Columns

 

Democratic Blackness vs. Republican Blackness

By EZRAH AHARONE 
Ever since Republican Herman Cain, a self-described “Black conservative,” remarked that two-thirds of Black Democrats are “brainwashed,” the question of his “Blackness” has been contrasted with that of President Obama.  Beyond the resentment from brainwashing claims, this issue should prompt discourse and partisan introspection to determine if Blackness “politically exists” in either party.   

 First, what is Blackness and how is it measured?  Originally, before its 1960s incarnation, Black was derogatory.  But during the Civil Rights/Black Power Movements we embraced Black.  Understanding that White establishmentarian practices were self-serving and antithetical, Blackness not only signified color, but moreover consciousness. Among others, a consciousness that our common and collective self-interests should not be compromised to accommodate White interests . . . A consciousness that we are the first and last lines of defense against manmade inequalities . . . A self-determinative consciousness of “Black Nationalism” to rightly restore and advance what little remained of our tattered personhood and African-ness.

However, the admirable ideals of nationalism as espoused worldwide by others, were co-opted and unfairly stigmatized as something impermissible and unintelligently odd for us . . . As if “being Black” and “being Nationalistic” are intrinsically racist . . . As if “all was well” and then the Black Power Movement just illegitimately popped-out of nowhere without explainable need or historical context.  Conjunctly, Webster’s favorably defines “Nationalist” as “A member of a political party or group advocating national independence or strong national government,” while “Black Nationalist” is debased as “A member of a group of militant blacks who advocate separatism from whites.”  

Coupled with this demonizing, Blackness never gained mainstream political traction, given that the brute force and psychological methods originally used to instill fear and obedience, also distorted our sense of self-identity and self-relevance, causing us to yearn and politically validate our self-worth according to how far and fast we assimilate and gain acceptance. 

But by no means did/does our assimilation constitute a mutual merger of two equally liberated people.  Being a fragmented subculture, we integrated into their already-existing nation of fully-operational designs.  We conformed, we did not construct the sovereign or nationalistic or ideological contours of the nation.  Other than our labor and loyalty, we hobbled into the relationship without independently possessing anything that they didn’t already own or control.  Hence, no “bilateral agreement” of any sort was ever jointly signed.  

While we are visible in both Parties today, our presence should not be mistaken as “equal receptivity” of Euro-Americans to infuse Black/African mores or ideals into governance.  Contrarily, our presence reflects our “full receptivity” to their practices of governance, including ambiguous wars that mock governing principles of Dr. King who is enshrined on the National Mall for placation.  That said, in effort to prove we are just as “American” as they are, we adopted their ethos, ethics, traditions, belief systems and sociopolitical traits as our own.  Black ideals and agendas that do not supplement their norms are routinely proscribed as racist, inconsequential, and non-authoritative. 

This partly explains why Black Democrats accept Obama’s “race-neutral” position to not openly support Black Agendas aimed at inequalities, even though we openly supported him as a bona-fide constituency with 96% of Black votes.  Knowing that Black-related agendas would rile both parties, we devised the face-saving retreat that: “Obama’s not the president of Black America; he’s the president of all Americans.”  Nevertheless, our very need for such agendas, links to the very fact that all of the prior 43 White presidents were “the president of all Americans” too, yet that didn’t preclude 35 of them (Washington to Kennedy) from upholding enslavement or segregation. 

In sum, there’s really no functional scale of Blackness by which Obama or Cain can be weighed since Black consciousness has been relegated as “politically impertinent” to the ideological and nationalistic makeup of both parties.  More and more, Black consciousness is becoming like a hobby that’s only relevant in privacy or at barbeques and family reunions.  So unless the political legitimacy and authentic collectivity of Black self-interests are evolutionized with 21st-century relevance and functionality, then by mass default, men like Obama and Cain will personify a Siamese standard of a new “Say It Loud . . .”

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Capitalism Coming Home to Roost

By EZRAH AHARONE

While capitalism is upheld by Western-European nations as the paradigm for economic fairness and efficiency, it conversely has a 400-year history of profiteering that traces to shameless enslavement and colonizing of non-European people by the same nations.  Today, capitalism’s tentacles of debauchery reach beyond the so-called “third world” to now roost among citizens within these very European nations, including America.  Once fiscally robust, America is debt-addicted and job-starved, with near-bankrupt states and crippled infrastructures of roads, bridges, schools and airports.

