Haha I sympathize with this meme. But it applies to the colonized as well as the colonizers. I do tend to fault impoverished people for shackling themselves to church dogma. Religion rationalizes and preserves inequity. Of course this ignores that African American congregations are community centers above everything else. To cast off religion would deprive believers of their whole social fabric. But isn’t that like arguing that slave plantations were more than places of involuntary employment? Obviously tobacco and cotton plantations were the centers of slave communities. To end slavery threatened a slave’s source of everything: sustenance, shelter, family and community. Small wonder most slaves resisted those agitating for abolition. Slave rebellions were always betrayed by fearful slaves. No churches advocated for abolition. Even the civil rights movement a century later, was resisted by African American churches, except for a tiny few associated with MLK. Everyone today pretends to have marched with MLK, even as they admonish their followers to stay in their pews! Ferguson ignited the Black Lives Matter movement despite local preachers incessantly calling for the protests to cease.
Tag: African-Americans
The guard towers of Camp Amache, CO, Japanese-American internment camp
Visitors to what remains of the WWII-era Granada Relocation Center located on Highway 50 past Lamar, are tempted to conclude that the remote location was isolation enough to restrict the movement of its 7,000 Japanese-American internees. Gone are all 560 buildings except their concrete foundations; the few remaining photographs depict a vast layout of spartan barracks, playing host to ordinary civilian lives, minus the atmosphere of incarceration. Were there cyclone fences and watch towers? The answer should not surprise you. Of course. Camp Amache was ringed by the usual multiple perimeters of prison fences, including six watch towers manned by military police, who were there, it was explained, for the internees' protection. I think plans to further restore Amache need to begin with the security fortifications. If such blights on American history as these race-based detention centers are memorialized in the hope that our nation not do it again, it dishonors our victims, and blunts the lesson, not to illustrate our heavy hand. I attended a recent screening of a documentary made of Camp Amache, attended by its producers, who expressed the usual motivation: in remembrance, never again. Special emphasis was placed on the contributions made by Japanese-Americans during the war, and on the magnanimity with which the internees accepted their lot. Survivors were not to receive an official apology until 45 years later, given $20,000 restitution for their livelihoods and families destroyed. It would be safe to say the audience felt well beyond the prejudice that had motivated their parents. Against Japanese-Americans. Unfortunately both the documentary and the filmmakers' commentary left the impression that "never again" describes a successful holding pattern. Of course, America has been at it again and as usual, its citizens have been obliviously complicit. Look at the War on Islam, which has necessitated the internment of Muslim-Americans and Muslims worldwide. Guantanamo is not much different from the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA) special Isolation Centers such as Dalton Wells, near Moab, where the WRA sent internees profiled as potential insurgency threats. America has been building a network of fresh detention facilities to house Hispanic-Americans who run afoul of the country's illegal labor market. Most of the detainees are promptly deported, but many languish while immigration issues and family ties are sorted out. While ICE pretends to protect the American people from the security-threatening unlawfulness of illegal aliens, in reality its detention centers enforce the successful abuse of a Hispanic-American slave labor pool. You need only visit a traditional prison or jail to see that an overwhelming disproportion of its inmates are African-American and Hispanic-American, far exceeding what can be excused as representative of America's poor. The American judicial system is still stacked against non-whites, and motivated by the same racist premise of protecting the security of white Americans. And of course there are the open air prisons which still incarcerate the Native-Americans, the internment camps we call reservations, the original Wartime Relocation Centers.
Doug Lamborn won’t touch President Obama because he says he’s a Tar Baby
That line probably gets lots of laughs at Tea Parties, but over Denver airwaves, Congressman Doug Lamborn's likening President Obama to a "Tar Baby" got, I'll say it, sticky. Yeah, the expression meant "intractable quagmire" when Mitt Romney used it to describe an cost-prohibitive subway project, but Tar Baby's primary allusion to a negative African-American stereotype got Romney in trouble. Now like a banana peel gag irresistible to Republicans, "Tar Baby" is how Doug Lamborn chose to describe, not a hole in the ground into which you pour money, not a trap set by a clever fox to lure the Uncle Remus progenitor of Bugs Bunny, but to describe his Teabag constituents' poster child usurper, risen from America's untouchable class, our first black president. You dopey Tea Party Klan jester, you won't shake Barack Obama's hand because it's black. You're a racist sneak, unfortunately egged on by the bigots endemic to your backwater district. I hope you find that the rest of Colorado will make your "Tar Baby" remark a real tar baby for you. Lamborn says he meant "quagmire" and a supportive media is referencing the dictionary to assert his usage was correct. But the instances for which Romney and John McCain apologized were quagmires, not personifications, least of all OF Obama. A physicist can say he's got a problem that's real bitch, but not if he's talking about his wife. I think it's fairly disingenuous to say the primary definition of Tar Baby is a quagmire. That's like concluding Fag is a cigarette. Yes, but that's when neither are used to describe a person. Curiously the local media helpfully mention that "Tar Baby" was a plot device in Uncle Remus, popularized by Disney in Song of the South. No mention that it's the only animation that has not been reissued, because it's widely regarded as offensive on racist grounds. Lamborn has apologized to President Obama and assures interviewers that he's confident his apology will be accepted. Isn't it ironic that he won't touch Obama with a ten foot pole, yet can count on the man's magnanimity? Of course he's right, the president opposes nothing, why take issue with racism? But I believe Lamborn will have lost his value to even his Tea Party Klan associates. Having his apology accepted, it's going to be impossible for Lamborn to belittle Obama with even a pea-brain pretense of credibility.
