#there would be no liberation for anyone in america is slavery were not abolished | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whitehotharlots · 3 years

Text

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc.

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism.

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable.

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself.

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing.

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse.

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back.

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure.

27 notes · View notes

nahimjustfeelingit-writes · 4 years

Text

Vampr Erik Origin

Okay so let me make a disclaimer:

I had to do a lot of research to try and create his back story in summary form. I basically learned a lot of shit that I didn’t know so with that being said, you guys can feel free to fact check me because I feel like this needs to be factual as far as the history of it goes. Also, Erik was born/reborn in an era that is very touchy. I mean, we go through crap as black people everyday but I used some very degrading words to represent how it was back in this time. If this is offensive, please feel free to let me know I will change it. I don’t want to offend or make anyone feel bad. So, here it is! This is the origin I came up with.

Erik Stevens is his alias but he was born Ricardo Dupoux. Erik was born in 1856 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Just 29 years before he became a vampire.

Erik’s mother was born in 1836. Her name was Fabiola Adonis and she is from Louisiana but her parents and family (Erik’s grandparents) are from Sainte-Dominigue which is now known as Haiti.

Erik’s father was named Jacques Dupoux. He was born in 1827 in Cuba and he migrated to Louisiana with his family when he was just four years old.

Both sides of Erik’s family originated in Sainte-Dominigue and began to migrate out during the black Haitian Revolution as free people of color. The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolt began on 22 August 1791, and ended in 1804 with the former colony's independence. It involved blacks, mulattoes, French, Spanish, and British participants—with the ex-slave Toussaint Louverture emerging as Haiti's most charismatic hero. The revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery, and ruled by non-whites and former captives. It is now widely seen as a defining moment in the history of the Atlantic World.

Haitian Vodou, is an Afro-American religion that developed in Afro-Haitian communities amid the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional religions of West Africa and the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Vodou is an oral tradition practiced by extended families that inherit familial spirits, along with the necessary devotional practices, from their elders. In the cities, local hierarchies of priestesses or priests (manbo and oungan), “children of the spirits” (ounsi), and ritual drummers (ountògi) comprise more formal “societies” or “congregations” (sosyete). In these congregations, knowledge is passed on through a ritual of initiation (kanzo) in which the body becomes the site of spiritual transformation. Many Vodou practitioners were involved in the Haitian Revolution which overthrew the French colonial government, abolished slavery, and formed modern Haiti. The Roman Catholic Church left for several decades following the Revolution, allowing Vodou to become Haiti's dominant religion. They referred to themselves as “serving the spirits” more so than using Voudou to refer to Haitian religion.

Jacques Doupoux and Fabiola Adonis were well respected within the Vodou community. Erik’s father was a hounsi bosale and Artisan. Hounsi is essentially a dedicated member of Vodou, an apprentice of priests. His mother, Fabiola, an Ounsi, oversaw the liturgical singing and shaking the chacha rattle which is used to control the rhythm during ceremonies. She had a voice that used to lull Erik to sleep. Jacques wanted Erik to follow in his footsteps and later become an oungan; a Vodou priest. He was born as a “child of the house” or a pititt-caye. Being an oungan provides an individual with both social status and material profit. Erik was present for his father's initiation when he was just a baby with his mother in a shared Ounfò; Vodou temple. There were four levels of initiation that Jacques Doupoux went through. That sealed Erik’s future.

The Ounfò was a basic shack in Bayou St. John. The main ceremonial space within the Ounfò is known as the peristil. brightly painted posts hold up the roof, which is often made of corrugated iron but sometimes thatched. The central one of these posts is the poto mitan or poteau mitan, which is used as a pivot during ritual dances and serves as the "passage of the spirits" by which the Loa; the spirits, enter the room during ceremonies. It is around this central post that offerings, including both vèvè and animal sacrifices, are made.

Free people of color owned the most property in Louisiana but of course, that didn’t go down in history because the whites didn’t like it. As for Erik’s family, his mother and father were free people of color that became sugar planters, for slave owners, and they also shared Haitian refining techniques to successfully granulate sugar. Erik favors his father more so than his mother, sometimes confused as his father’s younger brother.

The Colfax massacre and the Coushatta massacre happened in 1873. This sparked fear for Erik’s family and they held a certain Fete for Lwa which is a public ceremony. The drums beat, the congregation started to sing and dance for the Lwa. The Lwa came to the ceremony via possession. The Lwa prophesied, healed people, cleansed people, and blessed them and assisted them in resolving issues. Erik was 17 years old and he didn’t share this with his parents but he was running for his life from a group of white Southerners one day when he was walking the bayou of New Orleans. Erik ended up sleeping in Baton Rouge until the morning.

Erik often stays within the Ounfò, well into adult age. He became a hounsi bosale like his father, often participating as a ritual drummer or an ountògi. He would sing specific songs in Haitian Creole with some words of African languages incorporated in it. He was a Food Artisan like his mother. He admired her craftsmanship in the kitchen. Cheeses, breads, fruit preserves, cured meats, beverages, oils, and vinegars were some of her handmade specialties. This is one thing that attracted women to Erik besides his handsome features. He was Strong, tall, studly, rough around the edges and not afraid to challenge someone to a fight or a gun battle. Erik was charming, protective, heroic, funny, cocky which earned him the nickname “Big Ego Ricardo”. Erik was hard-working, religious, smart, sculpted, dependable, and an amazing lover in bed.

Long dreadlocks, whiskey-colored eyes, full, soft lips, and a smile with dimples so deep it charmed anyone. He wore fundamental ivory cotton band collar work shirts unbuttoned to show off his defined pectorals because he was proud of his body, sometimes paired the shirts with a vest, cotton brown or black knickers, riding boots, and a series of Vodou jewelry around his neck and on his fingers, some with symbols representing Papa Legba, La Sirene, Ogoun King, and Baron Samedi. During Vodou rituals, Erik would wear a cotton cloth around his head like a bandana, bare torso because of the amount of sweating he does during drumming to keep up with the dancers, Vodou symbols painted on his face to represent whichever Loa they were serving, white linen pants and bare feet.

He was obsessed with guns. He would often go down to the bayou to practice with stolen pocket pistols, shooting empty glass bottles and bean cans. He’s a protector, he did this just in case his family were in danger. The symbol of Vodou love on one of his ring fingers is what attracted his late wife, Justine LeBlanc to him when he was 27 years old. He was selling artisan bread one afternoon from an open shop window on Bourbon Street. Justine was six years younger than Erik. She was a Creole of color from Louisiana, like Erik, except her family were sent to Louisiana on slave ships from sub-Saharan Africa instead of Haiti like Erik’s family. She spoke a bit of English, and French with words from African languages. Erik spoke English and Haitian Creole with a little bit of Portuguese and Spanish.

Justine LeBlanc worked closely with Marie Laveau, who was rumored to be the granddaughter of a powerful priestess in Sainte-Dominigue, who began to dominate New Orleans Vodou that later became Louisiana Voodoo. These spiritual leaders served a racially diverse, mostly female, congregation. Weekly worship services took place in the homes of Voodoo leaders. Their sanctuaries were characterized by spectacular altars, laden with statues and pictures of the saints, candles, flowers, fruit, and other offerings. Voodoo ceremonies consisted of Roman Catholic prayers, chanting, drumming, and dancing. Vodou was brought of Haitian origin, however, the type practiced in Louisiana later in years is almost always known as Voodoo.

Erik was known to be a ladies man. He spent time flirting and fucking woman within his community. Pussy was practically thrown at him. Justine, however, changed all of that. They spent so much time together within one summer that Erik decided that he wanted to jump the broom with her which was symbolic of sweeping out of the old and sweeping in to the new to welcome a new household to the community. Justine lost her virginity to him the evening after their marriage and that’s when they started having children. Erik has two young twin girls; Rose Fabiola Dupoux and Felicie Ines Dupoux. After that, Justine couldn’t conceive anymore which she was often depressed about. Erik wanted to be fruitful because his mother came down very ill when he was five and she couldn’t conceive either. It was either her life or her ovaries so she had them removed.

Despite everything going on in America with slavery and racism, Erik; Ricardo, lived a happy life. He was feared and respected, a following of close male friends were like his comrades. They had his back, Erik had theirs. That all didn’t last very long. In June of 1884, when Erik was just 28 years old, things began to make a turn for the worst. Erik’s father, Jacques Dupoux, was lynched. With the 1880s dawning, a new era of violence ensued. White supremacy represented a central tenant of their platform and led to even greater levels of violence as they tried to reverse the advances made for African Americans during Reconstruction. They capitalized on rumors that black crime had expanded after the abolition of slavery. As a result, the number of lynchings soared across the South and hundreds of lives were being taken. Lynch mobs often justified their actions as attempts to defend white Southern womanhood from “libidinous” black males.

This angered Erik, causing him to gather a following of men who also lost family. Erik led the revolt to fight back white supremacy. They attached about 15 homes and killed between 55 to 60 whites throughout Louisiana. They also arrived on a local sugar and cotton plantation that often sought help from Erik’s own family for harvesting sugar cane. The revolt and about 20 slaves burned the plantation to the ground but that wasn’t before they hacked the entire family to death. Erik was made public enemy number one. His face was on wanted posters throughout the South but he was depicted wearing a scarf around his mouth and nose. Of course with Erik’s actions, some of his family and friends suffered. Vodou rituals were invaded and the members slaughtered. Marie Leveau and her following were protected but not Erik’s lineage.

Ricardo Dupoux AKA Erik Stevens returned home after successfully burning down another plantation and killing the entire family, including the children, execution style in 1886. Marie Laveau warned Justine that Erik was dangerous and he would endanger her and the children if she stayed with them. Marie instructed Justine to bring her something that belonged to Erik, something sentimental. Justine brought her Erik’s father’s ring that he wore around his neck. Marie performed a ritual that later informed Justine that Erik was in grave danger and this life as Ricardo Dupoux would soon come to a bloody, gory, gruesome ending. Marie told Justine that she couldn’t interfere because that could possibly go badly. Justine had to keep that big secret to herself to protect her children no matter how much she loved and adored Erik.

Erik wasn’t himself anymore. He became this angry, rude, vengeful man that killed without a backwards glance. He also turned to what is said to be evil magic in Vodou. Instead of becoming an Oungan, Erik became a Bokor and an occultist. A Bokor is a Vodou witch for hire who is said to serve the loa “with both hands”, practicing for both good and evil. Their black magic includes the creation of zombies and the creation of ‘ouangas’ talismans that house spirits. Bloods are usually chosen from birth but Erik was instead initiated in. He found the spirits, the orisha’s the Eruziles, not a priest in the flesh. The whites kept crossing the line in a spiritual and physical sense, it became Erik’s right to protect himself and his family with curses and hexes.

Erik caused moderate to severe suffering to those he seeked revenge on by hexing them and also using dark charms such as curses, the most heinous act on an individual; the worst kind of dark magic. He performed blood maledictions, a specific type of curse that may not kill the target but can remain within the victim's body, and be passed down as a genetic defect that can resurface generations later. Erik would inflict intense, excruciating pain on his victims, poison them, and cause flames called Move Dife which means “bad fire”, an enormous flame infused with dark magic to seek out living targets. Fabiola and Justine were afraid and they didn’t support Erik’s new choices. The light she saw in her son was indeed gone. He was of greatest fear within his community and within the Southern white community.

How did Erik meet his demise?

It happened in June of 1888, five months before Erik’s 33rd birthday. The White league and the Ku Klux Klan had been deactivated since the 1870s but some members worked closely together to hunt down and kill Ricardo Dupoux, soon to be known as Erik Stevens. He decided to use Erik Stevens as an alias since his name was so well known in Louisiana where he lived. No one besides the people close to him knew how his face looked since he wore it covered but his name however was remembered. If things didn’t go as planned for him and he needed to flee with his Mother, Wife, and children, he could have his name changed to Erik Stevens. A trusted friend named Augusto Richard’s wife named Beatrice Richard and her five children were held at gunpoint in their home. They found out where Augusto lives and used that as they way of finding Ricardo.

From what they tell him, Augusto’s family will be freed if he agrees to help the Southern white men capture and kill Ricardo Dupoux. At first, Augusto declined and said that Ricardo is a trusted friend of his. They punished him by beating his wife and threatened to hang her from a structure similar to a gallow. Augusto finally gives in, joining forces with the evil white men in exchange for his family's protection. Ricardo and Augusto have been friends since they were children. Augusto was sort of a co-planner with Ricardo to attack white supremacy and racists homes along with plantations. Augusto fabricated a new place to attack, suggesting that him and Ricardo go alone this time. Ricardo agreed without hesitation because he trusted Augusto. They arrived by horse outside of New Orleans near Maurepas Swamp……..

_______________

“Augusto...poukisa nou is it la?” Ricardo asked Augusto in Haitian Creole why they were there. He didn’t like speaking English just in case he was overheard. Ricardo’s eyes squinted suspiciously around him before he cut his eyes that looked black in the dark at Augusto.

“Mwen regrèt, frè,” Augusto spoke with a shaky voice, tears flooding his eyes. He told Ricardo that he was sorry.

Ricardo pulls out his pistol, aiming it at the shadows of the trees. He couldn’t believe he was being set up by someone that is supposed to be his friend. Ricardo told his wife and mother that he would be home safely and for them not to worry. He couldn’t trust anyone now. If he got out of this alive, he was going to cut ties with his followers.

“Well, well, well...look what we got here, a nigger with a gun!!”

Ricardo follows the source of that thick southern accent echoing in the night and finds a white man standing behind him with a gun pointed at his temple.

“Drop it, boy, or I will splatter this here swamp with ya monkey brains,” He threatened while making his gun click. Ricardo could see out of his peripheral more white men stepping out of the shadows. The moon light made the weapons in their hands shine.

“Listen to him nigger!!!” One yelled.

“AIN'T SO TOUGH NOW!!!” Another yelled while a series of laughter came soon after.

“Listen, I know ya can speak English, boy. Ya friend here told us everything. How ya niggers get a hold of books I wouldn’t understand,” He laughs before spitting in his face, “I’m gonna enjoy killing ya, just like ya enjoyed killing my friends ya fucking animal. This is how we’re gonna celebrate the ending of slavery...we’re gonna gut ya, and then we’re gonna throw ya filthy dead fucking body in the swamp so the gators can finish ya.”

The foul breath of this white man would have made Ricardo puke if it wasn’t for the gun pointed at him.

“Hey, Jenson, pass me my knife!” He yells, “I wanna Kill this one slowly.”

Like a swarm of stinky flies, the white men crowded Ricardo, some kicking him in his ribs, others in his face, bloodying him up. Ricardo didn’t drop to his knees willingly, he took each and every blow like a champion, even when his vision blurred from the blood trickling from a gash in his head from being pistol whipped. Augusto stood watching the entire thing. He was Disgusted with himself for allowing it to happen.

“Should we kill his wife? His mama? His little girls?!!!!” One of them punched him in the face while two men on each side kept him still since he’s so damn strong. It was almost inhumanly strong.

“AUGUSTO OU FUKIN TRÈT!!!” Ricardo yelled, before spitting out blood on the dirt covered ground. He called Augusto a fucking traitor, “Mwen gen yon fanmi! ti bebe mwen yo! ti bebe mwen yo! ou trèt!” Ricardo growled angrily with his deep fearful voice. He could only think about his family right now. What if some of these men were watching his house right now? They definitely were plotting something besides beating the living shit out of him in the swap.

“Kick this nigger down!!! It’s six of you and one of him!!!!”

A blow struck Ricardo’s spine so hard he felt it snap. He was on his stomach, his cheek hitting the dirt painfully. One foot was placed to the back of his head while angry tears fell from his eyes.

“Any last words? And say it in English before I slice your goddamn tongue off,” The man with the boot to his head spoke harshly.