In fed-up response, protesters of the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWSM) are rightly ranting over capitalism’s recent malfeasance.  Yet, in broad-spectrum, it must be reckoned that the descendants of those who were once enslaved or colonized, comprise a majority of people who now live in poverty.  The sum of Westernize capitalism – from its extirpations of yesterday to free-market enterprise today – has left trails of billions of impoverished non-European people all around the world wherever labor is performed, services are provided, and resources are located. 

With Africa particularly, it is not coincidental that its currencies and economies are among the weakest in the world, while the currencies and economies of Western colonial nations are among the strongest, even though most lack comparable natural resources of the African states they colonized.  Capitalist hegemony over Africa siphoned unknown trillions in labor and resources, upon which Western economies unfairly stand. 

True, the OWSM cannot undo capitalism’s ugly past.  But the point is to stitch threads of commonality and continuity, given that capitalism did not suddenly get derailed by Bush or Obama; or by halos of immunity and tax havens for the rich; or by the cost of war adventurism in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.  The middleclass is certainly feeling capitalism’s pitchfork more of late, but capitalism is no more depraved lately than at its inception.  A main difference is that – yesterday, its parasitic forces usurped non-Europeans of sovereignty, territories, resources and freedom, while today, extensions of the same parasitic forces are coming home to roost by cannibalizing Americans of all ethnicities of jobs, savings, stocks, pensions, social programs, healthcare and homes. 

Like African Americans, growing numbers of Euro-Americans have discovered that capitalism has nothing to do with “equality” nor is it “democratic.”  You don’t vote on the overly-priced gas and oil for your car and home.  You don’t vote for who owns or commercializes natural resources.  You don’t vote on mortgage or bank interest rates or the elasticity of money supply regulated by the Federal Reserve . . . There’s no such thing as equality or democracy in the Western format of capitalism. 

As such, the current 16.7% unemployment rate for Blacks more than doubles the 8% for Whites, and Blacks lag in every major index of economics.  It’s interesting that 8% would be long-awaited relief to African Americans. Conversely, 8% is so insufferable to Euro-Americans that it has sparked the OWSM to condemn “certain aspects” of capitalism.  But at core, US capitalism is fueled by consumption, which is fueled by credit, which is fueled by the very financial institutions that lie at the heart of the protests.  Besides, be it Bush or Obama, both parties are corporate manifestations.  America operates a de-facto plutocratic style of governance, where insiders make “contributions” with known intents for favoritism to influence policymaking and party platforms.

With the 2012 election approaching and Obama empathizing with occupiers, the media is setting a stage for Tea Party vs. OWSM showdowns.  Beyond partisan bickering however that blames the “other party” for America’s woes, a definitive matter is that, America’s economy is linked to centuries of international graft and gluttony from when Europeans ruled by overt brute force.  But with fewer “banana republics,” new Balances of Power are reshaping today’s decolonized world and diminishing the once-sturdiness of Pax Americana (US political, economic, and military advantages). 

The fluffy wording of the US constitution is one thing, but America’s capitalistic wealth wasn’t acquired by playing by the “democratic” rules it now wants to export to Africa and the Middle East.  So as predatory capitalism is coming home to roost while Americans simultaneously cheer the downfall of “select” governments, Black America should be circumspect that we aren’t in effect, cheering the latest mutation of the selfsame predatory forces of which we are historically among the greatest casualties. 

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Geopolitics, Globalization, and Terrorism

By EZRAH AHARONE

There’s a political and planetary solar system at work, where the earth revolves around the sun, while it comprises near-200 nations that revolve around various interests and ideologies that cooperate, compete, and clash.   In short, regardless of norms or ideals, no government or society has escaped the gravitational pull of geopolitics and globalization, which are bookend forces that configure today’s “balance of power” to the advantage of select nations while – either artfully or inadvertently – breeding seeds of terrorism along the way.

Globalization in benign terms refers to the world’s ever-growing interconnectedness via common markets, technology, and development.  Within this necessary interdependency however, colonial-like political and corporate arrangements are maintained whereby power and wealth remain largely concentrated within the orbital grips of Western nations and institutions.  This is reflected in the 67-year-old Bretton Woods outcome whereby only Americans would head the World Bank and only Europeans would head the IMF.  Hence, the EU’s adamancy that former-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who resigned amid rape charges) must unquestionably be replaced by a European.   

