Tag Archives: Racism

Afrcan American, Non Violence, Police Brutality, Social Action, Uncategorized

How I was Chi-Raqed: Spike Lee’s New Film Fail

I am sitting here trying to put into words how simply awful is Spike Lee’s new comedic satire “joint” Chi-Raq. So if my points come off as glib I humbly apologize. I would be remised if I actually called Mr. Lee’s new film a joint because that would be way too generous and far too sympathetic. Chi-Raq reminds me of my failed and embarrassing attempt as a young kid to pass off oregano as ganja simply because I wanted to look cool in front of a throng of girls and then embarrassingly gaging after a few puffs to the delight of my buddies. And like all embarrassing moments in childhood I am still trying to live that moment down.

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We all know that Mr. Lee has had a hit or miss career when it comes to making films. His Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing, Inside Man, and Clockers, were masterpieces. But he has also failed miserably at times racking up a list of decidedly atrocious films: Girl 6, School Daze, Drop Squad, Bamboozled, and Get on the Bus, just to name a few. But his latest outing Chi-Raq, and I want to be frank here has got to be his worst and possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. Now to say that something should be called as one of the worst or best of anything borderlines on arrogance. Certainly Mr. Lee could accuse me of not knowing much about filmmaking and compared to a Martin Scorsese he probably would have a valid point. But I, like many of my readers have spent a lifetime watching and studying films and have learned a thing or two about what it takes to really make a great film. And Brothers and Sisters, this ain’t one of them.

Great films are not just works that have good subject matter and subject matter he has. Mr. Lee leaned on the history of Greek comedy and the current American urban violence to construct this narrative so he’s safe on this score. The film is based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a Classical Greek comedy play in which Greek women withhold physical affection from their husbands as punishment for fighting in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Mr. Lee has never been want of good subject matter. He has, in previous films, relied heavily on things that matter to the black community: civil rights, race, gentrification, inter-racial and black on black love, color dynamics, and the exploitation of black athletes. His latest subject: Chicago and American inner city violence is indeed a worthy for our times. But filmmaking is more than just having great subject matter. Great filmmakers are masters of technique. They understand how their films look, sound and are meant to feel to their audience, something I thought he clearly nailed in Do the Right Thing. Great filmmakers learn that filmmaking involves the nitty gritty grind of good writing, lighting, cinematography, proper casting, set and costume design, and sound. All of these technical aspects must be brought to bear to enliven a Directors vision of an idea that is expressed through the media of film. In this case Chi-Raq is a masterful mess, a cataclysmic failure of epic proportions. You know the film lacks technical acumen when one person rolls out of one scene headed in one direction and then miraculously appears in the next scene. This shows a clear lack of attention to detail. In one scene he shows women in Tokyo joining the fight to withhold sex. But Mr. Lee never explains why women in Tokyo need to join the fight to end urban gang violence. There were so many moments in the film when I simply screamed bullsh**t that my fellow film goers began to think I was a Spanish Torero.

If you weren’t familiar with Lysistrata or Chicago’s spate of gang troubles the film is set in the inner core of Chicago, Illinois, one of the most troubled spots (Englewood) for violence, particularly black on black violence.  Chi-Raq’s female sexual prohibition occurs after a black child is caught in the cross fire of two rival gangs: the Spartans and Trojans (Yes, you heard it: Spartans and Trojans—never should one accuse Mr. Lee of a lack of imagination).   And there you have it. Naturally Mr. Lee then attempts to showcase how the holding back of sex, could in some way, highlight the power that modern day brown and black women have if only they were able to harness this power and realize group solidarity. Now you might be asking why is this a bad thing? It’s actually not. This is not a new idea and theoretically it has merit: the sexual occupation of female bodies by men. The problem is how Mr. Lee uses 118 minutes to unfold the nexus of this centuries old male-female dilemma.

