Monthly Archives: March 2017

McClatchy Washington Bureau

The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is. McClatchy Washington Bureau Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that ...

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The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is. - McClatchy Washington Bureau

rootfolks poets press

omowale-ketu oladuwa

the american negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that americans have always dealt honorably with mexicans and indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that american men are the worlds most direct and virile, that american women are pure. negroes know far more about white americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white americans what parentsor, anyway, mothersknow about their children, and that they very often regard white americans that way. and perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. the tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.james baldwin, the fire next time

truth be toldtrain never left the station! its stuck, spinning its wheels digging deeper and deeper into the muck and mire of empire. . . .

any self-respecting afrikan born in america with a bit of real knowledge of their peoples history, and the way that history was twisted to erase genocide and body snatching from the publics collective memory, in this nations quest for a founding myth, will give you the 4-1-1 on that.

thats right, train never left: in 1865 after the civil war, afrikans owned 0.05% of the nations wealth; a quite remarkable feat given that only 247,000 of the more than 4.4-million afrikans had been nominally free, and in a position to accumulate any wealth. but in 1990, 135 years after emancipation, afrikans share of americas total wealth had grown to a less than staggering 1%.1

the white supremacist fringe would have you believe that lack of growth is because afrikan people are genetically and cognitively inferior to whites. but even a cursory reading of that 135 years reveals the undeniable truth of this grim history of economic exploitation, legal bait and switch, and political chicanery designed to dull commonsense and divide we the people.2 its a history of bloody lies, murderous intentions, and the inevitable consequences that followed. in 2017, were living in and with the aftermath.

truth is, rich white men ordered and ordained the genocide of indigenous americans, and the theft and economic exploitation of millions of afrikans and their children bred to be capitalisms mules in service to the stolen land. landowning white mens inhuemane means of wealth accumulation became a sacred addiction to the greed that turned an economy into a culture of expropriation, racial oppression, patriarchy, self-serving violence, and a sheep-to-slaughter mentality. these elite founding fathers and the merchants who serviced their enslaved holdings passed on their ill-gotten-gain from this enterprise, from one generation to the next, accumulating interest, wealth, plausible denial, poverty and spiritual impoverishment.

the vast majority of white americans are residual beneficiaries of this largesse. and while neither they nor their immediate ancestors may have participated in the rape and theft, or directly benefited from the distribution of the spoils, its inescapable that their economic and social advance is a direct result of their white skin privilege and afrikan oppression. nothing more!

today, the republicans whove seized power in washington and the great majority of state capitals are playing their trump card, making sure to create enuf tension, and generate enuf fear and misdirection among whitefolk to keep them off balance, thinking only about how to support or bring down the presidents nationalist, antihueman agenda. trump has navigated institutional america firmly onto the shores of the supremacist fringe of white nationalism. and despite his rhetoric of inclusivity and cooperation across the aisle, his make america great again euphemism is meant to keep the niggers in their place.

the politics of skin and fear are being dealt by the power elite3 to create a wall of psychological 3 ill-will and distrust between average working class whites, therefore, rendering them incapable of reasoning in their own class interests, as represented in latent cooperation and political alignment with afrikan people and other people of color.

they reckon that white peoples mental well being rests squarely on the fact that their whiteness is a tangible, exploitable resource they can cash in to escape the condition of enslavement they see the dark-skinned others succumbing to and suffering. where there is cooperation across race, it is based on narrow self interest, within the pail of capitalist supremacy that has white privilege as its root and low-hanging branches. it is simple reform, not revolutionary change and the american experiment needs more reform like a bad tooth needs sugar.

there will be wars and the rumors of wars4

atho there is evidence of improved relations across the colorline,5 21st century america has not escaped plantation economy or politics. in this regard, hear brother malcolms prophetic voice:

i believe that there will ultimately be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. . . it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely american problem. rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.6

it is neither error nor act of chance that brother malcolm was assasinated when he was, calling up the afrikan intelligence of a people to see themselves as whole and not disparate sects of white nationalist states. it is no coincidence that martin king was assassinated just as he had begun to internationalize his message of poor peoples rights.

the clash to come will be on the grounds of economic inequality and the heavyhandedness of the police state. while the corporate media and elected middlemen of the elite passing as a government of the people keep the conversation about fear and race matters in the headlines, the bottomline is where the ultimate friction point lies.

