Happy Black History Month?

I first saw this extraordinary video on the terrific blog "We Are Respectable Negroes" last year. The moderator of that blog asked in posting it, "Am I dark and twisted as I laugh at the predictable outcome of Black rage, white fear, white denial, and the inevitable power of white women's tears in this video? Well actually they were rendered ineffective by said brother's verbal Kryptonite. Being a bit more provocative: Is there anything that he said regarding whiteness as property, power, and privilege in the U.S. that was (generally) untrue?"

I repost this video of a confrontation between a young white woman and representatives of the Black Israelites sect, and quote provocateur Chauncey De Vega's introduction not to endorse the Black Israelites (which in point of fact he wasn't exactly doing either). Over the years I've heard them preach terrible hateful things in Times Square about "faggots," and their love of the worst parts of the old testament is particularly unappealing to me. Their orientalist fantasy of what real Israelites must dress like -- they routinely show up in harem pants and studded leathers -- is at least naive and silly. And well, as a white person it's not my business but their separatism and virtual black Zionism is just a disaster. But the exchange recorded here on video is indeed powerful, revealing and thought-provoking. (It's also worth checking out the discussion on the original blogpost; it's linked above.)

Because the truth of the matter is that so many decades after what we remember as the classic transformative period of the civil rights movement, and even two years into the term of the country's first African-American president, the fundamental tension of racism in American society is really only papered over. Talking about race and racism directly is upsetting to many people. It quickly reveals gulfs in assumptions and culture that are like stark, unhealable and infected wounds. It seems we can try to act civil, putting on friendly faces, but so much of the underlying injustice and mistrust in society remains.

What better example of modern racism is there than the "tea party" movement? And yet that movement's white racial resentment is largely bottled up there behind a quivering lip, a locked jaw, and shifting eyes, by people who know better than to say what they are actually feeling. Only occasionally does that racism bleed off into a crudely worded sign or a tragic little monkey ragdoll. You can't prove the tea party is a racist movement, but everybody knows it is. Everybody's playing nice. Or at least, pretending they're playing nice. So in this video, nobody's playing nice, and tears ensue.

On the one hand it's nice that Black History Month is so officially recognized. Heck, the cafeteria at work today even had a Black History Month themed buffet. The smiling plastic talking heads on TV offer up historical tidbits like the past is all forgiven: hey we're all friends now. But maybe what we really need is a lot more yelling and crying. Cause pretending that there's no problem, well, it just doesn't seem to be working out so hot.

Malcolm X, 1925-1965

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbazz, better known as Malcolm X, was assassinated 45 years ago today. It's never been conclusively proved who was behind his assassination, whether the government, criminals, or the Muslim faction led by Louis Farrakhan. The world lost a great leader that day; a man of uncompromising principles, and devotion to freedom and justice. Malcolm X's message was never what the white liberal allies of the civil rights movement of the 1960s wanted to hear. He stressed self-defense, and the need for African-Americans to do the right thing for themselves. He vigorously opposed the hypocrisy of US foreign policy in the decolonizing third world. Toward the end of his life he set aside some of his negative views of white people in favor of a spiritually unifying vision inspired by his pilgrimage to Mecca without ever compromising his condemnation of the institutionalized racism so fundamental to American society. Here's an excerpt from his speech of Feb 14, 1965, the week before he was murdered.

Now, the press, behind something like that, they call us racist and people who are "violent in reverse." This is how they psycho you. They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practicing "violence in reverse." Pick up on this, I hear a lot of you all parrot what the [white] man says. You say, "I don't want to be a Ku Klux Klan in reverse." Well, you - heh! -- if a criminal comes around your house with his gun, brother, just because he's got a gun and he's robbing your house, brother, and he's a robber, it doesn't make you a robber because you grab your gun and run him out. No, see, the man is using some tricky logic on you. And he has absolutely got a Ku Klux Klan outfit that goes through the country frightening black people. Now, I say it is time for black people to put together the type of action, the unity, that is necessary to pull the sheet off of them so they won't be frightening black people any longer. That's all. And when we say this, the press calls us "racist in reverse."

Anti-American Art: February Is Black History Month

"Strongly support the righteous struggle of black Americans! Oppose racial discrimination!" Chairman Mao made a number of direct statements regarding the unfolding civil rights struggle in the early 1960s: "The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people," said Mao in 1963. That said, it's clear that the Chinese saw the African-American struggle in the context of armed third-world resistance to imperialism: the furious farm-implement wielding revolutionary mob in the background of this mid-1960s Chinese poster is a pretty amusing misinterpretation of reality. Still, as much as the Chinese propagandists relished global anti-Americanism, this was about as close as they ever came to offering a directly subversive message to Americans themselves.