The Roots of White Supremacy: Human, Cultural, Religious

JUSTICE INITIATIVE Part II: Human, Cultural and Religious Evolution The Roots of White Supremacy  By Heather Gray Introduction    This is Part II of what I began a few months ago on religion, namely "Part I: History and Violence of Christianity" (click here for the PDF).  Given the tragedy of nine members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston being ruthlessly killed on July 17, 2015, I am expanding upon this. The reason is because I've also realized that there is so much history that invariably gets left out of mix in our understanding of western culture and the advent of white supremacy.   Hunter-Gatherers (Peter Gray)  In this series I will summarize thousands of years of human evolution and culture, which I realize is a formidable and treacherous task. It's a look at our early formative history - and to repeat, it is a "summary". I don't think it is practical or possible to understand western religion and subsequent arrogance vis-a-vis the world's vast cultural and religious diversity as well as western white supremacy without some understanding of how we evolved - particularly from being hunter-gatherers to agricultural based societies. I am not exploring the nuances of religion and messages that I know many find inspiring and important. Rather, I am looking at the evolutionary/political/cultural and societal facets of it all.   Unfortunately, many of the changes we have made in our human experiences have not always been advancements - in fact, in many or perhaps most instances the reverse has been the case. But we do have the opportunity to learn about our past so that perhaps we can explore ways to improve and advance toward a more humane and just world.    And in subsequent articles in this series, I will share my personal experiences in witnessing or having knowledge of international violence being supported by or in partnership with right-wing fundamentalist Christians and what I would call quasi-government terrorist groups in southern Africa and southeast Asia. I define "West", in this instance, primarily as Europe (East and West) and Britain, in particular, along with its former white settler colonies, as in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.    Having lived in Canada, the United States, Australia, Singapore and for a brief while in the Philippines; and also working/observing in the field of agriculture in the U.S. and internationally and/or witnessing its impact; and coupled with studying anthropology, as a student, a lot of what I write below comes from some 40 years of my personal experience, study and observation.     Out of Africa and Its Impact We humans (homo sapiens) evolved in Africa some 200,000 ago and then, according to geneticist Samuel Wells, some of us began to leave the continent to travel throughout the world 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, largely due to changing weather patterns and lack of food. Australian aborigines, according to Wells, were of that first group of humans leaving Africa. There were ultimately various waves of us leaving the continent (Wells). In fact, there were 2 major flows of humans going north into Europe and Central Asia from Africa starting about 45,000 years ago and it took some 15,000 to 20,000 years to "colonize" it (Wikipedia). See below the map of our movement out of from Africa. The wave  of humans into central Asia is critical for understanding later European development.              Following different routes out of Africa, successive waves of early humans migrated into new territories, eventually populating the entire globe save Antarctica. This map shows this complex web of migrations in their broadest strokes. Maps by Joyce Pendola. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/07/genographic200707   I know this is likely old hat to some, and is a repeat from a footnote in my recent article "The Massacre in Charleston", but I think it valuable to yet again refer to how we changed while migrating around the world. As humans left Africa and then further away from the equator our skin color changed and became more varied over time. Our black or white skin or variations of color have largely to do with our adaptation to heat - the closer we are to the equator the darker our skin, as the "melanin is an effective absorber of light; the (darker) pigment is able to dissipate over 99.9% of absorbed UV (ultraviolet) radiation" (Wikipedia) and in this way we can better survive in an exceptionally warm climate; consequently the further away from the equator, the lighter our skin because we need to absorb more heat and vitamin D (Smithsonian) in order to survive (see the world map of skin color below). There is also a third factor that effects our skin color and it has to do with diet combined with UV rays:    ....coastal peoples who eat diets rich in seafood enjoy this alternate source of vitamin D. That means that some Arctic peoples, such as native peoples of Alaska and Canada, can afford to remain dark-skinned even in low UV areas. In the summer they get high levels of UV rays reflected from the surface of snow and ice, and their dark skin protects them from this reflected light (Smithsonian). Our different skin colors mean an environmental adaptation, with the exception of diet plus environment for Arctic peoples. That's it!  But this also demonstrates how important nature and the environment is to us humans. We are not separate from it, but part of it!         Race differentiation? There is no such thing. It's a myth. We are all of the same species with a variety of different colors (Robert Wald Sussman).    World Map of Skin Colors - GRID     Color is not the only factor that the West has used as a way to distinguish Africans and other people of color as different. Another difference that the West has tried to use is "racial essentialism", as in biological intellectual capacity or other characteristics such as industry and character. This is yet another fallacy by the western propagandists and colonists as a way to control the masses for their own intent.       Yet, as Professor William Richman has stated: "There simply are no genetically-based pan-"racial" differences in character, intelligence, or any other set of traits crucial to individual or societal success or position; racial essentialism is intellectually bankrupt" (Richman). I invite you to read Richman's excellent detailed article about genetics and the dispersal of us human from Africa " Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" (2006).    I also need to add here from the profound 1988 book by George Fredrickson, "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History" that every step of the way Europeans attempted to rationalize their oppression of Africans.   