Geopolitics in benign terms concerns the relationship between geography and politics . . . a government’s legitimate activities in domestic and foreign territories.  But from an operational standpoint of certain governments to safeguard or advance their economic, security, and foreign policy interests, geopolitics doubles as a sneaky codeword for the political muscling, coddling, and/or finessing of particular nations that have strategic value or pose threats, based on factors including location, resources, intelligence, terrorism and military implications.  

Invariably, classified operations ensue that the world public never knows or imagines because, along with geopolitics comes foreign intrigue, domestic deception of citizens, and manipulation of media, as governments jostle for upsmanship in a globalized pecking-order for world power. 

As such, the US has long played a dangerous game of “geopolitical roulette” in places like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which – not unrelated – are places that it now identifies as hotbeds for terrorist networks.  President Richard Nixon, who set modern precedents for America’s geopolitical approach to foreign relations, wrote in The Real War (1980) about maintaining geopolitical leverage in the Middle East and Africa, saying early on Page 3: “We have to recover the geopolitical momentum, marshaling and using our resources in the tradition of a great power . . . We must recognize the relationship between strategic resources and patterns of world trade, between economic productivity and military might.”

Accordingly, in roulette fashion, the US has no permanent enemies or permanent friends around Middle East territory, except for Israel.  Even Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak became disposable after 30 years of expediency.  Geopolitical relations have vacillated based on oil interests and the degree to which Arab governments are amenable to US policies.  Iran for example received billions in support after a known CIA-engineered coup installed Shah Pahlavi (1967-1979).  But once Ayatollah Khomeini ruled Iran, America propped and supplied Saddam Hussein in Iraqi’s war against Iran (1980-1988). 

Saddam later fell from geopolitical grace when his 1990 attempt to annex Kuwait jeopardized US oil stability.  He thereafter became the terrorist face of “What’s Wrong With the World,” until 9/11, when Osama Bin Laden unforgivably bit America’s geopolitical hand that fed him during the Afghan Mujahideen war against the Soviets (1979-1989). 

Once Bin Laden went turncoat, the US played roulette with Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf, ignoring all warning signals . . . Musharraf already had active sanctions imposed for his 1999 coup; his government was one of few with diplomatic relations with the former Taliban government in Afghanistan; and Pakistan had violated international arms agreements by obtaining missile technology from China and conducting nuclear weapons tests.   

On September 11th 2001 Musharraf was therefore ostracized as a “military dictator.”  Nevertheless, by September 12th 2001 in haste to avenge Bin Laden, the US began to geopolitically reincarnate the “military dictator” into the honorable stature and media image of “President Musharraf.”  He was coddled and gift-wrapped over $1 billion for his allegiance against terrorism, and Pakistan was seduced with over $20 billion since. 

After a near-decade of this wobbly courtship, along with thinking Bin Laden was a desolate cave-dweller in Afghanistan; he was paradoxically caught and killed in – of all places – Pakistan, where he’d lived unbothered for years with his family in a million dollar urban compound in – of all places – a military neighborhood. 

While the US consequently suspects Pakistan of consorting with al-Qaeda, Pakistan resents that the US conducted the raid unannounced.  To teach America a geopolitical lesson in return, Pakistan denied the US further access to the compound and refused to handover wreckage of the abandoned “special forces helicopter” for 2 weeks.  Eye-for-eye, it’s well plausible that Pakistan even accommodated China’s suspected overtures to “reverse engineer” the copter’s technology, especially knowing China has since awarded Pakistan 50 fighter jets.

The world is locked into a rotational axis where geopolitics, globalization, and terrorism are fixed realities.  And since America’s globalized-edge is predicated upon strategic resources like oil, the US cannot discontinue its risky proneness of trying to rent or convert Arab allies who are just as diametric to Americanization as Americanization is to them.  So irrespective of the president’s color, America will duplicitously continue to abet regimes that it may afterwards seek to violently dismantle – under the pretext of “fighting for freedom.” 

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Black History and Vindicationalism

By EZRAH AHARONE

As we celebrate another Black History Month during these political times of world turmoil and uprise, it’s important for America to project a world image that it has “turned the page” of racism in its own blood-stained history.  And while the relevance of this month has even been called into question since the advent of a Black president, I’m reminded of the African proverb that: “Until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero.” 

As such, when it comes to slavery and what is popularly categorized as “Black History,” America practices the seductive allure of what I call “Historical Vindicationalism,” where the harsh realities of events and narratives are masked and sterilized, while the end-product of Americanization gets epitomized as being lofty-enough to excuse and acquit the otherwise flagrant inhumanities of its means.  Thus, we as African Americans are psychologically expected to deem the inflicted pains of our history as well worth the ascribed value of the prize of Americanization.

