Jim Crow Jr. Is In the House

AND ALTHOUGH HE IS BOLDER THAN HIS FATHER AMERICANS ACT AS IF THEY CANNOT SEE HIM

My grandfather worked for years in a racist environment. He was called nigger to his face while at work and told the job he had was too good for him. He managed to buy a house in a neighborhood where at the time most of the properties on the block had exclusionary clauses; meaning in the deed of the house it expressly said the property was not to be sold to Blacks. My dad had no idea of what my grandfather went through until he himself started working at the same place in his early twenties.

At some point my father went to his supervisor to complain about the nigger jokes that were being told out loud for the benefit of the whole dept. The supervisor’s response was, “they’re just havin’ a little fun, what you can’t take it?” My dad wrote a letter to his supervisors’ boss and they immediately came and got on the supervisor. As soon as the bosses left my dad was called in by his supervisor and chewed out.

My father endured co-workers playing dirty tricks on him that made his workmanship appear inferior. Someone would change a needed component on his project or “borrow” his tools. All in an effort to have him “downgraded.” At some point my father wrote a letter requesting to go to school through an upward mobility program. His supervisor balled the letter up and threw it away telling him to get back to work or he would have him mopping floors before the end of the week. According to the G.I. Bill the agency was supposed to make it as convenient as possible for my father to go to school. Eventually my father was allowed to go to college but the hoops he had to jump through due to ignorant, jealous, racists were in my mind inconceivable until earlier this week. I can’t remember experiencing such outright racism in my life, but as I look at today’s headlines:

World’s Most Powerful Man Seems . . . Powerless

White House Refuses To Take Charge & Lead

More To Obama: Show Some Guts

Just Another Black Man With Bad Credit

Associating With Obama Is Like Touching A Tar Baby

I am seeing ignorant, jealous, racists at work in 2011. I have no idea what actually goes on behind closed doors on the Hill. But from where I sit it appears to me that these bigoted Tea Partiers have put President Obama in a place where he cannot do his job then they go to the media and complain that he’s not doing his job.

The Republicans refused to negotiate and compromise over the debt ceiling/debt reduction agreement interlocking two issues that have never been handled together and drawing out the process. This put the President in a position where he could not do what he needed to for the country and consequently the United States lost their stellar credit rating. This is akin to taking someone’s tools so they cannot perform their job.

Now don’t get me wrong I am not in agreement with everything President Obama has done since taking office, however neither am I blind. At no time in history has Congress fought EVERYTHING the President has attempted to do with the express intent of wanting his administration to fail. The only difference in this case is that a Black man holds the presidency.

It is asinine to say Obama’s lack of leadership caused the credit downgrade when it is obvious that his "co-workers” were playing games in order to make his performance seem inferior. The Tea Partiers “havin’ a little fun” at the expense of the country, members of Congress screaming “You Lie” at the President and people referring to him as a Tar Baby are outright racist attacks. This country should not allow the primitive behavior of a few to diminish the significant racial gains that have been made over the last fifty years as evidenced by a Black man in the White House.

The ISIS Papers with Dr. Frances Cress Welsing 07/24 Interview on Blog Talk Radio

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publishing of The Isis Papers. While I read this book several years ago I have embarked on the journey once again. While I in no way agreed with everything the good Dr. had to say I found The Isis papers to be a good read and the first steps to clarifying color, race, and symbolism in a racist capitalistic society.

Psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s functional definition of racism - the local and global power system structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined; this system consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of human interaction (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war). The ultimate purpose of the system is to prevent white genetic annihilation on earth - a planet in which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-white (black, brown, red and yellow) by white-skinned people. All the non-white people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetically recessive white-skinned people.

This book opened my mind to many issues; the essays make you think. Hit the link below and take a listen to the radio show, see what you think.

