Review of How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy

How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy
Peer mental health group cures 'addiction'Reginald James
Laney Tower
Laney College Newspaper,
Oakland CA
May 22, 2008


Author, playwright, and poet Dr. Marvin X is a modern theologian and philosopher sent to earth to help others find themselves. He's not a prophet, but is certainly beyond worthy of his Oakland bestowed title of "Plato" (Ishmael Reed).

His most recent book is, "How to recover from the addiction to white supremacy: A Pan African 12-Step Model for a mental health peer group."

Using a poetic and personal prose, Dr. M, as he is known, leads readers of all ethnicities and national origins on a journey to recover from what he terms the earth's most deadly disease: white supremacy.

"White supremacy can be any form of domination, whether stemming from religious mythology and ritual, or cultural mythology and ritual, such as tribal and caste relations," writes Dr. M. "White supremacy is finally a class phenomena, the rich against the poor,thus the process of recovery must include a redistribution of global wealth, for there is no doubt that the rich became rich by exploiting the poor, not by any natural inheritance or superior intelligence."

Dr. M, a founder of the Black Arts movement, uses his life experience with drug addiction to create a recovery model for others. Similar to the "12-step model" used by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the book reads like a personal narrative of not just one man's struggle to overcome a grafted sense of self-inferiority and a disillusioned projection of superiority in others, but a prayer of confidence that when others connect with their spirits, they will be able to overcome "stinking thinking," negative attitudes and self-destructive behavior.

After defining white supremacy in the introduction, the next chapter details how to detox and "rid the body and mind of the toxicity of decades under the influence of racist ideology of institutions that have rendered us into a state of drunkenness and denial."

After detoxification, patients are now ready to step into a new era. The first step to recovery is to "admit we are not powerless over self-hatred, racism and white supremacy thinking."

Dr. M's message of mental purification comes through strong in his accounts, and his vast historical knowledge of the experience of North American Africans" (so-called African Americans) encourages students to study. His vast literary references do not discriminate as he makes reference to Shakespeare and "classic" Greek tragedies as well.

"The Other White People," as he refers to them, "are an enigma to themselves, a conundrum of major proportions, transcending Shakespeare's Othello in tragic dimension, for their tragic flaw is lack of self knowledge."

"Such is the gracious gift of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. It has produced a Pan African people in love with all things European: women, clothing, religion, education (what people in their right minds would send their children to the enemy to become educated, especially without a revolutionary agenda), political philosophy, social habits, dietary preferences, sexual mores, etc" writes Dr. M.

While he seeks to create a dialogue with all, the sexism ingrained in this society leaps out at you. He attempts to make amends by apologizing for his past instances of sexism and emotional, verbal, and physical abuse of women.

The most powerful aspect of the book is the encouragement to the reader to gain a working knowledge of self. When speaking to the need for patients to take a "moral inventory," Dr. M puts a mirror up to all people.

Breaking down dynamics of interracial relationships with the analytical perception of a sociologist or psychologist, including historical context of relationships between black women and white men and the taboo of white woman with a black man, Dr. M simplifies the frustration faced by women who date outside of their "race" and the reaction of those who feel their "natural partners" have been stolen.

"In this war with the white woman over the black man's sperm, the black woman, in desperation and denial, tries to mimic the white woman as much as possible, donning blond hair and continuing the tradition of bleaching cream throughout Pan Africa."

Equally healing is the emphasis on seeking forgiveness. When under the influence of substances or mind altering racist ideology, people often hurt people that are closest to them. Dr. M apologizes for his own shortcomings while under the influence of not just white supremacy, but while using crack cocaine. The prolific writer fell victim to the "ghost" for 12 years, and apologizes to his family and especially his daughters.

He also apologizes on behalf of the "Black Bourgeoisie," "Pan African Professors" he attacked because they were "not as radical and revolutionary as I believed they should, after all, white supremacy institutions are not about to allow a radical Pan African ideology and philosophy to flourish within its institutional framework," writes Dr. M.

