Marvin X in Harlem, 1968
photo Doug Harris
James Baldwin in Harlem, cerca 1968
In my 1968 interview with James Baldwin at his New York apartment, he stated emphatically, "We the only thing that happened here, nothing else happened here but us!" It was a cold December and his apartment was without heat, but he continued, "Imagine, we are celebrating the Prince of Peace while bombing the hell out of Vietnam. These people don't believe in Christianity, your condition proves it!" And what is our condition, then and now--the same with superficial changes, mainly at the top, i.e., niggas in high places do not reflect the condition of the masses. Have you heard it will take 240 years for North American Africans to achieve equity with whites? Wow, 240 years? And they cry crocodile tears about reparations for 400 years of free labor allowing them to accumulate untold capital wealth, enough for them to dispense such wealth to generations of their children who boldly deny they have not benefited from the abject exploited wealth of their forefathers and mothers, por favor, please don't leave Miss Ann out of this political/economic drama greater than the greatest Shakespearean tragedies.
Shakespeare and Niggas
Was not Lady MacBeth as much a terror as MacBeth? Who do you think ran the plantations while Massa was fighting the Civil War?
Diop on Northern Cradle Tragedy and Southern Cradle Comedy
But as per tragedy, we must note that in the Cultural Unity of Africa, Cheikh Anta Diop made a clear delineation between Northern Cradle Tragedy and Southern Cradle Comedy, for the former derives from murder while the later evolves from the annual flooding of the Nile or Hapi River and the renewal of crops symbolized with the Resurrection Drama of Osiris and Isis, that was, essentially, a comedy, the essence of Southern Cradle or African dramaturgy. The annual renewal of the Nile Valley or Kemit was a source of faith in resurrection of agriculture that reimagined this myth-ritual in the deep structure of Kemetic culture, i.e., it was eternal unless interrupted by Seth or the forces of darkness.
Akhenaton and Monotheism
Darkness brought about disruption, challenges to the throne over succession, perhaps by the pharaonic Queens or the priesthood, especially those Amen priests during that critical reign of Akhenaton, whose Sun Hymn initiated monotheism, a challenge to the Amen priests. Thus in their successful conspiracy against the socalled heretic pharaoh, upon the termination of his reign, all acknowledgment of his reign were destroyed. Yet, ironically, his attempt to establish monotheism is the prototypical event in the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. See his notes in the Yusef Ali translation of the Holy Qur'an in which he devotes extensive notes on the rise of monotheism and Islam with its roots in the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton. But I must interject that as per monotheism, I agree with the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted, who stated in his classic work The Dawn of Conscious, "Monotheism is but imperialism in religion." This statement made plain to me that religion in general but monotheism in particular cannot be seen, and most certainly not understood, except as a religious and political phenomena. Those who are dumbfounded by the murderous acts of certain dogmatic religious sects and cults such as the Boku Haram, Isis, Somali rebels, Taliban, et al., will continue to be dumbfounded because such groupings are simply seeking power in the manner Henry Breasted described, except we doubt he imagined the global scope of such groupings, and even more so, the level of their murderous and heartless endeavors in the name of religion.
Niggafication of America during the Obama Era
Even I was overcome with passion at the election of Obama as President of the USA, yet I had full knowledge of the plethora of African presidents and prime ministers, along with those African rulers in the Caribbean, most of whom were/are victims as was that great Caribbean scholar/politician of Trinidad, Dr. C. Eric Williams, who wrote the classic Capitalism and Slavery, only to become a victim of capitalism and slavery himself.
So a black face cannot save our race. We indeed suffer the Sisyphusian myth/ritual, that eternal trek up the mountain only to fall down again generation after generation. And now we see even the majority of whites, along with the other ethnicities, are being reduced to the niggafication of their political, economic and psycho-social condition. As per whites, Critical Race Theory has them in a severe traumatic condition with their whiteness under question or more exactly, under nullification and negation as happened to the Africans who arrived in chains and their descendants who yet exist in economic and psychological chains at this hour. Of course I cannot neglect to mention we yet live under the boot of slave catchers parading as police, i.e., peace officers, who murder freely under the color of law.
And although we applaud the generation of socalled progressive whites who march under the black lives matter banner and often experience the terror of police violence, we must recognize a majority of whites symphatize and emphasize with the police, no matter the video seen around the world. These whites suffer severe denial to the degree their mental condition is athrophized beyond repair. Thus their condition is beneath that of the niggas they despise so deeply. Perhaps it equals the wretched ignorance of their poor white brothers and sisters whose condition is acknowledged to be beneath that of niggas.
Negation of Niggafication
Shall we therefore retitle my essay since whites may never approach the endurance level of socalled niggas, call them Negus if you are enlightened enough to know who we really are, African royalty, if for no other reason than because we survived centuries of the most wretched treatment ever experienced by human beings on the planet earth.
Niggafication or what nomenclature is proper
Such terms as Genocide, holocaust, ethnic cleansing, do not approach the depths of our experience in the United States of America and throughout the Americas. So it may be a misnomer to suggest any people, white, brown, yellow, can ever approach the deep structure of our suffering. Let us then dispense with the niggafication nomenclature to simply state that those who persist in the grand denial of white supremacy as the integral, systemic and most pervasive element of American society, i.e., the essence of institutions, political, economic, religious, educational, military, interpersonal, those persons have an awesome date with their destiny called reality, and such reality shall shake them to their bowels and beyond, from which they may never be able to recover, no matter how well meaning they pontificate to the world new found pronouncements of good will to the world.
--Marvin X
4/27/21
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