Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, is one of my heroes. One of the most inspiring moments in my life was watching his acceptance speech in Chicago on some cold election night in November of 2008. It opened my imagination to the possibilities of achievement that I had the potential to make a reality. His election was a real life example that contemporary black male excellence did not stop at entertainment or sport, but could ascend to occupy the highest office in the land. It was that night that I wrote my first ever blog post (all be it in a school notebook with an old fashioned number two pencil) about how I now dreamed of myself as a King! My Aunt still has that journal entry framed in her office (or so she tells me).
From the time Barack Obama entered office I began to pay special attention to his messages towards the black community. I viewed him as a leader, OUR leader. His message was, even though I didn't realize it at the time, a message that was and still continues to be very problematic. You see Barack Obama's message to black america spreads the myth that many other "liberal" black politicians, activists, reverends, and other so called "leaders", also choose to perpetrate; the myth of the black moral pathology. Put simply the myth of the black moral pathology tells us that while white supremacy has in the past been a detriment to black achievement, we have to now throw the shackles that exist in our minds. This usually manifests itself into "no excuses" statements, demands that black people take responsibility, and lectures on how to succeed in the white world. I've compiled a list of ways in which Barack Obama himself has done this.
This is in no way unique to President Obama; it is a pattern among privileged members of the black community. We see many successful and prominent black people telling the poorest and most marginalized members of our community to get their acts together; we know the "buy a belt" politics, the politics of calling some of our fellow brothers and sisters "ratchet or ghetto", some privileged black people try and differentiate "niggas" as a separate group of people causing our people's problems (this has been my sole complaint about the "Boondocks" animated series). There is no doubt in my mind that this myth is in fact a myth. Or at least, the assertion that these pathologies are the driving force of our problems is fiction. I would argue the contrary: that there is something miraculous about a people who at every turn in American history has been hated, subjected to violence, and stolen from has still in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles found a way to not only overcome, but also hold onto love for God, fellow man, and country. Especially when it appeared that God, fellow man, and country did not love them back. Where black people have gotten this strength from is to me both a mystery and a testament to the power of the human will. However Barack Obama is still not off the hook. This is my one true bugaboo when it comes to our president. These "excuses" that he so often mentions are in reality black people reacting to disadvantages that result from the what is at best failed policy and at worst conscious negligence that has lead to vast structural and institutional inequities in black communities. In truth what President Obama is asking us to do is to not react in a human way towards systematic oppression. As the chief enactor of policy in the Federal Government, Barack Obama should be finding ways to create policy that undo those systems of oppression rather than lecturing black people on how to react to them. President Obama is, as he as says the "The President of the United States of America, not the President of Black America." He is exactly right. Which means that he represents a government who's policy for 250 years was enslavement, another 100 years of Jim Crow, 25 years of housing discrimination (conservatively), 35 years of mass incarceration, and overall 400 years of general economic pillage and negligence. A man who represents this kind of history of moral injustice has no place lecturing the morality of the people who were subject to it. -515
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Early this morning I received news that I would be published in the Red Vine: Issue #12. Specifically for a past piece I wrote on how Martin Luther King Jr's radical turn on economic issues had pretty much made him a dead man (I recommend you read it in the Red Vine seeing as I've made some improvements from the version that exists on this blog. Your first digital download is completely free!). For those of you who don't know the Red Vine is the official publication of the Red Party, which "is a U.S. political organization that fights for working class unity in a single socialist party-movement."
