|
Books by Wilson
Jeremiah Moses
Golden Age of Black Nationalism,
1850-1925 (1988) /
The Wings of Ethiopia
(1990)
Alexander
Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent
(1992) /
Destiny & Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898
(1992)
Black
Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary
Manipulations of a Religious Myth (1993)
Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa
Narratives from the 1850s
/
Afrotopia: The Roots of African American
Popular History
(2002)
Creative Conflict in African American Thought (2004)
* *
* * *
Responses to an
American Speculator
By Wilson J. Moses
September 27, 2008
As a Black American
who can remember the 1940s, I find it amusing that I am
in agreement with so many positions of the Republican
conservative Senator from Alabama,
Richard C. Shelby,
ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. But
from the opening of the hearings last week, I found
myself agreeing with Shelby, and for that reason I have
to question some of the points below:
1.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson are pushing Congress to quickly
approve a $700 billion plan to remove illiquid assets
from the banking system.
Senator Shelby was
not convinced of the urgency, and indeed a week has gone
by without any executives jumping out of
windows. Shelby asked how Bush's men had arrived at
the figure of $700,000,000,000, and what other solutions
they had considered. Both of the President's men
meandered aimlessly and cravenly, refusing to answer the
question.
2. This is not
intended to be the sole solution. Private capital will
be necessary to further bolster the industry and
system.
Indeed private capital must be raised. Everyone is
talking about the "cost to the American taxpayer," and
yet nobody has introduced any tax figures into this
discussion, so I presume that a great deal of money is
going to be borrowed from China, Saudi Arabia, and
Russia.
3. Accounting conventions require financial firms to
reflect the value of assets based on current market
values (referred to as "mark to market" or MTM).
Investment counselors prefer using the emotion laden
term "value" instead of "price." Prices have been
inflated because wildcat bankers on Main street in
mid-America were inducing middle Americans to speculate
against the dollar on the housing market, gambling on
the presumption that their $300,000 house would double
its value within seven years, and encouraging people
with incomes of $50,000 to purchase $300,000 homes with
no money down.
The party line is that the cause of the problem was
passage of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977.
That is digging pretty deep, but it is the official
party line of the Republican Party, the Wall Street
Journal, Larry Kudlow, and Fox
Television—predictably so. In other words, they blame
some poor black or Chicano person who bought a house
within their means in 1977, rather than the middle class
white who speculated against the dollar in 2001.
Republicans also blame the creation of Fannie and
Freddie, and the pressure that lenders were under to
lend to impoverished minorities. This is not true.
The real villains were the American middle class and
their local bankers and realtors, who due to excessively
low interest rates, and rapid increase of the money
supply were systematically inflating the price (not the
value) of middle class housing. This combined with the
tendency of middle class Americans to take out second
and third mortgages and to think of their houses as ATM
machines was the cause of the constant inflation of
housing prices in America, until price far exceeded
value.
1. The root problem of
excessive debt and troubled assets on financial
institution balance sheets remains.
And How! But Main
street, is more to blame than Wall Street or
Washington. The average American is to blame for
carrying excessive debt. The root problem is irrational
exuberance.
4. Inflation pressures are easing, providing the
Federal Reserve with room to lower interest rates
further.
This is a vicious
lie. Inflation is running wild. Greenspan's and
Bernanke's madness has been unfair to people who have
lived simply and accumulated "life's savings." It is
hard on a sixty-six-year-old, who has not had a mortgage
on his or her home since 1986, and invested in
supposedly safe treasury bills. Such a person is
hemorrhaging money and getting negative interest on
her life's savings. And don't tell the person who is
heavily dependent on social security that there is no
inflation. Inflation is literally killing such a
person.
5. As such, we believe it is
prudent to take a cautious investment posture for the
time being.
Right you don't
want to take any risk, but you expect the Chinese to buy
up American debt, which they are forced to do, unless
they are prepared to write off the debt they have
already accumulated. No, ironically, the Chinese will
be forced to support the market, due to their already
massive holdings of American debt.
