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Staying Alive for the New Struggle
An Editorial by Rudolph Lewis
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To speak
of racism is to be portrayed as a racist. .
. .
The battles
with racism are about staying alive in our
souls.
—
Anonymous |
Hot, arid winds of
race hatred are blowing toward those who desire a more
just multi-political America. I received an email
recently labeling the work I do at
ChickenBones: A Journal
racist. My suspicions lean toward one of those
fair-haired persons who benefit most from racism. But
fears of political repression are all over the map. A
retiring college administrator with a Ph.D. (a long-time
acquaintance) charged me with being an anti-Semite
because I did not act favorably to the anti-Barry
Bonds comments made by one of his Jewish friends. A
Florida Republican state senator soliciting sex in a
public toilet blamed his homosexual urges on the fear of
black men.
These are indeed
extraordinary times. With the success of the Right Wing
in all three branches of government, whites in power
generally feel they have a free hand to do and say
almost anything they please and so they are on the
warpath to eliminate all opposition and all criticism.
They have won the war and their object now is to set up
a new regime to hold onto their gains. Either one falls
in line, or falls by the way side. There is in the
present political climate, I'm afraid, little
tolerance for in between. They got all the tanks, gun
ships, and missiles, and little reluctance to use them
on civilians.
We have been in retreat from Martin’s Dream for the last
several decades. "Staying alive in our souls" is now our
fall back line. That was the primary project of
America’s slave ancestors. It was the mind frame that
produced the Spirituals, in which the enslaved American
Negro poured “his most
poignant yearnings,” and a great variety of slave
folklore, animal tales, etc. In some sense it was not a
literature of argument and not a literature of what
Richard Wright
called "hate and bitterness," begging for
relief. It was a coded discourse to sustain despairing
souls through burning hot sun-filled summer fields and
cold bitter wind-blowing winter nights, a cohesive
preparation for the right moment of advantage. But we
must do this and more.
The new relevant
literature in this new political era must be as Arthur
Huff Fauset described Negro folklore, one of "moralism,
sober and almost grim, shrewd and frequently subtle"
(See
The New Negro). He
felt that this was the essence of the "African
originals." That is, they were derived from tribal
societies in which individual expression was extremely
monitored and censored. That era is upon us. The
Republicans and the Democrats close ranks in passing
reactionary “security” legislation. They have done
millions wrong and now they arm themselves to squash any
organizing against their political repression.
We have gone beyond
the rational and the reasonable and the sensible. Guilt
is no longer a persuasive tool available to liberals and
progressives. Our enemies have a free hand. There's no
longer a USSR, foreign opposition to the U.S.
bullies. These new power elites have an answer (excuse)
for every misdeed. As Albert Murray pointed out in his
Omni-Americans (1970), "putting the bad mouth"
on such madmen from a soapbox is no longer an effective
strategy, for "all political establishments” always have
“built-in devices to counteract the guilt and bad
conscience."
In public, as we
have seen with recent government apologia for slavery
and other memorials, there is "crestfallen
acknowledgement and little else," they compensate for
their "crimes by feeling genuinely sorry for the
victim." They are quite willing to allow us to "blow off
hot air," to indulge in militant ranting, to toss around
talk of “reparations,” for a moment. But watch them:
they "settle back into routine." Those complainants
become marked targets, like Aristide of Haiti; agents
are sent out to chop off feet, or refresh the work force
(or their agents) with new forced recruits.
The clock has not so much been turned back, as much as
the game has become more sophisticated, like the
psychologically trained torturers The lynch law is no
longer needed. The stupid Bull Connors and George
Wallaces have passed the baton to a new high tech, think
tank generation of white supremacists. Rope and burning
faggots have given way to computerized electrodes and
waterboarding and threats against life and family and
job and health security. We were self-deluded into
retirement, believing true progress had been
achieved when only the field of play had changed. Civil
rights legislation and government agencies to execute
the new laws indeed allowed certain freedoms and certain
advantages. But all that was temporarily enforced.
Republicans convinced white Americans that they didn’t
really have to become less white or change their hearts.
These right wing
fanatics promised to disarm and denude those forceful
mechanisms and install a different set of government
bureaucrats, like a Clarence Thomas or those USDA
officials lobbying Congress NOT to pass black farm
legislation. The fulfilled their promises and then some.