Hunter-Gatherers In the quest to explain human culture, anthropologists have paid a great deal of attention to recent hunter-gatherer, or forager, societies. A major reason for this focus has been the widely held belief that knowledge of hunter-gatherer societies could open a window into understanding early human cultures (Yale). When we left Africa we would have been hunter-gatherers, which we have been for most of our human history. It was only some 10,000 years ago that we began the mass production of agriculture and/or to grow food and store it in bulk. In fact "food production took over to such an extent that, in the past few hundred years, only an estimated 5 million people have subsisted by foraging" (Yale). Agriculture also radically changed they way we had lived as hunter-gatherers from an egalitarian to a hierarchical society.    Hunter-gatherers generally had small bands of people of about thirty individuals who were quite independent. They were, however, usually connected to a larger tribal group or other similar small groups. In the hunter-gatherer groups, resources were equally shared.   While hunting and gathering were largely separated by the men and women with men being the hunters and women the gatherers there were times that these tasks were shared. However, women as gatherers brought in from 60% to 80% of the food eaten by the group (O'Neil). It's true that some hunter-gatherer's brought some animals to extinction but "most groups lived thousands of years in the same area without destroying the environment" (huntergatherers.org).    I realize it is possible to romanticize the hunter-gatherer societies and they did vary but there appears to be some basic threads. Also, the research findings suggest a radically different and positive life than ours today. Here's more about the culture: These bands will usually move from place to place in a semi-nomadic way, although some may remain in permanent settlements.  Each band will have a leader, or chief, who usually is an organizer and mediator, but has little power beyond that.  Remember that these groups do not possess hardly any stockpiles of material wealth, and leaders particularly avoid having any more possessions than other members of the group so that there will not be any resentment or jealousy from the group.  So a chief usually will not have much power over the rest of the members of the group.  All members of the band have an equal voice in decision making.  A chief only organizes those voices.  In fact, if one person becomes too aggravating to another person of the tribe, that person can simply move to another band (huntergatherers.org) With respect to some of the "ideals" of hunter and gatherer societies overall, below is a description by psychologist Peter Gray which you can see is vastly different from what we have now in our western societies. It is definitely a model for us to consider or variation thereof:  We citizens of a modern democracy claim to believe in equality, but our sense of equality is not even close that of hunter-gatherers. The hunter-gatherer version of equality meant that each person was equally entitled to food, regardless of his or her ability to find or capture it; so food was shared. It meant that nobody had more wealth than anyone else; so all material goods were shared. It meant that nobody had the right to tell others what to do; so each person made his or her own decisions (Gray).    To repeat, the definition of a "chief"  in hunter-gatherer societies is not the "big man" who has considerable power but rather one who seeks consensus.  In fact, Peter Gray refers to research indicating that hunter-gatherers were "fiercely egalitarian" and would not tolerate anyone putting on airs or boasting.  In fact, Gray refers in his article to the concept of "reverse dominance". He writes:    Christopher Boehm proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled "reverse dominance". In a standard dominance hierarchy - as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos) - a few individuals dominate the many. In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them (Gray).     Further, equality and the relationship between men and women in hunter-gatherer societies are referred to below from recent studies reported in The Guardian in May 2015 being  that sexual equality, as some might think, is not recent. In fact, it appears to have been the norm for much of our human history. In her fascinating article, entitled "Early men and women were equal, say scientists",  Hannah Devlin notes that it was with the advent of agriculture "when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged" (Devlin).      Devlin goes on to say that the egalitarianism in hunter-gatherer societies was distinct from our closest primate cousins, the chimpanzees that "live in quite aggressive, male-dominated societies with clear hierarchies" (Devlin). Unfortunately, with agriculture we devolved from egalitarianism societies to those, in most parts of the world today, that are male dominated and somewhat like our chimpanzee cousins. Finally, there have been many false assumptions about hunter-gatherers that they must have lived short lived and grim lives, when quite the reverse appears to be the case:     Ethnographic research carried out over the last half century has largely demolished this myth that foragers in the past had to struggle for existence.  In fact, they usually had a food supply that was adequate and reliable.  Most of them only had to expend minimal labor to provide for their basic needs.  What is particularly surprising to people in industrialized nations is that foragers often lived well into old age with few signs of anxiety and insecurity" (O'Neil).        An important aspect of hunter-gatherer societies, therefore, was their closeness to nature, which is also expressed in the description of their spiritual lives. As they foraged they also had a very diverse diet with a variety of minerals. In fact, archeologists who have compared the bones of hunter-gatherers have been rather shocked at how healthy they were (tall and strong) compared to those in early agricultural societies whose diets where severely limited. Plus, in agricultural societies the masses worked excessively long hours - as in women grinding grains. Their bones and spinal cords reflect this strain on their bodies (Manning).   Reflection of our changed diet (pinstopin)   As a testament to the limited or unhealthy diet  of agricultural communities, in the 1930's my father worked as a dentist in the Northwest Territories in Canada around the Arctic Ocean. His patients were Eskimos and Native Canadians, many of whom lived in settlements, but also hunted and gathered food. He described how the teeth and health of his patients deteriorated as they were exposed to and eating the western diet - primarily sugar.  