Vindicationalism incubates historically and thrives unsuspectingly in various imposed forms and expressions.  In government for example, partisan members convened the 112th Congress with a showy display of patriotism by ceremoniously taking turns reading the US Constitution.  This was great political theater, especially for the viewing world audience, but what went largely unreported is that they propitiously skipped portions related to slavery . . . knowing that such uncut historical truths would naturally corrode the perceived integrity of the document and vainglory of the occasion.  

What also should not go unrecognized is that, the political ease of which Congress omitted references of slavery, stems from an overall greater political ease whereby Congress has ignored the unbroken link of causational inequities that 2½ centuries of slavery have systemically and endemically produced. 

Upon seemingly inhaling the same vindicationalist fumes, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who gave the Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, remarked in a subsequent speech that “the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” While she is wholly incorrect, this typifies a pervading psyche and a form of vindicationalism wherein Americans hold unconditional reverence for people and events of the 18th century, in ways that give near-Biblical inferences to the founding fathers and founding documents. 

As such, even though slavery is invariably and universally “wrong,” vindicationalism requires that we however are not to regard it as “wrong enough” to repudiate the character or diminish the greatness of the founding fathers.  Interestingly, to defend their historical imprint and further their just cause for posterity, Jewish cultures for instance avow unapologetically to “never forget,” while we seem resigned to fecklessly prefer “not to consider” the adversarial conduct of those historically responsible for our harm.  Since this would equate to political blasphemy on our part, men of Thomas Jefferson’s ilk are historically depicted at-worst as being benignly “complex and ambivalent,” rather than “immoral and inhumane.”  

To limit propaganda, nations should recount history with accurate terminologies since omissions, additions, embellishments and/or misplacements of words can distort facts to the point where false perceptions can become misleadingly disguised as irrefutable truths.  Euro-Americans understand both the dangers and advantages of word-manipulations, which is exactly why people in US courts are not merely demanded to swear on the Bible to just “tell the truth” . . . They must swear all-inclusively to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” 

Mark Twain emphasized the importance of word-use, saying “Use the right word and not its second cousin” and “The difference between the right word and almost the right word, is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”  Nevertheless, in another example of vindicationalism, his 19th-century classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was recently cleansed of all 219 mentions of the “N-Word,” which he deliberately used to capture America’s racial “lightning” that still strikes in this 21st century.  

Vindicationalism works however to camouflage racism and the horrors of our history into sugar-coated blends with modern media, politics, and education.  Students at Grover Cleveland Middle School in New Jersey for example, were assigned to “write catchy slogans and advertisements for why slave labor was the best way to run cotton plantations.”  One slogan read: “Got Slaves? Get Cash and Get Some.”  Black professor Stacey Patton of Montclair State responded saying: “It is important for students to understand both sides,” while Rutgers University professor Clement Price didn’t have a problem “teaching the past through several lenses.”

Based on the overall vindicationalist nature of America’s system of education, experts and authorities will commonly impart “sides and lenses” that intellectually rationalize and reconcile America’s historical depravity.  Conversely, there is no such academic lens to legitimize catchy ads or slogans about the other side to 9/11 or the Holocaust, and neither would the rank and file of Black or White professors intellectually defend it. 

In fighting for freedom, Thomas Paine warned about such distorted thinking which satisfies the sociopolitical expediency of others, saying, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”  So, if “the truth sets you free,” then we as African Americans need political outlooks and historical interpretations beyond today’s vindicationalist versions and time-warped customs which deify Americanization in ways that are both highly disingenuous and factually untrue.

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Culture, Constitution, and Religious Conformity

By Ezrah Aharone

The Juan Williams incident and the rhetoric of Bill O’Reilly that caused Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walkoff the set of The View, fan the flames of an unbroken theme in history where no other “belief” has arguably been as unifying yet divisive, peaceful yet violent as religion.  

Although the proposed Mosque at Ground Zero is widening the gap of intolerance between some Christians and Muslims, the tragedy of 9-11 (which involved extremist Muslims) is no more a window into Islam than the Atlantic Slave Trade (which involved extremist Christians) is a window into Christianity.  Extremists have historically slain innumerable others in the name of all 3 major faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

And just as there are doctrinal distinctions among the world’s estimated 1.9 billion Christians such as Mormons, Anglicans, Catholics and Coptics of Ethiopia in East Africa, there are likewise distinctions among the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims such as Sunnis, Shias, Ahmadiyyas and Murids of Senegal in West Africa.  So it’s either dimwitted or deliberate agitation for someone like O’Reilly, who is Harvard-educated, to wholesale indict and generalize that “Muslims killed Americans on 9-11.”    