Ricardo clenched his jaw while breathing in the dirt. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, however, the asshole in him wanted to toy with them.

“...Which one of ya is da father of Helen Landry?” He asks.

It was silent for a second until the boot on the back of his head was gone, being replaced with a hand yanking him by his dreads, lifting his head from the ground. Ricardo smiles smugly, his bloody smile almost as sinister as the blood from the gash in his head flooding his eyes.

“Let me ax ya something...are ya the reason my little Helen is dying? Doctor says she only has three days left...ya poison my little girl with ya voodoo magic?”

“I CURSED ya little girl with my Vodou magic…” Ricardo spits his blood in his face, “And if I were ya, I would go check on her, Doctors don’t always tell da truth.”

Augusto flinched when he witnessed Ricardo being kicked in the face. His jaw had to be broken now. He was being lifted off of the ground again, a sharp whimper of pain escaping his mouth. His feet gave out beneath him and now he was being dragged. His chest and abs were covered in dirt just like his handsome, swollen, and bloody face. His busted lip drooped and leaked blood while his groggy voice tried to form sentences. The men laughed at him but all Ricardo did was look at Augusto with unblinking eyes, one of which displayed broken vessels.

“Anything else ya got to say, nigger?”

The source of the voice didn’t matter to Ricardo. All he kept thinking about was his family and how he failed them. His father was probably ashamed. Ricardo looked towards the sky. If only he could call on Baron Samedi or Maman Brigette. He wasn’t in the safety of his Ounfò either. He could only hope that at this moment his mother, Fabiola, was summoning the spirits.

“Guess not, hold him down.”

With a dull, jagged knife, Ricardo was stabbed in his stomach. He felt like he was punched. The impact pushed him back a little and he wheezed. A tearing sensation and a noise followed. The pain took a while to kick but he could feel the blood trickling. When it was finally withdrawn, he felt something hot and cold at the same time, pulling the skin with it as it's removed. Ricardo’s cry was a brilliant sound to them, guttural chokes mixed with an agonized roar. His fists clenched and shook each time his skin was being torn to shreds. The knife rotated and the sound of his muscles and nerves being gouged growing louder. Then, without warning, the white man jerked it all the way into his stomach, until the shiny metal had disappeared inside him and the black handle was pushing against his broken skin.

“Die Coon!!!” They yelled in unison before celebrating with loud hoots.

“Look at him choking! This ugly motherfucker is bleeding out! Let’s take him to the water!”

Ricardo could feel his body falling to the ground. His hand clutched his wound but blood seeped between his fingers. He felt weak, his eyes opening and closing. Augusto stood there spewing apology after apology while crying hysterically.

“As for ya,” the white man that stabbed Ricardo multiple times drops his knife in the dirt, reaches in his back pocket with his bloody, cut up hand and pulled out a gun, “what? Did ya really think we were gonna let ya go free? Ya just another disgusting nigger too, and ya nigger bitch, ya nigger kids? Dem dead too.”

Ricardo watched with low eyes while Augusto took his last breath before being shot in the head, point blank range.

“Wastin’ all dese good bullets,” the white man pocketed his gun again, “Hall em’ up! Let’s take em’ swimming!”

_____________

Crowded tabletops with tiny flickering lamps; stones sitting in oil baths; a crucifix; murky bottles of roots and herbs steeped in alcohol; shiny new bottles of rum, scotch, gin, perfume, and almond-sugar syrup. On one side was an altar arranged in three steps and covered in gold and black contact paper. On the top step an open pack of filterless Pall Malls lay next to a cracked and dusty candle in the shape of a skull. A walking stick with its head carved to depict a huge erect penis leaned against the wall beside it. On the opposite side of the room was a small cabinet, its top littered with vials of powders and herbs. On the ceiling and walls of the room were baskets, bunches of leaves hung to dry, and smoke-darkened lithographs.

This is where Ricardo Dupoux rested upon a makeshift bed surrounded by oil burning candles. A sulfurous rotten-egg smell that is often associated with marshes and mudflats occupies the room. His entire body ached and the sharp pain prickled his scalp. Licking his dry lips with his equally dry tongue, Ricardo tried looking around with his sore eyes but the discomfort caused him to close them. It felt damp and gloomy around him, clearly nothing is quite what it seems to be. Ricardo could feel a powerful energy surrounding him, if only he could move his body. A few rickety floorboards creaked like someone was sneaking up on him and it made Ricardo jumpy. He wasn’t physically able to help himself.

“Ricardo Dupoux, ki sa yon sipriz bèl eh?”

A seductive voice of a woman spoke to him in Haitian Creole. This wasn’t a pleasant surprise exactly.

“Kiyes ou ye?” His voice was so hoarse and his throat felt raw.

“Who muh? Well...I’m yuh rescuer of course, handsome.”

“Kisa...ki kote sa a?” Ricardo coughs painfully. He could taste blood in the back of his throat.

“Well, don’t Yuh sound sexy speaking deh Creole to Mama Dalma. Yuh in muh shack, Ricardo.”

“Mama Dalma? Prètès Vodou a?” He spoke with astonishment.

“So, muh assumin’ yuh heard stories about muh from way back when...what else do yuh know bout’ me?”

“...Nothing.” He finally speaks English.

“Yuh know so much about muh voodoo mystic powers in the Caribbean 175 years ago…I’m honored.”

Finally, standing above his shell of a body was Tia Dalma herself. Tia Dalma was a practitioner of voodoo, a hoodoo priestess with fathomless powers that was perceived as a legend. Supposedly, she has uncanny powers to foretell the future, to summon up demons, and to look deep into men’s souls. She’s mysterious and beautiful with delicate patterns accentuating her hypnotic eyes, long but slender dreadlocks like him, deep melanin skin so smooth and unblemished, and lips painted black. She wore a sheer black dress that showed off her nudity beneath it, so many curves that looked delicious, and a mystical necklace dangling between her small breasts. Ricardo could feel her seductive energy enticing him into a tangled net. She playfully giggles while stroking Ricardo’s bare, sweaty chest with her long black nail flirtatiously.

“Poor baby, him carve yuh up?” She spoke with her Jamaican Patois. Mama Dalma looks Ricardo up and down like she wanted to mount him. She was so happy she couldn’t hide her beautiful smile.

“Did ya heal me, Mama Dalma? I thought I was gon’ die by a white man’s hand.”

“I’ve seen yuh fight big brawla, I’ve seen yuh cap a shot, I’m impressed wit’ yuh...haven’t seen a man deh brave in a while...queng dem white boys.”

“...ya been watching me?” He squints his whiskey colored eyes,“who ya for ya to be watching me?”

“Mhm, I been watching yuh, handsome...It’s because I want to save yuh...give yuh a better life than this.”

Ricardo was shivering, his skin pale and cool, difficulty breathing, mentally confused, and his blood pressure kept dropping. His chest was rapidly moving from breathing too fast, heart rate beating so fast it was almost painful, and he felt like he was running a fever.

“Easy nuh, yuh going into septic shock.” She takes her hand to pet his dreaded hair like a baby with the back of her hand.

“W-what?” His lips trembled. He was numb.

“Awoah. Muh herbes are keeping yuh stable but if I take deh herbes away...yuh die.”

Ricardo closes his eyes.

“Unless...yuh have two options, handsome.”

“One’s that I should trust? How do I know ya not poisoning me? Hm?”

“I’m gonna ignore deh...here are yuh options. Yuh can stay here on muh table and die slowly...or I can give yuh immortality.”

“Imòtalite? Baron Samedi?” He almost choked on his own spit from trying to speak.

“Better than the power of a Loa...yuh be immortal until meeting deh true death. Yuh have superhuman physical abilities, senses, flight, and healing.”

“What power is dat?” Ricardo’s eyes are glossy. He didn’t have much time. Mama Dalma was cunning, she could have healed him with her voodoo but what’s better? Healing him with the possibility of him dying again or turning him into what she became 175 years ago back in her little shack in a tree in Cuba, hanging onto her last breath. Ricardo was perfect in every way and she wanted to walk the earth with someone close to her...someone attractive and strong.

“Yuh ain’t got much time...make a decision, Ricardo Dupoux,” Tia strokes his face, “It could all be yours…”

Ricardo’s eyelids fluttered before he nodded his head. Anything to stay alive. Anything to get revenge. If he was going to come back stronger and immortal, he could wipe out every single one of them. He needed to get off of that table. Mama Dalma was convincing. Maybe it was her magic that persuaded him but none of that mattered.

“I’m glad Yuh agreed.”

Sharp, fangs extended from her teeth while she looked at him excitedly with hungry eyes. She came down on Ricardo with superhuman speed like a blur, causing his eyes to grow wide with surprise. It was almost painless, more like a pinprick considering how his body felt at the moment. The sharp points sank into his flesh like a knife to soft butter. His body twitched as his blood pooled around the back of his head, dripping to the floor of the shack and seeping between the wood. He started feeling even more woozy and lightheaded. She was really applying pressure with her fangs. He could feel his body going cold and then it felt as if his soul had left his body. Ricardo didn’t know how long this went on but it felt like forever.

Mama Dalma retracts her fangs, lifting her face from the crook of his neck slowly before staring down at Ricardo with her enchanting eyes. Her fangs pop out again and now she bites her own wrist before placing it over Ricardo’s mouth. He hesitated at first but Mama Dalma opened his mouth for him. Ricardo tasted his own blood before from his busted lip or if his gums were bleeding. He even tasted blood during a sacrifice at a Vodou ritual. It was vile with a salty metallic taste. However, Mama Dalma’s blood was surprisingly sweet, and scrumptious. Just that small amount dripping on his tongue gave him the effects of alcohol consumption.

“Deh is enough, Ricardo,” She tells him, “Ricardo...deh is enough.” She says with a more stern voice.

Ricardo wraps his hand around her wrist, applying pressure to keep it there. He could feel his body changing for the better already. Her blood...he couldn’t stop. He grunted, growled, and moaned from the taste. His tongue swiped her wrist and his own teeth tried to bite her for more but he was still so weak.

“Ricardo, deh is ENOUGH, no more!!!!!”

Mama Dalma yanked her wrist away speedily, her eyes staring down at her wound healing before her. She gave Ricardo a cold look, one that has him wishing he would have listened.

“When I tell yuh to stop, yuh listen,” She spoke with a spiteful tongue.

“It was so good,” Ricardo spoke with a weakened voice, “I want m-more.”

“Soon, muh child…” Mama Dalma kisses his lips, “Now we go to rest,” Mama Dalma wraps her arms around Ricardo and then with her superhuman speed they were out of her shack and laying in a dug up ditch. The soil was cold against Ricardo’s back. Mama Dalma places him in a wooden coffin, the moonlight creating a halo around her. His eyes drooped shut and he could feel his body shutting down like his organs were no longer working. Mama Dalma crawled into the coffin with him, resting her head on his chest and wrapping a single leg around his waist.

“When yuh wake, muh child, yuh will be Erik Stevens now...Ricardo Douboux died tonight.”

Mama Dalma kissed his cold cheek before she shut the coffin so they could finally rest until tomorrow night when Erik Stevens will finally be immortal.

#killmonger #Erik Killmonger #black panther killmonger #nahimjustfeelingit-writes

238 notes · View notes

thepatriotplace-blog · 4 years

Text

The Patriot Warrior Class

Its been awhile since I’ve posted on Tumblr. In fact I actually kind of forgot I had the account. I created this account a few years ago and I named it “the patriot place”. Pretty self explanatory.

Let me tell you about me. I am first and foremost a patriotic American. I have always called myself a patriot. I’ve been a libertarian party member for many years. I’ve voted in many POTUS general elections for the libertarian candidate (with the exception of 2x). I’ve always had a deep love for the US constitution have spoken out about the blatant corruption of the constitution that has been going on in America my whole life.

I also consider myself a warrior. Although I have never served in the military I was a police officer for 25 years and have since retired. My duties as a police officer included SWAT and emergency tactical medicine. I have been trained by the best warriors America has to offer.

Since the election of Donald Trump (who I didn’t vote for) I have seen the rapid decay of the Libertarian Party. It has become polluted with progressives, pedophiles and people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. My interactions with the neo-libertarians has been sad. Justin Amash has completely flipped in my view and I align more with Rand Paul than I do with Ron Paul. Jo Jorgesen who is the Libertarian’s Party POTUS candidate is and her public support of a Marxist organization was the last straw for me. I am no longer a member of the libertarian party.

I now consider myself a member of the patriot warrior class. I am prepared to fight and die for the Republic and its constitution. I took an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States and that doesn’t end when there is (Ret.) at the end of my name. There are many like me. Men and women who served and are currently serving to protect our Republic who believe in what I believe in are what will save this country from the Marxist insurrection, which is back politically by the Democrat Party and financed by the CCP and George Soros that is taking place within the US’s borders.

The neo-libertarians wont fight for the Republic. They are feckless and nothing more than internet bottle throwers and trolls. Their mentality is the same as the progressives, ‘Burn it down at all costs to get Trump out.”

The single most important event that turned the page in this chapter in my life had to be Trump’s speech at the National Archives Museum on Constitution Day. I have never heard a politician since Reagan deliver a speech more patriotic than this speech. I’ve included the transcript of that speech. So I will end this post with this.... In 2020 I will vote Vote Trump.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. A great Vice President. I am truly honored to be here at the very first White House Conference on American History. So important.

Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. (Applause.)

To grow up in America is to live in a land where anything is possible, where anyone can rise, and where any dream can come true — all because of the immortal principles our nation’s founders inscribed nearly two and a half centuries ago.

That’s why we have come to the National Archives, the sacred home of our national memory. In this great chamber, we preserve our glorious inheritance: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

On this very day in 1787, our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization. Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.

Yet, as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen. (Applause.) Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy. Far-left demonstrators have chanted the words “America was never great.” The left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement — the universal symbol of the rule of law in America. These radicals have been aided and abetted by liberal politicians, establishment media, and even large corporations.

Whether it is the mob on the street, or the cancel culture in the boardroom, the goal is the same: to silence dissent, to scare you out of speaking the truth, and to bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, and their very way of life.

We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.

The radicals burning American flags want to burn down the principles enshrined in our founding documents, including the bedrock principle of equal justice under law. In order to radically transform America, they must first cause Americans to lose confidence in who we are, where we came from, and what we believe. As I said at Mount Rushmore — which they would love to rip down and it rip it down fast, and that’s never going to happen — two months ago, the left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

As many of you testified today, the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.

The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies. There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project. This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history. (Applause.)

The narratives about America being pushed by the far-left and being chanted in the streets bear a striking resemblance to the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries — because both groups want to see America weakened, derided, and totally diminished.

Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.

A perfect example of critical race theory was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution. This document alleged that concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the nuclear family, and belief in God were not values that unite all Americans, but were instead aspects of “whiteness.” This is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity, and it is especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted, not disparaged.

Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness. But they’re wrong.

There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King, where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The left is attempting to destroy that beautiful vision and divide Americans by race in the service of political power. By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen.

Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.

That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible. (Applause.)

The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.

Under our leadership, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history. (Applause.)

We are joined by some of the respected scholars involved in this project, including Professor Wilfred McClay. Wilfred, please. Thank you very much. Welcome. (Applause.) Thank you. Dr. Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Peter. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. And Ted Rebarber. Thank you, Ted. (Applause.) Thank you very much, Ted.

Today, I am also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an Executive Order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the “1776 Commission.” (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. It will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding. Think of that — 250 years.

Recently, I also signed an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Today, I am announcing a new name for inclusion. One of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence was a patriot from Delaware. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress was deadlocked during the debate over independence. The delegation from Delaware was divided. Caesar Rodney was called upon to break the tie.

Even though he was suffering from very advanced cancer — he was deathly ill — Rodney rode 80 miles through the night, through a severe thunderstorm, from Dover to Philadelphia to cast his vote for independence.