I've been knowing for a couple weeks that I was going to be published in a socialist/Marxist/communist publication, and have for almost the entirety of that time, been deciding on how to let the world know the extent of my radicalness (I think I made that word up). Some of my heroes were/are actually socialists;, Martin Luther King wrote to his wife and to other close colleagues that he considered himself to be a Democratic Socialist (as do I - more on that later), the Black Panther Party founded by brothers Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale (GOMAB) was a self-proclaimed socialist organization, and one of my idols Dr. Cornell West was once the Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. There never was a point where a light bulb went off and I realized at that moment I was a socialist. For those of you who are familiar with my work, I pride myself on criticizing systems of power especially those which plunder, rape, and exploit on the bases of race and national identity. It became strikingly clear, at least to myself, that there is no conceivable way that the economic system that was built and still thrives on the outright oppression and pillage of black people and communities can ever truly deliver us sovereignty over the basic decisions that govern our everyday lives. In a more concrete sense; in my opinion there is no way that the same system of American capitalism that was built and depends on the degradation and pillage of black (among other) people and communities can ever be the same system that delivers us to the (hopefully) inevitable mountaintop. To be clear, I am a Democratic Socialist. NO I'M NOT ADVOCATING FOR REVOLUTION, A PLANNED ECONOMY, OR AUTHORITARIAN SOVIET-STYLE COMMUNISM. However, Like Dr. King and West, I believe that if we are to value the long term democratic goals of freedom, equality, and solidarity, then we must eventually reject the system of capitalism through the use of the democratic political system. Again, this is not to say that the economy must be planned. Free-trade and socialism can occur together, and they do in countries such as (not limited to) Norway, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Australia, Canada.... The difference between socialist free-trade and capitalist free-trade is that in a capitalist free-trade economy firms are operated by and for a single private interest with the goal of maximizing profit, while in a socialist free-trade economy firms are operated by and for the interest othe community at large in an attempt to reach the aforementioned democratic goals of freedom, equality, and solidarity. Goals which of course will not be attainable without a "radical redistribution of economic and social resources," (Martin Luther King Jr.) The point is, Martin Luther King, Cornell West, Huey P Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Cornell West dedicated their lives to telling the truth about the injustices American Capitalism brought not only to African-Americans, but people of color all around the world. They spoke what was then Jim Crow, police brutality, the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and abject poverty. It was that courage which allows me to speak about today's American neo-colonialism, mass incarceration, STILL EXISTING police brutality, institutional racism, and STILL EXISTING abject poverty. There's something solemn in finally confessing how radical you truly are, something liberating in relinquishing the fear of the status quo. I hope that there's another one of us out there who reads this article and finds the inspiration to let the world know how they truly feel: "I'm crazy and I know it" -515 I have found that one of the hardest things for marginalized groups of people to do when struggling for justice is to address privilege. I've found this to be personally true. I never began to examine my own male-heterosexual privilege until about a month or so ago (so I apologize if in this article I don't seem fully enlightened-I'm trying). For so long I had been worrying about problems that particularly relate to being a black man. I had never thought of these as black male issues, I had just thought of them as black issues. I had never really thought about the fact that I was excluding issues central to black womanhood, black homosexuality, non-cisgender, etc. until somebody asked me what I mean when I say "social justice." My list went like this;
First of all, black women are educated at much higher rates, much more likely to work (possibly in part due to higher rates of incarceration of black men) , much less likely to drop out of highschool and college, and vote at a higher clip than any other demographic group in the country (This from a study called "Black women in the United States, Progress and Challenges). Black women are really fueling our communities. They are much more educated, much more politically active, and much more employed than black men. Instead of being rewarded for the role they play in sustaining our communities black women are much more likely to be impoverished, paid a lower wage than even a black man for the same job, much more subject to violence both by police and in instances of domestic abuse and rape, and are rarely represented in positions of power or leadership positions. This is a problem few if any black male leaders have managed to bring to the table. Black women are even forgotten by movements that they are driving! Look at this picture that the #BlackLivesMatter movement has used to raise awareness of police violence, notice a pattern? Although black men are routinely criminalized and victimized by police, black women are just as likely to be subject to police