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Adapting Lysistrata to modern times requires skillful subtlety and a complete grasp of the stakes involved by the victims of crime, the perpetrators and all those that suffer from the loss of loved ones. The Greeks got it because the Peloponnesian War was the defining moment in Greek history, reducing Athens to complete subjugation and Sparta to unbridled domination of the Greek Diaspora. The original Greek play was neither meant to be in support of female power nor a call for pacifism but a call for an honorable end to the war. What honor can come from ending gang violence and the killing of innocent children?  Comedic satire of any subject only works if one has an idea what is satire. I am not sure Mr. Lee has learned this over his career–Bamboozled comes to mind. There is a fine line between satire and propaganda, and even finer line between purposely comedic satire. Great filmmakers are masters of subtle propaganda even when they intend to smash us out of our seats. Mr. Lee should watch or re-watch Dr. Strangelove, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Chaplin’s Modern Times. In film as in life timing is everything, particularly in comedy.

Another area of the film that is completely distracting is that the film script is written in singsong; yes nearly the entire film actors rhyme their lines. Yes, rhyme! For such a meaningful subject this fails to do anything but trivialize the subject matter, but I did say earlier this was a comedic satire didn’t I? Perhaps this was meant to be appealing to younger audiences? One can only wonder. The film features some old Lee actors: Samuel Jackson plays Dolmedes (Dolomite rip-off) who moves in and out of the film adding narration to drive the picture from one major scene to the next. Dave Chappelle makes a cameo appearance and John Cusack plays Fr. Mike Corrida giving the film a dimension of faux diversity. Wesley Snipes plays Cyclops, a one-eyed rival gang-banger to Nic Cannon’s role as Chi-Raq. Snipes is not funny and just is simply miss-cast in this role. Cannon is credible but lacks the material necessary to allow his talent as an actor to really shine. Angela Bassett suffers that same fate as Miss Helen who champions the power of books. Ms. Bassett is poorly used and not fitting with her remarkable skills as an actor.

Now I know that many people will like the film but that is what film criticism is all about, diversity of opinion. It’s clear that early reviews of the film are mixed and tend to see the film as some type of artistic display and demonstrative of Mr. Lee’s late period work. But lets be honest with ourselves: in light of the police murders, the incessant gang violence, loss of life and the anguish that black mothers and sisters live with as their men die needlessly the movie is simply stupid. But if there is one thing positive to take away from the film: is that a ton of black actors had work.

 

 

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Afrcan American, Non Violence, Police Brutality, Social Action

Police Brutality, Black Leadership and the Failed Consensus for Social Action

In the wake of killings of black Americans by police agencies across the United States blacks politicians and leaders of organizations attempted to devise responsible tactics and strategies to these brutal slayings without much luck. Some of these strategies include the need for greater emphasis on economic programs, strengthening of Federal oversight, and even the introduction of body cameras and other forms of technology that may deter renegade police officers. While activists like Reverend Al Sharpton have kept up pressure on police agencies no coherent plan of action has materialized and it appears that police intransigence has stiffened.

So why have the collective tactics and efforts of Civil Rights veterans Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson or the vast number of actions such as #brunchouts, student led marches, sit-ins, bridge takeovers largely failed to bring about any type of consensus or even coherent strategy to end police brutality? Why have the calls for a new civil rights movement and the introduction of economic programs failed to excite the public, in particular black America into a viably coherent and sustained social movement?

The fundamental problem I argue is that America does not suffer from a dearth of civil rights legislation, lack of leadership nor even the lack of economic programs, although the later is always welcome.  What is missing is a coherent mythology that will guide African Americans, and in particular black youth through the maze of obstacles that are a by- product of American individual and institutional racism. My argument does not negate the injustice of police brutality but I believe will go along way in re-aligning the black communities relationship with American society in general, which in turn may offer the means by which collective action may be mobilized. It may also help to assist the community in devising tactics necessary for a broader strategy to reduce black on black violence, police brutality, increase college graduation rates, erase economic disparities and general African American social expectations.

In 1982 William H. McNeil’s article “The Care and Repair of Public Myth” appeared in the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine. McNeil’s article was a stunning work of cultural and political theory that largely went unnoticed by black America. McNeil’s thesis was simple: “in the absence of believable myths, coherent public action becomes very difficult to improvise or sustain.” In other words societies or people without a coherent mythology will soon find themselves in trouble. Whether these are societies in whole or groups within societies, a coherent mythology provides the necessary psychological base for collective social action.

