America
has lived in grand denial. In the words of Baldwin , white supremacy
has caused this nation to believe in rationalizations so fantastic it
approaches the pathological. Racism has survived among slaves and
masters and the descendants of slaves and masters far too long without
any meaningful degree of reconciliation or compensation, even apology is
long overdue. Other colonial societies such as the French and Australia
recently apologized for colonialism, but not America , the chief
colonizer of the modern world.
She
is mainly guilty of domestic colonialism, having enslaved the Native
Americans, and then kidnapped millions of Africans who were brought to
these shores for eternal servitude. After emancipation, America promised
the freed Africans a few acres and a mule, but never delivered. She
promised freedom after her slaves provided 200,000 troops who were
decisive in the Civil War, but disarmed them and returned them to
virtual slavery called Reconstruction, which was short-lived and
essentially put the freed slaves in neo-servitude, at the whim of
terrorists known as Klu Klux Klan.
White
America benefited from four centuries of slavery and neo-slavery. The
neo slaves fought in her imperial wars against fascism abroad but were
subjected to fascism upon returning home. A few slaves benefited from
slavery, even having slaves themselves, yet in the end found themselves
facing the glass ceiling, especially when they refused to be running
dogs for imperialism now called globalism.
General
Colin Powell is the most recent example. America duped him and made a
fool of him before the world when he gave his fabricated United
Nation’s speech to justify the invasion of Iraq . He was replaced with
a more pliant Negress in the person of Condi Rice. We are urged to
recognize racial progress in her shameful role as Secretary of State. We
have achieved equality, for have we not placed ourselves (African
Americans) in the position to be charged with war crimes, having
justified the slaughter of a million Iraqi men, women and children in
the unprovoked occupation and destruction of the jewel of Arabic culture
and civilization?
But
in our grand denial, blacks as well as whites will attempt to convince
the world this point of view is left wing poppycock, the thoughts of a
disgruntled segment of the black Americans who have failed to enjoy the
benefits of capitalism, now globalism--no matter the disparities in
birth and death, education, wage parity,incarceration, housing, health
care, homicide and suicide, in every aspect of Americana.
To
mention race is to open a can of worms best left unopened because it
makes Americans nervous, uneasy, and disturbed mentally if not
physically. White Americans are made to feel guilty, thus etiquette
demands no mention of race in civil discourse or casual conversation
because we are all too sensitive and the endgame might be violence of
the worse kind.
And
so we are mostly silent on the subject until this ugly monster of ours
its head as it inevitably does from time to time, then after the most
brief discussion, all sides are urged to sweep it under the carpet until
the next round. Thus this racial drama continues ad infinitum without
any real resolution and certainly no reconciliation. We may have a
plethora of interracial marriages with the resultant biracial children,
yet nothing has been solved except for a kind of don’t ask don’t
talk racial harmony, along with the children growing up in racial
confusion called the tragic mulatto syndrome, whereby they try as best
they can to choose sides in this racial drama without end.
Clearly,
Barak Obama is caught between the racism of his preacher and white
grandmother. His endgame will be of great interest to the world at
large, and even if he doesn’t become president of the US , he will
have a role to play in racial politics globally. Obviously, his persona
is bigger than America , having an African father and a Muslim middle
name (Hussein) than has endeared him to the Islamic world, no matter the
outcome of the presidential election.
With
his now classic speech on race, putting himself in league with Booker
T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise and Martin Luther King’s I Have A
Dream, Obama, much to his dismay, has now become a Race Man, in the
classic sense of that term whose definition escapes all but those of
historical consciousness, which is most of us, black and white—except
that we must now realize there is only the human race, except for those
in league with me who claim membership in the Divine Race.
America's
Grand Denial can only be overcome by recovery from our racist white
supremacy heritage, beginning by accepting the scientific definition of
the human race (or Divine, if you agree with my spiritual notion), then
entering a program of detoxification, recovery and discovery.
Detoxification
includes deprogramming our white supremacy values of domination and
exploitation, including patriarchal authority and capitalist greed that
has lead us to the present economy is nothing more than pimping by
gunboat diplomacy. You sell me your labor and natural resources at the
cheapest price or I will take them at gunpoint, under the guise of
bringing you democracy” an advance from the naked colonial era of
spreading Christianity.
Recovery
is discarding the Grand Denial that there is a problem or that the
problem has been remedied, therefore stop making whites the villain and
blacks the victim, in fact, forget the entire matter—although blacks
already suffer acute amnesia to the degree that they are a danger to
themselves and others.