As he treated them on a barge in the Arctic Ocean, he said he was probably the only dentist in the world whose patients would spit in the Arctic Ocean. He was probably right!  Hunter-Gatherer Spiritual Life Our hunter gatherer lifestyle was not the only quality of life factor we took with us as we left Africa. It was our spiritual beliefs as well. We started developing our spiritual selves (largely with many gods) from the outset long before leaving Africa, took these beliefs with us as if we traveled from Africa, and then we altered our beliefs largely based on our new and different environments. Relating to our early spiritual expressions, scholar Karen Armstrong writes: "...my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognizably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art (Armstrong). In my previous article, "Part I: History and Violence of Christianity", I referred to the creation story in the European Christian Bible as having its roots in the Pygmy culture of Central Africa (Murdock). This is because the Pygmy story emulates much of the same themes and it developed far earlier, of course, than the North African or European version. And while the Pygmy's religious traditions overall are very complex, the creation story is itself monotheistic. Nevertheless, as Murdock has noted, our earliest form of worship was relevant to nature that included "wind, water, trees, mountains, animals". But also in the mix were celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, stars, constellations, planets, etc. as well as goddesses and gods both male and female (Religious Tolerance). However, virtually all of us human groups also developed creation stories in some fashion, and, as stated below, they tend to have the same basic themes and we all considered our beliefs to be true:    A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term myth  often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally, it does not imply falsehood. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true. In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense.... Creation myths often share a number of features. They often are considered sacred  accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either dieties, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily (Wikipedia). It is important to note again that as we became agricultural based societies we lost much of our honoring and respect of nature which is ultimately reflected in many of the new religions we developed in the West. Summary There have been assumptions that seem to stay in the American psyche - likely as a way to justify slavery and other white supremacist beliefs - that we have different human species, such as between whites and blacks. This fallacy is perpetuated in any number of ways but it is a social and cultural construct, primarily as a justification for oppression. Yet, we are all homo sapiens and of the same human family, but we have different colors because of the environment where we lived thousands of years ago. And "racial essentialism" inferring different intellectual and other capacities of us humans, as Richman and others note, is "intellectually bankrupt".   I need to add here from the profound 1982 book by George Fredrickson, "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History" that every step of the way Europeans attempted to rationalize their oppression of Africans or indigenous people wherever they were. Examples of the rationalization could be color of skin; "racial essentialism" as above; hunter-gatherer use of land for hunting rather than agriculture; a religion other than Christianity; etc. Whatever rationale it took, they used it in order to grab land, take the resources, and exploit the labor.   Regarding the hunter-gatherer culture, I was but touching the surface here. Nevertheless, what the culture offered in many instances should give us pause to reflect and, in fact, encourage us to explore ways that the egalitarianism and respect of the other could be emulated in our contemporary society. Therein lies the challenge, given the life we have in an intensely hierarchical capitalist society that prevails in the world today. But there is always hope and paradigms, including economic systems, do change! But, rarely without a struggle!  I mention the creation story above as well, of course, in that all of us humans ultimately sought a way to understand our life and world. The concept by the West and others via their religions is of stating that they have the truth, as it were, and that anyone who doesn't believe the same is a heathen (defined as someone who does not worship the God of Israel or is lacking in cultural or moral principles, etc.). Religion is not static. It did not come out of thin air. It also had its evolutionary development out of Africa. And the West, in fact, did not suddenly come up with many of these religious ideas or even the concept of monotheism. They were the beneficiaries of virtually all of the basic concepts, as in the creation story and much more of course, from their African ancestors. Mother Africa was and is the fount of our humanity both biologically and spiritually. In Part III, I will continue with a history of the advent of agriculture and new religions.  References: Armstrong, Karen A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, A Ballantine Book, (Random House) (1993) Fredrickson, George White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History Oxford University Press (1982) Manning, Richard Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization, North Print Press (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) (2004) Richman, William "Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" University of Pittsburgh Law Review, (2006). Sussman, Robert Wald The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea Harvard University Press, 2014. Wells, Spencer  The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey   (Penguin, UK; Princeton University Press and Random House, US (2002) _______ Heather Gray is a writer and radio producer in Atlanta, Georgia. She can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net. _______ Correction: In my previous article entitled "The Massacre in Charleston"  I mistakenly referred to the article " Genetic Residues Of Ancient Migrations: An End To Biological Essentialism And The Reification Of Race" (2006) being written by William Richmond - his name instead is "William Richman" which I have corrected in the attached PDF.