What McNeil meant by mythology is not what the average person has come to understand about them. A myth is not something that is untrue.  This is and has been a drastic misunderstanding of the term. A mythology as defined by McNeil is a “Statement about the world and its parts particularly nations and other human in-groups that are believed to be true and acted upon whenever circumstances suggest or common response required.” In short a mythology is mankind’s substitute for instinct.  It is the unique way in which human beings act collectively and at times individually.  Without a coherent public mythology collective social action is impossible.  At this very moment African Americans are caught between belief in the mythology of free enterprise in the guise of democratic capitalism and the mythology of America’s inability to provide the benefits of American citizenship fairly and equitably.  This includes equality before the law-one of the hallmarks and privileges of a stable modern democracy.  In many ways African Americans believe the United States still remains an inherently racist and unjust society.  These two opposing beliefs or mythologies cripple coherent public action.

Africans brought to American came with diverse religious, cultural and political mythologies and over the course of time were forced to become a people, an in-group with a set of cultural, linguistic and historical characteristics and shared values.  In short, Black Americans became a nation within a nation. Throughout its history black Americans forged consensus around a set of cultural mythologies. For example, Ethiopianism, a belief in the redemption and value of Africa as a source of cultural pride was the primary mythology through the mid 19th century that blacks used to barricade themselves from demeaning stereotypes of African inferiority.

Self-Help or Black Up Lift replaced Ethiopianism with the ascendency of Booker T. Washington the so-called leader of Black America.  Washington’s form of Self-Help became the mythology that blacks used to build black communities, educate scholars and professionals in the continuous wake of institutionalized and individual white racism.  Self Help’s replacement of Ethiopianism as a guiding mythology was logical as space and time began to distance blacks from their continental roots. And at the same time the belief in the values of individual economic free enterprise wrapped in the gospel the Self Made Man became the mainstream American mythology.  Washington didn’t create the mythology of black uplift he merely re-articulated what was largely an old Puritan mythology re-cast in 19th century America as the idea of the gospel of wealth or what some might call the prosperity gospel.  Washington’s political machine worked to inspire generations of blacks to commit themselves faithfully as a race to a program that relied on individual habits of patience, thrift, cleanliness, honestly and hard work. This became the basis of black collective social action. Collectively, 19th century African Americans believed that hard work would ultimately lead toward equality.

As the impediments and limits of the Self-Made man became evident the subsequent 20th century Civil Rights movement relied on the accepted mythology of equal citizenship as a means to rally African Americans toward the destruction of segregation and the racist class structure that placed blacks in subservient positions of obedience to whites. Martin Luther King, Jr., did not start the civil rights movement, nor did he invent non-violence as a tactic. But what he did was reshape and articulate new ideas and pushed the nation and black America in particular toward a new state of what was right, proper and possible.

With the rise the 1960’s Black Power movement militant black youth and many critics of white education rejected the mythology of non-violent action in the march for civil rights.  Young African Americans shuttered the American mythology that stressed American self-sufficiency for a complete re-ordering of American society that depended upon the destruction of American capitalism-an economic system that seemed beyond the grasp of so many within the ghettos of America. The Black power movement came to stress white racism would always be a constant obstacle to black economic and social progress and came to believe a form of “separatism,” a complete rejection of white society and move toward the creation of separate black societies was as the only logical path toward collective social action.  Blacks, power activists, with good reason, could not rely on the American mythology of hard work nor equality before the law as reliable mythologies for advancement. However, with the continued criticism and discrediting of Booker T. Washington’s program of Self-Help and King’s non-violent tactic young African Americans found themselves floundering for lack of a guiding mythology.  We see this born out in low college graduation rates, mass incarcerations, black on black crime, low voter turn-out, single family homes, and a host of other economic, social, cultural, political indices.

So where are we today? McNeil’ warned that discrediting old myths without finding new replacements erodes the basis for common action. Today, blacks have no means for building consensus because no single guiding mythology exists for blacks Americans to rally. There is schism in the body social. What do we say to young black males that see President Barack Obama as a black male role model while racist cops gun down other black males with impunity? I argue that the black writers, artists and intellectuals must consider the necessity of creating new mythologies that can sustain black life and bring a sense of clarity and purpose to a people that find themselves facing these two warring disjunctures.

