Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Niggas

I am pleased to see so much dialogue occurring in national media about one aspect or another of the Black predicament. However, much of that dialogue is misdirected and marginal and a waste of the few moments that Black opinion is allowed to be showcased on national media. The hubub about Michael Richards' use of the word nigger, or as Blacks say, nigga, is just such a waste. It ranks up there with the Cosby diatribe about Black conduct within its community.

How high Blacks wear their pants, and how many books they carry home from school in their book bags, and how many children they father and fail to support and whether they do or do not use the N-wordhas no material bearing on the Black condition in America. That behavior, and the use of the word nigga is not the reason for the racial disparity that has Blacks in 2006 earning one-half what whites earn for the same work; that has average Blacks unemployed at twice, and in the under 25 year old males class five times the rate of their white counterpart; that has Blacks who are out of work taking 3 times as long to find another job; that has the average Black high school graduate reading at the 5th grade level and has Blacks being gunned down in the streets during an Execution in Blue. These are the important issues that Black leaders need to seriously address not whether nigga is a legitimate word; or is endearing or perjorative; or appropriate for use in a mixed audience. Or whether Blacks should let their underwear show.

Black leaders, Jesse Jackson principally among them have snow poles for backbones and seize on these marginal issues to appear to be concerned and doing something to improve the lot of Black people in this country and elsewhere. Snow poles? That's one of Jesse's favorite metaphors. He suggested, long ago, that Blacks have snow poles for backbones. When things are cool, those backbones have Blacks standing erect, proud and determined. But that when confronted with racist America and the heat is turned up, those backbones melt and whither and their owners stand stoop shouldered and submissive. I love that thought. As it turns out, however, and to the everlasting detriment of American Blacks, he and the current crop of Black leaders all suffer from that affliction.

None of the Black leaders are confronting the American institutions that account for the economic disparities attendant Blacks in America. This is a capitalist country. Money is everything. Either you got it or you don't. If you don't, you are powerless. It is even more fine tuned than that. If you simply have less than the next group, your group is less influential than that other group on a political and social level.

While Blacks do not have the wealth of whites in this country, they have enormous consuming power; enough to tip the economic health of any one company, in any one industry over and down near the bottom of his counterparts' listing should that consuming power be microdirected away from such companies on a scheduled and selectively targeted basis. What Blacks need is some serious warfare against these corporate institutions that perpetuate American racial, and more importantly economic disparity. If the numbers were leveled off, and Blacks earned the same as whites in this country, i.e., twice what they now earn, the Black Ghetto as we now know it would disappear and with it, Ghetto attitudes that the Cosbys and Waters of America seek to denigrate.

The Cosbys, Waters, Sharptons and Jacksons are overly concerned with the quality of life in the hole, when they should direct all of their attention to getting Blacks out of the American Black Hole.

Bottom line: Black leaders should spend those precious media minutes going after those institutions that cause the important problems in the "Quarter". They are shooting at the wrong targets and wasting precious resources in the process.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Execution in Blue

Execution in Blue:

It did not take a genius to have a clear understanding of the news account that an unarmed man and his companions were gunned down by a NY Police department squad late at night when no one was looking to know that the identity of the victims were Black. Police departments do not fire 40+ shots at an unarmed human being during the course of their duties unless the man is Black, with an occasional Brown man. Never a white man. When they are confronted with a white man in a similar situation, they spend hours in negotiating his surrender. They clear out the neighborhood so innocent people don't get hit by stray bullets from the no-shooting cops. They bring in FBI negotiators to preserve the life of their brethren. But when the target is Black it's a happy firing range where cops empty their magazines and have time to reload so as not to miss the fun.
The real problem I have with this scenario is not that it is still happening, but that the leadership in the Black and Brown communities is so spineless. In fact, it because of the latter that it IS still happening.

Eurogenia

Europeans just don't get it.

They intrude into other people's homes and cannot understand why the homeowners don't put up with it or appreciate why it is for their own good. The Europeans began this garbage during the Crusades. They repeated their mistake during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they decided to divide up the entire continent of Africa and most of the Middle East among themselves. Can you say Raj? They did not ask the natives. They just showed up one day and said "you do not live here anymore" like the nazis did to the homes of the jews during Kristal Nacht in the 30's and 40's. And they do it for the most self-serving and specious of reasons. Can you say Manifest Destiny?

They might have gotten away with this garbage when the natives only had spears, or in the case of the American West, arrows. But not recently. Can you say RPG? Or IED? Or the Mau-Mau? Or Vietcong? Or 9/11?

I think it is a genetic condition I like to describe as Eurogenia; a disease process characterized principally by an irresistable, European compulsion to dominate the Brown and Black people of the world.

Until this afflicted populace realizes that it has to deal with Browns and Blacks as global partners rather than as the vanquished, American and other European lives will be wasted on Brown and Black battlefields to support a curable disease process.

Dumb!!!

hs