While the masses of Christians would never fathom blowing-up a building as did Timothy McVeigh, the masses of Muslims would likewise never fathom flying an airplane into skyscrapers as on 9-11.  But let’s be unpopularly frank but true about something . . . Islam, in any form, has been historically depreciated by this establishment as being alien and adverse to the cultural and ideological makeup of Americanization. 

Whether you agree or disagree with his comments or firing, this stigmatic view of Islam adds to why an otherwise cosmopolitan Black man like Juan Williams is orientated to get spooked if he “sees people in Muslim garbs boarding airplanes.”

Mosques and Muslims have long been viewed by this establishment with national security concerns that predate 9-11, given that Islamic theology and practices reside mostly outside of Westernized input and influence.  In a certain sense, Islam is classified somewhat as being a quasi political, judicial, and cultural system-unto-itself, that competes far more than it complements Americanization.    

Quite contrary to the presumption of being a compassionate “welcoming call” to embrace “all religions,” America was constitutionally founded with Freedom of Religion as a safeguard to prevent theocratic rule.  It was never meant to harbinger all religions to come and culturally or ideologically saturate society.  Hence, when it comes to religious freedoms, there have always been seeming breaches between “culture and constitution” as the mosque in question fittingly demonstrates. 

The concept of Freedom of Religion is one thing, constitutionally.  But culturally, the Anglo-Saxon diaspora of this nation is wedded unequivocally to Protestant brands of Christianity that are nationalistically bundled with patriotism and militarism . . . Which is why Christmas, for example, is the only state-recognized religious holiday; and why  Congress decreed 1983 as the “Year of the Bible,” proclaiming that Biblical beliefs led to America’s settlement; and why soldiers are mandated by the Oath of Enlistment to “Solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . so help [them] God.” 

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who “interprets” the constitution, remarked that “A religious-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.”  As such, US Protestantism is politically allied with Judaism and Catholicism, and despite all the hype about religious freedoms, there’s always been an unexpressed yet well-understood “cultural expectancy” and “nationalistic thrust” for all other Americans to conform accordingly.  

In fact, another unpopular but frank truth is that, African Americans are largely Protestant – not because of Freedom of Religion – but because Euro-Americans are largely Protestant.  Our “style” of worship differs, but because our enslavement was so complete, our religious precepts are mirror replicas of theirs, even though Christianity has various doctrinal distinctions as earlier cited.  Due to their rigors, if they hypothetically were Buddhists, the majority of us would no doubt be Buddhists too.   

This same thrust of conformity and expectancy is precisely what pressurized President Obama – after he seemingly expressed support for the mosque – to straddle the fuzzy line between “culture and constitution,” by saying he wasn’t commenting on the “wisdom,” but rather the “right” of Muslims to build the mosque. 

With the looming Tea Partiers and Glenn Beck idealists, coupled with 20 percent of Americans thinking he’s a closet Muslim, Obama is under a religious microscope like no other president.  He must coat each word with caution whenever he speaks about Islam, Israel, or Middle East politics, so that he isn’t perceived as being a “Muslim sympathizer” or veering from the long-held cultural traditionalism that politically synchronizes America’s “faith and foreign policy.”

At core, the mosque controversy isn’t merely about religious freedom.  Nor is the Juan Williams matter merely about free speech.  And certain criticisms against Obama aren’t mere partisan differences.  

On a deeper level, these issues are indicators that the conformed ways of the original paradigms of Americanization are colliding with today’s multiethnic paradigms, causing the erstwhile boundaries of freedom and equality to be stretched to limits that Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries never imagined or intended.  

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The Un-Abolishable N-Word

By EZRAH AHARONE

To pacify society, “Media Band-Aids” are constantly placed on open wounds of unhealed racism as the Shirley Sherrod incident demonstrated.  Although the William Morris Agency dropped Mel Gibson for spewing the N-Word among other rants, Leonard Rowe’s new Michael Jackson book shows Morris executives using the N-Word 232 times in emails he uncovered during a racial lawsuit.  And Omar Thornton tragically killed 8 co-workers and himself after allegedly being fired for stealing at a job where employers called him the N-Word.