There is no sense in pretending that old wine in new caskets is what is needed. Marches, demonstrations, economic programs have all had their day. There is no sense in getting around the fact that these tactics have all lost their luster and fail to acknowledge that humans have always been and will continue to be a diverse collection of hunting bands prone to violence. However, a viable mythology that recognizes and takes seriously the concept that black lives matter is the only sincere method to build a future where the mythology of “protect and serve” applies equally to all Americans citizens and will assist in making police violence against the black community as common as it is within the white community.

What we need and sorely lack is a new leader with a vision of both past and future that millions will find compelling as to make them wiling and eager to join in common action to achieve a newly articulated goal. In short, we sorely need a new mythology.

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Uncategorized

Ok Ferguson, So Now What’s Next?

There is no doubt that the recent events of Ferguson has uncovered a dramatic gulf that exists between the young who seek freedom from oppression and are willing to pay any price to remit that oppression and the old that seek reform only through old tactics of non-violence.   This cleavage between the young and the unyoung comes at a time when youth dominated protests movements have crystalized throughout much of the so-called Third World: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, the sit-in at Taksim Gezi Park in Turkey, Occupy USA, the various Arab Spring movements from Tunisia to Cairo including the struggle for dignity in Gaza.

After Ferguson there can be no denial of the truth –no other way than to face facts beyond change: since 1865–the end of the Civil War, segments of American society have been engaged in a low-grade genocidal war against Native and African- American communities.   From the 19th well into the 20th century this war saw the exile of indigenous people to reservations, the destruction of centuries old Indian cultures and the obliteration of all black towns: from Rosewood to Tulsa; the segregation of blacks into urban ghettos, the mass incarcerations and the extension of that war to the deportation of thousands from immigrant Latin American communities residing in the U.S.

Young African Americans activists must realize that their desire for justice must be tied to and understood in the larger world wide historical demand for justice that extends from David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) against international slavery to the continued war against police and State brutality in Brazil, to the continued suburban ghettoization of European youth. This war is a fight against oppressive government sanctioned and institutionalized power that seeks to force people of color into accepting the status quo where 1% of the world’s population controls 99% of the world’s resources–from land where people of color are in the majority.  Make no mistake this is a genocidal war of domination of such epic magnitude that it would make Julius Caesar green with envy.

Non-violent struggle (the authors assert that non-violence is, and can often be, a form of low grade violence) was borrowed from Henry David Thoreau who devised this strategy in the face of an American government attempting to profit from the expansion of slavery in the west. Non-violence was later taken up by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to unseat a racist European power that, through force of violence, dominated every facet of life in India. Martin Luther King, Jr., borrowed these same tactics and preached a form of non-violence that showed the world the true colors of southern racism as they raped, lynched and destroyed black lives, undermined black potential, and forced blacks into a caste system that relegated blacks to poverty and despair. As Civil Rights victories mounted blacks internalized these victories and began to seek the spoils of American life in earnest.

Over time we witnessed the expansion of the black middle and upper classes that earned their way to wealth and prosperity and in some cases to positions of power and authority in American society. Yet, there remained cracks in the veneer of success. Black urban poverty became a way of life rather than a temporary condition, prestigious black colleges that had educated generations of black intellectuals were abandoned and many closed, black health disparities increased, and the mass incarceration of youth to enrich the prison industrial complex gutted communities of color and with that came the loss of voting rights for numerous black males. This was tantamount to the emasculation of black men. This was largely accomplished through the now recognized failed war on drugs, a conscience effort to funnel children of color into prison (see school to prison pipeline) and through state and local legislative policies that solidified institutional racism. No one was spared–neither the poor, the colored, nor the young. Blacks from the middle and upper classes, who had hoped that the content of their character would be the sine quo non of a new American racially egalitarian society, bore witness to their own struggles of racism at work, in their communities and the countless confrontations with police and state authority.