Charges of racism and racial discrimination do not have
a snow ball's chance in hell of going anywhere these
days and those who brought that into force, like Stokely
Carmichael, Thurgood Marshall, Oliver Hill and Fannie
Lou Hamer, are dying off like flies. Such talented and
devoted men and women are rare. It takes generations to
produce martyrs.
In short, the movement for integration is dead.
Liberalism is in its coffin; the lid sealed; the dirt
has been tossed in. And what masquerades as
liberalism breathes through tubes. Only the
Condies and
the Colins are acceptable. That is as far as diversity
will be allowed in this new era. Different colors but
not different politics. If you can't get with the
program, you'll have to find some other game to play. In
some sense this is where Du Bois was in the 30s when he
lost faith in the efficacy of "integration," advocating
instead a retreat from outworn politics and a renewal of
reliance from below, depending on our own resources.
Those black
professionals who do not want to become right-wing
conservatives will be tossed out of their institutions.
They will be forced to embrace their brothers and
cousins left behind in order to make a life. That is, we
must again discover positive virtues in forced
segregation and de facto segregated
non-mainstream institutions. But we have a racial
liberalism and a diverse population (Latin and Asian
Americans and others) that never existed before,
advantages that Du Bois never imagined for democratic
struggle.
The traditional
black institutions (colleges, civil rights
organizations, churches, etc.), however, are no safe
haven, for their administrators, like Julian Bond, are
now among the worst right wing collaborators, though
they were once militant social activists. MLK knew such
religious men like T.D. Jakes develop in every
generation and promise heaven above and financial
rewards below with collection plates filled with
corporate and government dollars to the tune of $17
billion a year. Attempts by liberals and radicals
to seize those institutions usually fail, though I do
not discourage an effort. In any struggle there are
lessons learned. But new institutions and new mechanisms
that mirror the current needed struggles against
mainstream party disenfranchisements will have to be
created, as well as a new rhetoric.
As you know,
there are those who are creating institutions to escape
the necessary and inevitable struggles ahead of us on
U.S. turf. That is, there's another "Back to Africa"
movement and the old race rhetoric, a la Garvey and the
Southern abolitionist societies, as well, is afoot. I am
not so much against it, only those politics are for the
few and the exceptional and we have some recollections
of the behavior of former American slaves and their
Liberian rule over the “natives.” They were unable to
outrun their American souls and, at times, malaria.
Anyhow, the struggle must go on here and we must see it
as a protracted struggle just as the white
supremacy right wing saw theirs as a protracted
struggle. It took them 30 years and now they're back in
the driver's seat. We must look too at our struggle as a
long range one, in need of new tactics and new
strategies, operating across the old racial lines.
I doubt any of my
generation will be here to see the fruits of this new
struggle. But we indeed must commit ourselves to do
whatever is in our power now to assist the new young
leaders who must come to the fore to carry the
blood-stained banner. We need to make our minds up
quickly and help them to lay out the parameters for that
struggle.
These new organizations and institutions must mirror the
kind of America we truly desire. Such concepts as
Amin Sharif's "The
Fourth World" need more consideration. We
must guard against “minorities” being goaded into the
round royal rings to slug it out blindfolded, while the
money bags sit on the sidelines, amused. We need
Sharif’s fresh thinking and we need more of it. For the
new struggle will not be merely a national (or
racial) one, but an international one.
The new struggles
will occur more intensely in both Europe and the United
States, the control centers for the new
global oppressive forces. In both regions the issues and
the struggles will be exceedingly similar. Vast numbers
of "colored" people will be moving globally north, not
south, as we see with displaced Sudanese migrating to
Israel and Sweden. Cheap voluntary labor is what now
drives the Euro-American engines. And cheap labor,
especially if it is colored, seldom receives respect.
That strategy
depends on destabilizing government and societies in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We must collaborate
with those at home and abroad for birthing leaders
responsive to the needs of the broad masses. Mules are
carrying laptops and mobile phones into the isolated
Andes and devoted men are carrying them into the Ituri
forest and the sandy deserts to fight against corrupt
and comfortable leaders. Those of us at the heart of
Western corruption and repression must teach ourselves
to be less comfortable and commit our resources to the
coming and inevitable democratic struggles.
posted 15 August 2007
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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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Go,
Tell Michelle
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update 23 April 2010
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