Older Americans on fixed incomes, especially those
foolish enough to have accumulated life's savings will
be the heaviest losers, no matter what happens.
Franklin D.
Roosevelt introduced massive tax increases during the
last depression, and his policy helped. Roosevelt
dumped surplus industrial products on Europe by means of
the Lend Lease Act. Of course you cannot ship surplus
housing (which Bush admitted last week we have) to
Europe, and besides the Europeans aren't buying, and the
Chinese are getting skittish. But the price of housing
nonetheless remains high, due to the inflationary
activities of the Fed, which are directed at maintaining
inflated prices.
Sooner or later the
American people will have to face a tax increase,
because there is very little fat in a federal budget
that pays Sunni militia $1,000,0000 a day not to shoot
at our troops.
If you like this article consider
making a donation.
* *
* * *
Breakthrough
Reached in Negotiations on Bailout— Some lawmakers
have made clear that they will not vote for the bailout
plan under virtually any terms. “I didn’t want to be in
the negotiations because I object to the basic
principles of this,” said Senator
Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican
on the banking committee, who would normally be his
party’s point man.
Pressed about his
role, Mr. Shelby replied, “My position is ‘No’. ”
Officials,
including Mr. Bush, stepped up efforts to sell the plan
to the American public, which, according to opinion
polls, is deeply skeptical.
“The rescue effort
we’re negotiating is not aimed at Wall Street; it is
aimed at your street,” Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio
address. “There is now widespread agreement on the major
principles. We must free up the flow of credit to
consumers and businesses by reducing the risk posed by
troubled assets.”
In a brief speech
on the Senate floor, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of
North Dakota, said: “It’s not just going to be Wall
Street. The chairman of the Federal Reserve has told us
if the credit lockup continues, three million to four
million Americans will lose their jobs in the next six
months.”
The ultimate cost
of the rescue plan to taxpayers is virtually impossible
to know. Because the government would be buying assets
of value — potentially worth much more than the
government will pay for them — there is even a chance
the rescue effort would eventually return a profit.
Some Democrats had
sought to direct 20 percent of any such profits to help
create affordable housing, but Republicans opposed that
and demanded that all profits be returned to the
Treasury.
NYTimes
* *
* * *
Letter to Senator Obama
Dear Senator Obama,
Conservatives are
blaming the banking crisis on the
Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was never
honestly enforced, but very cynically exploited by
recently collapsed Countrywide Financial and other
usurers who lured poor black people into these
mortgages. Bank of America took over Countrywide in
June 2008, promptly eliminating 7500 jobs.
Every African
American will want to read The Wikipedia Article on the
Community Reinvestment Act in its current version,
most recently edited on September 28, 2008. But read
fast, because I don't know how long an objective version
will remain available. I am certain the current one
will soon be revised by minions of The Wall Street
Journal, Fox television, Larry Kudlow, or Neil Cavuto.
It was not a
pathetically meager number of loans to poor black
Americans that led to this crisis. And is anyone so
stupid as to believe that Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales was enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act?
Of course not! The
real target of this smear is Obama, who once worked with
Acorn, a community organizing group, which supported the
act, but attempted, in vain, to warn against the abuses
of interest-only, sub-prime, flexible-rate,
no-money-down mortgages, Such mortgages should never
have been marketed to anyone, including white
suburbanites.
The typical target
of this scheme was never the poor inner-city black
person, but a middle-class white family, who took out a
no money down, interest only, adjustable rate mortgage
in a white neighborhood with the foolish expectation
that it would inevitably double its value within seven
years.
In 1950 my parents
bought a dilapidated fixer-upper for $5000. For seven
years my dad did not own an automobile so he could come
up with the down payment. My parents had to sue before
the previous occupants, poor whites, themselves the
victims of class oppression, moved out. It took a
while, since the judge sided with the previous
occupants, although my father was forced to pay their
rent. The house was then vandalized. Plaster was
falling off the walls, and the floors soaked with
urine. My dad practically rebuilt the house, and paid
off the mortgage within ten years while working for a
modest wage at the Detroit Water Works as a filter
attender and chlorinator operator.