For nearly a century, a statue of one of Delaware’s most beloved citizens stood in Rodney Square, right in the heart of Wilmington.

But this past June, Caesar Rodney’s statue was ordered removed by the mayor and local politicians as part of a radical purge of America’s founding generation.

Today, because of an order I signed, if you demolish a statue without permission, you immediately get 10 years in prison. (Applause.) And there have been no statues demolished for the last four months, incredibly, since the time I signed that act.

Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered. And a Founding Father’s statue was removed.

Today, America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man, who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves. I am announcing that a statue of Caesar Rodney will be added to the National Garden of American Heroes. (Applause.)

From Washington to Lincoln, from Jefferson to King, America has been home to some of the most incredible people who have ever lived. With the help of everyone here today, the legacy of 1776 will never be erased. Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

We will save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children, and for every generation to come. This is a very important day.

Thank you all once again for being here. Now I will sign the Constitution Day Proclamation. God Bless You. And God Bless America. Thank you very much.

#trump #nationalarchives #libertarian #liberty #freedom #trump2020 #potus45 #potustrump

3 notes · View notes

showdepremiosclub · 4 years

Text

An Appeal to American Workers

Concerning the social and economic status of the United States of America... "...man seems to be in a worse state even than the brutes..." -- Samuel von Pufendorf, "On the Duty of Man and Citizen," Book 1, Chapter 3 Introduction For so long, writers of all ages have made their appeals to kings, to queens, to archbishops, saints and popes. When trying to advance their own interests, men of letters would correspond with dukes and rulers of provinces. By contacting those in power, they were confident that their ideals would be expressed to the people in the most succinct and powerful way. Yet, it has been the trend of Anarchists, regardless of era, to make their appeal not to the rulers, but to the ruled -- not to the presidents or the prime ministers to beg for their mercy, but to the workers of the world's nations, and command them to action. Since we are advocates of a certain sense of justice, since we are the prophets of social doom and resurrection, we believe that the cause of the condition of the world is the ruling class and its minions, their state-sanctioned slavery of Capitalism. And, furthermore, we believe that to plead for mercy from those who casually mock the things that stir us, to plead for mercy would be to offer a begging hand to our executioner. For these reasons and more, Anarchists and Freethinkers make their appeals not to kings or queens, not to "sovereign entities" and their mechanized armies, but to the people themselves, that they might liberate themselves and others. It is in such an attitude that I present this piece... An Appeal to the American Workers. Why Revolt? First, when I am speaking to my fellow brethren, my comrade citizens in the United States of America, I want to say this. At first sight of the Communist and Socialist manifestos, their ideologies, the speeches made by their affiliated parties, when I heard these things for the first time, I was in complete disagreement. The language used by these demagogues of Communism was burdened by economic vocabulary. In some works that would be classified as liberal, I've seen the word "aggregate" used five times in a single sentence. Through these bizarre concepts, these overly technical definitions of a so-called sociological science, these "decline in the wage conditions of proletariat" and "bourgeoise distribution of wealth," through all of these is where we hear the call for Communism. I first want to tell my readership that I am familiar with these speeches, these pamphlets, these books, and I am familiar with the awkward and almost inhuman way that they have dealt with the economic question. I have seen men of Socialism do nothing but reprint manifestos and sloganeer, as though their drone-like actions were about to bring about the greatest state of peace, justice, and equity for mankind ever known. While these socio-economic appeals of Communist and Socialist parties are made to the public, they are often ignored; in a way, they are regarded solely as "preaching to the choir." They use words and phrases that the people are generally unfamiliar with. Their politics are relatively dreary; whenever a new party pops up, its statement of faith seems to be followed a pattern completely uniform with the last party. This is not an attack on those who are unfamiliar with the phrases and vocabulary of Communist theory. Rather, it is an attack on those who are ridiculously stuck with such phrases. To other Communist and Socialist comrades, those who feel that society would be greatly benefited through collective property, I ask this: that these awkward and almost erroneous phrases are abandoned now. Not because they are no longer understood by the common people, but because they were never understood by the common people. People must not be intellectuals that they might be revolutionaries. With that said, I want to say that I wholly and truly believe in the philosophy of Communism. I am an advocate of the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in matters of economics and sociology. In many ways, I divert from the philosophy that they preached. I am also a follower of the words of Mikhail Bakunin, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman -- the late, forgotten Anarchists of yesteryear, whom openly opposed the arguments of Marxian economics. Again, I diverge from their arguments in many ways. I am a follower of the words of Thomas Paine, when speaks of doing justice as man's only duty; I am a follower of the words of Carl Sagan, when his words oppose the claims of religious fanatics; I am a follower of the words of Jean Jacques Rousseau when his words are of the corruptability and weakness of a Republican government -- I am the humble follower of Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. But, in so many cases, I find myself in disagreement. Perhaps it would help my Communist brethren to practice a higher degree of skepticism when reading the works of Marxian economists and other political philosophers. A Revolution -- But Against What? If we are to take an objective and honest look at the situation in the United States today, we will find ourselves looking face to face with some very grim and ugly facts. Many people are losing their jobs to outsourcing. Corporate scandals are becoming a daily occurence. People have lost complete faith in this system that seems to perpetuate unemployment, poverty, and misery. This is not solely my view, but it is the view of the people. More than half of the country does not vote. There can be only one reason for this: people feel that both political parties and their candidates are incapable of redressing the ailments of this dying nation. Underneath the sloganeering of "rugged individualist" philosophers, underneath phrases like "quarterly corporate gains" and "official company accounting procedures," underneath other phrases that serve to aleniate us from the subject, underneath it all, we become more and more dissatisfied with this country. We are a modern country living in a modern world! Yet, when we open our eyes, we still find so much poverty, so much misery, so much homelessness. We find ourselves face to face with an economic system that nobody has tried to improve upon -- an economic system that is essentially the root of these social ills. In so many years, with such great strides in all studies, we feel that men have inherently left one field untouched, that is, the field that deals with how to create a social and economic infrastructure, so as to remove these undesirable elements. We are not moved by self-interest or snobby intellectualism; we are moved by the interest of all of mankind -- it is our interest to eliminate the suffering of the innocent. In a 1997 study by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, for every dollar an employee earned, he made almost six dollars for his employer. [U.S. Census Bureau, 1997 Economic Census, Comparative Statistics, Core Business Stastitics Series, EC97X-C52, issued June 2000.] One dollar of that six earned income goes towards the other expenses, such as replenishing the shelves and electricity. [Business Expenses, 1997 Economic Census, Company Statistic Series, 1997, Issued December 2000, EC97CS-8, US CENSUS BUREAU, U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU.] That means, for every two dollars a Capitalist spends, he is given seven dollars back. The investor makes money because he has money, and for no other reason. He is maintained at a situation in life where more money will do him not much better. And while he is surrounded in elegance, lavishness, and wealth, there are millions of children starving to death in our nation. In 1980, the top 1% of the United States owned more than 25% of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 20% do not even own 1% of all the wealth. [U.S. Treasury, Internal Revenue Service. Quoted from Contemporary Macroeconomics, by Milton H. Spencer, Worth Publishers, Inc., Fourth Edition, page 45.] If these facts alone are not enough to disturb anyone of good conscience, then I do not think anything is capable of disturbing them. I could continue to parade statistics around. I could delve deeper and deeper in to the archives of economic thinktanks, pulling out numbers and equations used to determine the unemployment rate's fluctuation in response to the rate of interest of banks. I could pull up a historical timeline, showing the general decrease of wages in contrast to the general increase of profits. There are at least a million articles that discuss the economic question that I have yet to read; each of them from authors of their own particular background, whether Free-Market Capitalists or Marxian Communists. All of these writers have contributed what discoveries they've made to the intellectual community. They offer their words in defense of the trends or patterns they discover in economic behavior. Some of them are motivated by political causes, whether it's the establishment of Statist Communism or the abolishment of Communist political parties in third world nations. Many of them are motivated by their desire for prestige, to be recognized by the community as men and women of thought -- they figure, that if they can make their words more boring, dull, and formulaic than other authors, they will be recognized as men and women of genius by some university community. Some authors have no interest, except to explore the sociological field, and find out what it is that really moves the economy, to discover what gears and what cogs in society effect what other gears. Yes, I could pull out plenty of statistics and many arguments that these economists have utilized in demonstrating their opinions. But, in this appeal to American workers, I must say what I think: I believe that the average man and woman have enough sense and enough experience to make the decision that the status quo is unsatisfactory. Consider a radical reorganization of the social structure. For this reorganization to have any merit to it, we must start with the problems we observe. So, then, let's consider the most obvious problems. There are men and women whose job it is to hold signs on street corners, many times dressed in costumes, trying to entice people to purchase goods and services. They make very little money, but there are men and women in corporate firms whose task is essentially the same. Marketing and Sales executives are making six-digit salaries by devising new and different methods for convincing the public to want their goods. Their job basically is to convince people that they want and need things that their own wit and intellect wouldn't ever tell them to purchase. On top of these executives, there are the people of the media, the makers of commercials, billboards, radio advertisements, newspaper advertisements, graphic design for corporate logos; some people spend years doing market analysis, so that they can uncover trends in the consumer choices of citizens and workers. At the top, there are executives and corporate officials, making millions of dollars a year, and at their disposal is an army of Walmart greeters, sales associates, clerks, manager assistants, and other professionals -- all of them solely exist to entice people to buy things that they otherwise wouldn't have wanted in the first place. From this point, we find that the purpose of their existence is to subvert, control, and manipulate the general will of the people. Their meaning to life is inimical to that of a free conscience. Those people who work in low-wage jobs, spending most of their lives taking orders from supervisors and being criticized for "not having company" spirit -- I cannot blame them. I cannot blame them at all. If being a Walmart greeter was the only job available, if it was the only thing that could help someone support their family or drug habit or pay rent, then I cannot blame them. But to those corporate executives and company officers, these CEOs who control billions of dollars of the world economy, they are responsible for this situation. They have built up a culture of want, consumption, and poverty. Someone looking at it from an objective viewpoint will say that these people are simply useless, they simply do not contribute to society in any positive way, but that is light view of the situation. Not only do sales and marketing associates fail to contribute to society in any meaningful way, but they are parasites; they are the thieves of intellectual liberty. Their fat paychecks are only provided for by the society which they have leached themselves on to. It is not by noble pursuits and honesty that they make their living; it is by avarice and dishonesty. This is among the first and most notable dilemmas of the Capitalist economy: the advertisement industry. Whether we are looking at corporate executives, or people dressed in chicken suits holding signs on the sidewalk, I think I am making a fair judgment in saying this: these people do not contribute to society in any meaningful or productive way. We see, then, the first common and obvious fault of the Capitalist economy. What is the solution? It's a rather simple and obvious one. Those people who are members of this inhuman industry are to be put to productive work. What does that entail, specifically? Well, those employees who were stripped of their old professions would be put to work in meaningful jobs. In particular, they would start to contribute labor to the economy so as to produce goods and services. That means jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, or transportation and distribution. I consider these fields of the economy to be productive because they contribute in satisfying the interests of consumers. Workers on an assembly line, for instance, are creating products that will be consumed: television sets to be watched, clothing to be worn, computers for hobbyists, CDs and DVDs as entertaining media, tools to help other workers accomplish their jobs, etc., etc.. Members of the agricultural economy are invaluable for one obvious reason: they create the food that feeds all of us. Construction workers produce the buildings that people live and work in; they are simply a different type of manufacturing worker. Transportation and distribution is essential, in getting the products from the site they were produced to the site they will be used at. All of these fields are necessary to a healthy and free society. I do not want my opinion on this matter to be misunderstood or misinterpreted. My contention is not that it should be made a crime for men and women to use their own intellect to change the opinions of others. I think that the law should reflect a general anti-censorship ethic: whether in matters of politics or economics or religion or philosophy, or any field of study that has been subject to witch-hunts and being burned alive, I think that all should have intellectual liberty. You should have the right to private discourse, to let the thoughts in your mind mix and meld with memories and experiences, to be the ultimate judge and jury of your own opinion; it is the right to decide that you enjoy something as much as it is the right to say that you dislike something. You should also always have the right to publish the results of your private discourse, to speak with other members of the community in a way that reflects your thoughts, to try and convert people to your opinion on anything, whether art and culture or politics and society. The Statists, Fascists, and others of the anti-Democratic tribe will spend hours upon hours, lamenting the tragedies that have occured and will occur again if the people have the right to intellectual freedom. Whatever tragedies have occured from liberty of thought, they shrink to almost nothing, when one thinks of the tragedies that have occured from the suppression of liberty of thought. We criticize the advertisement industry solely for the sake that it is counter-productive, it works against the general interest and will of all men and women of good character. It invades communities, turning them in to dry husks, destitute of any real sense of culture and destitute of any real sense of purpose. It has turned art into a perversity, exploiting painters and sculptors, taking their passion and molding it into "Buy One, Get One Free!" There is no excuse, no pardon, that could ever be made for this group. However, when we look at the employment of the distribution economy, we find ourselves looking at the same faults that plagued the advertisement industry. Distribution centers, whether they're stores or malls or shopping centers, all of them seem to operate on the same principles that the advertisement industry acts upon. Such an enormous effort is placed on making the products or services look more appealing, so that the consumer is convinced to purchase such items. It also seems as though these distribution centers are having less and less of specific products. Many popular chain stores are a combination of department store and grocery. It seems that almost every store is selling "impulse items" near the counter, including candy and cheap mini-magazines. These impulse items are in every store, whether it's an office supplies store, a furniture store, or even something as simple as a gift card store. Many grocery stores are also selling cooked and prepared food, ready to eat. In their never-ending quest to boost profits and gain stockholder confidence, stores are expanding the line of products that they sell, not to make their selection complete, but to have more income from sales. Distribution centers in an ideal society would not consist in these elegant settings, with employees who act as greeters or make the store look visually appealing, nor would artists be exploited to create artwork for product packaging. The individuals who fill these positions would be transferred to industry sectors where they can act as productive agents of society. In examining the American and European economy structures, we have here seen the greatest reforms and changes we would enact. That is, the greatest reforms and changes we would enact, if the economy was built to serve the interests of mankind, and not built to serve the interests of private corporations and exploiters of labor. With the abolishment of so many professions, one might think that a massive unemployment might take place. This is not necessarily so. Those who would lose their jobs would be relocated to meaningful parts of the economy. That would mean, that society would produce more goods, at a higher quality, with less hours. Essentially, yearly wages would be doubled and work time would be halved. The happiness and satisfaction with life that men and women have would be increased; that is the basic goal of all this discussion and research. Ultimately, in this fair and ideal economy, workers would be paid not according to suggestions and manual aids from the corporate office. They would be paid according to the value that they create. Instead of the minimum wage which finds itself the standard of many industrial, farming, and service jobs, workers would be paid upwards of $20 to $30 an hour, a number that certainly can be afforded by the economy. The primary reason why such workers are not being paid this right now is remarkably simple: those who are the legal owners of capital (mines, farms, stores, factories) want as much money from their business ventures as possible. That means paying as low as possible so that there is more profit. It is for these reasons, that all members of the Capitalist class (those who own the productive parts of society) are regarded as the thieves of labor, the enemies of the working class, the exploiters of the proletariat, among other phrases used by Leftist groups. Among the most bitter ironies that history has taught us, it is this: workers in the year 1600 worked only ten hours a day to secure their needs. When industrial societies arrose, and factories allowed workers to produce ten times as much as when they worked without factories, people started to work 12 to 18 hours a day, sometimes as much as 20 hours a day. The new economic conditions that came with the industrial revolution allowed the Capitalist class to force people to work for so long, since the members of this class were also the ones who controlled food distribution in society. And today, when man's productive power is at least several hundred times that of the 1600 worker, the average workday is 8 hours -- and that alone was a struggle that cost the lives of many workers, gunned down by thugs hired by corporate entities, just to obtain. It is for these reasons, these observations and experiences in what has always felt like a dying world, that I am a Communist and a Socialist. For the motivation of a better world for myself, my fellow human kin of all nations, and the children of the coming generation, that I hold true to these beliefs. Subversive Tactics for Revolutionaries and Reformers There are countless ways in which a willing person can contribute to the revolution of social and economic relations in our world. If a person becomes interested in social change and political reform, then they only have an entire history of revolution to look to for advice. The existence of today's conservative, for example, can only be excused for those who were considered radical by society's standards several hundred years ago. It was once common to think that a king's absolute authority of life and death over every person was just, that the rule of government can be exerted without the authority of the people, that the general will of the population is inconsequential, that the ruling class needs no excuse. These and a thousand more foul lies were once considered public wisdom by the philosophers of the past age. And before these things were believed, even more cruel and bitter philosophies were preached as religion. Before this, there was no conception of justice, no idea of right or wrong. When men thought of morality, they simply thought of what the men who spoke for god said; when men thought of fairness, they simply thought of what the men of government said. It is true, that as we look back in history, we find eclipses in timelines, where a people were defiant, revolutionary, and bold -- where men and women dared to live by their own means, not by the guidelines of a king or priest. But such societies were small and lasted very shortly. Yet, all of this evidence is clear to all who are interested in changing today's social, economic, and political affairs. If you have this interest, then know this. There is reason to hope that things will change. And this hope is fueled by our understanding of history, our own philosophy, and of how today's society operates. The most popular and well-known of the methods of reform is that of the union. People of a particular trade or business unite together so that they can collectively demand better conditions, through practices like a strike or boycott. The interest of the common labor union is antithetical to every interest of the Capitalist class. The labor union demands higher wages, fewer working hours, better working conditions, fair treatment of workers. These are the things that drive up the costs of the businesses. A corporation, which the sole interest of gaining power and wealth, looks to union activity as the greatest offense; it is a small group of people who have combined their power together, so that they might force oppressive groups to change their behavior. The method of the union is the most peaceful method of social change. The greatest threat its members ever pose to society is the threat to stop working, to start boycotting, and to start picketting. Their goals are not achieved through violence, but by a very gandhi-like style. The effective goals of the union are simply the improvement of the working class's conditions. It has always sought economic reorganization, demanding that nobody can be fired except with very good reason (job security) and demanding that the workers are paid fairly according to their labor. While it is true that these are good and valid causes of any standard labor union, it shouldn't be forgotten that a union can be used as a political tool. Consider a city council that has just been bribed by corporations to remove the living wage law (a law that provides around $15 per hour minimum wage). The working class of the city will be greatly hurt. Their living conditions will start to fall, and in a short while, they will feel that their condition has reached their original position. They would either see the impending blow to their movement coming, and do nothing, lay still, take the suffering the state thinks they deserve. Or, all labor unions would combine together, for an enormous general strike. It must be understood, that products being produced, distributed, and consumed, is the government sanctioned form of slavery. For everything bought or sold, money is given to taxes, to support the state. For every hour you work, money is given to federal taxes, to support the state. For everything owned, money is given as property taxes, to support the state. If everyone, from every union in the city, from the services unions, the administrator unions, the manufacturing unions, the transportation unions, if every union in the city were to go out on strike at the same time, they would inflict massive, irreparable damage to the government. They could use their power as unions to force the government to change its decision, otherwise the entire infrastructure would collapse under this pressure. This is also a worthwhile tactic if one union is having difficulty gaining better conditions for itself, and the unions its federated with could go on strike. They go on strike, to tell their employers, to tell the other CEOs, to listen to their unions and accept some collective bargaining agreement, so that business can proceed as usual and the Capitalist system can continue. It is unfortunate that today's unions fail to see the necessity of a federation of unions and of advocating for political causes that directly effect them. Unionizing labor today is legal. That is something they need to realize. True, the burden of poverty is over their heads; they must work so that they can feed themselves. It is always the habit of the weaker victim to be less assertive, less bold in their attacks of their enemy. But we must unite in order that we can oppose our enemies of Capitalism. We must unite, and we must be strong, in that we can overcome our enemies. And also, while I said it was a largely peaceful effort at social change, there is no doubt that the Capitalists have done to keep it anything but that. Investors hired armed police squads to subdue picketters. The social organization of our society has turned us on ourselves. We are killing and murdering each other for crumbs. All the while, an army of police officers are guarding corporate headquarters all across the United States, while people are suffering from poverty and want. Unemployment is high and the wages are low. We have a very good reason for revolting at the state of things. Another popular effort to gain control of the situation, and create a worker's paradise is to form a political party, and to try and gain as many positions in government as possible during elections. However, it has been this method that has received the most criticisms from the general public. Efforts of the state to achieve a truly Socialist effort has had dismal results: the U.S.S.R., the Dictatorship of Cuba, the murder by the allegedly communist governments of Vietnam and Korea. And then, the efforts of minor socialist parties and international communist tendencies, these efforts have accomplished so little. True, there are some European countries that have started to elect Socialist parties, and to enact Socialist legislation. There are campaigns to reduce the average work day, to give better benefits to workers, to protect the consumers from harmful products, and to pay the workers more. But most Communists agree that they want the economy to be in the control of the people; so too, must the political structure of a society be in the control of the people. For this reason, most Communist and Socialist reformers have taken to the method of control via unions; to employ it to obtain political ends on behalf of the working class is to engage in a practice of Anarchy known as Anarcho-Syndicalism. There is also a popular case against voting based on Anarchist principles. Anarchists often argue that if we refuse to vote, then the whole justification of consent with the government falls apart, and the system will collapse. I can hardly see any justification for this. Less than a third of the population votes anyway. If more than two thirds of a nation is not enough force to gain superiority, then at what point do we become effective? Many Anarchists maintain this position: that to refuse to vote is to make a revolutionary step. I hear their arguments, and I don't quite find the logic of their evidence. I do not see how refusing to vote is doing anything to stop the oppressors from continuing to oppress us. If they find at least one thing sacred, or at least semi-sacred, and they are willing to respect the will of the people in electing a representative of their interests, then why should we shut off this method of social and political change? Why should we villify it, destroy it, and inhibit all of its functions, when it is the only method we are legally allowed and encouraged to change the system? Consider this one scenario. There is an island with twenty people on it. There is a Democratic vote on whether this person is to be hung for his crimes or not. Among those who decide not to vote, they argue, "I do not think the collective should ever be able to vote on the life or death of a commune member, so, I shall not vote, and demonstrate my opinion this way," yet, if the majority votes for the killing, then it's the inaction of the Anarchist that played a great role in the murder. For this reason, and reasons like this, we are apt to believe that we can use voting to change things, whether we are voting on a measure or a proposal, or for a person who seems to be the lesser of two evils (despite the fact that evil is evil). Perhaps some Anarchists will consider by ideals much less Anarchist and much less Libertarian if I support voting to a certain extent. Perhaps they will say that I am a reformer, but not a revolutionary, that I am reformist Libertarian, or some other such terms. I have only called myself an Anarchist because my ideals have been in unison with those of passed history, including Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. I disagreed with them on points, of course, but the basic philosophy remains in tact: elimination of the state, communal ownership of all property, mutual organization of social units, abolishing poverty and all drug prohibition, among so many other efforts to create a better, more lasting peace between men on earth. If this basic philosophy cannot be defined as "Anarchism," then I can see of no other word to fit my arguments. Among many projects of the Anarchists and Communist, there is that project known as a worker colony. A worker colony is a collection of workers, who live and work together in close quarters. They are all assigned housing units and jobs, most of these places catering to industrial or manufacturing jobs. Then they work four to six hours a day, and are given leisure and a suitable pay for the rest of their day. Sir Robert Owen was a philanthropist businessman of the early eighteen hundreds, and created such a society. Instead of the fourteen hour workday, these workers were only required to work eight hours a day. They were given good, high quality food at inexpensive prices and they were given free medical care. The leader of the collective, Robert Owen, was capable of turning a profit with this business venture. In fact, many of these communities were started up by many investors, however, they soon became unfashionable at the sight of rising cost and competitive markets. Many Anarchists of the new era have suggested the creations of such communities, so that people are capable of living as workers and consumers in a society where their happiness is the main end of all productivity. I am not aware of any situation where Anarchists and Communists combined their finances in order to buy land and create such a community, but it is definitely a valuable idea to be considered, even if it's just on a small scale. Finally, there is the most popular and accepted method of spreading Anarchism and bringing about the revolution. That method is propaganda. This can take numerous forms. It can be everything from marches and protests to picketing to leafletting. Personally, I find that leafletting is the most effective way of swaying public opinion against their enemies. A piece of paper briefly outlining our ideals will be something that a person approaches on their own, it is not an argument or a debate, and it allows the person to ingest the ideas at their own speed. It is almost a re-education process. People have to unlearn that social organization should be based upon fear and misery, and have tol earn that all social relationships should be cooperative and fair. Plus, with more people educated and of Anarchist, Marxian, Communist, Socialist, or Libertarian opinions, there will be more people sympathetic to the cause of the unions. There will be fewer people who will work as scabs at a striking business or shop at stores where unions are boycotting. More people will vote for Socialist parties, environmental safe propositions, and Socialist measures. More cities and regions are to obtain a healthy Anarchist and Socialist population. The more people in a city, the more that can contribute to a massive project like a worker colony. The more who are convinced of the Anarchist position, the more who are likely to bring that issue to the eyes of the public, in spray painting across corporate property or marching in line at a protest. With all of these methods, I can hardly see these Anarchists and Communists doing nothing to bring about change. A Free Society: The Appeal for Anarchism I can no doubt expect that many of these ideals are enormously progressive in the eyes of today's American worker. He looks to these principles, these ideas of workers owning the productive forces in society, these revolutionary fundamentals of the workers being paid the wealth they produce, he looks to these, and he might as well be looking in to the future by thousands of the years. He is impressed, but also intimidated, and almost scared of the change. What it would take to change society, he argues, would involve moments of poverty and misery, such great reorganization of the social order, that it must be impossible. And, even if it were possible, it would be necessary that some government should guide it, that some revolutionary vanguard party is necessary to the construction of a new society. Without a large collection of highly armed, highly volatile, highly greedy men, nothing that we seek to change would get changed. It is necessary, in the eyes of these men trained to be hopeless, it is necessary that a government always exist, in order that society can have civil discourse, while the cruel element of mankind is subdued by the police forces and the military barracks. I allude to one incident I uncovered in Portland, Oregon. Fortunately, it is an extremely Leftist town, full of as many Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists, as there are Liberals and Democrats. This has allowed some interesting experiments to come up, since so many people of the same political beliefs are collected together in this one city, and can work together on massive projects. There is one particular cafe which advertises itself as "Worker Owned." It is called Back to Back. In reality, it is owned by the I.W.W., or the Industrial Workers of the World (AKA: "Wobblies"). It just so happens, though, that the people who work there are not the owners, and beyond that, they are 100% volunteers. The only payment they receive is in tips. This is not the realization of the worker's paradise, it is the realization of his worst nightmare. In their vanguardist efforts, the money that is raised with sales should go to two places, in the eyes of the IWW: To other Capitalists, to fund their exploitation of the working class, by helping them sell their products, and to bureaucrats, who can sit around for hours a day arguing with each other over wealth distribution, convinced that they are the essential piece to Proletarian revolution. But, I do not know all the arguments of the IWW. Perhaps, they will use the same language of Corporate America. "In recreating the world, we feel that it is necessary that workers are paid nothing, that they are to live humbly off of charity, while all the wealth in the world is concentrated in the hands of a very small number." We will heard their arguments about cost production, about competition, about inflation. They will speak on the same terms that McDonald's or Walmart would speak, in justifying cost reduction and retail increases. We are Anarchists and Communists. We believe that the Capitalist system must go if there is to be any justice in the economic or social sense; and, above and beyond that, we believe this change in the socio-economic sphere of the world can best be done by our own efforts. So many great tragedies and miseries in the world have been caused by people doing exactly as they are told, by people who act without thought, becoming the slaves to some inhuman entity. We do not need new rulers or more party politics; we need the people to rule for themselves, for each man to be his own master and his own slave. My appeal here, then, for the American people, is an appeal for a Communist economy, as much as it is an appeal for an Anarchist society. The efforts of previous liberation groups has been in a vanguard party, in a despotic government coupled with all capital as public property, these are the greatest of dictatorships. The essential argument behind each argument, that of Anarchism and that of Communism, is the same. The idea of people deserving the wealth they create, and the idea of people living in a democratic society are similar in that both are a demonstration of the common will and desire of the people. They are both based on improving the lot of the majority of people. Besides, Communism cannot be properly carried out unless the most Democratic of conditions exist in society. Look at the Leninist revolution. It was followed and supported by a wide range of social reformers, but the conclusion was the over empowerment of the government, to the point of dictatorship. Lenin held elections once. He lost, and then used his military power to dispose of the winning political candidate. A reign of terror, of secret police, of torture chambers, of a government subverting the natural will of the people to rule themselves. The same can be said of the Castro-led revolution in Cuba. At first, it was a hopeful situation for those who wanted a dramatic change in the social order of the world. But, it was not long before the revolutionaries who sided with Castro quickly turned against him when they found out he chose himself as dictator. Castro violated the will of the people, while parading around like he was its greatest demonstration. So did Lenin. In both of these international cases, it was a revolutionary party that refused to let the people rule themselves. If we are to be successful, we must pay respect to our Socialist brothers, and understand the faults that they made. We must create an Anarchist society, if the Communist economy is ever to be justly employed. I hope that the philosophy, the politics, the economics, and the social views displayed in this essay were enlightening or even heart-warming; I hope I have helped many other workers realize that they are not alone in their opposition of their two greatest enemies, the Capitalists and the government. The first strips him of all his deserved wealth, the second strip him of all freedoms. It is the poverty of slavery, the chains of misery. I hope that the suggested methods for achieving our new world prove helpful, and that the workers of the world are bold and strong enough to try these tactics with me. By uniting, by organizing, we are becoming stronger than the leader of our enemies. Stay strong, and stay linked together.