hmcgray@earthlink.net

Sun Ra Arkestra 5/21/15 pt.1

Sun Ra Arkestra 5/21/15 pt.2

Oakland Juneteenth, Saturday, June 27, 32nd and Market, North Oakland, 11AM--7PM

THE HISTORY OF BLACK HAIR

Marvin X interviewed by Ishmael Reed for The Complete Muhammad Ali book

Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland

photo Adam Turner

If you want motivation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.... His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen.--Ishmael Reed

Chapter 28

Ishmael Reed interviews Marvin X on  Ali As A Black Nationalist

San Francisco, January 2004 Black Liberation Book Fair

 

Some of the pioneers of the 1960s Black Nationalist movement are gathered at a book fair organized by Marvin X, a writer who is much venerated in Black Nationalist circles. Some of those gathered are die heart Maclolmites who are cool to Ali and attribute mainstream acceptance of Ali as the white public gloating over the fact that the man once called “ The Louisville Lip,” has been muzzled by a disability.

Though still regarded with respect, some black nationalists will never forgive Muhammad Ali, their one time hero, for turning his back on Malcolm X, their idol. Some of those who dismissed Joe Frazier as an Uncle Tom are giving Frazier a second look. He is no longer regarded as the usurper who deprived the exiled champion of his glorious comeback. As an example of Joe Frazier’s lack of sophistication was his mistaking “Uncle Tom,” for “Peeping Tom.”

“Malcolm gave me political consciousness. He stood up against America. Ali on the other hand is now speaking on behalf of America.”—Marvin X

 

Marvin X provides further evidence of the influence that the Nation of Islam had on Muhammad Ali’s decision to forfeit his duty to serve in the armed forces. He provided a biography, which gives a historical background to the presence of African-American Muslims in this country.

Marvin X

“I would like to delineate my lineage. As a spiritual descendant of West African Muslims, I begin my literary biography in the Mali Empire, among those scholar/poet/social activists of Timbuktu: Ahmed Baba, Muhammad El-Mrili, Ahmed Ibn Said, Muhammad Al Wangari, and the later Sufi poet/warriors of Senegal and Hausal and, Ahmedu Bamba and Uthman dan Fodio.

“In America, this literary tradition continued under the wretched conditions of slavery with the English/Arabic narratives of Ayub Suleimon Diallo, Ibrahima Abdulrahman Jallo, Bilali Mohammad, Salih Bilali, Umar Ibn Said. (Note:There is some suggestion that David Walker, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington and Benjamin Banneker may have  been descendants of Muslims.) In 1913,Noble Drew Ali,established his Moorish Science Temple in Newark, New Jersey, later Chicago, and created his Seven Circle Koran, a synthesis of Qur’anic, Masonic, mystical and esoteric writings. 

  “And most importantly, Master Fard Muhammad arrived in Detroit, 1930, to deliver his Supreme Wisdom, mythological Sufi teachings, to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, later summarized in Elijah's primers of mystical Islamic theology and Black Nationalism, Message To The Black Man and The Theology of Time. 