By the time he paid
off the entire mortgage in 1960 at $50 per month, which
included both interest and principle, his roses and
irises were the talk of the neighborhood.
When I was 10 years
old, my mother explained to me the difference between
principal and interest, and how a mortgage was
amortized. One of my chores was to occasionally hand
carry the mortgage payment to the real-estate office
which was about a mile away.
* *
* * *
From what I could
understand from the
Wikipedia document realtors and some banks used the
CRA as an undercover means to make risky mortgages to
make quick money off of minorities and that other
financial institutions without proper oversight bought
into these kinds of mortgages making additional profits
off these same risky mortgages. Now some are thus
claiming that the government (the CRA) forced these
institutions on the lower and upper end to make or buy
into such risky loans.—Rudy
Yup. That's pretty
much the way I see it. The CRA had all its teeth
pulled by 2005, and it was nothing more than a cover for
extending the same "benefits" to the urban poor, that
were being "enjoyed" by the foolish geese of the white
middle class. Wilson
* *
* * *
|
Speak My Name
Black Men on Masculinity and the
American Dream
Edited by Don
Belton
It is rare in
America for African-American men to have the
opportunity to express who they are, what they
think, or how they feel. As the nemesis in the
American psyche, they have been silenced by an image
that is at once celebrated and maligned. In this
first anthology of contemporary African-American
men's writing, black men share their experiences as
the revered and reviled of America. Through the
voices of some of today's most prominent
African-American writers, including August Wilson,
John Edgar Wideman,
Derrick Bell, and
Walter Mosley,
Speak My Name explores the intimate
territory behind the myths about black masculinity.
These intensely personal essays and stories reveal
contemporary black men from the vantage point of
their own lives - as men with proper names,
distinctive faces, and strong family ties. |
 |
Writing about everything from
"How it Feels to Be a Problem" to relationships
between fathers and sons, these men reveal to us
both great courage and in an amazing love for each
other and themselves. In a stunning tribute to a
centuries-old brotherhood of heroes, black men come
together to challenge America finally to see them as
individuals, to hear their long-silenced voices—to
speak their names.
* *
* * *
This diverse anthology,
mainly of original essays, serves as an excellent counterpoint
to media stereotypes of black men. Topics include black male
images, relations with women, family life and heroism. Some
favorites: soft-voiced scholar
Robin D.G. Kelley recounts how his newly shaved head scared
people; novelist
Randall Kenan recalls a mysterious, kind and loving mentor;
Quinn Eli faces the tendency of black men to accuse black women
of not being supportive; filmmaker
Isaac Julien and poet
Essex Hemphill debate whether black unity can include gay
men; novelist
Walter Mosley muses about why his PI protagonist, Easy
Rawlins, needs the backup of the remorseless killer Mouse to
survive in an oppressive world. Belton, a former reporter for
Newsweek who teaches at Macalester College, contributes his own
touching effort, which treats the gap between himself and the
ghetto-trapped nephew he loves.—Publishers
Weekly
* *
* * *
Black masculinity has built
and shaped America. It is an old story which our fathers taught
us; it is measured by their quiet dignity as well as their
fears. What is heroic about
Speak My Name
is the fact that the contributors are men who decided to become
writers. They all made the decision to use words instead of
fists. They are writers shaped by the 1960s, like Arthur
Flowers, who writes:
|
And, understand, the 60s were more than street
battles or sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, the 60s
were about commitment. We cared. We tried. It was
important (and do-able) for us to make a better
world. It was important to save the race. And it
still is. |
While our society still
attempts to come to grips with the lyrics of tappers, Don
Belton's book is a gift which offers insight into how a few
Black men think and feel. For sisters who are still waiting to
exhale, it serves as testimony that there are good men in the
world and we only have to speak their names.