violence. How many people know about Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Jones, Darnesha Harris, Shontel Davis....? Even worse we forget to talk about the problems that black transgender women face. I recently found that they are even more subject to violence, both by police and otherwise. In addition there have been black transgender women who are routinely put into the wrong jail! Not only are black women, non-cisgender, and LGBTQA attacked by the larger society, what is even more troubling to me is the attitudes and beliefs that black heterosexual men themselves perpetrate. Black men routinely pathologize black women. We call them hoes, tricks, bitches, thots (watch a rap video, any rap video). We condemn any expression of black-female sexuality and pressure them to conform to European/White standards of beauty. We stereotype black women, complaining about black women with "attitudes" or call our women gold diggers. We praise white women for having black features - big lips, full curves, thick legs, a big ass - while stigmatizing our women who share the exact same characteristics; I've heard terms like "ghetto booty" or "ghetto thick" and "DSL" (If you don't know what DSLs are then I suggest you look it up on urban dictionary). We value white women over black women in general. Face it black men its true. Black men are much, much, MUCH more likely to marry inter-racially than are black women. This means that while we never have to worry about finding a black queen as a life partner, black heterosexual women constantly are worrying about finding a black partner. In addition the fact this article is mainly examining issues that discuss heterosexual and cis-gender roles and that it is very difficult for me to find issues that pertain to the intersectionality of homosexuality/non-cis-gender and blackness is a result of my black heterosexual/cis-gender privilege. I was recently a part of a discussion about the rift between black men and women. I didn't realize how deep the problem is until the men in the room began to speak (rant coming). EVERY SINGLE BLACK MAN THAT SPOKE HAD THE SAME SORRY ASS RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY BLACK MEN. It went something like this: "I feel you but honestly I don't do that, and none of my black friends do that." or "I've never felt that way" or "I've never seen that happen myself." SO AS A RESULT WE GOT ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE. How can we ask white people to check their privilege, and attack white privilege and unearned assets that they benefit, without ourselves checking privilege and acknowledging unearned assets?! Black men here's my assignment, look at this bingo card, if you've EVER said one of these things then I want you to google "the black male privilege checklist by Jewel Woods" and get to checking your shit. These are our mothers and sisters. Black queens and princesses that are literally wholly responsible for the existence of black communities in America. Women who raised you, many times on her own, worked insane hours, cooked for you, put clothes on your back, and still managed to channel her inner diva, her inner shot-caller, her inner baller. These are the women who are so educated, so smart, politically active, and at the same time funny, charasmatic, and stunningly beautiful. These are the women that have your back EVERY TIME a black man is gunned down, incarcerated, and exploited. It's time we grab their backs too. -515 p.s. I'm sorry for the language/ranting, this is one of the most frustrating things I deal with. p.s.s. Black men, check this bingo board, for real. If you've said any of these things, you better check yo' self before you wreck yo' self. As I have begun to dedicate a certain fraction of my time and energy towards battling the status quo of oppression and plunder that has been imposed by thewhite male power elite in this country, I have come across a two major road blocks within black movements that have been, in my mind, seriously hindering our progress. The first is the failure to address privilege within black communities. That will be something I will address in my next post. However, today I have to talk about the problem that I fear will be the dagger in the heart of our movement: The centering of whiteness by sometimes well-intentioned black people. I see, almost everyday, three different ways that black people put white people and whiteness at the epicenter of what is legitimate, relevant, and powerful. We must understand that this is by the book the manifestation of white supremacy. To center whiteness instead of empowering blackness is to entrench the grips of white supremacy. The first way in which I see this happening comes in the form of respectability politics. Put simply, respectability politics is when marginalized groups (in this case black people), police members of their own group so as to show their social values compatible with the mainstream rather than challenging for failure to accept anything different. Black people do this ALL the time. We tell black boys not to sag their pants, tell black women not to twerk, criminalize the vernacular English that developed in black communities, ESPECIALLY criminalize the public use of the word "nigga", we condemn rap music as "not real music" or assert that "nobody makes real music anymore", and so on and so forth. What we are really doing is joining white mainstream culture in attacking everything about ourselves that is not white (and patriarchal and heterosexual). By doing that not only do we fail to challenge the mainstream for its criminalization of blackness, but we legitimize whiteness as what is right. When we do that we tell the rest of the