“The next major work is Malcolm X's Autobiography, with the assistance of Alex Haley. This neo-slave narrative bridged ancient and modern Islamic literature in America. Let us also include Louis Farrakhan’s Off-Broadway drama “Organa” and his classic song “A White Man’s Heaven is The Black Man’s Hell,” anthem of the Black revolution of the 60s. Amiri Baraka utilized the Muslim myth of Yacub in his play ‘A Black Mass,’ one of his most powerful works, an examination of the cloning of the white man. Askia Muhammad Toure must be credited for his Islamic writings, along with poetess Sonia Sanchez (Laila Mannan) who served a brief tenure in the Nation of Islam. Yusef Rahman and Yusef Iman created powerful Islamic poetry as well.

 

Marvin X continued (Black Liberation Book Fair, January 31, 2004)

“Well, you know we both had the draft problem as Muslims. Ali followed Elijah Muhammad’s directive to go to prison instead of going into exile like I did. I went to Canada. I was there about six months. Well because I got tired of Canada. There is an expression, ‘Racism is as Canadian as Hockey.’ First I went to Chicago and linked up with the group around Black World, which was edited by Hoyt Fuller, Haki Madhubuti and others. I was in Chicago when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. After I left Chicago, I went to Harlem. This is now ‘68. I went to New York to work with Ed Bullins at the New Lafayette.

“I went to Montreal for a visit. I had met a girl from Montreal. At the same time there was a struggle at Sir George Williams University. Bobby Seale was up there and a brother from Dominique, I think it was Dominique, Rosy Douglas. There was a student struggle going on; I got busted coming back from Montreal. Coming across the border without papers. And so I [was] put in jail in Plattsburg, New York, and then released on OR [Own Recognizance] and then they gave me a trial date, a court date in San Francisco, for the draft. I was invited to lecture at Fresno State in the Black Studies Department. Richard Keyes was the chair. So actually I was going to two trials. One with Reagan at Fresno Superior Court and one in San Francisco at the Federal Court.

“In 1967, I had met Eldridge Cleaver upon his release from Soledad Prison, who was then working for Ramparts magazine. He was supposed to interview Muhammad Ali, but he couldn’t go because he was under house arrest,  so he arranged for me to do the interview. I went to Chicago to wait around for the interview. Muhammad Ali was in Detroit. He finally came back to Chicago. We were at Elijah Muhammad’s house.  I saw Elijah Muhammad’s wife, Clara, and Muhammad Ali, but I didn’t see Elijah. Before we got ready to do the interview, Elijah Muhammad called him into a room, and when he came out he said, ‘Elijah Muhammad said not to do the interview.’ That he had said enough about the draft. This was like ’67. Well, we were probably in the house for about an hour. He said that Elijah was ‘the man I am willing to die for so I do what he says.’ Well that’s how most Muslims felt. 

Both Black Panther and NOI attitudes about the draft influenced me. That’s why I was in Canada. What I’m saying is that Elijah said, ‘Resist the draft.’ The Panthers said, ‘Resist arrest.’ So I resisted the draft and I resisted arrest. That’s where I was coming from.

“Ali asked me if I needed any money, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ He gave me a hundred dollars. Why did he? I don’t know. I guess maybe it was his personality. 

I was at Merritt College with Huey [Newton] and Bobby [Seale] from 1962 to ’64 and we identified with Malcolm X and so I didn’t join the Nation until ’67. I think I was looking for something more than what the Panthers were offering, because I could have easily gone to the Panther Party because they were my friends. It was a spiritual dimension that I was looking for. But I also got some Marxist material from the Panthers. But, you know their Ten Point Program was just a rehashing of the Muslim Program and put into  Marxist language.

“Malcolm gave me political consciousness. He stood up against America. Ali on the other hand is now speaking on behalf of America. That’s not really strange for him to do that and I think I say that about him in my review of the movie ‘Ali’ in my book In The Crazy House Called America. He became a follower of Wallace Deen and Wallace Deen has an American flag on his newspaper. So Wallace accepted his American identity and I guess his followers follow that. Wallace left his father before Malcolm. He never came back. Ali said he followed Wallace after Elijah made his transition, because as far as he was concerned, Wallace came with the true Islam, the spiritual Islam, after the Nation had become corrupted. And then Norman Brown told me last night that as far as he was concerned Wallace just bought into Arab Nationalism and Arab racism and turned Negroes into Arabs.”