Avatar: novel push for noble savage
I'd like to contrast the high-profile critical receptions being given two Hollywood films about darker-skinned-ness. Precious is about an African-American girl so dark she absorbs the light, without being about race at all. The movie tells a story of poverty, incest and the cycle of abuse, while tipping the scales with gratuitous stereotypes of Hottentot welfare mamas attendant their usual good-for-trouble black males. Vilifying the subjects it pretends to rescue, Precious has the blessing of the media, a shameless Oprah included. James Cameron's Avatar on the other hand, opened to depth-charges of faint praise calculated to dim the buzz, perhaps because it packs the most subversive black-is-beautiful message since Muhammad Ali. Avatar evokes rudimentary indigenous spirituality, peppered with what even elementary-schooled audiences can associate as Native American themes, from which we can infer the concepts are eternal, but idealizes an athletic aesthetic more human than the movie's live-action characters. The "blue cat people," as the critics have chosen to describe its Na'vi tribe, are but fantasy-striped, tailed Spartans, computer iterations of the Williams sisters and NBA dream teams. The real humans of Avatar tower in prowess, dignity and luminescence over their modern mensch oppressors. Where racial equality on film is plotted according to how black figures are granted access to the world of white priviledge, Avatar celebrates the sovereignty of dark skin in its environment, where it's not a barbershop, rapper's crib, or street corner in Harlem. And instead of prepping the more palatable light-skinned negro for easier assimilation to the welcome-diversity crowd. Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, is an ugly project by and for gentrified American, whose title character is White-America's usual avatar into their mysterious conception of Black America. I can do it no better justice than this review excerpt published Counterpunch: A fiction whose “policy message is that welfare recipients are black women who wish to avoid work, who use their time having sex with their daughters, watching television and dining on pig leavings.” Is this a film – or a crime? A crock and defamation that reinforces white man's supremist burden. Under Iran's culturally repressive Islamic Revolution, the artists have produced a golden age of film. The greatest of these films have had to disguise their social message in analogies surrounding the concerns of children. Avatar takes perhaps a similar tack. Behind diversions of fantasy and special effects, is a profound morality tale. Critics can attack James Cameron for his simplistic storytelling, it's the price to pay to bring the simplest of viewers along. Perhaps the director can release a final cut for cineastes which omits the redundant exposition. I don't mind that Cameron uses a highlighter for the Cliftnote set. A survey of online comments shows me that some fans applaud themselves for getting Avatar's message where they are certain their fellow audience members might not. Most certainly the alarm most critics are raising has to do with the unpatriotic attitude which Avatar takes toward Capitalist imperialism. In GWOT America where we still "Support Our Troops" and
Suddenly colored television
Immediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term "Nine Eleven" was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying "last Monday," or "last week Monday," before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme. Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended. Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there's a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009. It's a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that. Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It's a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind. It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I'm not sure we don't really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn't thinning their number fast enough for our taste. Obama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They're not poor blacks after all. They're the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys. Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that's the real manipulation. The day after September 11, the term "Nine Eleven" was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it "9/11" when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 - 17 or other. They'd gotten the memo about how to frame the "world-changing" development, complete with its catchy catchphrase. Obama is just such another media campaign,
Local black man made to take his hat off
COLORADO SPRINGS- An early Pikes Peak Region African American settler is commemorated with a statue in downtown Colorado Springs. A plaque explains that William Seymour was one of many freed slaves who moved west after the Civil War. The statue is meant to honor all those "invisible" pioneers, ignored in the official histories of the city. What's remarkable is that the statue of this black man is erected next to the Plaza of the Rockies, a bastion of conservative financiers. The plaque explains a further improbability: the statue was funded by the Plaza. Otherwise known as the Booz Allen Hamilton building, the Colorado Springs home of Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney and RBC Dain Rauscher. What caught my eye was Seymour's fedora laying on the adjacent bench. It's an artistic touch that blurs bronze with reality, but the metal hat also reduces the bench's utility by half. That's the first beef I had with it. Only one person can sit at a time to wait for the bus. Then I pondered why Seymour's hat was off. The gesture makes him look like a gentleman, fitting to have been the first African American to serve on an El Paso County jury. Seymour was also a founding member of a local Baptist church. Is the park bench meant to be a church pew? He'd have left his coat at the door as well. Integrated as it is with the park bench, we have to conclude William Seymour is standing outside. We've encountered him, as the plaque suggests, on his way home. He's taken his hat off out of deference to us. We honor he and his fellow "invisible" black pioneers, but we depict him in the lee of Plaza of the Rockies, knowing his place. Other historical luminaries honored around the downtown have statues who've kept their hats on.