society that whiteness is the ruler by which we measure what is good and bad. Instead we need to be challenging the idea that whiteness is the center of correctness every chance we get. The second thing I see black people doing is insisting on the use of and respect for institutions that were established to fuel white supremacy to solve our problems. Again this asserts that these institutions, established by the white heterosexual male power elite, are legitimate. This to me is insane, seeing as these institutions were established by the plunder and sometimes violent exploitation of black people! If anything we should be challenging the true legitimacy of these institutions. For example, how many black "leaders" do you hear chastising black people for failing to show up to voting polls? In reality what they are asking us to do is to bolster the political institution which has committed and continues to commit some of the worst crimes our communities have seen! One of the things that kills me is when leaders ask for "respect for the due process". This process has been robbing us of justice for hundreds of years! This is the system that established separate but equal, protected Jim Crow, and continues to perpetrate the mass theft of black life that is mass incarceration . And "leaders" ask us to be patient and have respect for it?! I experienced this just last week on the University of Iowa campus. After holding a rally to demonstrate how black voices aren't heard on campus Georgina Dodge, the chief diversity officer (and black woman) told the media that if students have concerns have problems with the way the administration handles issues of blackness that we should go to the black student advisory council. This council is a part of the administration!! The same administration that we were just protesting!! We have to challenge white institutions of power, and attempt to set up our own if we are to create progress, not insist on the use of the ones that have been the tools of oppression. Finally, we need to stop insisting on inclusivity in our movements and on educating white people. Don't be afraid to assert a space as black! When discussing/protesting problems that are unique to the black experience, do not feel obligated to include white people! For as many spaces that we have been/are excluded from, we NEED to possess our own spaces to discuss and organize. Pressure to be inclusive comes from the fear of black people coming together to do anything. Furthermore, it is not our job to educate white people. Ignorance is not a problem WE suffer from. In fact, focusing on educating white people removes black empowerment from the focus. Instead we center the issue on "fixing" white people rather than healing black people. I'd be open to discussing this in my thread. However I'd like to end: How can we truly begin to heal if we are using remedies created by the one who inflicted the wounds in the first place? -515 A brief introduction: Last Thursday students at the University of Iowa held a "Black Voices Aren't Heard" Rally. A daily Iowan opinion piece in response to that rally was to be written connecting those events with the events in Ferguson and Baltimore.
Pretty much what happened in the article is that the misguided young man who wrote it asserted that Black Voices are heard. His evidence? We have a black president, a black attorney general, a black businessman visited the IMU, and in February we had a black journalist at the University. So hoorah, systemic institutional racism is cured I guess... What was much worse is that this young man went on to call those who took to the streets in anger in Baltimore "violent thugs" and lecture black people on how to correctly respond to perpetual oppression (yes the young man who wrote this was white and benefits from the oppression he was telling us how to respond to). So here is my response. Enjoy. (BTW I'm linking the article below this sentence so you can read it for yourself.) http://www.dailyiowan.com/2015/05/01/Opinions/42023.html In response to “Korobov: The Power of Peaceful Protest” As a member of the organizing committee of the “black voices aren’t heard” rally, I can reaffirm that after reading Mr. Korobov’s article that Black Voices are indeed not heard. First we must address the fact that white people who benefit from the oppression of black people think it appropriate to tell black people how to react to systemic and perpetual plunder, degradation, and violence. It’s not. Second, Mr. Korobov had no problem calling black people who chose to channel their frustrations into the destruction of property thugs. Anybody who does not understand how racially charged the word “thug” is AND cannot begin to empathize with what they are feeling has no place writing opinion articles on race. Third, the fact that black people who live in a perpetual depression and are subject to constant state sponsored violence, were called “violent thugs” – a neo-racial slur – was personally infuriating While we are on that; if black people who break windows are to be called thugs, my question to Mr. Korobov is: what should we call policemen who break spines, kill innocent twelve year olds, and slam women’s heads into concrete? Finally, the distraction to peaceful protest are not the 300 or so people who took to “rioting”, it is the media’s sensationalization of those people while there were simultaneously 10,000 other people peacefully protesting police violence and general indifference towards black life. I will end with a quote from Dr. King, seeing as Mr. Korobov seems to be a fan of his work: “I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.” |
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