While abolishment is preferable, the N-Word won’t just fizzle-away as an isolated expression, devoid of context.  In a peculiar historical sense, it is emblematic of a mutating “relationship deformity” between Black and White America, that society has been conditioned to not stare at too long.

T
he N-Word has festered as a derivative outgrowth from an abusive past that still stains America’s fabric of government and society.  It manifests today in disproportionate and dysfunctional Black conditions that require remedies beyond jobs, education, and voting.  But there’s mainstream avoidance to delve into the nitty-gritty’s beneath the N-Word’s surface, knowing its core will unveil human flaws and systemic failures that America has yet to racially reconcile.  

To begin unraveling the N-Word conflict, you must understand that distinct terminologies just don’t pop in-and-out of a nation’s vocabulary by happenstance.  Language is a central element of nationhood.  Phrases of both honor and dishonor circulate the political and cultural blood of every nation. 

When some world leaders visit the White House, they’ll flex their sovereign muscles by using translators to interpret their native language, even though they may speak English fluently.  Whosoever wields sovereign powers over a territory also has subsequent access to regulate words and concepts, as well as make or reshape history, doctrines, and ideologies.  Man has probably warred over words and ideals just as much as territory and resources.   

Understanding the power of defining and controlling language, it becomes clear why we weren’t permitted to read or write during slavery, nor speak any language other than English.  We couldn’t even tap or hum to ourselves.  Enslavers would panic, not knowing “the words” behind the tap and hum . . . Herein marks initial concerns to disarm and re-channel the influences of our words and music.  Now, under the pretext of “Free Speech,” the N-Word is commercially linked to a billion dollar music-genre that flaunts sex, violence, and prison culture to our children, while we’re powerless to prevent it.

It’s no mishap that we were collectively labeled with derogative terms.  Remember in the movie Roots, when Kunta Kinte was barbarically lashed (see video) until he renounced his African identity and surrendered to calling himself “Toby”?  Since we were considered “less than human,” logic might suggest that Euro-Americans wouldn’t care what we called ourselves . . .  No, No, No. 

For submission purposes, captors cannot allow captives to communicate in unfamiliar languages or have unfamiliar names.  As such, all “Kunta Identities” had to be deconstructed entirely.  “Toby vs. Kunta” represented an epoch identity/ideological struggle where – “winner takes all” – there was/is no second prize. 

African names traditionally convey aspects of heritage, history, and virtues.  Enslavers didn’t know the meanings, but they knew that African names encompassed more than European names.  So “Toby” denoted far more than a typical European name alone.  The “act of renaming” was part of a larger process to psychologically transfigure all “Kunta Identities” into domesticated natures that could ultimately be trusted to be “Toby-minded” – even when no one was looking. 

Although “Toby” and the N-Word differ in perception, they are similar in function.  Yes, the name “Toby” may sting less, but originally and ancestrally, we were/are no more a “Toby” than we were/are a N-Word.  Just because we grew accustomed to being called “Tobies,” doesn’t make the “act of renaming” any less unprincipled than being called the N-Word . . . Both were dishonorable and each equally severed and misidentified who we were/are according to our God-given lineages. 

From slavery until recently, it was inconceivable that the N-Word would backfire to become publicly off-limits to Whites.  Now, with its “redefined” use, young Blacks seize upon this irony by saying it without compunction, which elders regard as a Black-on-Black slap in the face of our own progress and self-dignity. 

True, nobody should say it.  However, it’s not that simplistic, nor is it a “Black issue” alone.  Riddance of the N-Word and its assorted mis-conditions, will require Euro-Americans to therapeutically examine and correct both themselves and Americanization in ways they have thus far been politically and psychologically unwilling, due to their egotism of “Exceptionalism” which supposedly elevates America above other nations. 

But the lofty liberties and moralities that Euro-Americans self-profess today, is not something portable that can be retroactively applied to cushion the wrecking-ball impact of “N-Word hardships” that they even codified into law during 3½ centuries of enslavement and segregation which ended less than 50 years ago. 

Remember, the N-Word is symptomatic of our unedited historical experience with Americanization . . . Like fingernails raking a chalkboard, it screeches that: “All Has Never Been Well With American Democracy.”  So, when you factor the totality of past relationship deformities, combined with all the present un-reconciled complexities that the N-Word figuratively embodies – advising young Blacks to simply “Don’t Say It” is like saying, “hide under the bed,” as a solution to escape a raging house fire.   