Belton's purpose for
editing the volume was to "experience a richer sense of
community and communion among other Black male writers." This is
evident in the interview conducted by Lewis Edwards of
Albert Murray. Here, a young writer sits at the feet of an
elder with an acknowledgment of inheritance and a respect for
tradition. When Murray (author of
The Omni-Americans and
Train Whistle Guitar) talks about his friendship with
Ralph Ellison during their days at Tuskegee, he conveys to
Edwards how two Black men enjoyed reading and developing their
intellect.
Speak My Name
, according to Belton, is structured in "jazz music's
compositional model of theme and variation, giving my
contributors a series of extended solos that develop toward
visions of masculinity as a struggle for hope." Belton divides
his book into five sections, although these categories are
unnecessary. One can enjoy the entire volume the way one
appreciates the old Ornette Coleman "Free Jazz" album; just open
the door to the studio and let the brothers play. The music will
find its own center.— Black
Issues in Higher Education, March 7, 1996 by E. Ethelbert
Miller—FindArticles
* *
* * *
 |
Race Men
By Hazel V.
Carby
Race men is a
term of endearment used by blacks to signify those
high-achieving African American men who "represent
the race," disproving bigoted notions of black
inferiority. In this engaging study, Yale African
American Studies Professor Hazel V. Carby seeks to
ask "questions about various black masculinities at
different historical moments and in different media:
literature, photography, film, music, and song." She
does so by discussing the lives and works of myriad
types of race men. Frederick Douglass's
uncompromising fight against slavery, W. E. B. Du
Bois's masterful
The Souls of Black Folk,
Martin Luther King's nonviolent struggles, and
Malcolm X's fiery rhetoric articulate the
intellectual-political prisms of black activism, for
example, while actor
Danny Glover represents the dilemma of the
black/white sidekick and the fight for a more
multidimensional Afro-American image. |
* *
* * *
Carby compares
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the ex-slave who liberated Haiti from
the French in the 19th century, to Trinidadian writer
C.L.R. James, whose Marxist interpretation of the Haitian
Revolution, the
Black Jacobins, unveiled the complexities of
colonialism, class, and the sexist aspects of radical black
leadership. She discusses jazz icon
Miles Davis's quest for freedom and his misogynistic persona
articulated in his autobiography, then praises science fiction
writer Samuel R. Delany's
Motion of Light in Water as "an effective counterpoint
to Miles ... a magnificent attempt to reject the socially
created obstacles separating desire from its material
achievement, and in the process demolishing and transcending the
limitations of heterosexual norms."
Indeed, for Carby the major flaw of race
men is that their upholding of "the race" does not prominently
address the concerns of African American women as well.—Eugene
Holley Jr.
* *
* * *
In a discussion of "The
Body and Soul of Modernism" Carby reads Nicolas Murray's nude
photographs of Paul Robeson, as well as black male nudes by
other European and American artists, and argues that for these
modernists the black male body represented "essentialized
masculinity." However, because the black subject was unable to
"gaze back at the viewer," these photographic texts reproduced
"the unequal relation of power and subjection of their
historical moment" in the early twentieth century. Carby also
discusses Robeson's roles in Eugene O'Neill's
Emperor Jones and
All God's Chillun Got Wings, concluding that, in
contrast to the character Robeson portrays in
Oscar Micheaux's film
Body and
Soul, O'Neill utilized a "strategy of inwardness" to
present racialized emotional conflicts for Robeson's character,
rather than outward resistance and rebellion. Carby's notes
that, with his expanding political consciousness and increased
commitment to the advancement of the working classes worldwide
in the 1930s, Robeson rejected these types of roles.
Unfortunately, how these ideological changes were reflected in
Robeson's racial consciousness (was Robeson a "race man"?) are
left unexplored.