And
who would tell a Jew to forget the Holocaust? And does not the Jew
remind the world at every turn what the Germans did to them? We have a
thousand times more right to tell the world what happened to us than any
Jew, for our suffering lasted four centuries, not four or five years.
For their four or five years (1939-1945) the Jews were given a state
while we have not acquired one acre for four centuries (1619-2008) of
slave labor and government sanctioned terror that even Hitler emulated
with his destruction of the Jews.
In
order to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, America must
make a searching and fearless moral inventory; she must admit to God the
exact nature of her wrongs; be ready to have God remove her defects of
character (being saved by the grace of Jesus Christ has not and will not
solve America’s white supremacy addiction—the white Christian
mythology allowed us to be burned on the cross or lynching tree—yes,
strangely similar to Jesus). Rev. James Cone suggests America can only
recover from the addiction to white supremacy by coming to an
understanding of the relationship of the cross and the lynching tree.
Listen to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and ponder the life of Jesus
Christ.
You
have had Jesus in your midst for over four hundred years and crucified
him on a daily basis, even unto this present hour. America must examine
her census, her graveyards in the south and north, the bills of sale,
the prison inmates, the mental hospital patients gone mad as a result of
white supremacy addiction—then make a list of all the Africans
harmed, the Native Americans, the poor whites treated worse than you
treated niggers—then make amends to such people, including reparations
in the form of land and sovereignty. Discovery for America in general
will be when she accepts the radicalization of her culture to bring it
in harmony with the global village, which involves the dismantling of
institutions that perpetuate domination and exploitation of her citizens
and other peace loving peoples throughout the world. If America
persists in her Grand Denial, then she must prepare for her self
destruction, for it shall come at the hands of the man in the mirror,
not from any external forces. --Dr. M
Dr.
M is the author of How to Recover from the Addiction to White
Supremacy, A Pan African 13 Step Model, Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight
Way, Berkeley CA , $19.95.
How To Stop The Killing in the Pan African Hood
By Marvin X
"The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads."—Mao
We
are talking about a condition in the hearts of men, an evil sore
festering and stinking like rotten meat, to use that Langston Hughes
metaphor. It is a spiritual disease more prevalent than HIV, for it
consumes whole countries, not only Pan Africa, but it may be said to
originate in Europe because lying and murder is the great theme of this
culture, and Africa and Africans throughout the Diaspora are victimized
and suffer this malady equally with their colonial Mother. See how
Europe butchered the butcher's sons in Iraq, or is this the democratic
way of life she is bringing to the sand nigguhs?
The
problem is how to throw off the vestiges of colonialism to become the
New Man and New Woman. Of course, we must first recognize how sick
colonialism has made us throughout Pan Africa. Somehow we must bow down
and ask forgiveness of our Higher Power, the ancestors, the living and
the yet unborn. There must be a cleansing ritual performed until the mud
and slime of Western culture is purged from our minds, bodies and
souls. The Western gods must be destroyed, crushed to the earth and
stomped into eternity, for they have blessed us with ignorance,
superstition, greed, lust and pure evil, allowing us to become worse
than beasts in the field, committing the worse atrocities, yea, even
worse than all the teaching of our colonial masters.
No
doubt Africa is paying for the great sin of sending her sons and
daughters into slavery. Has Africa asked forgiveness of herself, yet she
wails for apology from the slave master's children. Has she given
reparations to her descendants lost in the wilderness of North America?
Has she ever sent a symbolic ship or plane to bring them home? So Pan
Africa lives a slow death because she allows corrupt, boastful, arrogant
leaders to control her nations, her leaders shelter each other,
covering their multiple sins, protecting themselves from people's
justice that would rightfully hang them like Mussolini and his wife.
Like
jack in the box, Pan Africa must jump out of her iniquities, she must
call forth the divine energy within the bowels of her soul and step into
the New Day of light, breath and health. She cannot allow her children
to devour her from coast to coast, sea to sea, from America to Africa,
but children only mock the behavior of adults, so we cannot blame them,
children are children, so adults must step to the front of the line, no
matter how busy they are doing nothing, for they are surely doing
nothing if the village is in chaos, security being the top priority of
civilization.
Everyone must become the
central command, every man and woman must be about the business of
teaching new values, new ways of thinking and acting that are not
harmful to the human soul and the human condition. The world is so full
of wisdom it escapes us because our quest is for the trivial, the low
things of life, not the things in the upper room, but those in the
basement, in the gutter of our minds and hearts, that is where we dwell,
that is our focus and this is why we suffer.