In his book, In The Crazy House Called America, Marvin X is far more critical of Ali’s move to the right. He blames it on the champion following the teachings of  the late Wallace Muhammad. In the book he writes,

“We understand that he [Ali] has been requested to make public service announcements supporting America’s war on terrorism. Would this be a more dramatic ending: the people’s champ who fought against oppression, finally broken down to a servant of the oppressor… the tragic truth is that Ali is a member of Warith Din Muhammad’s sect that was known for flag waving before 9/11. Warith had rejected the teachings of his father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in favor of orthodox Islam, dismissing the Black Nationalism of Elijah for Americanism, so it is not whack for President Bush to call upon Ali to be the ‘voice of America’ to the Muslim world, nor for Ali to accept. If indeed, our hero has been co-opted, let us be mature enough to realize humans are not made of stone and we know in real life people change, not always for the good—thus the danger of hero worship and thus the Islamic dictum: nothing deserves to be worshipped except Allah.”

 

In 1998 I received a three-year grant from the Lila Wallace Foundation, which required me to accompany adults, who were learning English at Oakland’s Second Start Literacy Program, to the theater. In the course of three years, I saw a number of plays and musicals, many of which were overrated, and quite a number of which were insulting to minorities, like “Ms. Saigon” and “Rent” and the most reprehensible of all, “Stonewall’s House,” a play that tried to clean up the Confederate insurgents’ reputation and which argued that blacks were better off in slavery, and that because of political correctness, white male playwrights were oppressed. In other words, plays by blacks dominate the Great White Way. The play that I found the most compelling was produced by the Black Repertory Theater in Oakland. It was called “A Day In The Life,” and it was written by Marvin X. Like some of the other black revolutionaries of that period, Marvin X turned to drugs after the disillusionment set in, and the revolution was busted, partially due to a sinister COINTELPRO operation (Counter Intelligence Program). Some of the more vibrant, charismatic and militant of the activists were permitted to morph into non-threatening positions as college professors, where they still engage in correcting those whom they feel are not revolutionary enough. All one has to do is contrast the swell-headed boastful play, “Big Time Buck White” in which Muhammad Ali starred, with “A Day In The Life” to determine the corrosion of the sixties optimism and the pessimism of the current political climate. Black Nationalists and those on the black left have been among President Obama’s harshest critics, while black support for the president has remained in the ninety percent range. Cornel West, whom white progressives were agitating for a run in a primary against the president, referred to the president as “a black mascot for Wall Street,” which makes you wonder why Wall Street backed his opponent, Mitt Romney. Marvin X has called the president “a black hangman.” The Marvin X play includes a scene in which the late Black Panther leader Huey Newton with whom I appeared on an 1988 ABC TV show (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=VHL7glIcP4o&feature=share) a year before his assassination over a drug deal gone wrong. In Marvin X’s play he shares a crack pipe with the man who would later assassinate him.

Inspired by the Harlem Book Fair, Marvin X decided to organize his own. Thus the Black Liberation Book Fair was held in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, San Francisco’s Skid Row, on January 31, 2004. This event included a veritable Who’s Who of Black Nationalist personalities. With the tendency of the segregated media to tokenize every aspect of African-American life, some of these people are unknown to the general public, but connoisseurs of black politics and culture know about them and recognize their important contribution to the modern slave revolt of the 1960s. If anyone would give an unsparing portrait of Muhammad Ali, it would be they. For the 1960s, Muhammad Ali was their leader, but some, like Haki Madhubuti still resent the champion’s betrayal of Malcolm X, who, among black nationalists, is regarded as a deity.

 The book fair was held in the basement of Saint John’s Church. While the media of the 1960s made a few Civil Rights and Black Power personalities famous, some of those who had worked behind the scenes, those who did the intellectual heavy lifting, were present at this book fair. Poet Askiá Toure, my 1960s roommate, Nathan Hare,the late Sam Greenlee, whose film version of The Spook Who Sat By The Door, about an armed uprising against the government drew the attention of the FBI, and the late Reginald Major, the author of The Black Panther Is A Black Cat, which remains one of the best books on that group’s career.

The Complete Muhammad Ali

“…it will become the truly definitive book on Muhammad Ali.” Professor Sam Hamod, PhD

“twelve solid rounds of writing… stands above its competition.” Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch

More than a biography and ‘bigger than boxing’, The Complete Muhammad Ali is a fascinating portrait of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Ishmael Reed calls it The Complete Muhammad Ali because most of the hundred odd books about the Champion are “either too adoring or make excessively negative assertions.” They also omit many voices that deserve to be heard.