Carby describes the
authentic and inauthentic nature of the relationship between
ex-convict and folk singer
Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter and folklorist
John Lomax and his son
Alan. She believes that this unusual partnership
demonstrated an attempt to use "the aesthetics of the folk" to
create a "fictive ethnicity of blackness" that allowed the
incorporation of potentially threatening black males into the
national community. For
C. L. R. James the
cricket field
in England's colonial territories not only was the space where
"ideologies of masculinity" were put to the test, but also was
"the battleground out of which nationhood . . . [had to] be
forged." Carby argues that in James's
Beyond the Boundary (1963) and the novel Minty Alley
(1936), "intellectual practice, racial politics, and cricket
were . . . unquestioningly imagined within a discourse of
autonomous, patriarchal masculinity." In
Black Jacobins(1938)
James posits the existence of a "revolutionary black manhood
that, both individually and collectively, gives birth to an
independent black nation state."— African
American Review, Fall, 2000 by V.P. Franklin,
FindArticles
* *
* * *
|
Speak My Name
Black Men on Masculinity and the
American Dream
Edited by Don
Belton
It is rare in
America for African-American men to have the
opportunity to express who they are, what they
think, or how they feel. As the nemesis in the
American psyche, they have been silenced by an image
that is at once celebrated and maligned. In this
first anthology of contemporary African-American
men's writing, black men share their experiences as
the revered and reviled of America. Through the
voices of some of today's most prominent
African-American writers, including August Wilson,
John Edgar Wideman,
Derrick Bell, and
Walter Mosley,
Speak My Name explores the intimate
territory behind the myths about black masculinity.
These intensely personal essays and stories reveal
contemporary black men from the vantage point of
their own lives - as men with proper names,
distinctive faces, and strong family ties. |
 |
Writing about everything from
"How it Feels to Be a Problem" to relationships
between fathers and sons, these men reveal to us
both great courage and in an amazing love for each
other and themselves. In a stunning tribute to a
centuries-old brotherhood of heroes, black men come
together to challenge America finally to see them as
individuals, to hear their long-silenced voices—to
speak their names.
* *
* * *
This diverse anthology,
mainly of original essays, serves as an excellent counterpoint
to media stereotypes of black men. Topics include black male
images, relations with women, family life and heroism. Some
favorites: soft-voiced scholar
Robin D.G. Kelley recounts how his newly shaved head scared
people; novelist
Randall Kenan recalls a mysterious, kind and loving mentor;
Quinn Eli faces the tendency of black men to accuse black women
of not being supportive; filmmaker
Isaac Julien and poet
Essex Hemphill debate whether black unity can include gay
men; novelist
Walter Mosley muses about why his PI protagonist, Easy
Rawlins, needs the backup of the remorseless killer Mouse to
survive in an oppressive world. Belton, a former reporter for
Newsweek who teaches at Macalester College, contributes his own
touching effort, which treats the gap between himself and the
ghetto-trapped nephew he loves.—Publishers
Weekly
* *
* * *
Black masculinity has built
and shaped America. It is an old story which our fathers taught
us; it is measured by their quiet dignity as well as their
fears. What is heroic about
Speak My Name
is the fact that the contributors are men who decided to become
writers. They all made the decision to use words instead of
fists. They are writers shaped by the 1960s, like Arthur
Flowers, who writes:
|
And, understand, the 60s were more than street
battles or sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, the 60s
were about commitment. We cared. We tried. It was
important (and do-able) for us to make a better
world. It was important to save the race. And it
still is. |
While our society still
attempts to come to grips with the lyrics of tappers, Don
Belton's book is a gift which offers insight into how a few
Black men think and feel. For sisters who are still waiting to
exhale, it serves as testimony that there are good men in the
world and we only have to speak their names.
Belton's purpose for
editing the volume was to "experience a richer sense of
community and communion among other Black male writers." This is
evident in the interview conducted by Lewis Edwards of
Albert Murray. Here, a young writer sits at the feet of an
elder with an acknowledgment of inheritance and a respect for
tradition. When Murray (author of
The Omni-Americans and
Train Whistle Guitar) talks about his friendship with
Ralph Ellison during their days at Tuskegee, he conveys to
Edwards how two Black men enjoyed reading and developing their
intellect.
Speak My Name
, according to Belton, is structured in "jazz music's
compositional model of theme and variation, giving my
contributors a series of extended solos that develop toward
visions of masculinity as a struggle for hope." Belton divides
his book into five sections, although these categories are
unnecessary. One can enjoy the entire volume the way one
appreciates the old Ornette Coleman "Free Jazz" album; just open
the door to the studio and let the brothers play. The music will
find its own center.— Black
Issues in Higher Education, March 7, 1996 by E. Ethelbert
Miller—FindArticles
* *
* * *
 |
Race Men
By Hazel V.