Dr. M is able to weave not only events in his life which were symptomatic of white supremacy, but the thought process and actions of others.

While some may be quick to write Dr. M off as a Pan-African revolutionary (which he is), or a "reverse racist" (which he is not), his book benefits people of all ethnicities to come to grips with their preconceived notions about one another.

He successfully differentiates between white supremacy and "white people" for only a few handsomely reap the benefits of white supremacy, while others simply enjoy white privilege. He also emphasizes that white supremacy has not, and will not, flourish without disciples and co-conspirators.

"The white supremacy rulers have used poor whites and working class whites to delude whites into thinking the blacks are the cause of their misery and economic exploitation, just as capitalism is presently using immigrant labor to suggest they are the cause of middle and lower class white economic woes, while in fact it is the white supremacy global bandits who are outsourcing for cheap labor." Dr. M equates the assertion with the current immigration debate.

Ultimately, after completing the 12-step model, patients are encouraged to join the "cultural revolution." Harkening to the era of he 1960s, Dr. M suggests "linguistic transcendence" in which North American Africans reclaim a regal self-concept.

In the great tradition of indigenous healers, Dr. M pours love into patients inspiring hope for a cure for what others have deemed the only reality.

Like all scientists, Dr. M is experimenting, hoping that patients will actively involve themselves in their recovery. The "peer group mental health model" accompanies the book and allows the reader to form their own circle to undergo transformation with friends, family, or those people you haven't met yet. Starting a much needed dialogue, Dr. M brings forward "5000 watts" of shock therapy to awake people to their senses.

Dr. M obtained his PhD in Negrology from the University of Hell, USA. Formerly known as Marvin Jackmon, he was born in Fowler, CA and grew up in Fresno and Oakland. He attended Merritt College and San Francisco State University where he received a BA and MA in English. He has taught English, African American Literature, Drama, journalism, and more at Fresno State, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills, and Laney College. He was an professor at Fresno State University when then Governor Ronald Reagan found out Dr. M refused to serve in Vietnam--he was barred from teaching.

His other books include Love and War, poems, 1995, In the Crazy House Called America, essays, 2002, and his most recent Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, 2007His books are available from Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA, 94702. $19.95 each. His Academy of da Corner is at 14th and Broadway, Northeast corner. He is presently organizing the Blackwell Institute of Art, Math and Science. How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy was used as a textbook at Berkeley City College and Oakland's Merritt College.

I Love Everything About You But You

Marvin X and Paradise Jah Love
photo by James Moore, Jr

This is Black America's favorite poem of mine!
Black people say this poem makes them feel validated!
===
"I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, BUT YOU!"
===
They want the black spirit
They want the black mind
They want the black soul
They want the black behind
They want the black muscle
They want the black heart
They want the black music
They want the black art
They want the black rhythm
They want the black hips
They want the black power
They want the black lips
They want the black style
They want the black talk
They want the black skill
They want the black walk
They want the black rod
They want the black heat
They want the black coffee
They want the black meat
They want the black land
They want the black gold
They want the black diamonds
They want the black coal
They want the black oil
They want the black race
They want the black earth
They want the black space
They want the black dollars
They want the black gods
They want the black everything...but me and you
Now that's odd!
They want the black neighborhood but not the black neighbor?
I love everything about you, but you! -

(c) 1995 Paradise 939
The complete version with music is available...

Berkeley Juneteenth, 2011

Marvin X and Paradise Jah Love
photo by James Moore, Jr

Berkeley's Juneteenth was peaceful, especially with the entire Berkeley police department out in full force. For once, we thank the police for keeping the peace. Marvin X exhibited his writings and archives from the Black Arts Movement. A more complete archive of his art and work is in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

People wanted to purchase his display of archival materials from the Black Arts Movement, including copies of Black Dialogue Magazine, The Black Scholar, Black World (Negro Digest) and Journal of Black Poetry. Marvin X told customers these items were his personal archives and were only for display, and were not for sale at any price.