What About Black Community, Obama?
What About the Black Community, Obama? Seems like a reasonable question and to hear The Weasel respond to the question and then look at his response a bit is certainly worthwhile. The Black Community certainly knows where they stand with John McCain but that is still no excuse for allowing oneself to be hoodwinked by Barack. And many Black people are not allowing this to happen.
Barack- ‘I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I’m just like you, Mr. Businessman’
Barack Obama's recent campaigning has highlighted how he's ready to go to war against Iran alongside Israel, and how he supports using the death penalty even more than it already is used by the government in the US. Barack Obama, to the Right of the Supreme Court! Change the business community can back safely! Why he even berates Black fathers for being bad role models for the kids! They're Black! Let's see? More guns, bombs, and equipment for more war! Looks good for business. More prisons, death chambers, and nastiness to the lower classes! Looks good for the industrial-police-prison-National Security business crowd. More sanctimonious moralizing. Looks good for the church businesses, too. 'I may have a pigmentation disorder, but I'm just like you, Mr. American Dumb Ass Businessman!' Vote Barack Obama! Safely, now.
Jermaine Ward dies and police begin cover up of their murder by taser
Here we go again! Yet another police murder by taser and the cover up has already begun. The police say they tasered Jermaine Ward while he was uncuffed, while his companion who was also arrested, says that he was handcuffed already. Can you tell who is telling the truth here? Possible cause of the original stop by police? Jermaine, who is Black, had a White girlfriend in the car with him. Florida Cops Taser and Kill a Man The police say the handcuffed man was resisting arrest and not following orders. Did they taser him because he refused to spit out the weed he was trying to swallow? Did the tasering cause him to later choke to death? Did the police officer even care that he was putting a man in danger of losing his life over an inconsequentiality? With the taser, the police can become cop, judge, and executioner in a heart beat. Why does the Police State love electricity so much, I wonder? Police State America abroad; Police State America at home.
Will race protest be curtains for Obama?
If there is a indeed still a racial divide, what happens to the colorblind society tapped to elect Obama in November?
‘White-facing’ MLK
Every year in America, we go through a sick ceremony that 'White-face's' MLK. That ceremony is called MLK Day, where leaders of the White Community, that wouldn't have bothered spitting on the living Man, as opposed to tasering him, start to slobber all over themselves in order to lecture the general public about 'the message' of Martin Luther King. MLK has been converted into another Establishment Christ figure, but one that seemingly is Black. Per American media, MLK just like their Christ version, loved all equally and supposedly opposed any anger at the racist well-to-do war monger, that the corporate media adore. Don't be angry, was the message of MLK per the US Establishment. Here is a commentary about this phenomena 40 Years Later, Martin Luther King Is Still Silenced published on alternet. MLK, largely did not get openly angry, except that begin to change in the last few months of his life. He stopped staying silent about many issues that he had not addressed previously, in his role as a raterh conservative pastor. The flock had gotten tired of all that 'turn the other cheek' stuff, and demanded more from Martin, and he began to belatedly deliver more. That anger that came out at the end of his life is the real message of Martin Luther King today. He spoke out and lost his life for it in the end. Don't let the corporate media and government turn MLK into a white-faced Establishment pastor. MLK had broken from that mold. He had gotten fed up.
Black teenager taser-murdered by cops at his workplace over eating Hot Pockets
Yes, once again we see the police using their tasers to murder somebody. This time, they came and tasered a 17 year old kid working at a Food Lion grocery store, who hot eaten some Hot Pockets there and gotten into a dispute with his supervisors over it. His mom had actually sent him back to the Food Lion telling him to settle the matter like a man. Teen Dies After Shocked by Taser by Police While at Work (Be sure to see the video where the mom talks about the police's actions) The cops settled it like the thugs they are. And how proud the Food Lion managers there must be for their role in all this. Lesson here? When thugs (police) are given lethal weapons to use, they will kill people with them. Researching some to write this commentary, I found that this kid whose last name is 'Turner', was not the only Turner to be tasered to death by police. Google some, and check it out. Interestingly enough, just days after the Obama speech on race matters, I could find no media outlet that either mentions the race of the supervisors of this Black teenager, or the race of the cops that murdered him. What are they trying to hide, I wonder?