During the past 50 years the older generation of African Americans strived to enter American society as co-equals with white Americans in the work place and in seemingly diverse communities. And while blacks strove they abandoned historically black colleges and universities, abandoned the poor in inner cities, and failed to create any lasting structures that would enable young blacks any real opportunity to move ahead without losing their culture and their dignity. In effect whites demanded a form of cultural monotony while, at the same instance, they denigrated blackness. Black Strivers incorporated a go-along-to-get-along strategy by adopting white cultural values while abandoning the very black values that had created Washington, Garvey, Dubois, Johnson, Angelou and Shakur.

The young have to understand that their education has been defiled in a way to placate them and give them a sense of duty and loyalty to a country that desires to see them give up their culture for a way of life that has destroyed the environment, emasculated Native Americans, fought catastrophic wars from Vietnam to Iraq for resources–the last being for oil; destroyed Union protections for workers and seeks to give Wall Street cartels carte blanche in enriching the 1% while the middle and poorer classes see their stake in society erode.

Protest marches have failed because black leadership has failed. Boycotts have failed because black strategies and tactics have failed. Old ways must be torn asunder. New ways of thinking and acting must be deployed, a new vocabulary that seeks to honor the environment, seek justice for all regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual and religious orientation must be at the forefront of this and future struggles against the forces of darkness that, if given their way will destroy every ecosystem on this planet and along with it human life.

Black, White, Brown, Yellow and Red youth must envision a new alchemy, a new spirit, a new way to thinking. Old revolutionary talk will not free the imprisoned mind, this will only occur through the creation of new paradigms, and new articulations of justice. We, old must work with the youth to achieve new symmetry that will eradicate race as a dominating factor in the life chances of millions from the impoverished Favelas of Brazil to the Detroit’s 8 Mile.

The fight will be hard, and fraught with difficulty. The benefits of justice will require thick skins, strong backs and a firm resolve—but without this resolve what price freedom? What price continued enslavement?

To summarize we assert the following:

  1. African Americans must seek international condemnation for a racist American justice system that unfairly targets people of color; African Americans must seek condemnation for genocidal practices by Federal, State and Local governments that seek to use State sanctioned violence and oppression against People of color;
  2. Build coalitions with minority communities and those whites that seek an alternative structures to replace existing hegemonic institutions;
  3. Create new democratic organizations that value diversity of opinion, diversity of race, color, creed, sexual orientation and religious orientation; and to seek greater and open access to affordable education for all.
  4. Develop institutions that value the natural environment and those creatures that depend on its wholeness for their survival.
  5. Recognize and respect the varied ways in which people seek to govern themselves; and to only wage war only as a tactic of defense and when no other options are available.

 

Also contributing to this article was Major Aldo Putman, USAR. (Ret.). Major Putman served as a combat advisor in Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

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Uncategorized

Behind the Veil: White Racism, White Privilege, and America’s Long Road Ahead (Part I)

I had hoped in my inaugural launch of niyabinghiblues to devote the bulk of my time writing on more pressing theological concerns rather than delving into the much discussed topic of race & racism. From my point of view what more can be said about that topic? But in light of the racial diatribes by Los Angeles Clipper owner Donald Sterling, Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy and “plantation mistress” Paula Deen I began to wonder why, in-spite of our collective anti-racist efforts, so many white Americans still cling the view that blacks are and should remain unequal members of society?   Steve Nash, a highly respected athlete and potential NBA Hall of Famer, said it best by asking why racist ideologies like those of Sterling still remain inviolable in certain segments of our community?

The question posed by Nash gives us a platform to dialogue on racism’s saliency and why racism seeks and finds expression in a myriad of ways each no less astonishing and hurtful to Americas “majority minority” population.  Deen, Sterling and Bundy and many others believe deeply that blacks are social pariahs and better off earning their keep as plantation slaves.  The effects of this racist ideology confirm what many feel in the African American community, that the Civil Rights mission to fully integrate the bulk of black Americans has been a dismal failure.  What accounts for this phenomenon? In a series of essays to follow I will present what I believe to be the most poignant and ignored research on the topic.  Poignant because it gets to the heart of racisms ubiquity in the white community, and ignored because it nakedly exposes the rotted core of American racial ideology.

