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The Pain of Violence and Death In the Hood
By
Marvin X
"When
you kill your brother, you kill yourself,
so two people are dead."--Abdul (Leroy) James
Not
long ago some Washington, DC school children were asked what
they envisioned for their future. They responded with how they
planned their funerals. As I watched the Discovery Channel's
documentary on Saddam Hussein's regime, the pain of mothers and
fathers who lost children and other loved ones in the nightmare
called Iraq, supported for many years by America, I also thought
about life and death in America, especially in the black
community as a result of drugs and the related violence.
Many years ago I tried to work with mothers who had lost
children in Oakland's drug wars until I was overwhelmed with the
testimonies and tragedies I was forced to hear, not much
different from seeing the mothers and fathers weeping and
wailing at discovering missing relatives at the mass graves in
Iraq. Yes, if taken collectively, the national deaths of African
Americans due to drugs and related homicides, constitute mass
murder, orchestrated by the American government, a government
similar in many ways to the fallen regime it supported for many
years in Iraq. Almost everyone in Iraq has been a victim of
Saddam's death squads, just as in America, almost everyone I
know coast to coast has family members murdered, jailed or
addicted as a result of the so-called war against drugs.
While the Oakland mothers tried to organize, the fathers I know
that have lost sons go about their daily round in silence,
albeit suffering as the mothers suffer. So we have a nation of
people in virtual mourning, doing their best to maintain sanity
in an atmosphere of madness.
The more we organize, the more the drugs and killing
proliferate. It seems to be a losing battle with the "drug
lords" who we know is Uncle Sam. Anytime the police want to
stop the flow of drugs, say when a pig is killed, they stop it
immediately, the hood is dry overnight, but once the suspect is
apprehended, the drugs flow again like water.
So all the talk about more police, more judges, more prisons is
poppycock. The economy of the hood is a drug economy, let's be
real. This became clear to me seeing masses of black people
shopping downtown during working hours, how is it possible
except for an alternative economy. I've said before the dope man
is the number one employer of our youth coast to coast.
Well, is there a program to end the pain, the murder and social
destabilization? We could say, as in Iraq, we need a regime
change. We need to throw out the corrupt police, mayors,
preachers (many churches would cease to exist without donations
from mothers of drug dealing children), school teachers and
others who benefit from the drug trade.
Few are ready for radical change, most will accept Miller Lite
solutions that don't go to the root of the problem, until one of
their children is a victim, then they wail like an Iraqi mother.
Yes, we will march to city hall when the police abuse a ghetto
youth, but the nightly black on black homicides cause no real
protest, especially in the hood where residents are terrified
into silence.
Of course, my solution is the formation of elder councils. But
these seem to miss the mark. The elders seem too old and feeble
to really do anything but pontificate and demand youth bow down
to them because of age and reactionary wisdom. Yet I know no
other solution: the elder council should serve as an
alternative government, empowered by the people to handle
matters the traditional political and social/economic structure
is unable to solve. It would be composed of intelligent,
progressive, radical conscious people respected by the community
for their integrity and problem solving ability. The elder
council would be especially useful in emergencies, say, when
white power falls or is under attack.
The
council would be the point of authority to resolve matters
between community residents before the criminal justice system
is involved, such as conflict resolution, including domestic and
street violence prevention. It would also provide alternative
economic solutions to drug dealing. It would establish grief
counseling and/or mental health groups such as the Black
Reconstruction mental health group Dr. Nathan Hare is
facilitating in San Francisco. With the many deaths from
violence and natural causes, grief counseling is especially
needed in our community, too many are forced to suffer the pain
of loss alone.
If you have a better solution, tell me about it because death in
the hood is killing us coast to coast, and we have too many
intelligent people not to find real and lasting solutions to our
myriad problems, short of bringing in the US military that is
too busy bringing in drugs
Marvin
X is a poet, playwright, essayist, teacher, actor, organizer, director
and founder of Recovery Theatre, Inc., a therapeutic theatre project for
the chemically addicted and those suffering mental disabilities. His
latest book of essays is IN THE CRAZY HOUSE CALLED AMERICA, Black Bird
Press, 2002.
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Eating the Rich: Resolving
the Dilemma of Black Criminality
By Rudolph Lewis
The proper response to the rise in the
black prison population and "violence and death in
the hood" is an important and significant question and
needs immediate attention. But it is not a matter to which we
should become overwrought. I have faith that we have the power
within us to resolve this dilemma.
If the black man can be the progenitor of
the human race, build the great pyramids of Egypt, be the
backbone for the creation of wealth in the Western hemisphere
and create more black millionaires than any place on the earth
(except possibly among African heads of state), be a dominate
force in the major sports of today, be the greatest international
influence in the cultural arena (music and dance), surely the
matter of staying out of the white man's prisons and decreasing
poverty and hunger should be a much easier problem for black
genius to overcome.
This will require certainly a concerted
effort from all sectors within the black community, especially
from people like Russell Simmons and other hip-hop millionaires
and powerbrokers who have been one of the primary exploiters of
the rebelliousness and recklessness of young black men and women,
and from black politicians too who absorb all of the political
will and energy of the black middle-classes, and yes, the heads
of black megachurches (many capable of pulling in a half a
million dollars with one event), also slick sloganeering
millionaire black lawyers who have sold their souls to
corporations and big-time drug dealers, and from high profile
black educators who own chairs bought by American free
enterprise and Bill Gates, and, well, from sanctimonious civil
rights leaders like those in the NAACP who are linked like
sausages to the corporate world, and contributions, indeed, from
any other blacks who have sold their birthright and are
fortunate to pull down $100,000 a year by sincerely and honestly
kowtowing to their masters.
If the endangered black youth of America could
feast on these black elites and notables, their blood lust might
be satiated and they would not have to become involved in
intergenerational murder and other disreputable criminal
behavior and we could thus save them from being used as
second-class modern slaves for the amusement of our corporate
masters. This feast should make them fat, comfortable, and too
lazy to commit any worthwhile crimes.
My swiftian jest might indeed be a real
moral-social-and-economic-solution. Individuals might give a
second thought to accumulating too much of the bling-bling
because greed could be digestively terminal. This solution
would, of course, eliminate the social distance between the
classes -- for the poor would get to know the rich in
the truest sense, namely, by ingestion and digestion. Though
this recommendation may not be respectable by the measures of
civilized society, it will indeed be afrocentric.
And we should of course respect our elders and not allow the
youth to have all the goodies to themselves: we should cut off
some choice morsels for the elderly and have them begin this
ritual feast for a more egalitarian society.
posted 31 July 2008
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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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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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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