Ishmael Reed charts Muhammad Ali’s evolution from Black Nationalism to universalism, but gives due credit to the Nation’s of Islam’s and Black Nationalism’s important influence on Ali’s intellectual development. People who led these organizations are given a chance to speak up. Sam X, who introduced Ali to the Nation of Islam, said that without his mentor Elijah Muhammad, nobody would ever have heard of Ali. That remark cannot be ignored.

Reed, an accomplished poet, novelist, essayist and playwright, casts his inquisitive eye on a man who came to represent the aspirations of so many people worldwide and so many causes. He also brings to bear his own experience as an African American public figure, born in the South in the same period, as well as an encyclopaedic grasp of American history.

People interviewed include Marvin X, Harry Belafonte, Hugh Masakela, Jack Newfield, Ed Hughes, Emmanuel Steward, Amiri Baraka, Agieb Bilal, Emil Guillermo, Khalilah Ali, Quincy Troupe, Rahaman Ali, Melvin Van Peebles, Ray Robinson, Jr., Ed Hughes, Jesse Jackson, Martin Wyatt, Bennett Johnson, Stanley Crouch, Bobby Seale, and many more.

Reed also places the Muhammad Ali phenomenon in the history of boxing and boxers from before the times of Jack Johnson, through Joe Louis and Archie Moore to Floyd Mayweather. He also includes Canadian fights and fighters like Tommy Burns, George Chuvalo and Yvon Durelle.
“The Heavyweight Championship of the World,” wrote Reed in a 1976 Village Voice headline article shortly after third Ali-Norton fight, “is a sex show, a fashion show, scene of intrigue between different religions, politics, classes; a gathering of stars, ex-stars, their hangers-on, and hangers-on assistants.”

The author of the much cited Writin’ is Fightin’ has now produced what will likely be known not only as The Complete Muhammad Ali but also “the definitive Muhammad Ali.”

Praise
“great book, a lot of hard work, and I know that it will become the truly definitive book on Muhammad Ali.” Professor Sam Hamod, PhD; Former Director of The Islamic Center, Washington, DC

---

 

Ishmael Reed is a prize-winning essayist, novelist, poet and playwright. He taught at the University of California-Berkeley for thirty-five years, as well as at Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth. Author of more than twenty-five books, he is a member of Harvard’s Signet Society and Yale’s Calhoun Society. He lives in Oakland, California.

Sacramento Black Book Fair’s Community Read-Ins

The 2nd Annual Sacramento Black Book Fair (SBBF)

Comments on Marvin X's poem Fly Yo Flag, Nigguh

Yo Brother Marvin X, that poem really hit the spot... that was like a 22 rim fire to the head of the ignorant and their superstitions of patriotism. We need to get major cases of Citrom the lemon sparkling laxative and purge our communities of the bullshit and help end the love-fest of the Black face administrator of imperialism big eared official mulatto Barack "Buckwheat" Obama...

   --Sekou

I love that – Fly Your Flag . . . Now there’s a poem !

--Dr. Neal Hall, India
   

EXACTLY!  

The racist flag is the latest distraction attraction designed to protect racism.

Asante sana!

--Kujichagulia Phavia

Nigguhs are crazy. How in the motherfucking hell did we go from mourning the death of nine people to worrying bout a cracker ass punk bitch flag fly yo own flag, nigguh let the white man southern cracker northern fake smile soda cracker motherfucker fly his stars and stripes yo ass been burned by both flags fly yo flag nigguh let the white man be his white devil self his day is coming soon and very soon fly yo flag North American African ass nigguh! --Marvin X 6/22/15 -- October 4, 2001

When I'll Wave The Flag

By Marvin X

I'll wave the flag When the trillions in reparations are paid to the African American Nation For 400 years of terror in America When the bill of the Middle Passage is paid When the bill from the cotton fields is paid I'll wave the flag When the damages due the descendents of mass murder is paid Mass kidnapping Mass rape I'll wave the flag When the police stop terrorizing us for breathing while black Walking while black Loving while black I'll wave the flag When the 2 million men and women in prison are released for petty crimes And those guilty of stealing elections take their place in the cells I'll wave the flag When those guilty of stealing labor, stealing energy, stealing souls of the poor are jailed I'll wave the flag When those guilty of the miseducation of our children are jailed for crimes against humanity I'll wave the flag When those who terrorize the earth, pollute the earth, poison the food, the water, the air Inject animals with hormones Genetically alter vegetables and fruits When these people are taken before the world court for terrorizing the world I'll wave the flag Until then Kiss my motherfuckin' ass. 2001 Marvin X.