Inter-racial dialogue on racism, I argue, has failed to adequately address racism because it fails to take into account the full breadth of scholarship in the social sciences (experimental psychology, theology, history, and anthropology) to illuminate a much deeper and complex structure to white racism. The failure to do so, I argue, continues to lay waste our collective efforts to rid America of this pattern of racism.  I will present a broad scope of cross-disciplinary research (transdiciplinarity) so that we may attempt to positively push forward the stagnated dialogue on the subject. Ultimately, I believe that we must use relevant scholarship within the social sciences to explore racism, its effects on subject populations, and then construct theological based mythologies to combat and finally put an end to this American scourge.  The power to do so is within all of us, black, white, no matter.

The ideology of an American multi-cultural meritocracy, if not already, should be laid to rest.   Egregious acts of racism in America are so regular they appear universally accepted by all classes within the white community.  Whether it’s septuagenarians like Sterling, racist “tweets” against Joel Ward’s 2012 NHL playoff goal, or NFL WR Riley Cooper’s indignation at “niggers.”   It would appear, efforts to racially equalize American society, finds its greatest resistance within the white community.  We should consider why racism continues to be durable even with the consistent dedication of educational institutions and the efforts of good citizens of every color in combating racism?  Rather, racism and the resistance of many whites to multiculturalism have defied efforts to remake the United States into the racial utopia envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  We Americans are seemingly unable to come to terms with what should be self-evident, that we have failed in King’s efforts to create a color-blind society.

Without a doubt we no longer live in a society where Klan rallies, cross burnings, rapes, and lynchings are a mainstay of life for blacks as they were just 60 years ago. Some will point out, justifiably, that African Americans have made enormous progress in American society. For example, there are more black millionaires, blacks in the middle class, and a higher percentage of black high school graduates than any other time in America history. No longer are African American women raped indiscriminately; black neighborhoods, churches and schools burned, nor are black men taken from their wives and murdered in front of their children.   Local, State and Federal agencies no longer act as a unified chorus in sanctioning ritualized acts of barbarity as they had after the Civil War.  However, this ignores the mountain of evidence suggesting that for the masses of African Americans little of life has changed since Reconstruction. In a nation where concentrated wealth would shame Caesar Augustus, Black poverty is persistent at 28.1%; 33% of black children (3.6 million) live below the poverty level; only 16% of blacks hold bachelors degrees compared to 37% of whites and 51% Asian Americans; In the 10 most populated states, rates of child poverty among black children range from 29% in California and Florida to 47% in Ohio; incarceration rates by race should cause the most hardened criminalist embarrassment and self-reflection.

Law professor Michelle Alexander has illuminated the state of black males and prison in her work The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012). This should be required reading for every American citizen. Yet, a more chilling assessment of our prison system was offered in a 2007 report from the Center on Media, Crime and Justice: Unlocking America – Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population.  The report summarizes and demonstrates that incarcerating large numbers of people, in particular people of color, has little impact on crime and is not cost effective.  According to the report, prison policy has exacerbated the festering national problem of social and racial inequality. Incarceration rates for blacks and Latinos are now more than six times higher than for whites; 60% of America’s prison population is either African- American or Latino. A shocking eight percent of black men of working age are now behind bars, and 21% of those between the ages of 25 and 44 have served a sentence at some point in their lives. At current rates, one-third of all black males, one- sixth of Latino males, and one in 17 white males will go to prison during their lives. Incarceration rates this high are a national tragedy.

And there is no end to the growth of prisons under current policies. In 1972 there were roughly 200,000 prisoners, by 2012 roughly 1,571,013.   Elites within political, police, and judicial institutions, dominated by white males, sought to incarcerate low level, non-violent drug offenders by appealing for support from traditional black allies: poor and working class whites. The net result, of white Americas War on Drugs, was the creation of prison culture in the black and brown communities, an armed police state within the white community (Stand Your Ground and Open Carry Laws) and the loss of American claims to exceptionalism. The Sentencing Project has confirmed that sentencing policies since 1982, have resulted in the dramatic growth in the number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses from 41,000 in 1980 to half a million in 2011. Furthermore, harsh sentencing laws such as mandatory minimums keep drug offenders in prison for longer periods of time: in 1986, released drug offenders had spent an average of 22 months in federal prison. By 2004, federal drug offenders were expected to serve almost three times that length: 62 months in prison. Alexander has narrated the sinful irony of the political realignment gained by politicians in creating and supporting the prison industrial complex (PIC). Alexander wrote: President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising.  From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics.  The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action.  In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks.  The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” I will show in subsequent articles how the regulators of the PIC are the direct descendants of the Slave Powers that were violently expunged from power in the Antebellum South. I argue that the incarceration of black males was an all out war on the black family, specifically black males to ensure white male hegemony in America.  The facts are indisputable.