1 note · View note

janeaustentextposts · 5 years

Note

I saw a quote about how Jane Austen is a white author for white readers and like I get it totally cuz like with the exception of mentioned romani in Emma and a few mentions of the slave trade in Emma and Mansfield Park, it just had me curious as the the roles of colored people back then? I know Jane Austen had some pretty liberal views about race but like with slavery on british soil recently abolished but still going strong in English territories and America, what was the general opinion?

Look, I’ll level with you, I was born and raised in a colonialist nation and as far as I’m aware all my ancestors could be traced to a pretty tight section of northern Europe, so that’s that on that. And Austen is, in many respects, peak Englishness, and of that certain class which often had the foundations of its prosperity in the exploitation of colonized peoples and places. There’s really no escaping that context. The institution of society in which Austen was living and writing was, without a doubt, racist in ways both blatant as well as insidious, and she would have operated on the same benefits of privilege which white, Christian, English-speaking people still do, today.

So the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire by an act of Parliament in 1807; (though slave-trading was merely punishable by a fine at this point which would be a negligible amount to an established slaver, and the crime only became a felony in 1811,) however slavery itself was not abolished until 1833; and the British Empire being the British Empire, I’m not gonna be handing out many backpats for their glacial rate of progress here in unfucking what they fucked. The Navy established the West African Squadron to patrol the west coast of Africa and suppress the trade, and the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1823 in London. It is believed, however, that the slave-trade continued in clandestine operations throughout the Empire for many more decades, and legislation was enacted or updated in a patchwork application which did not result in immediate and joyous liberation for former slaves, and slave-owners were recompensed for their ‘loss’, rather than any effort being made at reparation being made to those who had been enslaved.