Kobe
gives his wife a four million dollar rock, but will it placate her
soul, will material things correct a spiritual problem of faith and
trust? The West has a sordid history buying people as Pan Africa can
attest, but everyone is not for sale, those of integrity will jump ship,
will eat the whip and the gun, for persecution is worse than slaughter,
the Qur'an teaches. No, physical weapons cannot solve the problem. Look
at Israel, she has the all the modern weapons but she cannot defeat the
spirit of a people determined to be free. So Pan Africa's children can
and must be armed with a new consciousness. Even Fidel Castro has said
the new weapon is consciousness!
Like
Johnny Appleseed, we must go about spreading consciousness, teaching
unconditional love and forgiveness, sharing knowledge and wealth with
the poor and ignorant, the brokenhearted and oppressed. I am not trying
to be sentimental, but we can and must flip the script as they say in
the hood. Again, like Jack, we must jump out the box of mental and
physical oppression by taking a new look at reality, by stopping a
moment to wonder at the pleasure in the sun, the trees, the sea and
mountains, the glory of being alive each moment to share human love,
being grateful we have a moment on this earth to whisper truth to
children that they may rise and be a pleasure to the ancestors watching
everywhere.
Yes, we must transcend
block man and block woman, the block within ourselves even, and reach
forth into the realm of new possibilities, not allowing evil and her
brothers and sisters to control the air and sun that comes each day
blessing us with another moment to walk in the light, escaping the
darkness of ignorance, greed, lust and violence.
Black
men, go into the hood and take the guns from your sons, yes the sons
you abandoned, neglected and rejected, the sons who look like you
although you deny this, the sons who walk with sad hearts, hardened
because they long for you, for your love and guidance, for your wisdom
and strength, after all, Mama did all she could to raise her manchild in
the promised land. * * * * *
A Response to "Killing in the Pan Africa Hood" 
By Rudolph Lewis
Marvin,
there is great wisdom that should be heeded in your essay "How To Stop
the Killing in the Pan African Hood." I am aware that a new set of
values (though possessed by our enslaved ancestors but now abandoned
under the "new world order") and a new perspective of our place in the
world, of our past and future are earnestly needed in these dire times.
The most important of these new perspectives is couched in your
paragraph that reads as follows: Has Africa asked forgiveness of
herself, yet she wails for apology from the slave masters' children. Has
she given reparations to her descendants lost in the wilderness of
North America? Has she ever sent a symbolic ship or plane to bring them
home? So Pan Africa lives a slow death because she allows corrupt,
boastful, arrogant leaders to control her nations, her leaders shelter
each other, covering their multiple sins, protecting themselves from
people's justice that would rightfully hang them like Mussolini and his
wife.
In short, you suggest our
critical sword should have a double edge—that is, the slave trade
involved African nations and European nations collaborating for the
purposes of wealth and power. They got rid of their "niggertrash." Many
of those descendants of the tribal kings and chiefs who sold millions of
slaves still play significant roles in the politics of today's African
nations. And they will sell us again and their people again in the 21st
century, if the World Bank and other internationalist (globalist),
corporatist agencies offer the right price. (Check out Paul Kingsnorth's
essay on South Africa and the ANCA Shattered Dream.)
In
the contest for wealth and power, "black" and "white," however, are not
real distinctions but illusions, a means for escapism or sidetracking
those who wish to do the "good." I know "evil" has become a popular
theme in the discussion of international politics and the resistance to
corporate imperialism, especially from the bully pulpit of the
presidency. So-called righteous men love to stand behind such symbolic
bulwarks. I hope we do not become agents of such trite rhetoric—it
indeed will lead us astray. It is necessary that we keep on the straight
and narrow and keep both edges of our sword whetted sharp. At no time
must we sink back into mythologizing the world for the sake of political
convenience, to hear merely the rhythm of our own voices.
Beneath
most Pan-African rhetoric (from the 19th century to the present), there
is this underlying notion of Africa as paradise into which Satan (the
white man) introduced evil. I recommend strongly that all
Pan-Africanists and sympathizers and all other petty-bourgeois,
pseudo-revolutionaries read the Malian Yambo Olouloguem's novel Bound to
Violence. Or any non-romantic account of Africa before European trade
began. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart will provide some evidence even
in the "wholeness" of tribal life, all was not well.
Even
though there was a sense of justice, and right and wrong. There were
some practices or acts that were just horrid, unnecessary, and "evil."