Anti-racists have failed to accept the idea that there is a durable and accepted ideology among white America that black life is of lesser value than white life. How would one explain the consistent parroting of white kids in black face, the hanging of President Obama in effigy on college and high school campuses or the harassment of Obama supporters after his election victory by young white males? The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported violence against Obama supporters in “Racist Backlash Greets President Barack Obama,” (2009). The SPLC documented assaults on Black citizens is no less chilling than the violence perpetrated on blacks during the Age of Jim Crow. Obama effigies were hung from trees at the University of Kentucky. In Snellville, Ga., a boy on a school bus told a 9-year-old girl that he hoped Obama would be assassinated. A dark-skinned doll labeled “Obama” was hung in a high-school stairwell east of Tacoma, Wash; five students were expelled. A University of Alabama professor reported that an Obama poster was ripped off her office door. When she put up another one, somebody wrote a death threat against Obama and a racial slur on it. A biracial student at a high school north of Pittsburgh complained that a teacher’s aide said to a student that Obama would be killed, that the American flag would be changed to the KFC chicken chain’s emblem, and the national anthem would become “Movin’ on Up” — the theme song of “The Jeffersons,” a sitcom about a black family. The aide also berated her for supporting Obama, the student said. How does anyone explain why so many (young) whites hold these views and feel free to express them openly? The typical explanation, offered is that white children are taught racism at home and receive media and consumer messages that blacks are intellectually & morally inferior and spiritually bankrupt.   Yet, intuitively this line of argument defies logic. I am not arguing that racism is not passed from one generation to the next or not perpetuated by the media. What I am saying is that there are enough competing positive racial images that should have rendered these negative images of blacks unworkable. Black movie stars, intellectuals, and athletes have been dominant for nearly 40 years providing clear refutation of stereotyped images. Yet, while Magic Johnson, is arguably one of Americas most beloved celebrities, Don Sterling and his peer group feel he barely warrants an admission ticket to a Clippers game. The long held belief of racisms inevitable demise is grossly premature.

The task ahead is fraught with peril and many will resist the idea that white privilege, and white hegemony exist at all. Coming in consciousness of ones own power, especially to acknowledge this privilege is to be open to the possibility that one’s own personal economic, political and social standing has been achieved not by the sweat of one’s brow but by the sweat and pain of loss by another. The possibility of unrecompensed material gain in an alleged meritocracy smacks at the face of Americas greatest article of faith: The Self Made Man. For some, the very nature of inter-racial dialogue would question the very core of American values and the very foundation these American institutions rest. This may explain, in part, why racism refuses obsolescence. In short, racism is a product so deeply woven into the fabric of American society that to end racism may be to end America as we know it. At best it will require the complete eradication of the institutions that have supported American exceptionalism since the founding.  But by doing so, by examining, questioning and discarding the very ideologies that supported the genocidal massacre of Native Americans and Africans might prove liberating and reveal a stronger, freer and more inclusive America.

Over the course of months I will provide a series of articles that will examine the construction of American ideologies of white racism, white privilege, and African American’s responses over the past four centuries of black life in America. These uniquely American ideologies work in concert to perpetuate white over black even while we sleep. The challenge is to rise above these ideologies to seek love rather than hate, brotherhood over antagonism and to work with white and other Americans to deconstruct racial privilege. As we move to a “majority minority” society our greatest necessity and challenge in the 21st century will be to dismantle white privilege peacefully and without the chaos and loss of life America experienced from 1861-65.

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