I don’t know that I can tell you in a succinct fashion, in a tumblr ask-answer, what The General Opinion was. In theory you could suppose that many proud Britons talked a good game about emancipation and abolishing the slave trade...while continuing to smoke tobacco, eat sugar, and wear cotton sourced from plantations. (Some more ardent abolitionists did make an effort to abstain from the use of these products as a means of protest, but they would be a decided minority.) And one could absolutely be against slavery in principle and still be a ragingly blatant racist supremacist in every other possible respect.

Likely, if asked directly, many people WOULD manage to say something to acknowledge slavery is a dreadful sort of thing, of course; but the more one digs into how the profits of the slave trade and plantations were disseminated through most of British society, it suddenly gets a lot closer to home. How do people react to being reminded of their privilege, today? I know the internet tends to bring out the worst/loudest responses, so the pessimist in me feels like a lot of people would dig in their heels and start acting like the worst thing in the world is to even admit that they have benefited from tacit racism inherent in the system rather than doing any self-reflection, coping with their white guilt without pestering POC to help them do so, and taking steps to redress structural power imbalances by performing acts of allyship and amplifying marginalized voices. But then I like to think that there are people doing just that--quietly, very likely imperfectly--but making the effort to grow, all the same.

The institutions were stronger back then, of course. People--particularly those in power--could get away with much more open excess of wretchedness than we would condone, today. We’re still working to dismantle the Old Boys’ Clubs and cultures of shame and superiority that shut out so many from equal opportunities to flourish and be happy; but perhaps I naively console myself in thinking that there have always been good people around, and their stories don’t seem to get spread half so quickly as the negative ones. Most of us want to recognize humanity in each other, and have it recognized in ourselves.

In Austen’s day I suppose it would be easier to be ignorant, is the problem. For better and for worse, it was probably startlingly easy to cut oneself off from outside opinions, and even news, in a bucolic bubble, surrounded by the same sort of people for generations. Once change begins, though, who’s to say where it ends? Sometimes it’s easy to admit to being wrong, to change one’s mind, and breathtakingly simple to try to do better the next time. Say a south Asian journeyman comes to work in the village and make a home, or his lordship’s son returns home newly married to a black lady--this is your community, and these are your neighbours, and there’s no earthly reason not to show some grace and a warm welcome. (Though some places are so insular that anyone so much as from the next parish over might be viewed as a Stranger.) I won’t pretend it’s a bed of roses and everyone rolled out the welcome mat, but people of colour existed and lived full and varied lives before, during, and after Austen’s time--and unfortunately period dramas and adaptations largely tend to filter out this fact when it comes to casting, even for background actors, giving a false sense of segregation in historical populations which quite frankly was not the case. There have been rich and influential black people living and working in England for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I know I’ve probably missed some good points or made some of mine poorly, but I’m one very underqualified blob of mayonnaise. I’ll recommend Gretchen Gerzina‘s Black England for further reading (sometimes I’ve seen it called Black London, but I believe it’s the same text published under different titles.)

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #Anonymous

141 notes · View notes

adultprivilege · 5 years

Note

Hi, I was wondering why you said that the institution of parenting is structurally abusive? (I think I have a vague notion of why you might have said that, but I'd like to get it cleared up)

so we got two asks with this question, I’ll leave the other one to the other mod because maybe they have a different perspective. This is Mod Isaiah speaking right now, btw.

In my opinion parenthood is structurally abusive because any system of power, without any easy source of retribution for the powerful, is inherently abusive. Even if your parent is actually perfect, but they just don’t give you the freedom to know that you are safe in this society, is abusive. There is still a very real threat that they could abuse you and get away with it, because CPS isn’t gonna do anything, and foster care is terrifying to so many people, and no one in the rest of the world will ever believe the child.

So, a comparison. Relationships have to be consensual in every way. A person should be able to not participate in different actions (if I specify sexual it ruins the metaphor), they should be allowed alone time, they should be trusted by their partner, they definitely shouldn’t be hit, physically harmed in any way, screamed at, or anything else drastically aggressive by their partner, they should be able to maintain contact with everyone else in their life, they should be allowed to leave the relationship entirely, and to encompass all of this they should just have the freedom of choice so long as that choice doesn’t infringe on someone else’s freedom of safety.

In the early Americas, and in a whole lot of countries that I’m too lazy to google, women were considered to be owned by the husband in the same way that children are owned by their parents. That’s why the “ownership” of women was always transferred from their fathers. They weren’t allowed to control their own finances, they didn’t need to consent to sex for it to happen, they would be forced to spend time with their husband, they could be yelled at and screamed at and hit and have no way to escape, they would never be trusted to be capable of handling themselves, I mean a real consequence of sexism is female genital mutilation being used to promote chastity till marriage which still happens in places like Liberia (I’m not sure if it’s legal there but a huge part of the secret society “Sande” is female genital mutilation to promote chastity and refusal to masturbate) they could straight up be refused to see their family ever again, they would have to go through an incredibly difficult court process and prove that their partner was abusive to pre-1950s standards (I don’t actually know the exact year but it was past 1950, Adam Ruins Everything has the whole story) , and we all know they were never given freedom of choice. Of course, their husbands could’ve been generous, radical feminists, suffragists, they could’ve given their wives whatever they wanted. But if you were put back in the 1900s as a female, you would never trust a man enough to marry him, and many cis women decided to dress up as men just to escape the oppression.

Let’s think about another comparison. Slavery. I know any comparison to things like slavery or the holocaust are always really touchy and dangerous to do unoffensively, but I pick this one specifically because it is so drastic. I’m not gonna compare the two in terms of awfulness, because I think it’s impossible to properly measure either in terms of awfulness when our society is still justifying both and influencing us to do the same. And I don’t prefer the idea that someone will guess which I think is worse. It’s awful, and yet at the time that personal slaves were legal in the USA, many people would justify it with “I treat my slaves properly, why should I get rid of my slaves just because someone else is bad to them?” And “now we know” (quotes because this is bullshit and if Donald Trump was given 4 more years I think he could have enough influence to make slavery legal again and liberals would just say he’ll get his karma when he’s out of office, or that this is why we have to vote for Warren, or some bullshit, we don’t actually know that slavery is bad, we just want some moral highground to pretend we’re not racist anymore) that slavery is awful no matter what, because it is literally ownership of a human being. I’ve always wanted to go to the places where slavery was still legal, buy a bunch of slaves (hear me out and don’t misquote me) and then free them. But a huge part of that has to be letting them know that I’ll free them immediately and they don’t have to do anything for me, giving them power over me to make the power balanced, going into some legal process to free them in their home country, and paying for their plane tickets if they wanna come to the US to escape their former owners. And I mean, this has been a huge thing on my “when I’m rich” to do list ever since I found out slavery is still a very real problem in a lot of places. But the fact that Thomas Jefferson thought it’d just be fine to buy slaves and own them in a moral way has been interpreted as extremely offensive at this point.

But children, if you literally have the rights to own them, is totally cool you guys. Totally. I mean it should just be generally understood by now that owning another human is wrong, even if it isn’t for profit. And parenthood, for the most part, is ownership of a child. And it’s straight up the same thing as 1850s marriages. I’ve seen a lot of people say they don’t know anyone who wasn’t spanked or beaten as a child, and frankly I only know a couple people who weren’t abused, and even they seem to have taken some issue with the fact that their parents had a right to them as people. It’s cruel because you are blatantly saying “I have more power legally, politically, socially, and economically than you, I control all of your finances, I have been assigned with the duty to care for you and make sure you own up to your responsibilities, I pretty much own you in terms of legality and society, you have no means of leaving this house unless I force you out, and also I’m not only allowed to but ENCOURAGED to punish you in whatever means possible. Pretty much the only thing I’m not allowed to do without social judgement is sexually abuse you, and even then people either won’t believe you or they’ll think we’re from Alabama and we’re just like that. And if you want to leave, you’ll have to call this organization that is just famous for putting you in an even worse household, and they’ll probably just call me to tell me what you said behind my back and then ditch.” That entire situation sounds like a horror novel to an adult, and we are rooting for the adult to escape. But for a child it’s perfectly fine to us.

So is there a method of changing this? In my opinion yes, but it is much more radical than anyone would like. I think children should be able to leave their parents and find other parents or enter contracts with older children to live with them temporarily or permanently. I think all children should be given financial independence and a salary for going to school, one that mostly is earned through attendance and participation, but could be raised slightly with the right grades. I think at teenage years, maybe 14, people should be given the right to vote, because if the government is so much more active in childrens lives than adult lives, through schooling, parenthood, and mental hospitals, then why do children not get a say in that? The founding fathers believed that people without property shouldn’t vote because they might be biased and vote for whomever will provide them property, and their vote might come out of greed. Adults use the same logic to prevent children from voting, saying they’ll vote for someone who will limit school work, but honestly that’s a very necessary action. We need to cut down on school hours, because 40 hours a week has been proven to be stressful to adults and much more stressful to children, and we need to add those hours to summer, creating 2 week breaks 4 times a year rather than having 3 months that make summer famous for unlearning your entire last school year. We need to have teachers check in with parents regularly to make sure that the children are safe and well cared for, and check in with students to make sure they feel comfortable. We need to fund CPS and create radical reforms to it, I mean don’t get me started with that because I’ve already written an essay for this ask alone. We need to make sure that educating children on abuse and sex is required all across the country, and that we start at younger levels like second grade with some not very emotionally taxing or explicit knowledge of sex or abuse, and then we do another more involved abuse education in maybe seventh grade, and tenth grade. We need rehabilitation for abusers, and therapy for victims if they want it. I’m big on prison abolitionism in favor of restorative/transformative justice combined with rehabilitation, because the current system sends parents into a justice system that ultimately traumatizes people who were already likely abused as a child considering the cycle of abuse, and then sends them back into the world. I don’t think anyone has to take pity for them, abusers are not good people, but prison does not work.

And a big part of this involves abolishing capitalism. personally don’t believe in capitalism, socialism, communism, or anarchism at the moment. I’m still sort of deciding, but I’ve been mostly interested in crafting my own version of all four. I think different sections of the government should incorporate each one, but the system will only fail if you have just one system and no others. In my opinion, whatever system there is, wealth should exist, but there should be a limit to the wealth you can have. You should not be able to own more than five houses, I hope this isn’t too radical for the multibillionaires. There should be a limit to your wealth, but there should also never be such thing as a “living wage.” People should not have to pay to exist, that is cruel and inhumane. College, healthcare, housing, healthy food, basic internet (only because it’s basically a necessity at this point, most people are starting to look for jobs online so how is a person going to survive without this, I mean it’s basically god at this point), and accomodations for disabilities should all be provided for free. Money should only be used for things like pools and going on a hiking trip with a professional Grand Canyon guide. Idk I can’t think of anything right now but stuff that isn’t required just to get someplace in this society. The reason for all this being that the biggest link to abuse is struggling with money. I have seen people, like with my own eyes, being verbally belittled by a parent for not being able to renovate an apartment well enough to rent it out up to the parent’s standards, because they were constantly struggling with money. That family would constantly have fights because the parent would take out financial shit at their children, or have an awful day at their job that was an hour away and come home screaming about meaningless shit. And my own experiences of abuse almost entirely disappeared relatively when my family was able to afford mortgage and we no longer had to save up for my college tuition. Poverty and former trauma are the biggest causes of abuse and we need to address that through the destruction of capitalism.

But yeah I’m gonna let the other mod know to answer the other ask on this because my opinion might not represent them and I take some really radical stances on child rights activism. Thanks for the ask and I’m sorry for the essay!

79 notes · View notes

the-merricatherine · 5 years

Text

Afro-America & The Fourth World

Identity, Status, & Political Program

By Amin Sharif

The test case of civil liberty whereby both blacks and whites in America try to drive back racial discrimination have very little in common in their principles and objectives with the heroic fight of the Angolan people against the detestable Portuguese colonialism. The problems which keep Richard Wright and Langston Hughes on the alert are fundamentally different from those which might confront

Leopold Senghor or Jomo Kenyatta. – Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

The analysis presented above by Fanon, a genuine Third World revolutionary hero, has been one that seems to have been patently ignored by many Black and Left political thinkers for years. Yet, if Fanon’s analysis is correct, the question arises as how to incorporate its meaning into a new political program that will lead to the liberation of, in this case, Afro-America.

Presently, the dominant thinking among an active section of African-American thinkers is that the political conditions of African-Americans and Africans arise from the same nexus. Pan-Africanism and, its child, Afro-centric thought—the ideological foundations of this section—has effectively turned the African-American community’s gaze toward the motherland in a quest for solutions to problems indigenous to the Black Community.

But Fanon’s analysis suggests that on the political plane, at least, Africa may have less to offer than we think. So, perhaps, the time has come to question whether this orientation towards Africa as the primary source for the solution to the problems of Black men and women in America is helpful and should continue or is a hindrance and should be discarded.

If as Fanon contends, the solution to the African-American struggle lies outside of an African context, then where can the solution be found? It is our contention that the solution to the problem of the African-American must come out of a strictly African-American (Fourth World) context. This does not preclude the importance of Africa to the African-American community. But it does mean that we must assess Africa’s importance to our community in a more realistic manner.

Efforts Shoring Up An African Identity

Anyone who has studied the history of the people of African descent in the United States understands the “psychological” and “cultural” need of the Black man and woman to reconnect themselves to Africa. The stripping away of the humanity of African people in America by a process that sought to convert them into chattel was one of the most devastating and unprecedented events in the history of the world. By seizing on a connection with Africa, the Black man and woman threw off the effects of racism and restored to themselves a “version” of the African identity that was lost through slavery.

We have used the term “version” of the African identity to underscore the impossibility of the African American regaining his or her own “original” African identity. No one seriously believes that after many hundred years in America that Black people can simply pick up their African identity where it was left off. For one thing, Africa and African cultures have not existed in a vacuum over the last four centuries. The colonial situation, independence, and internal developments in Africa have to some extent reshaped many of the cultural structures in the motherland.

So what it meant to be African four hundred years ago when Black captives left the shores of their motherland may mean something different today. Still, all things being equal, the development of a positive attitude toward Africa as a whole must be seen as beneficial on the “psychological” level to shoring up the identity to the Black man and woman in America.

Yet what is sometimes lost in the orientation of the Black man and woman toward Africa is an acceptance of their unique situation in America. If we are an African people, we are one that has been formed in the cauldron of a distinctly American form of racism. It is this American form of racism that has also contributed to the structuring of the African American identity.

In fact, it has been our reaction to American racism that has driven the African American constantly to clarify not only his “cultural” but also his “political” status within the American political system. So, in the matter of identity and status, the African-American must answer two questions: Who am I in the context of my cultural heritage and identity? Who am I in the context of my political status within America?

Clarity on these questions is crucial to the progress of all African Americans. Answering one side of the question without answering the other serves only to gives the African-American Community one half of the solution it seeks. Without a solution to the entire problem of identity and political status in America, the African-American will always be fighting with one hand tied behind his or her back.

It is the contention of this article that this is exactly what we are doing. For, in binding ourselves to Africa, we gained something of our identity. But, at the same time, this attachment has over time eroded the development of a political program that is solely for and about African-Americans within the United States. To the consternation of those who are so attached to all things African, it must be announced here, being African is not a political program!!

Africans, whether found at home or abroad, both have been politically reactionary and revolutionary depending on their political program. To speak of oneself as African or African American at this juncture in our history says nothing about what one wants for our people. Our goal must be to seek answers to both the identity side and the political side of our existence in America.

The answer to the first question concerning the cultural heritage and identity of the African American may be more revealing then we realize. As the descendents of African slaves, it is often taken for granted that whatever cultural heritage and identity that the Black man or woman possesses begins in Africa. But African-American cultural heritage and identity does not rest solely upon what is inherited from Africa.

Centuries of living in America have given rise to a myriad of cultural and social forms that have altered the fundamental identity of the once Black slave. From the spiritual to the mundane, the day- to-day experiences of surviving the Middle Passage, Slavery, Jim Crow Segregation and the failed attempt at Integration has created unique responses within the African in America which many commonly refer to, in total, as the Black Experience.