If true be told, there was more evil in Africa than one could shake a
stick at. The process of empire building in Africa by Africans
themselves and the perennial struggles for power and the retention of
power included the wholesale slaughter of tribes (genocide), butchery,
debauchery of every sort (religious, political and social), cannibalism,
incest, and so on—all these acts of evil existed before modern Europe
stepped onto the soil of Africa or worked out its first deal for a cargo
of slaves. The emperors, kings and queens, and chiefs—to whom we have
become so inured (and want to imitate by dress, manners, and
religion)—did not achieve those aristocratic titles by their sweetness
and benevolence but by the same means we are familiar with today in
those who strive to rule and conquer. That is, they did it the
old-fashioned way—by violence, exploitation, and oppression.. The
aberrations we see in Africa and at home are not new. This violence for
wealth and power is just as old as the first time one brother killed
another for his wife or his ass. This contest for dominance has always
been bloody and this violence and evil were not invented by Europe or
whites. We must do away with this myth—the white man alone as incarnate
Devil. Otherwise, in a perverse way, we make Africans less than human—we
make them into externally corrupted angels. There is no sanctity in
having a black skin or in Africanity.
This
type of mythologizing gives our leaders too much credit and too much
room for collaboration with corporate power and a means of duping the
masses of the poor and the black working classes. It is no longer
sustainable that we ask or recommend that the masses of "Pan-Africa"
live vicariously by distant observation and/or proximity to power and
wealth. That an elite should live in comfort and security while the
great masses attend them hand and foot with all their hearts and souls
is no longer acceptable if we truly have egalitarian goals for our
society.
That kind of barbaric
nobility is no longer proper in a civilized world in which democracy and
human rights have been given revitalized meanings in which every man is
a king and queen, or at least be acknowledged with that kind of
respect, integrity, and dignity. Our critical sword should not only land
on the heads of the great aberrations of society—the likes of a Idi
Amin, a Mobutu, a Bokassa, or a Sgt. Doe or a Charles Taylor, but also
those respectable heads of state like Mbeki, Obasanjo, and the other
African leaders who smilingly welcomed Bush to Africa and are ever-ready
to make their deals with globalization.
Such
African leaders with such narrow interests sold our ancestors into the
Americas. And not only those African leaders there, but also here at
home, we should do some swinging at our black elected and appointed
officials (city councilmen, legislators, cabinet secretaries), yes and
also corporate and ecclesiastical functionaries, and other notable
heads, such as the leaders of civil rights organizations like the NACCP,
whose board is ruled by corporate executives or such flunkies and
running dogs. They too must be made to pay for their sins of neglect and
moral blindness. If we lapse into the anti-white, anti-American,
anti-Western rhetoric, we will sorely miss the point and provide more
fuel for these black elites to further misdirect the energies of the
masses of Pan-Africa along lines of escapism and support for the status
quo.
If we are to make real changes
within our communities some of our petty bourgeois aspirations must be
abandoned. We can no longer naively defend black middle-class sellout
politicians and preachers. We must recognize a real change in the face,
rhetorical aspirations, and the present corporate ties that our leaders
have established. It is fine to cite Walter Rodney's How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa, as some Pan-Africanist Marxists tend to do. That
is well indeed. I am far from a white apologist—a corner in which some
may want to paint me. But I do not want to be a black apologist, either
-- I was not taught that way. The NAACP is headquartered here in
Baltimore and they just had a conference and they had nothing to say
about the 40% unemployment rate here among black males (18-35); the high
murder rate (about 300 a year, mostly young black males); a 50%
drop-out rate from high school; neighborhoods in which only 25% of
adults have a high school diploma. Brothers and sisters are paraded to
jails like our ancestors to Goree Island!!! Whatever the justification
for their apprehension is inadequate and should cause some shame to
those who run this city and those who support the powers to be—which
here in a majority black city, means a black middle class and those who
work government jobs or receive money from corporate elites
Damn,
brother, we have grown ass men on the corner selling single cigarettes
for 35 cents a piece. What kind of enterprise is that? And it is not
just a few. Is that any way to gain a livelihood? And our shit-head
leaders are worrying about whether Bush or democratic presidential
candidates come to their meeting. Ain't that a matter to be indignant
and upset about? But it seems we are so spiritually sick we take it as a
norm the misery and the downtrodden state of the poor (black and
white). That the oppressed are overlooked and allowed to continue to
sink into the abyss is a grand betrayal by our leaders. Murder and
mayhem is not just coming from the bottom dregs of society. We have a
general slavery and devastation in which silence and passivity is
imposed by poverty, the gun, and prisons?
Marvin X and Danny Glover attended San Francisco State University where Marvin's first play Flowers for the Trashman was produced by the drama department. Danny performed at Marvin's Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, in the Fillmore District. While Danny was part of the student strike at SFSU, 1968, a few months later, 1969, Marvin X was fighting to teach at Fresno State University but was removed on orders from Gov. Ronald Reagan. Gov. Reagan also removed Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA the same year, 1969. 
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