As with the N-Word and all negativities in its wake; you must not only fearlessly combat every facet and extinguish all embers of raging fires, you must furthermore confront the rudiment causes, and then enact preventive measures for future protection.  Otherwise, as in prior centuries, the N-World and all its mutative outgrowths will continue to remain just as un-abolishable throughout this 21st century.

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The New “We the People”

By Ezrah Aharone

This July 4th in 2010 marks 234 years of US independence.  And although America’s ongoing “melting pot experiment” is theoretically unbiased to Blacks, Latinos and Muslims, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that hate groups, like the well-armed Hutaree militia, have increased 200 percent since President Obama’s 2008 election. 

Texas, the former rebel republic and current headquarters of the Guardians of the Free Republic is now waging new ethnic and ideological battlefronts, by arming schoolchildren with conservative-bent textbooks that re-sculpt some of America’s most traditional outlooks.  In Arizona, new immigration legislation now gives a tacit eyewink for police to roundup and shakedown Latinos.  And if you didn’t know, the catchy slogan “If you see something, say something” is a discreet way of saying “keep a close eye on all Muslim people.” 

The resulting rifts over the civil liberties of US citizens and Obama’s recent speech on Immigration Reform, offer a perfect platform to dissect the definition and discrepancies of “We the People” as spoken of constitutionally and historically.  

It was German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller who named the Western Hemisphere “America” in tribute to Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci in 1507.  As early as 1782 when colonists were still blasting their British kinfolk with musket balls, J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur posed the question “What is an American?” in his famed book Letters from an American Farmer.  So who then exactly are “We the People” in modern terms and times? 

Certainly, when these three simple but significant words were first penned in the US Constitution in 1787, the founders didn’t envisage America becoming a vast multi-ethnic society in a world of international laws, where state-sanctioned slavery could have them prosecuted today for the likes of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Certainly, when the ironfisted but seldom-mentioned, President James K. Polk, swiped an unprecedented 1.2 million square miles of territory from Mexico as spoils of war in 1846, it was never intended for millions of Mexicans to sneak across “America’s” border with impunity today.  But as the saying goes, “Mexicans aren’t crossing the border, the border has crossed them.” 

And certainly, as for Japanese-American citizens, “We the People” became constitutionally meaningless when Franklin D. Roosevelt decreed Executive Order 9066, which unleashed the US military to mass-incarcerate 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

While the malice of the founders and ethnic crackdowns of Polk and Roosevelt do not detract from their “American greatness,” there’s comparative objection from Blacks and liberal Democrats because the new textbooks in Texas place positive spotlights on people like Jefferson Davis and Sam Houston.  Based on the outcry, you’d think that Davis and Houston were more crippling to the cause of African Americans, than say, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.

If you’ve notice however, there’s an overall process at work to politically repackage the image and ideals of America’s founding history.  As such, despite centuries of known ethnic mistreatment and “Whites-Only” privileges, America conversely portrays itself as being uniquely constituted with rights and freedoms that were always meant for “everyone” to partake . . . As though “We the People” signified Blacks, Native Americans, Latinos, Asians and even Muslims all along. 

Sure, this promotes feel-good nationalism, especially during these days of protracted warfare in Muslim countries.  But the unedited political truth as cited in Foreign Affairs magazine is that: “For substantial stretches of US history, it was believed that only the people of English origin, or those who were Protestant, or white, or hailed from northern Europe were real Americans.” 

Although the founders bequeathed a largely-Anglo nation, what they didn’t politically calculate were a few societal probabilities . . . That demographic shifts could eventuate a “New We the People,” causing Anglo people to teeter on the brink of becoming a minority on American soil, where “one man, one vote” would become an establishment threat.  Moreover, that the “New We the People” could send a Black man to the White House in the 21st century. 

On the downside, along with secretive hate groups, the “New We the People” has attracted mainstream opposition from Tea Partiers who openly aim to “take their country back,” which among other things is a coded expression of “ethnic displeasure.”  The fact that a group like the Tea Party has almost instantly become a fully-financed movement of scale, is a foretelling omen that the “New We the People” can expect continued ethnic resistance well into the future. 

So the celebratory fireworks and barbeques on the 4th of July may mask the nation’s racial complexities for 24 hours.  Yet the much-hailed ideals that the Declaration of Independence proclaims are still nevertheless A Dream Deferred, given that lingering ethnic prejudges and political contradictions remain endemic 234 years later . . . and still counting. 