Colored Accommodation & New Negro Assimilation

It is this Black Experience—a synthesis of what the Black man and woman brought with them from Africa, what they re-discovered of Africa, and what they found, used, and developed in America—that is the nexus of the African-American identity. It is only when the interplay of these fundamental aspects of the African-American identity and political status is acknowledged does the complexity of the situation of African in America become apparent.

For example, when there was little or no acknowledgement among the descendants of the America slave trade of an African component to their identity, they often referred to themselves or were referred to by others as “colored” “negro” or as “black.” There are historical, sociological, and political reasons why this was so. The foremost reason that these terms took hold among Black people was that slavery attempted to violently eradicate anything that connected the Black slave with his African identity in a positive sense.

Yet the term “colored” persisted as a designation for the African in America well into the middle decades of the 1900s when slavery had been abolished. Indeed, Booker T. Washington, once the pre-eminent leader of the African-American Community, was said to prefer the term “colored” over any other designation for Africans in America. What is important to recognize is that Washington held that the problems of race and racial identity could be solved within the restrictive confines of segregation.

It may have been that in Washington’s psyche, the term “colored” was a designation that represented the least degree of separation between the emancipated Black slave and white America. That certain Black slaves and ex-slaves, especially those who enjoyed a physical proximity to their slave masters, desired a connection to all things white can be found in E. Franklin Frazier’s groundbreaking work, The Black Bourgeoisie. Franklin cites an observation made by an ex-slave as an example of how closely some slaves associated themselves with their masters:

It was about ten o’clock when the aristocratic slaves began to assemble, dressed in the cast-off finery of their master and mistress, swelling out and putting on airs in imitation of those they were forced to obey from day to day.

House servants were, of course, “the stars” of the party; all eyes were turned to them to see how they conducted [themselves] . . . they are ever regarded as a privileged class; sometimes greatly envied, while others are bitterly hated.

Clearly, we have here an example of the successful “detribalization,” a term used by Franklin, of the Black slave. Franklin’s slave has replaced, or, perhaps a better term would be, “masked” his African persona by ritualistically acting “white.” It is this “masking” of the African persona that Washington seems to prefer when he selects the term “colored” as designation for himself and his race.

But, within the African-American community, the term “colored” was commonly associated with “mulatto,” a designation for a person who is neither wholly black nor wholly white. Though this term was a well recognized racial designation throughout the South, it also stands as metaphor for Washington’s own political philosophy of racial “accommodation” and his personal identity and status within the America of the 1900s.

For, in the decades that saw Jim Crow segregation take hold throughout America, Washington was almost never subjected to its policies. Just as the “aristocratic slaves” mentioned above took on the “airs” of “whiteness” on a psychological level, Washington took on an air of “whiteness” in the political sense when he was spared the indignities of segregation. It is precisely because the term “colored” is so closely associated with this kind of honorary “whiteness” and Washington’s own acquiescence to racism that it began to be vilified by future, more racially-conscious generations of Africans living in America.

The great African-American intellectual, W. E. B. Du Bois, on the other hand, was said to have preferred the term “negro” early on as a designation for Africans in America. Leader of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King also used “Negro.” This racial term has always enjoyed a dubious reputation within the African-American community.

For T. Thomas Fortune, a contemporary and friend of Washington, “negro” was a term of contempt. Malcolm X also vilified the term “negro” in his incendiary speeches of the 1960s. He often refers to African Americans as “so-called negroes.” Malcolm used the term in its most provocative sense implying that this designation for the African in America arose from racist forces outside rather then within the African-American community.

Indeed, by the time of the Harlem Renaissance, the term “negro” had come to be associated with the many racial stereotypes, especially those rooted in the rural South. In a kind of reclamation of the term, the progressive writers and artists of the Renaissance began to define themselves as “new negro [es]”—a term that emerged in part from Alain Locke’s 1925 anthology, The New Negro. The sentiment of the New Negro intellectuals and artists was summed up best by Langston Hughes:

We younger Negro artists, who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If the white people are pleased we are glad. If not their displeasure does not matter . . .

What is interesting about the New Negro sentiment of the Harlem Renaissance is that it was not weighed in favor of an African identity—the influence of the Negritude movement not withstanding. Instead, New Negro sentiment rose from the recognition of the significance of negro “folk culture.” Du Bois eloquently refers to this folk culture as the “epic mood” of Black people. The ambivalence on the part of the New Negro intellectual toward Africa may best be seen in Countee Cullen's famous poem "Heritage":

What is Africa to me:

Copper sun or scarlet sea.

Jungle star or jungle track,

Strong bronzed men, or regal black

Women from whose loins I sprung

When the birds of Eden song?

What is Africa to me? This was not simply a question asked by a New Negro poet. It was also asked often on the streets of Harlem where New Negro identity contended with Garvey’s Pan-African identity. It is well known that many members of the New Negro movement were opposed to Garveyism. I need not recount the sometimes volatile interaction between the two movements. What needs to be emphasized is that even those who argued in favor of a strong African identity had some practical problems to contend with.

In 1926, Waring Cuney won first prize in Opportunity magazine’s poetry contest for his work, "No Images":

She does not know

Her beauty,

She thinks her brown body

Has no glory.

If she could dance

Naked,

Under palm trees

And see her image in the river

She would know.

But there are no palm trees

On the streets,

And dish water gives no images.

Central to Cuney’s work are questions of personal, racial, and even gender identity. Even if his Black woman could conjure up images that speak to her positively of an Africa connection, will that connection change her life in a fundamental way? She still faces the dish water, an apt metaphor used by Cuney for her and every other Black person’s murky identity within white, racist America, and finds that the water is non-reflective. It gives up no sense of identity--“no images.”

New Negro intellectuals would argue that Cuney precisely framed the question of identity with all of its agonizing implications. In what practical sense can the recognition and identification with Africa help us? It may give us “psychological” solace and cultural orientation, the New Negro would argue, but not much more. Africa has value to the African American only when she is viewed through the prism of her own experience in America, these intellectuals would say.

Acknowledgements of this circumstance by Cuney may be why there are no images to be found in the dish water. Any sense of identity or image must be made first from our own interaction with the world we live in, not with the one we wish to occupy. This is why the militancy of the New Negro movement was, almost entirely, rooted in solving the “race problem” within the parameter of the American system.

Black Consciousness & The Third World

The term “negro” was a universally accepted designation for the African American until the end of the Civil Rights Movement. Just as the New Negro movement represented a break with the stereotypes associated with being a “colored” man or woman in America, especially the South. The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) rose in political and artistic opposition to being “negro” in America. For members of the BCM, even the New Negro militancy of folks like Ellison and Wright was tied to an unrealistic assessment of the depth of racism and the power of a non-violent civil rights movement to redeem America.

Like the Harlem Renaissance, the member of the BCM produced their own intellectual thought and artistic response to the times in which they lived. If the New Negro intellectual supported everything from integration, Trotskyism, to soviet-style communism, BCM intellectuals stood in support of cultural and political black nationalism and other radical ideas. If New Negro artistic values were embodied in the works of the Harlem Renaissance, the BCM’s artistic values were embodied in the militant Black Arts Movement (BAM).

For the BCM intellectual being “black” meant self-definition through self-awareness. In a sense, the BCM effectively resolved the dilemma of double consciousness introduced by Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk(1903). The question was not how to exist both as a “negro” and an “American” in their eyes. The question for the BCM was how to tap into the “epic mood” of Black people and use the energy found within it to liberate themselves. The question for the BCM was how to translate Du Bois’ “epic mood” into Black Power—culturally and politically.

That the BCM considered the matter of racial identity as being closely tied to radical political action is evident form their literature and political program. There is nothing new in this since there has always been some connection between racial identity and political struggle among African Americans. When the African in America considered himself to be "colored," the prevailing political program was accommodation with segregation.

When the African considered himself to be a “New Negro,” the political program was militant “integration.” When the Black Consciousness Movement emerged and the Black man and woman revived their version of an African identity, a program of radicalism based on Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism was in play.

By the time the Black Power Movement of the 1970s emerged, the forces of racial identity and political program were so thoroughly fused that to speak of one was to speak of the other. Fragmentation occurred within the black community based upon which racial and political camp one supported. Those who considered themselves African American looked upon the old “negro” leadership as Uncle Toms. The “negro” leadership, in turn, considered youthful African-American radicals as upstarts who lacked patience. In the end, both sides lost out.

And today neither the inheritors of the Integrationist (negro) movement or Black Power Movement (of the African American) enjoy much stature within the African-American community. By the time, Carmichael and Hamilton published their groundbreaking book, Black Power; the African-American community was steeped in charged rhetoric on both sides. It was perhaps to clarify their position to the “negro” leadership, the greater African-American community and even to some extent white America that Kwame Toure aka Stokley Carmichael—a leading spokesman for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as well as a new generation of radical African Americans—collaborated with Charles V. Hamilton, a young brilliant college professor, to produce their insightful work.

Black Power, a term coined by the New Negro intellectual and social realist Richard Wright, was the political embodiment of the Black Consciousness Movement. It came to fruition after the deaths of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X when the smoldering fires of urban black unrest had not been fully extinguished. Black Power sought to translate Black Consciousness into political action.

Although the rhetoric of Black Power advocates was sometimes incendiary and revolutionary, as in the case of Rap Brown and Huey P. Newton, the authors of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Stokley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, did not present it as a revolutionary solution to the problems confronted by Black America. Black Power did not even offer “formulas . . . for ending racism” in the United States. But what Black Power did do was connect “the black liberation struggle to the rest of the world,” especially to Africa. For as Carmichael and Hamilton stated in their book:

Black power means that black people see themselves as a part of a new force, sometimes called the Third World; that we see our struggle closely related to liberation struggles around the world.

This statement is as profound as it is problematic. Its profundity resides in the recognition of Carmichael and Hamilton of an international anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle being waged in Africa, Latin America, and Asia in late 1960s. What is problematic about the statement is that neither author seemed aware that Fanon had already posited that the struggles in the Africa or the greater Third World had little or nothing to do with the problems of Black people in America. This is even more baffling because in the very next paragraph the authors quote extensively from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, the book in which this assertion is made.

Novel Conceptions: Garvey, Elijah & Malcolm

But, in defense of Black Power, it must be recognized that Carmichael and Hamilton were following a line of thought already espoused by two great Black Nationalist thinkers—Garvey and Malcolm X. Both Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X interlaced the problems of Africans in America with those in the motherland. For Garvey, America was seen as only a staging ground for the real struggle between Black Africa and her white European colonial rulers.

The African American, as other African people throughout the Diaspora, would eventually have to participate in the liberation of their African homeland. Garvey put it these terms, “Four hundred million Negroes will redeem Africa or answer to God the reason why.” Logistically, how this was to be done was never quite clear. But Garvey’s appeal lay not in the execution of his political program. The strength of Garveyism lay in the psychological and cultural connection he makes between two disconnected people—the Africa abroad in the United States and the African at home.

Malcolm X amplified and refined Garvey’s message on many levels. As a student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad while in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm severed the psychological connection between, the African in America and white American political and cultural power. Elijah Muhammad, much like Garvey, offered a new worldview that placed “blackness” at the center of his universe. By discarding their family names and replacing them with a generic “X,” Malcolm and other members of the Nation of Islam were emptying themselves of all association with a greater white world. In doing so, they were making themselves ready to undergo a transformation similar to the one experienced by the native intellectual under colonialism.

Fanon described this transformation in The Wretched of the Earth:

It is true that the attitude of the native intellectual sometimes takes on the aspect of a cult or a religion . . . In order to assure his salvation and to escape the white man’s culture the native feels the need to turn backwards toward his unknown roots . . .

It was precisely because Malcolm had been fortified against white racism by Elijah Muhammad’s teachings that he was made ready to accept new social and political ideas. Malcolm, like all converts to the Nation of Islam, was steeped in Elijah Muhammad’s mythology that elevated the Black man to a position of superiority over of the white. The Black man was, according to this mythology, the “original” man, vice-ruler of the universe.

The white man was, on the other hand, the result of a perverse experiment, a being whose physical parts were taken from lower life forms and stitched together like Shelly’s monster. For the Negro of the middle decades of the 1900s, these revelations must have been as startling as the discovery for the Church that the sun and not the earth was the center of our solar system. Although, Elijah Muhammad referred to the Black man incorrectly as "Asiatic," the inference was still the same—the divinity of the (Black) non-white man and the lower status of the white.

As Malcolm progressed in political understanding and eventually left the Nation of Islam, Black Nationalism and Africa became more and more the centerpiece of his political philosophy. By the time Malcolm gave his famous speech, "The Ballot or the Bullet" in 1964, he had fully appropriated an African-American identity for himself and was encouraging other “negroes” to adopt this identity:

Right now, in this country, you and I, 22 million African Americans—that’s what we are—Africans who are in America. You’re nothing but Africans. Nothing but Africans. In fact, you’d get further calling yourself African instead of Negro.

When Malcolm gives his speech on "The Black Revolution" on April 8, 1964 at a meeting sponsored by the socialist Militant Labor Forum, he does not only continue to speak of himself as an African-American. But, he has also begun to frame the Black struggle and the tactics used to suppress it in anti-colonial terms:

So America’s strategy is the same strategy as that which was used in the past by colonial powers: divide and conquer. She plays one Negro leader against the other. She plays one Negro organization against the other.

In July of 1964, Malcolm X found himself making an historic address to the Organization of African Unity on behalf of his newly established Organization of Afro-American Unity. This address given before the “African heads of states” is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it marked a successful effort by Malcolm to internationalize the plight of Black Americans. Secondly, it showed that Malcolm had turned to Africa and her leaders—not the white American power structure—to assist in the amelioration of racism in America.

Even the choice of a name for his organization was no more than an attempt to build a political apparatus that paralleled the one built the by African leaders in their fight against a newly emerging neo-colonialism. And, he says as much in his speech:

Your excellencies:

The Organization of Afro-American Unity has sent me to attend this historic African summit conference as an observer to represent the interest of 22 million African Americans whose human rights are being violated daily by the racism of American imperialists.

The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OOAAU) has been formed by a cross section of America’s African-American community, and is patterned after the letter and spirit of the Organization of African Unity.

Malcolm continued in making the case that a link existed between the African and the African-American on this occasion:

Since the 22 million of us were originally Africans, who are now in America not by choice but only by a cruel accident in our history, we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems.

There is nothing in the history of Black struggle that can compare with Malcolm’s "An Appeal to African Heads of State." While it may lack the emotional impact of Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, it is, in every other respect, more far reaching and politically sophisticated. Indeed, the two speeches stand as wonderful counterpoint to each other. Each man is at his best and fully in his element when the speeches are given.

Martin is a commanding presence as he stands at the head of hundreds of thousands of African Americans in the great mall that stretches magnificently before the Washington Monument. Malcolm has gone literally back to the origin of the Black man—Africa—and stands before heads of state that represent the aspirations of millions upon millions of Africans. Each man makes his appeal for a solution to the exact same problem—the oppression of 22 million African—Americans.

Each man is assassinated long before the liberation of the African American can ever be accomplished.

Black Power: Afro-America as Colony

The authors of Black Power were, of course, master students of Malcolm X and Dr. King. They had absorbed each man’s teaching and if Black Power is anything it is a synthesis of their political philosophies. But anyone who reads Black Power today can readily see that it is tilted in favor of Malcolm X’s pro-Africa, anti-colonial leanings.

So enraptured were Carmichael and Hamilton with Malcolm’s anti-colonial ideology that they openly defined Afro-America as a colony of a greater white America within the pages of their book. Carmichael and Hamilton insisted that because Afro-America was a colony, its struggle had no American context. Or as they put it:

. . . there is no “American dilemma” [concerning race in America] because black people in this country form a colony, and it is not in the interest of the colonial power to liberate them.