The ISIS Papers with Dr. Frances Cress Welsing 07/24 by WombMans Song | Blog Talk Radio

You Decide

I am currently taking a summer course at Georgia State University, Black Nationalism. The class meets from 12noon - 4pm Monday and Wednesday. With a class that long grad students tend to talk and mingle. Well there is a lady in the class, of European decent; I'll call her Shelley, about my same age who also happens to be a mother of teenagers. Consequently, we talk about everything from the assignments for class, the department, our children.

Last week another student in the class mentioned the portrayal of Black men in the media. When the above Vogue cover was mentioned my colleague and I had a vast difference of opinion. Shelley didn't see the problem with first, the large black savage gorilla beast used to lure men into enlisting in the military - to "Destroy this Mad Brute" and save the white women’s virtue; nor did she see the correlation of a 6 foot 8 inch 250lb Black man almost carrying a 5 foot 9inch 120lb woman. They even had her wear a green dress to show the connection with the poster. Does anyone see my point here?

This country has had a long and sordid history of using the media to manipulate the perception of Blacks. Why is this not obvious to anyone who lifts a newspaper/magazine or turns on a television set?

My white liberal colleague came off as too sophisticated not to know about racial injustice and too comfortable with her skin privilege to care. And I am sure I came off as an angry Black militant. I suppose there is no such thing as an objective point of view.

This past weekend

So did you enjoy your long holiday? What were you celebrating? The 4th of July? The Independence of a country that has oppressed your peoples for hundreds of years and continues to reap havoc on the Black family?

The 4th of July causes me to stop and think. Now those of you who know me know that I love any excuse to get together with family and friends. The 4th of July, however, celebrates the liberation of wealthy colonial slave owners from the bondage of British taxation without representation. It did absolutely NOTHING for the slaves.

In 1776, a period of monarchy, colonialism, slavery and gender inequality, it certainly was not self-evident that all persons were endowed with fundamental equality and that governments existed to serve the just interests of the people. Martin Luther King Jr. called Thomas Jefferson's document the nation's promissory note; a check that when Blacks attempted to cash, bounced. And I should say here that our country still has not acknowledged the bounced check let alone made restitution. So any celebration of the 4th also needs to be tempered with a sober reflection on our nation's sins: genocide and land theft perpetrated against Native Americans, chattel slavery and Jim Crow against African Americans, second class citizenship for women - both white and Black, internment camps for Japanese Americans, brutal labor practices against Chinese immigrants, imperial aggression in Latin America and the Middle East.

We cannot ignore Frederick Douglass' admonition that the 4th of July does not mark freedom or self-determination for Black Americans. The abolitionist newspaper editor faced a similar dilemma on July 4, 1852, as a speaker in Rochester, N.Y. "Pardon me; allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?”

In the speech, known as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” the editor/publisher of the North Star answered himself: “But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.”

How can I or you celebrate a day that our ancestors did not benefit from? July 4,1776was a day that white America declared it was free & independent from Great Britain. The war lasted from 1775 until 1783 when the final peace treaty was signed in Paris. Now, the Blackman in America didn't get his freedom until 1865, almost 90 years later. Even though we helped fight in the Revolutionary war we as a people were nothing but the property and servants of others, and even when "freedom" came free to do what? Without land, skills, resources and education our forefathers weren't really free (but that is for another discussion - which I will get to.

It is obvious that African Americans have come a long way. The Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, is evidence of this. However, in the words of Frederick Douglas,
"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice we must mourn. What to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

Last Friday I gathered with a group of Black scholars and we ate, drank and enjoyed watching Roots, Alex Haley's best-selling novel about his African ancestors that follows several generations in the lives of a slave family. Originally aired on national television in 1977, the saga began with Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) a West African youth captured by slave raiders and shipped to America in the 1700s. The family's saga is depicted up until the Civil War where Kunte Kinte's grandson gained emancipation. Roots made its greatest impression on the ratings and widespread popularity it garnered. On average 130 million - almost half the country at the time - saw all or part of the series.

I certainly hope you made the best of a day that continues to mock people of color, for what was true in 1852 is still true today, there is not a nation, or President, guilty of the atrocities that the United States has and continues to perpetuate.