The people then suggested he copy the journals so the present generation can have access to the precious materials from black history. He agreed to do so. Note: Marvin X is not financially able to copy said materials. You can make a donation to the Blackwell Institute of Art, Math and Science so the material can be duplicated and desiminated. Send your donation to Paul Cobb at the Post Newspaper Group.

Catch Marvin X at the Muslim Unity and Reunion ( 1950-3011) at Defermery Park (aka Bobby Hutton Park) on Saturday, July 16, 11-5pm. Also, the following day, Sunday, July 17, Defermery Park, at the Memorial for Geronimo Ja Jiga, 2:30 pm.

The Second Civil War

The Second Civil War

With each passing day, America sinks deeper toward the very necessary economic revolution. We can see the Second Civil War as a war between the economic classes, the ruling class and the underclasses. The war will be fought to redistribute the wealth produced by the workers, but siphoned off by the bosses causing the wage slaves economic depression.

This frustration transcends all ethnic groups, even the formerly middle class whites are beginning to feel like nigguhs have felt for centuries. The whites are now jobless and homeless, the perennial state of many North American Africans. This is cause for symbiotic unity, for surely the day shall come when all of us realize we've all been hoodwinked and bamboozled by the ruling elite, political and economic. Surely we will desire a united front against the oppressors that no amount of demagoguery will prevent.

The general strike will be in order. In recent times, the people of North Africa and the Middle East have shown us that the unity of all sectors: workers, teachers, youth, and elders can bring about radical change that no amount of guns, secret police, agent provocateurs, snitches, helicopters, tanks, can subdue, especially once the fear factor is eliminated. We must realize the only thing to fear is fear itself! Knowing the moral arc of the universe is reason enough to understand the necessity of overcoming our fears to do the right thing: fight the power!

Once the ritual dance of life or death with the oppressor has been won, when fear is emilinated from the equation, the oppressed man and woman realizes a freedom that is astounding. A new man and woman has been born in an instant, only the day before he and she were part of a group, a nation of stunted men and women, backs broken by submission to wretched wage slavery, devoid of a living wage and the necessary benefits.

The people see the economic quagmire caused by pure greed of the capitalist swine, who have no intention to share the wealth, not anytime soon, unless forced to do so by the general strike.

The blood suckers must be broken by the solid will of the people. It took the people of Egypt 19 days to bring down the American running dog Mubarak. After 30 years of oppression, 19 days of fearless unity overthrew the tyrant. Libya is taking longer, Yemen as well. The Syrian butchers seem to have no intention of submitting to the will of the people. Bahrain is entrenched with a minority ruling a majority of people who have long suffered discrimination. It is in the national interest of America to support the anti-democratic regime. In nearby Saudi Arabia, they will be lucky if their revolution wins women the right to drive a car. Such backwardness is allowed because of oil.

And so the American revolution will have its own unique process, but its day of judgement is inevitable, unless she decides to share the wealth. As in North Africa and the Middle East, the rulers in America will hold out until the midnight hour. There may be blood and the suffering of many, but it will be a necessary cause to bring true economic equality to a land built on the accumulation of capital by slave labor, followed by the wealth from wage slavery.

The time has come for the producers of the wealth to enjoy the benefit of their labor under the sun. America had the chance to be the light of the world, but the greed of her rulers and their filthy capitalist system of free market exploitation must be eliminated. Change must be not what we believe in but what we know, to hell with change we can believe in. We must have radical change beyond belief. It must be change brought about by our own hands. As Dr. Romana Tascoe told us about the Haitians who informed her they know they got their liberation by their own hands, no body gave it to them, they didn't need a Lincoln to issue an emancipation proclamation. They got their liberation by the sweat and blood of their own hands.

The Second Civil War must correct past mistakes and injustices to all parties in the American dream. America may go the way of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, a Balkinizaton by ethnicity. This is the human right of self-determination and sovereignty of all people.