Carmichael and Hamilton then go on to say:

Black people are legal citizens of the United States with, for the most part, the same legal rights as other citizens. Yet they stand as colonial subjects in relation to the white society. Thus institutional racism has another name: colonialism.

This is quite a feat. In the space of a few sentences, Carmichael and Hamilton have transformed the entire history of Black struggle from one that is based on obtaining democratic rights for African Americans within America to one which stands entirely outside of an American context. But almost as soon as they make their assertion concerning colonialism, they begin to backtrack from it. They begin by declaring that their “analogy is not perfect,” because as they point out themselves:

One normally associates a colony with land and people subjected to, and physically separated from the “Mother Country.”

Then, they cite the following as justification for their faulty analogy:

. . . in South Africa and Rhodesia, black and white inhabit the same land—with blacks subordinated to the whites just as in the English, French . . . colonies. It is the objective relationship which counts, not rhetoric (such as constitutions articulating constitutional rights) or geography.

What is fascinating about Carmichael and Hamilton’s argument is that they are making their case for Black people being a colony based almost entirely on exceptions to what most political theorists would consider the classical colonial situation. This political analysis is not due to any lack of understanding of what “classic colonialism" is on their part. As they point out:

Under classic colonialism, the colony is a source of cheaply produced raw material . . . which the “Mother Country” then processes into finished goods.

But after acknowledging this classical and universally accepted definition of colonialism, Carmichael and Hamilton state that:

The black communities of the United States do not export anything [to the Mother Country] except human labor.

One must ask at this point if Carmichael and Hamilton really believed that Black people constitute a colony at all. Perhaps fearing that their readers may be asking the same question, they glibly declare that the exceptions they cite to colonialism do not matter in the case of Black America. In the end, Carmichael and Hamilton insist the “differentiations” made in their definition to classical colonialism are nothing more than technicalities. But what we have here is more than just a series of technical violations of the classical definition of colonialism. That is, if classic colonialism is characterized as an:

Association with land and people subjected to, and physically separated from the Mother Country.

Cheaply produced raw material that is then processed into raw goods.

Solving the Colonial Question

What is apparent is that in making their case Carmichael and Hamilton have trimmed the foot to fit the shoe, as it were. It is evident that they are suffering from an over identification with the Third World colonial situation in the writing of Black Power. This Third World over identification is born of an emphasis on Africa as espoused by Garvey, Malcolm X, and the Pan-Africanist movement that grew up around Malcolm after his death.

The result of this over-identification with Africa, in the case of Black Power, is the misreading of the political situation of the African American within America. Carmichael and Hamilton’s mislabeling of Afro-America as a colony is based on a simplistic formula: Africans in Africa are being colonized. We are Africans. Therefore, we too are colonized. The flaw in this formula can be immediately and easily recognized. It simply does not take into account that we are talking about Africans who exist under two different political circumstances:

The first set of Africans exists on their own land, possesses their own language, history, and culture. Their fight is to end the physical occupation of their land. They are subjected to all the conditions of colonialism without ambiguity. If they are successful, they will throw the occupiers out and have their land back once again.

The second set of Africans also exists within a political system of exploitation. They have never possessed the land that they occupy. If they are successful in their struggle, they will be considered full citizens of the country that has historically exploited and rejected them. In other words, the first set of Africans are fighting to rid their country of an occupying force. While the second set of Africans are fighting to extend the right of citizenship to themselves and their prosperity.

Of course, we can see all this now with twenty-twenty hindsight. Fortunately for Carmichael and Hamilton, this mislabeling of Afro-America as a colony does not, otherwise, damage the thrust of their book. Indeed, Black Power still stands today as one of the masterpieces of political literature produced at the end of a turbulent period in American history. But having said this, we must admit that the mislabeling of Afro-America as a colony was a glaring mistake that had many unintended consequences.

Defining the The Fourth World

But, if African-Americans are not a colony within America, what are they? What is their political status in America?

It is our contention that not only Africans, Latinos, Hispanics and Asians in America but millions upon millions of second and third generation Africans, Arabs, and Asians throughout Europe constitute the Fourth World. But to answer what the Fourth World is one must understand what constitutes the other three (3) worlds:

The First World has been defined as the economically advanced countries of Europe (and their stepchild America.) The First World is commonly called the West so that it will never be confused with the old socialist countries of the Soviet Union.

The Second World was Soviet Union and her satellites before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, Russia has been stripped of her socialistic character and is struggling to hold on to her political and territorial integrity. Many believe that the Second World is a thing of the past having been crushed in the struggle with First World forces.

The Third World is the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These countries have and continue to be locked in a fight with First World forces over the allocation of their resources. Some are reactionary. Others are progressive. Some, as in the case of Cuba and Venezuela, are even revolutionary.

The Fourth World in made up of those descendants of Third World people who were brought to the First World—America or Europe—as a source of cheap labor. Whether their appearance within the West was forced as in the case of the African slave or a result fleeing the poor economic conditions in their own countries, the Fourth World is locked in a struggle within the First World for democratic rights.

The Fourth World constitutes the elements within the West that have gone, if we may use a physiological metaphor, undigested by the political system. Integration, as in the case of America, or assimilation, as in the case of Europe have dismally failed to bring Fourth World people the equality that the West extends to all its (white) American and European citizens. The plight of thousands of abandoned Blacks in New Orleans gives lie to the idea that racism is dead in America. Just as the riots by courageous Fourth Worldyouth—Africans and Arabs—in the ghettoes surrounding the urban areas of France give lie to the ideas of assimilation within Europe.

The Fourth World people are not the colonial subjects of the First World!

As in the case of the descents of African slaves in America, they, in many circumstances, have been born, raised, and are citizens of the First World, at least in theory. The bar to real citizenship for Fourth World people within the First World is primarily an abiding racism that forces racial, cultural, political and economic oppression on them.

These circumstances make it clear that Fourth World people can only resolve the matter of their citizenship within the First World by ending First World racism and economic exploitation. And this can only be accomplished by a struggle for democratic rights conducted within the First World! This process is fundamentally the same for the Arab in Paris as it is for the African American in New Orleans. We are all in the belly of the beast. We all share the same enemy.

By the end of the 1980’s, the power of the Black Consciousness Movement was waning. Radical and revolutionary organizations such as SNCC and the Black Panther Party had been successfully crushed by American fascist tactics. There was considerable white backlash against any further Black political progress. It was at this time that the radical political agenda of the sixties and seventies was severed from the Black Consciousness Movement.

The result was that African-American identity which was the psychological sanctuary of African-American radicalism was appropriated by politically conservative forces. Thus, being African American no longer meant opposition to oppression. To be African American under these conservative conditions meant quite the opposite; it meant finding the best way to serve one’s personal interest rather than the collective interests of the race.

What we have today in the United States is a kind of cottage industry of Africanism crafted by the conservative African-American forces that are mainly lodged within the middle class. Radical African-American professors on college campuses have been replaced by apolitical teachers and department heads such as Skip Gates.

These professors and Department heads have no compassion for the Black poor or the Black working class and more importantly see no need to oppose the American power structure. They, and many members of the current political leadership of Afro-America, are what Fanon refers to as the “class of affranchised slaves” of the American political system. As such, they stand unqualified to lead the masses of African-American Fourth World people within the borders of the United States.

In addition to the growing conservatism among African-American leadership in the United States, Africa no longer provides African-American radicalism with the inspiration that it did when Malcolm X was alive. Anti-colonial struggles produced many revolutionary nationalist and socialist leaders who became heads of nation. These leaders, in turn, inspired young African Americans to examine these revolutionary examples in light of the American situation.

Today, many African nations are awash in tribal disputes—many are the consequences of neo-colonialism—which have stifled Africa’s development. But corrupt political leadership, military coups have also given rise to the idea that the African abroad is not component to manage his own affairs of state. The bottom line is that the African American is more likely to receive more bad news about Africa than good. And, under these conditions, it is baffling why anyone would turn to the motherland for solutions to problems of the African American in the United States when she cannot now solve many of her own problems.

If Afro-America is to survive then African-American identity must be again tied to a program of radical action. It is only when being African American means being in opposition to racism and economic exploitation that the frontier of progress can be pushed forward. But to tie the African-American identity to a radical platform, we must be ready to confront both white racism and African-American conservatism. There can be no united front with our enemies whether they reside inside or outside of Afro-America.

As Fourth World consciousness within the African-American community takes hold, we will find that the forces most interested in advancing a radical political program will be the African-American working class and her allies among the underclass—those suffering from long-term unemployment. Conversely, we will find our enemies as those political forces who either actively support our oppression or turn a blind eye to it. While it may take years to fully develop a The Fourth World political program, there are some fundamental tenets that must be established in any progressive program:

Work for all Fourth World people in the United States and a living wage for that work.

An end to institutional racism that bars Fourth World people from living lives of dignity.

Education for our children. This means an end to the under-funding of pre-dominantly Fourth World school systems and colleges.

An end to sexism that keeps Fourth World women locked into poverty. We want a universal child care system for all Fourth World children that include free childcare, pre-school, healthcare, and nutrition programs.

An end to “the cradle to prison” policies of the United States government that condemn Fourth World men to a future of incarceration. We want rehabilitation for addictions, for training and work programs for all of those held within the local, state, and federal penal systems. We want an end to the indiscriminate use of the death penalty against men of color.

The right of U. S. citizenship extended to every Fourth World child born in America whether his or her parents are illegal or legal aliens.

An end to the wars and the machinations of the United States against Third World countries. We want reparations paid to all Third World countries by the West for centuries of economic rape as well as immediate debt-forgiveness.

Full and unconditional citizenship granted to all Fourth World people in the United States, Canada, and Europe if they so desire it—without restrictions on their culture, religion or political status.

These are only starting points for a political program for African-American members of the Fourth World in the United States. But with them, we can move forward to form Fourth World organizations and eventually a The Fourth World party. But we can not even form a Fourth World organization within the African-American community if we can not tie our African-American identity to a program of radical change. Our cause is just but even just causes perish if they can not find fertile ground.

The fertile ground of our cause is the African-American working class—the most exploited section of the American working class. If a Fourth World organizations can take root among the African-American working class then our cause will have a chance. Power to the The Fourth World!!

Amin Sharif Nov. 29, 2005

posted 4 January 2006

1 note · View note

quakerjoe · 6 years

Link

I thought white people were evil. I was wrong.

Whenever anyone mentions the historical atrocity of chattel slavery, white people will emerge from the dark crevices of humanity to gnaw away at the assertion like roaches on a discarded Cheeto. They will explain how most white people didn’t own slaves. They will offer a convoluted explanation about the Confederacy and Southern heritage. They will introduce the concept of “presentism”—the idea that we shouldn’t judge the actions of people in the past using modern-day standards—as if the white people of the past couldn’t quite grasp the idea of inhumanity and brutality until 1861.

Everyone knew that slavery was evil. Everyone knew that Jim Crow was evil. Everyone knew that lynching was evil. Everyone knows that any kind of injustice or inequality is evil. These things persist because most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate them.

And most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate inequality and injustice because they usually benefit in some small way. The Southern economy was built on evil slavery. Jim Crow laws maintained a national order with white people firmly planted atop the social hierarchy. Systematic injustice keeps black people in their place, but it also comforts white people to know that the big black bogeymen are being kept behind bars.

Inequality and racism exist not because of evil but because the unaffected majority put their interests above all others, and their inaction allows inequality to flourish. That is why I believe that silence in the presence of injustice is as bad as injustice itself. White people who are quiet about racism might not plant the seed, but their silence is sunlight.

Many of those people don’t speak out because they fear alienation more than they hate racism. For them, the fear of having someone furrow their brow in their direction outweighs their hatred of sending children to an underfunded school knowing that they don’t have an equal chance at success because of the color of their skin.

They know the reality of disproportionate police brutality, but they don’t have to worry about their children being shot in the face. Their kids receive good educations. Their kids can wear hoodies whenever they please. Little Amber and Connor’s résumés don’t get tossed in the trash because of their black-sounding names. Their children’s futures are determined only by work ethic and ability. Therefore, they stay silent on the sidelines.

That’s not evil.

That is cowardice.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON (MAYBE)

On Thursday, while visiting San Antonio, I was approached by a gentleman who heard my name and wanted to know if I was the Michael Harriot from The Root. He said that he was a paralegal who works with one of the noted immigration attorneys who were all over the news that day (I don’t know which one because I had been traveling and ... Crown Royal). He began to explain how the Trump administration was literally putting children in concentration camps.

Hold up ... before that previous sentence causes Caucasian heads to explode, allow me to offer this definition from Dictionary.com:

Now back to our previous conversation.

Just before he shook my hand and said it was nice meeting me, he explained that it was entirely possible that those children might never see their parents again. Then he said something that I still cannot erase from my brain. He paused, his hand still gripping mine, and looked past me as if he were recalling something, and said, “This is some Gestapo shit, man.”

I know that sentence gave liberals heart palpitations. There is always pushback anytime someone compares anything or anyone to the führer. Even though there is a literal Nazi movement rising in this country, Hitler is the third rail of every conversation, no matter how apt the comparison.

Despite the similarities between 1933 Germany and 2018 America (a rise in nationalism, a government-sponsored ethnic-cleansing movement, a racist strongman in power, that whole concentration camp thing ... ), the most obvious parallel between the Third Reich and the Trump administration is the willing silence of the majority.

Trump chief of staff John Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and many others refuse to publicly stand up to this insane administration even though they disagree with the policies. Ryan would rather quit. Kelly has reportedly given up. Sanders is reportedly leaving the White House. But none have publicly broken up with Donald Trump.

But it is not just the politicians in the Republican Party who are afraid to speak out against their base; the spineless cowardice of the Democrats has also become increasingly apparent. We expect Republicans to stand with their fearless leader and maintain their grip on power, but Democrats have been so silent that Rep. Maxine Waters’ defiance makes her look like a crazy woman in a tinfoil hat by comparison.

A CBS survey revealed that most Americans disagree with Trump’s “both sides” equivocation regarding the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year. According to a CNN/ORC poll, a majority of Americans opposed the white-nationalist-inspired travel ban. Two-thirds of Americans say that separating children from their parents at the border is unacceptable, according to a CBS poll.

Still, most white people won’t do shit.

The crisis at the border is the latest addition to a long list of instances when white people have chosen silence over what is right. Most of the white people who supported civil and voting rights still did not march, boycott or sit in. The white people who shed tears over police videos won’t attend a Black Lives Matter meeting.

Cowards. All of them.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

—DESMOND TUTU

At least once a week, I will receive an email from a well-meaning white person who wants to know what they can do to fight injustice and inequality. The answer to that is simple. Whenever and wherever you spot racism or inequality, say something. Do something.

Every. Single. Time.

If a white person spoke up every time a fellow Caucasian used the word “nigger” in the safe space of whiteness, they would stop doing it. If a white person advocated for diversity and equality behind the closed doors of power, where black faces are seldom present, people in power wouldn’t dismiss the reality of the tilted playing field.

And maybe I should go back and add the word “some” before every mention of “white people” in this article because I’d bet every penny I have that at least one white person with good intentions is reading this while murmuring, “Not all white people ... ”

Which is exactly my point.

“Some” is not enough.

Some white people will speak out sometimes, just like some fish can fly and somebears can ride bicycles. But if a biologist were lecturing on the mobility of aquatic animals or grizzlies, it would be idiotic to interrupt with the rare cases of flying fish or bears that ride Huffys.

Fish swim. Bears walk.

And white people are cowards.

“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

—LILY TOMLIN

There is a quote in the Holocaust Museum by Martin Niemöller, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for speaking out against Adolf Hitler. The quote reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Initially, Niemöller supported the Nazi Party for years because he “felt that reparations, democracy, and foreign influence” had damaged his country and “believed that Germany needed a strong leader to promote national unity and honor.”