afrikan people are oppressed because they dont have the collective force of their income or purchasing power not because they are varying shades of black. emphasis on race skin color is an emotional distraction that keeps afrikan people and the masses blinded to their condition of wage slavery and penury. afrikan people are 12-14 percent of the population, owning only 1% of the total wealth, and but 5% of businesses. that leaves us open to the charge of comparative inferiority.

let there be no confusion concerning the state of afrikan peoples oppression or the way that condition is construed by the ruling class and their government managers to cover their crimes. our position and condition are a direct result of our enslavement and forced labor over centuries, and its constructed aftermath. we are not inferior but sufferers, having suffered the ravages of white nationalism all these years hanging on to the hope that one day we, too, would be free and equal partners in this western economic enterprise.

nevertheless, we must accept that our fealty to those masters whove held our bodies and minds in bondage speaks to our complicity in their crimes. no one in america will liberate us for us, we must do that for ourselves.

we are learning to see clearly, to look impassionately, and to resurrect truth from the body of our experience. we cannot escape our part in this madness, but we should never internalize the american drama as our own. it is not. it is an historical anomaly to which we have been normalized by torture and time. it is not a condition that will last forever. we will not always be others footstool!

with republican hegemony raging thru the land, donald trump in the white house as head of the capitalist world empire, and right wing religious fanatic mike pence and his cohort twisting his nipples in the wings, ready to step into trumps shoes when impeachment is imminent and resignation the only course to short circuit the process, brother malcolms prediction of conflict is particularly resonant and prescient.

but, you say, arent immigrants americas new niggers, particularly those from mexico and the seven muslim nations trump has banned? isnt the president reaching out to blackpeople? hasnt he proposed support for historically black colleges and universities, and doesnt he want to put a cop on every corner in our chocolate cities, as a way to make the streets safe again? inotherwords, isnt donald trumps presidency supporting the advance of afrikan people as viable participants in the white supremacist experiment?

it may seem so on its face, but afrikan people should be super cautious, and spiritually conscious to take no solace from this latest round of racebaiting, xenophobic, white nationalist jingoism, and diversity double-speak. each immigrant group singled out by trump enters communities in america whose share of the total wealth, and business ownership is greater than that of afrikan people. in the final analysis they contribute more to donald trumps america than do afrikan people. and, yet, they are being rejected! does that not raise red flags everywhere?

afrikan peoples value to the national economy is consumption. this year alone afrikan people are expected to have $1.1-trillion in purchasing power. and these dollars are not harnessed to the benefit of afrikan people. instead, our money is spent creating jobs and wealth for others and their communities.7 that condition isnt carved in stone. we can re-member it!

identity, a matter of commonsense

people of afrikan descent will recover from the post traumatic slave syndrome deficit we face as8 subjects of the western world, when we give up the illusion of fitting seamlessly into the delusion of white supremacist democracy, and rediscover our identity as an afrikan people centered in family and its extension. as such, collectively, our intent finds and grows the family center, re-membering afrika and its diaspora. this new republican administration provides afrikan people an optimum political target around which to coalesce toward unification. the enemy hasnt been this clear since pre-brown vs. board-1954 america.

donald trump is the newest sheriff in town; the great white hope installed to put the natives in their place. already, hes raised the rightwing plaint to law and order,9 loudly proclaiming the targeting of cities with large afrikan populations for federal get tough on crime interventions. and altho trumps call to turn the cops loose on people of color may seem new to some, as the online mag salon has reported, the presidents take on cop capers goes way back.

when i was young, i sat in a diner with my father and witnessed two young bullies cursing and threatening a very frightened waitress. two cops rushed in, lifted up the thugs and threw them out the door, warning them never to cause trouble again. i miss the feeling of security new yorks finest once gave to the citizens of this city. let our politicians give back our police departments power to keep us safe. unshackle them from the constant chant of police brutality which every petty criminal hurls immediately at an officer who has just risked his or her life to save anothers. we must cease our continuous pandering to the criminal population of this city. give new york back to the citizens who have earned the right to be new yorkers.10

earn the right to be new yorkers!?! there should be no doubt about who donald trumps new yorkers are; or to whom he refers as the criminal population. afrikan people are squarely in the 21st century bullseye of the police state. so whatever better we think may have achieved under democrat rule during the last eight years, evidence points to a substantial roll back under way with this new republican regime, guided by the lite of all administrations back to nixon, reagan and bakke. america always has been a scary place for afrikan people, but now some would argue that were on the verge of becoming casualties of a trump house of horrors.