 

Blacks 7 times more likely than Whites to be arrested in San Francisco, bastion of white liberalism

New BI Report: African-Americans 7 Times More Likely than Whites to Be Arrested in San Francisco

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Julia Beatty

Click here to download a summary of key findings from the Burns Institute report.

“S.F. study finds big disparity in arrest rates between races”
(From the San Francisco Chronicle – 6/23/15)

Black people are disproportionately represented throughout the criminal justice system in San Francisco, from arrest to booking in jail to conviction and sentencing — and the disparity is growing worse, according to a city-commissioned study set to be released Tuesday.

The study found that black people are 7.1 times more likely to be arrested in the city than white people, 11 times more likely to be booked into jail and 10.3 times more likely to be convicted. Those convicted spend more time on probation or behind bars.

The study, which examined data through 2013, was commissioned by the San Francisco Reentry Council, a multiagency group that includes prosecutors and the mayor’s office and seeks to helps incarcerated people transition back into society.

The findings come as nationwide attention turns toward racial inequity in the criminal justice system, following several high-profile, video-recorded killings of unarmed black people by police officers.
And the report comes as thousands of San Francisco criminal cases and convictions over the past 10 years are under review, following the release of racist and anti-gay text messages sent between at least 14 San Francisco police officers.

“The disparities are stark,” said Laura Ridolfi, Director of Policy at the W. Haywood Burns Institute, the Oakland nonprofit that conducted the research. The organization seeks to redress what it sees as the justice system’s biased treatment of young people of color, whose early brushes with the system hurt their ability to be successful.


“This is a clear statement to the city and county that there is work to be done,” Ridolfi said. “The disparities here undermine the notion of justice.”

According to the study, the over-representation of minorities in San Francisco courts and jails has grown more stark over the past two decades, even as crime rates trend down across all demographics.
In 1994, for every white person arrested, 4.6 black people were taken into custody by police in San Francisco. In 2013, that number jumped to 7.1, according to the study. Though black people represented just 6 percent of the city’s adult population, they made up 40 percent of those arrested.

Once arrested, black people were less likely to make bail or be freed before trial, even though black defendants were more likely to be eligible for pretrial release.

“The report makes it clear: Racial profiling extends beyond the street and into the courthouse,” said Public Defender Jeff Adachi, co-chair of the Reentry Council. “It also shows that San Francisco lags behind the rest of the state in closing the equality gap in its justice system.”

While the racial disparity gap has been closing statewide, it has been growing in San Francisco, the study said.

In 1994, 3.9 black people were arrested in California for every white person, while that number was 4.6 in San Francisco. By 2013, the statewide number had dropped to three black people arrested for every white person, while that number jumped to 7.1 in the city.

While the study’s findings are alarming, Police Chief Greg Suhr said, “We try to do our job as objectively as possible.”

Suhr said socioeconomic factors must be considered in the statistics. Black residents of San Francisco tend to be poorer, live in neighborhoods with higher crime rates and, according to the study, are 10 times as likely as white residents to have a past criminal conviction. Suhr said his department has worked to address these issues through a jobs program that employs city teens, especially from poorer communities, and a recent push to keep kids in school.

“There are so many other things that are part of the conversation,” Suhr said. “But we’re certainly not trying to arrest our way out of this situation.”

Ridolfi said limitations of the data — in many cases the races of suspects and those arrested were not available — made it difficult to analyze the reasons behind the wide discrepancy between racial groups.

The study notes that accurate figures for Latino residents were unavailable due to the disregarding of ethnicity. Moreover, the authors said, the counting of many “Hispanics” as white likely served to understate the disparity between black and non-Hispanic white people.

Max Szabo, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said his office is “very supportive” of the study.


“This is important work that we are very supportive of, and we are not shying away from the challenges that this study depicts,” Szabo said. “As the district attorney has noted for some time, we need additional investment in data capacity so we can paint a clearer picture of disparities in the system and begin identifying policy solutions that can have a lasting impact.”

Kale Williams and Vivian Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com, vho@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @sfkale, @VivianHo