Sound familiar?

When they came for black people, white people, like Neimöller, did nothing because they were not black. When they came for the Muslims, white people did not speak out because they were not Muslims. When they came for the immigrants, white people remained quiet because they were not immigrants.

The most disheartening part of all this is that black people and other people of color alone cannot abolish discrimination and hate. It is a problem created by white America and maintained by the silence of the majority. Every form of inequality would disappear by next Friday if every white person in America used his or her privilege to eliminate it.

It is useless to speculate on the exact reasons why they don’t. Sure, some of them are racists who benefit from the current social order. But many are just unmotivated because they don’t want to upset the apple cart. They will weep at the sight of children being ripped from their parents’ arms and shipped to internment camps. They will say Philando Castile’s death was a cruel injustice. They will tell you they “have a good heart.”

But they will only whisper these feelings? Who gives a fuck about hearts when their mouths are quiet and their hands are idle?

Republicans who disagree with the Trump administration remain silent. Instead of screaming at the top of their lungs, Democrats are calmly suggesting the same electoral solution that put Trump in power in the first place. Moderate whites say nothing behind closed doors. White women still have not confronted the 53 percent of their population who supported Trump.

And that is why racism persists. That is how Trump maintains his power. Injustice is evil. The cowardice of silence perpetuates injustice, and anything that perpetuates evil is, by definition, also evil.

Therefore, silence is evil.

As Leonardo da Vinci once said (I could not find the exact source. I think he said it when he painted the Mona Lisa, fought injustice as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or starred in Inception): “He who does not oppose evil commands it to be done.”

This is some Gestapo shit.

Until all white people do and say something, people in power will always be able to point to the silent majority and say that no one cares about racism or inequality. Ultimately, whiteness affords them the right to remain silent.

I thought white people were evil.

I was right.

- Michael Harriot

28 notes · View notes

saskhal · 5 years

Text

Understanding how racism works

Dear Sara Chavez,

I do agree with you that we have yet to see this dream come true. I also believe that we can one day make it happen and live in a world where the idea of race no longer exists. Notice how I said the idea of race. This is because long ago during the colonial times of the Americas race had not been a real thing for people to use and describe people as. People identified with their nationality. For example, English, Spanish, or Shawnee instead of white or native American. I don’t believe racism is inherent because there was no race. and if it was inherent from a primitive time then wouldn’t people look similar while they could not travel to a faraway place like we can now? I would suggest that race started around the time of Thomas Jefferson because he was one of the first people to address it in a way that suggested a racial hierarchy when he wrote how blacks were distinct either originally or over time and became inferior to whites (Golash-Boza, 2018). Although in history the terms white and black had been used to describe people of another ethnicity, it was never used in such a way that was degrading to a person even an enemy. Color of skin had not been used as a category of people in this way.

But the next step is to understand how this idea gets passed on socially if it really isn’t inherent. If I am not born racist, then how come when I look at someone and assume part of their character based on how they look? This process is called socialization. It is a method to create culture and values as well as public order. Things to look for in socialization is our peers, family, media, and schooling. Since we both like psychology, there was a study in Texas to see if children were born with trait that naturally separated themselves by race when interacting with each other. “Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further—believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do” (Bronson, 2009). The bias was fund at age six. This means before that children do not think this way. But it is not about who is good, it is about essentialism and what you look like means you have these set of traits or in this case of the study things you enjoy. This is definitely shown in pop culture when you see people of the same looks doing the same activities which further reinforces this idea of race to the next generation.

Now that we can begin to say that racism is not inherent, I want to also point out that even people who are not racist can be engaged in racist ideas. As Americans, we understand that overt racism is bad, and we like to say hey that was racist, or this person is bad. But when we point out individuals it hides attention to where racism still lies today. There are many policies set by our institutions that have racist consequences and over time and by many different institutions we see a pattern of structural racism that keep marginalized people under oppression even after most of our county sees racism as a bad thing. But we ignore our system by only pointing out individuals, punishing them, and never questioning the system that made it possible for a racist idea. For a brief example, we justified slavery with race. Then slavery was abolished so instead there was sharecropping which was like slavery because white people still owned their property and it was almost impossible for blacks to pay off the plantation owners. In modern day we have continued this chain of discrimination and kept black people at a disproportional rate of poverty and harsher prison sentences. And if one person were truly not racist it would not make sense to suggest that black people are just lazy, so they are poor or that black people are just really bad and do more crime. I am only use one racial example, but it is easier to understand how the discrimination works that way.

I would say that children might be able to learn certain things better than adults such as language, but they learn the same as adults such as how we are socialized through the media. Adults learn from media the same way children do by looking at interactions. We can think about a long process of ideology and control of people. I am talking about hegemony, the process where there is a dominant control of a whole group of people through knowledge and beliefs by consent and not by force, and it serves for a group hierarchy. With this process we can notice how people are portrayed similarly so that everyone in this control will begin to create bias from the information they are given. We can see on the news many instances of terrorist and movies about people in the middle east, but for white Americans who commit mass shootings they are not terrorist but instead mentally ill. Or on the other hand it can be what is called enlightened racism that makes people think a poor person of color can do better if they tried hard like on the shows we watch (Golash-Boza, 2018). If a black person became the president that means anyone can, unless you look at his history and all the privileges he had, it is unrealistic to think someone from a poor family and little city resources could achieve this although it may be possible it is not likely in our current system.

Structural racism can work through the dominant ideology of the United States, color-blindness. Color-blind racism has four main frames. They are abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural, and minimization of race (Bonilla-Silva). If someone is color-blind it means they do not see race and just see everyone as equal, which seems like a good idea, however it lets them ignore that racism exists and they can justify discrimination and marginalization based off the four frames instead of calling it racism. With abstract liberalism we can argue for a policy to not have racial words and disagree for any policies to give “extra” to marginalized people. Naturalization racism is saying more of inherent rationalization of why people of one race are mistreated, such as they just feel more comfortable in this group and people naturally separate themselves. Under cultural racism we can say a group of people often make decisions that lead them into poverty without thinking of how the system and current political policies make it hard for that group of people to pursue a better economic path. The last frame means that when we see an example of racism (such as a news report), which is often individualized, a privileged person can agree that is bad but follow with a “but that doesn’t happen all the time” or “it could be anyone. Why do they point out race?”. With this information I would like for you to open your mind like you said. People can open their minds and change, but the change is not necessarily for the good. Instead of basing arguments on individuals being closed minded I would say that many people are open minded, but the culture they are surrounded by teaches them that being a good person means there is no racism. But we both realize that racism still exists.

Humans do seem to fear change, don’t they? We have changed a lot, but racism has also changed and that is why we still face it today. This can be explained through racial formation. Once institutions and groups challenge what we collectively know, we face change. But once we fix our problem a new stereotype is made and is socialized. It looks to me like a never-ending cycle, but if we acknowledge it and stop hiding racial ideas in our policies, we may be able to end the cycle of racial formation. I hope that by giving you a sociological perspective that I have helped you better understand how racism exists. I know you are willing to learn, and I hope you can find a way to teach others to be more aware of racism and how it affects each of us. I have hope that once we can understand and accept what is currently wrong that we can work to fix it instead of changing it to match a political or economic agenda.

#writing #letter #racisim #university of washington #love #sociology #change #news

1 note · View note

thegiftedoneishere · 6 years

Link

I thought white people were evil. I was wrong.

Everyone knew that slavery was evil.

Everyone knew that Jim Crow was evil.

Everyone knew that lynching was evil.

Everyone knows that any kind of injustice or inequality is evil. These things persist because most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate them.

That’s not evil.

That is cowardice.

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON (MAYBE)

Hold up ... before that previous sentence causes Caucasian heads to explode, allow me to offer this definition from Dictionary.com:

Concentration Camp: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.

Now back to our previous conversation.

Still, most white people won’t do shit.

Cowards. All of them.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

—DESMOND TUTU

Every. Single. Time.

Which is exactly my point.

“Some” is not enough.

Fish swim. Bears walk.

And white people are cowards.

“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

—LILY TOMLIN

There is a quote in the Holocaust Museum by Martin Niemöller, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for speaking out against Adolf Hitler. The quote reads:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Sound familiar?

But they will only whisper these feelings? Who gives a fuck about hearts when their mouths are quiet and their hands are idle?

Therefore, silence is evil.

This is some Gestapo shit.

I thought white people were evil.

I was right.

#the root #excellent article #truth

6 notes · View notes

thefederalistfreestyle · 6 years

Photo

Hamilton: how Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical rewrote the story of America (New Statesman):

[. . .] Because of the success of Hamilton – it has been sold out on Broadway since August 2015, won 11 Tony Awards and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and is on tour in Chicago and Los Angeles – there is now an industry devoted to uncovering and explaining its references. Yet the sheer ebullience of the soundscape is not enough to explain why it became a hit. To understand that, we need to understand the scope of its ambition, which is nothing less than giving America a new origin story. “Every generation rewrites the founders in their own image,” says Nancy Isenberg, a professor of history at Louisiana State University and the author of a biography of Aaron Burr. “He [Miranda] rewrote the founders in the image of Obama, for the age of Obama.”

In doing so, Miranda created a fan base that mirrors the “Obama coalition” of Democrat voters: college-educated coastal liberals and mid-to-low-income minorities. (When the musical first hit Broadway in 2015, some tickets went for thousands of dollars; others were sold cheaply in a daily street lottery or given away to local schoolchildren.) He also gave his audiences another gift. Just as Obama did in his 2008 campaign, Hamilton’s post-racial view of history offers Americans absolution from the original sin of their country’s birth – slavery. It rescues the idea of the US from its tainted origins.

[. . .]

There is, of course, a great theatrical tradition of “patriotic myth-making”, and it explains another adjective that is frequently applied to Hamilton: Shakespearean. England’s national playwright was instrumental in smearing Richard III as a hunchbacked child-killer, portraying the French as our natural enemies and turning the villainous Banquo of Holinshed’s Chronicles into the noble figure claimed as an ancestor by the Stuarts, and therefore Shakespeare’s patron James VI and I.

James Shapiro, a professor of English literature at Columbia University, New York, and the author of several books on Shakespeare, first saw the musical during its early off-Broadway run. “It was the closest I’ve ever felt to experiencing what I imagine it must have been like to have attended an early performance of, say, Richard III, on the Elizabethan stage,” he tells me. “But this time, it was my own nation’s troubled history that I was witnessing.”

Shapiro says that Shakespeare’s first set of history plays deals with the recent past, ending with Richard III; he then went back further to create an English origin story through Richard II and Henry V. “Lin-Manuel Miranda was trying to grasp the fundamental problems underlying contemporary American culture,” he adds. “He might, like Shakespeare, have gone back a century and explored the civil war. But I suspect that he saw that to get at the deeper roots of what united and divided Americans meant going back even further, to the revolution. No American playwright has ever managed to explain the present by reimagining so inventively that distant past.” And where Shakespeare had Holinshed’s Chronicles, Miranda had Ron Chernow.

There are Shakespearean references throughout his play. In “Take a Break”, Hamilton writes to his sister-in-law, Angelica:

They think me Macbeth and ambition is my folly. I’m a polymath, a pain in the ass, a massive pain. Madison is Banquo, Jefferson’s Macduff And Birnam Wood is Congress on its way to Dunsinane.

Shapiro says that these “casual echoes of famous lines” are less important than the lessons that Miranda has taken about how to write history. “Another way of putting it is that anyone can quote Shakespeare; very few can illuminate so brilliantly a nation’s past and, through that, its present.”

[. . .]

I love Hamilton – I think the level of my nerdery about it so far has probably made that clear – but I find it fascinating that its overtly political agenda has been so little discussed, beyond noting the radicalism of casting black actors as white founders. Surely this is the “Obama play”, in the way that David Hare’s Stuff Happens became the “Bush play” or The Crucible became the theatre’s response to McCarthyism. It’s just unusual, in that its response to the contemporary mood is a positive one, rather than sceptical or scathing. (And it has an extra resonance now that a white nationalist is in the White House. One of the first acts of dissent against the Trump regime was when his vice-president, Mike Pence, attended the musical in November 2016 and received a polite post-curtain speech from the cast about tolerance. “The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologise to Mike Pence for their terrible behaviour,” tweeted Trump, inevitably.)

Hamilton tries to make its audience feel OK about patriotism and the idealism of early America. It has, as the British theatre director Robert Icke put it to me this summer, “a kind of moral evangelism” that is hard for British audiences to swallow. In order to achieve this, we are allowed to see Hamilton’s personal moral shortcomings, but the uglier aspects of the early days of America still have to be tidied away.

There’s a brief mention, for instance, of Jefferson’s relationship with his slave Sally Hemings – whom he systematically raped over many years. But the casting of black and Hispanic actors makes it hard for the musical to deal directly with slavery, and so the issue only drips into the narrative rather than being confronted. There’s a moment after the battle of Yorktown when “black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom – not yet”. Another sour note is struck in one of the cabinet rap battles between Hamilton and Jefferson, in which the former notes acidly, “Your debts are paid cos you don’t pay for labour.”

In early workshops, there was a third cabinet battle over slavery – and the song is available on The Hamilton Mixtape, a series of reworkings and offcuts from the musical. When a proposal is brought before Washington to abolish slavery, Hamilton tells the cabinet:

This is the stain on our soul and democracy A land of the free? No, it’s not. It’s hypocrisy To subjugate, dehumanise a race, call ’em property And say that we are powerless to stop it. Can you not foresee?

Ultimately, though, the song was cut. “No one knew what to do about it, and [the founding fathers] all kicked it down the field,” Miranda explained to Billboard in July 2015. “And while, yeah, Hamilton was anti-slavery and never owned slaves, between choosing his financial plan and going all in on opposition to slavery, he chose his financial plan. So it was tough to justify keeping that rap battle in the show, because none of them did enough.”

***

In March 2016, Lin-Manuel Miranda returned to the White House. This time, one of the numbers he performed was a duet from the musical called “One Last Time”, sung with the original cast member Christopher Jackson playing George Washington. After Alexander Hamilton tells the first US president that two of his cabinet have resigned to run against him, Washington announces that he will step down to leave the field open.

It is the political heart of the play’s myth-making, comparable to Nelson Mandela leaving Robben Island. The decorated Virginian veteran was the only man who could unite the fractious revolutionaries after they defeated the British. Washington could have become dictator for life; instead, he chose to create a true democracy. “If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on./It outlives me when I’m gone.”

For a nation just beginning to think that Trump could really, actually become its president, seeing the incumbent acknowledge that his time was nearly over was a powerful moment. For Obama watching it in the audience, it must have felt like his narrative had come full circle.

Towards the end of the song, Hamilton begins to read out the words of the farewell address he has written, and Washington joins in, singing over the top of them. It was a technique cribbed from Will.i.am’s 2008 Obama campaign video, in which musicians and actors sing and speak along to the candidate’s “Yes, we can” speech.

In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama had written, “I learnt to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere.”

This was the promise of his presidency: that there was not a black America or a white America, a liberal America or a conservative America, but, as he said in his breakthrough speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, “a United States of America”. The man who followed him clearly thinks no such thing, but nonetheless the nation must learn to move on.

In his farewell address in January 2017, Obama returned to the “Yes, we can” speech, using its words as the final statement on his presidency:

I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: yes, we can. Yes, we did.

For the playwright JT Rogers, this is the true triumph of Hamilton – giving today’s multiracial America a founding myth in which minorities have as much right to be there as Wasps. It is political “in the sense of reclaiming the polis” – the body of citizens who make up a country. “The little village we live in outside the city, everyone in the middle school knows the score verbatim,” Rogers adds. “They recite it endlessly and at length, like Homer.”

the full long-read here!

#hamilton #meta #u.s. politics #obama #new statesman #history #shakespeare

253 notes · View notes