKa's move
towards fascism. I'm out and about in the community and except
for a few grass roots groups like the International People's
Democratic Uhuru Movement which is a black organization, I don't
see any other black leftists doing anything in the black
community.
For all their derision against "Back To
Africa" or the "Glories of Ancient Africa" the
truth of the matter is, there is no bigger fantasy in existence
than the pipe dream of black and white workers uniting to
overthrow the ruling elites! No one in their right mind sees
that happening anytime soon. Except for a brief period in the
late '20's and early '30's during the Great Depressio,n the
white left has never posed a serious threat to the status quo
because the ruling elites were able to co-opt some of the
rhetoric and formulate programs such as Welfare and later
Medicare and Medicaid to take the wind out of their sails.
The Left’s MO was to use black issues to
stir black enrollment because Africans in America were victims
of virulent racism and racial cast, then use blacks as cannon
fodder in their movement. Most whites never embraced the
left’s socio-economic programs nor their rhetoric about racial
harmony and co-operation. The white liberals, radicals, and
Hippies of the ‘60's and ‘70's are the arch Neo-Cons of
today.
Black Marxists are so busy mocking the
nationalists they forget or deliberately ignore the fact people
of color took the brunt of COINTELPRO. No white boys or union
members were gunned down in the streets or railroaded into
prison on bogus charges like J. Edgar Hoover and local
authorities did to countless black folks, the Puerto Rican
LaRaza movement, the American Indian Movement NOI, RAM, New
Republic of Africa, NAACP, Panthers etc. For all their talk
about black and white workers uniting in solidarity and
brotherhood, organizing, rising up against the imperialist war
machine and overturning the capitalist system, where do you see
any examples of this happening in AmeriKKKa, where do you see
blacks and whites working together as equals in the left?
The other thing we must be clear about is the
riots in Watts, Newark, Chicago, Philly, etc. in the late '60's
and ‘70's had nothing to do with Marxist revolutionary
ideology or dogma. They were the result of the pain and pent up
frustration of ghetto living conditions and the straw that broke
the Camel's back, the government’s assassination of Martin
Luther King Jr. The irony of it all is King a proponent of non
violence integrated the anti war movement accomplishing
something the Marxists weren't able to do with all their
revolutionary rhetoric!
At least the Afrocentric community gets props
from the conscious black community because they discovered what
Marcus Mosiah Garvey intuitively knew, most African people
(those not brainwashed by the white right or left) have a
yearning to get out from under the yoke of racist dehumanization
and subjugation of the Arabs and Europeans. The Afrocentric
movement is so powerful it forced not only the ruling elites
into an aggressive reactionary posture but also Leftist
"intellectuals" as well.
Speaking of Leftist intellectuals, black Leftist
intellectuals never get any respect or promotion by the white Leftist
apparatus unless they are perfectly parroting the Marxist party
line. Most popular black Leftists like Manning Marable and Bill
Fletcher are really more like protestors or would be reformers
than revolutionaries. Neither one of them is advocating taking
up arms against the government nor are they in any position
personally to lead a movement to overthrow the capitalists
system!
No black Leftist class analysis comes close
to touching the psyches of black folks like nationalists writers
like Amos Wilson, Jacob Carruthers or Ra Un Nefer Amen. Just as
the Leftists correctly point out most Africans in America have
no plans to repatriate to Africa, they must be willing to admit
most Africans in America have absolutely no affinity for Marxist
ideology whatsoever.
Indeed some very conscious and cultural
brothers The Last Poets said/sang/rapped succinctly "Niggas
Are Afraid of Revolution." This applies to most self styled
revolutionaries also! Black Leftists are so obsessed with the
class issue they are in total denial about the racism that
exists within the Leftist movement itself. What's worse they
lack the courage to confront it or the numbers to force any
changes when they are forced by circumstances to admit it exists
in their own movement thereby forfeiting any credibility they
may have garnered in the black community.
The notion of race and racism are too real
and too pervasive and for a black person to believe the class
issue supersedes race/color is to blind oneself to the realities
of AmeriKKKan life. The Leftist dream of black and white working
together based upon their own perceived self interests, while a
noble and pragmatic goal, runs counter to the history of most
populous movements in this country.
Check out the history of the populous farm
movement and the early labor organizers and you'll see how easy
the ruling elites played the race card to sabotage what little
trust and solidarity blacks and whites were able to amass. What
does that say about whites’ serious revolutionary intentions
or the possibility of black white solidarity and success if
their ruling class exploiters could so easily get them off
purpose and task and sabotage the movement simply by raising the
specter of race?
I could go on but by now you get my drift.
The ethnocentric or nationalist approach makes the most sense to
me. Why should white radicals or progressives help us when they
can’t even galvanize or mobilize their own people to wage
resistance against the capitalist exploiters who are slowly
robbing them of their standard of living through globalization
(global exploitation and expropriation of the world’s
resources) or sending their children off to far away lands on
imperialistic missions that are not succeeding.
Notice I said white radicals because the
reality is there are no real white revolutionaries in AmeriKKKa
today let alone any real black ones. The truth of the matter is
AmeriKKKa is imploding more from the greed, hubris and moral
bankruptcy of the ruling elites and the gallant resistance of
freedom fighters in Columbia, Iraq and Afghanistan that from the
rhetoric of the left or from black nationalists.
What we need to be doing is pooling our
intellectual capital and coming up with ways to formulate
liberation. survival and empowerment strategies that conform to
our unique needs instead of keeping ourselves divided rehashing
the same old issues our elders in the previous generation
educated us about. Positively Black
posted 15 November 2003 |