                                                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

The Makings of Modern Mis-Education

By Ezrah Aharone 

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black History Month and second Black PhD to graduate from Harvard, wrote the acclaimed The Mis-Education of the Negro way back in 1933.  In the 1940s, psychologist Kenneth Clark’s “Doll Test,” demonstrated that small Black children were being psychologically conditioned to yearn and favor the looks of White people at the expense of self-dislike.  His critical findings were cited during Brown vs. Board of Education when the Supreme Court desegregated schools in 1954.

Here we are, decades removed and Dr. Woodson’s book is still widely sold and studied, while recent doll experiments show that Black children are still predisposed to view White dolls as “prettier and nicer” with hair that’s “better” than Black dolls.  Educationally, we face ever-dismal challenges where Black children enter kindergarten a full year behind Whites; by high school the gap extends to 4 to 5 years; and 58 percent of Black males don’t even graduate high school, according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education. 

Princeton researchers recently published a 7-year study, concluding that a 20-year “Manhattan Project-effort” is necessary to close today’s education and economic gaps of racial inequality.  Just so you’ll know, the original Manhattan Project was a massive pursuit, costing the equivalent of $22 billion and comprising thousands of scientists who developed the A-Bomb in 1945 to nuke Japan into a crisp.  So, to infer this same scale and category of effort, speaks to the comparative urgency and enormity of educational hardships that African Americans must confront during this 21st century.   

There’s good reason for skepticism since Black kids who dropout commonly say “classes aren’t interesting.”  And as far back as my childhood in the 1960s, “Acting White” has been a tagline used by Black kids to ridicule those who academically excel.  Naturally, adults respond by saying, “there’s nothing White about being smart.”  Although this is absolutely true, it absolutely misses the point and fails to address the sociopolitical and mis-educational factors that confound young minds to misconstrue smartness with Whiteness. 

What we as African Americans must realize is that children worldwide learn that the earth is round and 1 + 1 = 2.  These are universal facts that are race-neutral, which have nothing whatsoever to do with either Blackness or Whiteness.  However, the functions and end-uses to which nations apply such facts to influence and educate kids, are not as neutral or universal. 

Hence, “Acting White” is a troubled way that our youngsters express something that we have thus far lacked the power to change – Which is that the functions and end-uses of America’s “System of Education and Intellect” are based on skewed purposes, processes, and interpretations that place European images, ideals, and institutions as the central frame of reference and relevance.  This lack of intellectual equality and institutional parity, encapsulates the very essence of the mis-education identified by Dr. Woodson. 

Our mistake is that we consider it sufficient to simply insert Black people into existing White institutions, and then paste tidbits of sanitized versions of “Black History” into America’s larger body of education.  By contributing without properly correcting the functions and end-uses of America’s “System of Education and Intellect,” we have consequentially allowed “the problem to masquerade as a solution.” 

Ask yourself – To what function is our current system of thought being applied, and who/what are the ultimate beneficiaries and end-users? 

With our 4 centuries of collective intellect and institutions, we can’t stop our youngsters from shooting and killing each other.  We can’t even stop them from cussing in front of elders.  We have communities nationwide that are being held hostage to solution-less Black-on-Black crime, where standards of manhood are measured by practices of “prison culture.”  Modern mis-education is rendering us intellectually and functionally unfit to “rescue ourselves from ourselves.”

Black leaders and educators convene nonstop to debate and decipher “what’s wrong.”  But here’s a biting truth about the nature of Americanization – The very psychological inducements that entrap small Black children to idolize and overvalue White dolls, mutate into sociopolitical mindsets that psychologically induce Black adults to idolize and overvalue European ideals and institutions just the same . . . its one yoke with two levels of psychological shackles.

During his last address to the SCLC in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King similarly noted that neither Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation nor Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill could provide us with “psychological freedom.”  This, he continued, must come from the “inner depths of [our] own being.”    

As such, we should not expect centuries of mis-education and psychological attachments to simply evaporate, even with a Black president.  The purging process however, will certainly require a “systemic undressing” of America’s character and historiography in ways that this establishment will definitely find uncomfortable and unwilling to concede. 

So until and unless we become courageously prepared to mount ample intellectual and institutional capacities to attain and defend our “psychological freedom,” The Mis-Education of the Negro will not only be the title of Dr. Woodson’s book, it will be an accurate description of a permanent reality. 

 

Ezrah Aharone
Phone: (732) 566-9327
Email: Info@EzrahSpeaks.com