Books by Stanley Crouch

Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (2007) / The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (2005) / 

The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader (2002)  /  The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994 (1995)

Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989 (1991) /  Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives (1998)

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Victory Is Assured

By Stanley Crouch

Is there a cliché factory where they mass produce people like LaVon Rice? Who is unaware of the levels of complexity that pollute human history in any culture and any kind of government? Is Mr. Rice at all aware of the fact that there was NO abolition movement in Africa that had nearly the grand vision of humanity that developed in America? Has he any awareness, at all, of Anthony Benezet, the 18th century Quaker and abolitionist, who has no parallel in Africa and whose ideas were so pure in terms of universal humanism that they laid down the fundamental argument with racism to this very day? In short, Benezet, who had taught both black and white children observed that, given equal training, it was clear that what he called "the African genius" was the same as that of the white.

Is Mr. Rice at all aware of how important to the thinking of the WORLD the American abolitionist movement, at maturity, was? In fact, one could say that all issues of social access to those considered inferior at birth were prefigured and argued by black and white people on a scale that influenced 
women's suffrage, unionism, and just about every other thing that groups have fought for in order to be respected and recognized as human beings, regardless of color, of religion, of national origin, sex, of class, of sexual persuasion?

What the former Don L. Lee is writing about is the complexity of Afro-American life and experience, which is especially refreshing coming from a man of his former black nationalist intellectual limitations. He learned something as a man in the military, which is not the same as supporting every American military campaign. He also went to Africa and realized something, which is that he was not an African.

In fact, I would suggest and, have continued to suggest over the years, that if Negro Americans were as involved in elevating themselves and actually learning how great a tradition they created in this country as they are in romantic blubberings about Africa, we could get these public schools working and bring an end to the intellectual genocide that keeps so many from the levels of success necessary to raise the capital, create the lobbies, organize the voting blocs, create the letter-writing, and so necessary to influence the policies of this country, both domestically and internationally.

It would also do Mr. Rice some good to go to the ibolish.com website and look into the Arab relationship to the selling of slaves right now. This lightweight but fervent identification with the Islamic world is surely not grounded in fact, historical or contemporary. Mr. Rice, poet that he supposedly is and artist surely interested in the images that arrive in world literature, might also be interested to see that the fundamental racist images of black people might well have arrived, first, in the the tale that opens "A Thousand and One Nights." Oops. 

Further, Mr. Rice should contact SOS Slaves Mauritania, where he might find out that the reason that organization did not sign on to the Durban Conference on Racism was that it did not address the racism of Arabs toward black Africans or the tribal racism of black Africans toward other black ethic groups. That is the actual foundation, he must know, of the slave trade that he does so much whining about in his response to the former Don L. Lee.

If murder and rape bothers him so much, he would do well to think about how much of that happens to the black people in this country who are oppressed by street criminals "of color" who have murdered, LITERALLY, thousands upon thousands over the last 30 years, raped thousands, sold drugs to thousands, and have maintained the kind of reign of terror that skinheads never could, had they begun killing black people in the numbers that street gangs have.

If he is disturbed about rape and murder on the continent of Africa, he could ask why the civil rights establishment, the Congressional Black Caucus, and TransAfrica have not demanded of the UN that something be done about the terror and the mutilations in Sierra Leone, the murders in the Congo (nearly 1000 last week), and the sex slaves Naomi Wolfe spoke with Oprah Winfrey about on Winfrey's show a few weeks back. In short, if Mr. Rice is so hopped up about injustice, why doesn't he do something other than run down the same tired list of complaints that we have heard over and over and over and over since black Americans stumbled into another version of Pan Africanism nearly 40 years ago?

If he wants to talk about American companies and their rapacious relationship to the Third World, he should go to pbs.org and find the Frontline story on Iraq, "The Long Road to War," which looks into why the sanctions did not work against Saddam Hussein. They threatened Iraq's business relationships to, for two major players, Russia and China, those models of social morality and empathy for the oppressed, sweating masses. 

In other words, the kinds of stainless heroes that Mr. Rice would like to have in the world do not seem to exist when it comes to actual power. Europeans, Americans, capitalists, Marxists, oligarchies, and totalitarians have end tended to get away with as much as they could as long as they could. But when the purple smoke of sentimentality clears away--which is almost never--what the former Mr. Lee says is absolutely true. Black Americans, for all of our troubles, live better than any black people anywhere else on the face of the earth. We have also contributed more on every level--intellectual, political, moral, technological, aesthetic, athletic, spiritual, etc.--than any other black people. 

For better or for worse, actually, like everybody else, for BOTH, we were the first modern black people and are the predominate black people right now. The consequence of that is not that we should wallow in bragging but that we should GROW UP. That is to say move up from clichés and start bettering our condition so that we can better the policies with which we disagree--or support! In conclusion, I would say to Mr. Rice and all of those who were wired in the cliché factory, break free and start climbing up the tree of life. You might then see something we all need to know about and learn from you.

Source: Kalamu's e-drum (April 9, 2003)