All options are open and up for discussion and consensus. The American people may be able to have a functional unity that at least gets us pass the rule of the blood suckers of the poor. And then we can decide what park of the American pie we desire for our centuries of free labor under the sun.

Hard thinking is in order, for this is no light matter. But we know a people united cannot be defeated. We can do better than the free market economy. What about a fair market economy, a just economy that allows people a living wage and makes them owners of the means of production. I like what the Communists told me when I went to read poetry at a Communist bookstore in San Francisco and asked for the boss. The laughed and said, "We don't have a boss, we killed the boss. That's what the revolution was about, to get rid of the boss."

We can own the means of production. We must seize them because they belong to us, the workers who produce the wealth that is stolen from us by the capitalist bosses who care nothing for American workers or any other workers around the world, only if they are cheap labor combined with cheap resources taken or seized by armies from the capitalist nations, who shall seize all resources needed for the engine of the rotten capitalist machine that grinds the poor into cannon fodder. There is no respect for the labor of the poor, in America or around the world.

Only when the workers stand up and discard their fears will change come, discard the fear of death, the fear of jail and prison, only then do we begin to live the life of true human beings.

--Marvin X

6/26/11

Muslim Unity Meeting and Reunion

Unity in the Community

Muslim Unity Meeting and Reunion: 1950-2011

Saturday, July 16, 11-5:00

Defermery (aka Bobby Hutton ) Park

18th and Adeline Street

West Oakland

information: Khalid 510-927-5055

Journal of Pan African Studies on Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy

Editorial:Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy

Guest Editors
Yaba Amgborale Blay, PhD
Lafayette College
&
Christopher A.D. Charles, PhD
Monroe College

This Special Issue of the Journal of Pan African Studies focuses on the
practice of skin bleaching -- the intentional alteration of one’s natural skin color
to one relatively, if not substantially lighter in color, through the use of chemical
skin lightening agents -- as it manifests among people of African descent. Within
the context of global white supremacy, skin color communicates one’s position to
and within the dominant power structure.

Given this reality, many people, namely those subjected to white domination, colonization, and enslavement, have historically internalized projected notions that the basis of their inferior condition is their skin color. Although the contributors to this issue examine the phenomenon from a variety perspectives, all draw attention to the impact of global White supremacy on valuations of skin color and the extent to which skinbleaching, as a social practice, is functionary of white domination.

The introductory article, “Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy: By Way of Introduction” by guest editor, Yaba Amgborale Blay, critically examines the symbolic significance of whiteness, particularly for and among African people, by outlining the history of global White supremacy, both politically and ideologically, discussing its subsequent promulgation, and further investigating its relationship to the historical and contemporary skin bleaching phenomenon. The article provides a broader socio-historical context within which to situate the global practice of skin bleaching and thus provides a necessary framework for further realizing the critical significance of the articles presented in this issue.

Whereas the large majority of the discourse on skin bleaching focuses on
the practice as it occurs throughout the world, there exists a paucity of literature
on skin bleaching in the United States. With three articles examining the historical
legacy of the practice in early 20th century America, and one focusing on product
usage in contemporary Harlem, the current issue attempts to address this
significant gap in the literature.

In his article, “Skin Bleach And Civilization: The Racial Formation of Blackness in 1920s Harlem,” Jacob Dorman argues that for African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, skin bleaching represented much more than mere cosmetic practice. Examining historical archives,newspaper records, skin bleaching product advertisements, and the infamous and bitter wrangle between W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, Dorman positions skin bleaching within the larger discourse of civilization and contends that the practice reflected ambiguous notions of racial progress and advancement.

Similarly, Amoaba Gooden’s examination the Black vanguard of news reporting
in her article “Visual Representations of Feminine Beauty in the Black Press:
1915-1950” highlights the extent to which the Black press, influenced by White
supremacy, patriarchy, and classism, assigned higher value to those ideals and
physical features associated with Whiteness than those associated with Blackness.