Carby
Race men is a
term of endearment used by blacks to signify those
high-achieving African American men who "represent
the race," disproving bigoted notions of black
inferiority. In this engaging study, Yale African
American Studies Professor Hazel V. Carby seeks to
ask "questions about various black masculinities at
different historical moments and in different media:
literature, photography, film, music, and song." She
does so by discussing the lives and works of myriad
types of race men. Frederick Douglass's
uncompromising fight against slavery, W. E. B. Du
Bois's masterful
The Souls of Black Folk,
Martin Luther King's nonviolent struggles, and
Malcolm X's fiery rhetoric articulate the
intellectual-political prisms of black activism, for
example, while actor
Danny Glover represents the dilemma of the
black/white sidekick and the fight for a more
multidimensional Afro-American image. |
* *
* * *
Carby compares
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the ex-slave who liberated Haiti from
the French in the 19th century, to Trinidadian writer
C.L.R. James, whose Marxist interpretation of the Haitian
Revolution, the
Black Jacobins, unveiled the complexities of
colonialism, class, and the sexist aspects of radical black
leadership. She discusses jazz icon
Miles Davis's quest for freedom and his misogynistic persona
articulated in his autobiography, then praises science fiction
writer Samuel R. Delany's
Motion of Light in Water as "an effective counterpoint
to Miles ... a magnificent attempt to reject the socially
created obstacles separating desire from its material
achievement, and in the process demolishing and transcending the
limitations of heterosexual norms."
Indeed, for Carby the major flaw of race
men is that their upholding of "the race" does not prominently
address the concerns of African American women as well.—Eugene
Holley Jr.
* *
* * *
In a discussion of "The
Body and Soul of Modernism" Carby reads Nicolas Murray's nude
photographs of Paul Robeson, as well as black male nudes by
other European and American artists, and argues that for these
modernists the black male body represented "essentialized
masculinity." However, because the black subject was unable to
"gaze back at the viewer," these photographic texts reproduced
"the unequal relation of power and subjection of their
historical moment" in the early twentieth century. Carby also
discusses Robeson's roles in Eugene O'Neill's
Emperor Jones and
All God's Chillun Got Wings, concluding that, in
contrast to the character Robeson portrays in
Oscar Micheaux's film
Body and
Soul, O'Neill utilized a "strategy of inwardness" to
present racialized emotional conflicts for Robeson's character,
rather than outward resistance and rebellion. Carby's notes
that, with his expanding political consciousness and increased
commitment to the advancement of the working classes worldwide
in the 1930s, Robeson rejected these types of roles.
Unfortunately, how these ideological changes were reflected in
Robeson's racial consciousness (was Robeson a "race man"?) are
left unexplored.
Carby describes the
authentic and inauthentic nature of the relationship between
ex-convict and folk singer
Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter and folklorist
John Lomax and his son
Alan. She believes that this unusual partnership
demonstrated an attempt to use "the aesthetics of the folk" to
create a "fictive ethnicity of blackness" that allowed the
incorporation of potentially threatening black males into the
national community. For
C. L. R. James the
cricket field
in England's colonial territories not only was the space where
"ideologies of masculinity" were put to the test, but also was
"the battleground out of which nationhood . . . [had to] be
forged." Carby argues that in James's
Beyond the Boundary (1963) and the novel Minty Alley
(1936), "intellectual practice, racial politics, and cricket
were . . . unquestioningly imagined within a discourse of
autonomous, patriarchal masculinity." In
Black Jacobins(1938)
James posits the existence of a "revolutionary black manhood
that, both individually and collectively, gives birth to an
independent black nation state."— African
American Review, Fall, 2000 by V.P. Franklin,
FindArticles
* *
* * *
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making a donation
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
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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posted 27 September 2008 |