but to believe and get stuck in that train of thot is to give the power of your mind to the institutional cancer of capitalism that ephemeral force that creates and facilitates the circulation of the myth of afrikan peoples dysfunction and inferiority.

paraphrasing dr. john henrik clarke, the people who would be called afrikans had built 11 civilizations long before those who would become the european climbed from caves of ignorance on the backs of the black people of the nile valley civilizations.

to that end, we channel the incomparable nina simone, who said, life is in the feeling:

life is short. people are not easy to know. theyre not easy to know, so if you dont tell them how you feel, youre not going to get anywhere, i feel.

crossing the colorline to intersectionality

we, too, feel nina, and we know that what we feel is more accurate than our thinking! and what we realize in the praxis, since the turbulent 60s, is that we the people have more in common with one another than we have that separates and divides us. today, that realization is on the move. today, its called intersectionality, as people with different causes and policy interests find themselves on the same protest lines in support of one anothers issues. during the 60s, black community politics surged on the river of black nationalism. we understood the psychological and practical impact of doing it our selves, for our selves.

whitefolk took their lead from us, understanding that their work was to bring their people to consciousness by working in their own communities. and on that basis cooperation and alliance were/and still are possible.

todays intersectionality seems an advance along those lines that shows a degree of maturity in the resistance movement that could portend an openness to understanding and supporting afrikan peoples most logical and direct call for liberation reparations as a first step to aligning our family interests. intersectional coalescence around this issue will change all lives, because it will reorient the national conversation about americas economic and political well being. it will set a real basis for morality and ethics in a state where all peoples voices are heard, and count. however, if cross-cultural work cant begin based on this understanding, then there really is no basis for for afrikan people to consider revolutionary alignment. to eschew this point of intersection easily identifies a bent toward reformation rather than revolution, in that the outcome of resistance would simply feedback into the capitalist hegemonic loop.

imagine a revolutionary paradigm of a constitutional convention to which afrikan people were fully participating in determining how their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens would be governed. recognizing that the wealth of the west is built on the broken bones and dead bodies of millions of indigenous americans and enslaved afrikans, certainly would give a new governing document meaning and legitimacy it has never possessed.

with donald trump in the white house, conscious afrikan people cant afford to allow this moment to pass without inserting into the national conversation for change, our call for reparations and community renewal thru a peoples constitutional convention. unseating the current administration and challenging the wealth of the 400 billionaires whove replaced the landowning white men who founded america and wrote the laws we the struggling poor are governed by from the afrikans perspective, that is not the intersectionalist challenge. unseating the capitalist world order is what must be done. and certainly that begins at home, but must begin with the internationalist understanding that the capitalist order must be brought to heel.

as afrikans it is not enuf to just be concerned with canceling the trump presidency. we must cripple and restructure the world economic order. thats the focus, the point in history at which the crisis in race, immigration, environment and hueman health, housing, gender, hueman rights, and all other issues converge. this is the groundbreaking truth of intersectionality. and if it is not this, it has no viability for afrikan people. malcolm and king both understood toward the end of their lives of resistance, that our struggle is an international and collective, and that anything outside that paradigm is bogus reform.

europes colonization of afrikan people was accompanied by its colonization of other people of color. and in the process, the conquerors colonized information about themselves, these subjugated people, and the world. we still live in the world they created and passed on to their sons and daughters.

about this world the academics and professional activists theorize, fitting practical models to their ideological formulations. they are putting in their work to understand the dragon that must be defanged. the politicians are adjusting their platforms and tweaking their rhetoric to make their political parties seem relevant. still others the progressive commonfolk are running on emotion thru the streets mad as hell that a donald trump could be elected to lead their country. all these visible streams lead to reform. but reform will not solve the afrikans problem white supremacist economic praxis, capitalism.

identity counts

i am the afrikan stolen from the land i was born to. i have no country. i am not tied to or invested in the well-being, parties or privileges of america. i am invested in my collective afrikan self my collective identity and individual huemanity. from the preeminent value of my afrikan body and the ancestral genes that give it form, im invested in the history of moments and this very momentthat give it meaning.