Given the frequent appearance of skin bleaching advertisements, and the extent to
which reporters attempted to reject degrading popular images of Black women
(e.g. the Mammy), Gooden argues that the Black press ultimately endorsed skin
bleaching as a means through which Black women in particular could attain not
only feminine beauty, but social respectability.

Like Gooden, Treva Lindsey also examines a number of skin bleaching advertisements, however, she focuses specifically on late 19th to early 20th century Washington D.C. and skin bleaching among Washingtonian women. Lindsey explores the relationship between White supremacy, skin bleaching, and New Negro womanhood, and in the final analysis of her article, “Black No More: Skin Bleaching and the Emergence of New Negro Womanhood Beauty Culture,” she connects skin bleaching to a politics of
appearance that intersected with White supremacist and gendered discourses
about urban Black modernity and social mobility; and asserts that African
American women of the time embraced a White constructed beauty culture as
means to an end – social, political, and economic freedom.

Moving the examination forward nearly 100 years, in his article, “The Derogatory Representations of the Skin-Bleaching Products Sold in Harlem,” coeditor
Christopher Charles analyzes the images used to market skin bleaching
products sold in contemporary Harlem in order to determine whether or not such
imagery is derogatory. Charles discovers that many of the underlying messages
inherent to the imagery displayed on skin bleaching labels today are identical to
those used decades ago in that they continue to exhibit hegemonic representations
of Whiteness versus Blackness.

In his estimation, it is this consistency and continuation that continues to push the sale of skin bleaching products in the United States. Margaret Hunter holds a similar position in her article “Buying Racial Capital: Skin Bleaching and Cosmetic Surgery in a Globalized World.” She argues that the increased incidence of transnational skin bleaching is a result of the merging of old ideologies (colonialism, race, and color) with new technologies of the body (skin bleaching and plastic surgery). In this way, as one attains light skin, s/he attains a form of racial capital – a resource drawn from the body that provides tangible benefits within the context of White supremacy.

The works of Donna Hope and Emphraim Gwaravanda both situate skin
bleaching within the specific cultural contexts within which it takes place,
Jamaica and Zimbabwe respectively. In her article, “From Browning to Cake
Soap: Popular Debates on Skin Bleaching in the Jamaican Dancehall,” Hope
examines skin bleaching through the lens of dancehall music culture which,
unlike the larger Jamaican society, contends that skin bleaching represents a mode
of fashion and style.

By examining dancehall artists, their public personas, and their lyricism about skin bleaching, and further situating skin bleaching within Jamaica’s historically three-tiered racialized society, Hope attempts to unpack conflicting cultural debates surrounding skin bleaching in Jamaica. With attention to skin bleaching in Zimbabwe, Gwaravanda relies upon Shona proverbs as an indigenous knowledge system through which to analyze the phenomenon.

Through the proverbs, he asserts that for the Shona people, intrinsic beauty is
valued above extrinsic beauty, dark skin is to be valued, and that one is to be
knowledgeable of his/her culture and identity. It is through these perspectives that
Gwaravanda challenges contemporary skin bleaching in Zimbabwe as a departure
from traditional Shona culture.

Commentary provided by African-centered psychologist, Daudi ya Azibo
concludes this special issue on skin bleaching and global White supremacy. In
“Skin Bleaching and Lightening as Psychological Misorientation Mental
Disorder,” Azibo argues that skin bleaching is consistent with the psychological
misorientation mental disorder articulated in the Azibo Nosology.

According to Azibo, living under White domination has severely traumatized people of African descent and has destabilized our ability to orient ourselves towards ourselves.Skin bleaching is thus regarded a reflective side effect of this psychological destabilization. By concluding with Dr. Azibo’s commentary, we hope to open and extend the discourse, spark debate, and inspire continued research into the
multiple dimensions for which skin bleaching has implications for people of
African descent.

Please go to: jpanafrican@yahoo.com

Message to Berkeley Juneteenth, Sunday, June 26, 2011

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.