huemanity is a universal yet singular praxis. it is international, intentionally without borders or national boundaries. on these premises i stand demanding reparations. and this demand backed by the buying power of afrikan people has the potential to bring all huemankind to the negotiating table, with an intent to bring huemankind into alignment with natural law all people are created equal, with none more equal than others. all people live in relationship to all that has been created from the matrix of earth, sea and heaven, and to this trinity we owe our fidelity, exercising the intention that all should share in this planets wealth.

while the lords of davos meet to determine how the worlds economy should be grown, 12 governed, and distributed, it is insane for afikan people to sit on the sidelines waiting for the generosity of the 1% to save us from them. the chemistry of the times requires afrikan people to wake the fuck up! in america alone we possess purchasing power equal to the 15th largest nation in the world. we govern the continent of afrika, still the source of the worlds richest mineral deposits, altho we dont control our countries economies. and the afrikan diaspora, especially in south america is large enough to wreak havoc on any government that would openly oppress its ranks. we must stop talking yang, and start talking family security, economics, cooperation, and development.

but this power can only be exercised with the open-armed embrace of one another as afrikan people. the collective will of afrika, when realized, is a force that cannot be denied, but the masters of the west and their arab allies are certain the destruction theyve wrought on the afrikan body-mind during the last 1300 years is sufficient to keep us divided and at one anothers throats, in perpetuity, about a democracy that never has existed.

personally im in favour of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. now, under capitalism we cant have democracy by definition. capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. thus a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level theres a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. just as im opposed to political fascism, im opposed to economic fascism. i think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, its pointless to talk about democracy.

noam chomskys take on democracy is clear, as should be our own.

we must come to our senses and effectively treat the post-traumatic slave syndrome we suffer from we should make no further sacrifice without atonement. cooperating and pledging allegiance to the wests well being is at our own expense. that is the ultimate sacrifice. the relationship between the rich and the poor must come into balance, and we must be the force that drives the intent for this momentum, a fundamental redistribution of wealth. by this means we mite prevent chaos, anarchy, and the death of millions more. this moral and ethical stance should be the position of a unified people who realize their common identity and history. this would be a democracy i can understand and work toward.

Read more commentary at http://www.rootfolks.com.

Sources:

1dr. claud anderson, the more things change, the more they stay the same: racial inequality and the moment of lock-in: http://law.usc.edu/assets/docs/roithmayr.pdf

2ronald takaki, a different mirror: a history of multicultural america; introduction, p2

3the power elite is a 1956 book by sociologist c. wright mills, in which mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the 3 leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities

4matthew 24:6: and ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

5the term color line was originally used as a reference to the racial segregation that existed in the united states after the abolition of slavery. an article by frederick douglass titled the color line was published in the north american review in 1881. the phrase gained fame after w.e.b dubois repeated use of it in his book the souls of black folk.

6anthony hamilton, socialist review, issue (399), february 2015, malcolm x: the road to revolution, http://socialistreview.org.uk/ 6 399/malcolm-x-road-revolution

72016 nielsen report: black buying power has reached tipping point, but how will black america leverage it to create wealth? http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/02/04/2016-nielsen-report-black-buying-power-reached-tipping-point-will-blackamerica-leverage-create-wealth/

8dr. joy degruy-leary, post traumatic slave syndrome: https://youtu.be/QNEX0LtR-Oo

9flamm (2005) documents how conservatives constructed a persuasive message that argued that the civil rights movement had contributed to racial unrest and johnsons great society had rewarded rather than punished the perpetrators of violence. conservatives demanded that the national government should promote respect for law and order and contempt for those who violated it, regardless of cause. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/law_and_order_(politics)

salon: 10http://www.salon.com/2017/01/17/donald-trumps-law-and-order-obsession-is-rooted-in-the-distant-past-and-points- toward-a-dystopian-future/

11dr. john henrik clarke: why africana history: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/afprl/clarke/why-africana-history-by-dr.-john-henrik-clarke

12usa today: what is davos? 5 things to know about the world economic forum, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/ 2017/01/16/what-is-davos/96390850/

Tags: afrikan consciousness, black liberation, capitalism, democracy, donald trump, featured, frost illustrated, intersectionality, james baldwin, malcolm x, martin luther king, nina simone, Noam Chomsky, omowale ketu oladuwa, politics, racism, republican party, rootfolks, the fire this time, white supremacy

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the fire this time. . . . - Frost Illustrated