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The BC readers who take the time
to write us sustain the dialogue essential to the maintenance
of community, and we are always grateful for their contributions.
Few questions vex our readership more than those
revolving around the question of black leadership. Who elects
or selects them? How do we evaluate their performance and ours?
Who or what are they leading or following, and to what end? In
a world where most people get most of their impressions of reality
from the electronic media, careful public analysis of the words
and deeds of the black faces in high places thrown at us on screens
and through speakers is a vitally important activity.
Here is a representative selection of reader email
on two of those black faces, Senator Barack Obama and Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice.
The Senator's Mushy Mouth On War
The following is from BC's December 1, 2005, Cover
Story, "Obama Mouths Mush on War."
Obama's speech had the Democratic Leadership Council's
(DLC) brand stamped all over it. Triangulating expertly, Obama
first praised the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who has
called for immediate steps towards U.S. military redeployment
out of Iraq, hopefully in six months, then dismissed both Murtha's
bill and any hint of "timetables" for withdrawal. In
essence, all Obama wants from the Bush regime is that it fess
up to having launched the war based on false information, and
to henceforth come clean with the Senate on how it plans to proceed
in the future. Those Democrats who want to dwell on the past -
the actual genesis and rationale for the war, and the real reasons
for its continuation - should be quiet.
Rashad Umrani was quick to respond:
I am glad that you are not infatuated with the
senator. He is financed by the same interest who financed
Majette (GA), Mel Reynolds (IL) and several other candidates
that ran against incumbent members of the CBC who have antagonized
powerful interests.
I truly resent outsiders dictating who the leadership
should be. I am truly upset about not being able to play
a more substantive role in the political process.
Brother Rashad,
Senator Obama's career is really not all that similar to either
of the two congressional miscreants you name. Majette was elected
by an abnormally large white turnout in a district with a thin
black majority and fled
after a single term. Reynolds
drifted into office with a big boost from Chicago Mayor Daley
when the longtime incumbent became incurably lazy or senile, and
was gone in four years. Senator Obama is serious in ways neither
of these two could ever have been, and early in his career did
much of what one might have expected of an authentic progressive.
His personal gifts and compelling personal story, along with the
early support of progressive forces in Illinois put him on the
national stage.
Once on that stage, the senator has appeared intent
on breaking free of his former progressive base to follow the
lead of corporate cash. Obama will be around for a while, but
so will you and so will we.
We got another letter, from Chuck Dupree, who lives
in Louisiana. We respect his opinion, but Mr. Dupree is certainly
off balance.
I have to admit, I was hoping for something a little
bit, I dunno, less knee-jerk.
"Raw racism fueled the initial U.S. policy."
No. At the most expansive definition of racism, which I agree
is a controlling issue in US domestic policy, it's third on
the list of reasons BushCo invaded Iraq. Oil. Currency.
Control, which can certainly be interpreted broadly in terms
of racism. But really, read Karen Kwiatkowski. Racism is
not high on the list of issues for the neo-cons, unless by "racism"
you mean Israelis versus the rest of the world.
I love your writing, but I'm disappointed that you
react in terms of racism as the number-one issue. In the US,
true, racism is critical. But for the neo-cons, racism means
something entirely different. It's not the issue in Iraq, and
those of us who agree on the corrosive influence of racism in
the US should be agreeing on the irrelevance of that issue in
this context. Iraq is, among other things, a method of dividing
the egalitarian opposition by providing issues to debate that
are important, but not in this context.
Racism is not just a controlling issue in domestic policy. It
has been at the heart of America's foreign policy for its entire
history. From the 1898 invasion of the Philippines, in which
900,000 perished to the uncounted dead in Iraq it is racism among
the white American public that makes these bloodthirsty adventures
palatable and possible. Why, if not for racism is it that every
school child knows 57,000 Americans died in Viet Nam and nobody
knows that 2 or 3 million Vietnamese perished? Why is it that
Cheney and Wolfowitz expected to be able to reorganize Iraqi society
at gunpoint and that they would appreciate the favor? Why, if
not for racism, does the public imagine it is an American right
to invade when and wherever it chooses?
The white Left has failed to deal with this problem,
and left us all in a world of crap. It is this reluctance to
recognize the racism that fuels the imperial exercise that allows
the corporate Pirates to get away with their crimes, every time.
Let us be clear: U.S. racism allows the killing
to continue in Iraq, without the counting of any bodies - because
those bodies don't count. Black folks understand the syndrome.
Apparently, Mr. Dupree, you do not.Respectfully,
Bruce
Condi Rice: The Torture Tour
James Thindwa, of Chicago via Africa, wrote a scintillating
piece for our October
13, 2005, issue, titled, "How Black Conservatives Hurt
Their Cause." The article traveled all across the Internet,
and apparently caused alarm in Condoleezza-loving circles that
want a Black face in a high place, at any cost.
Dear Sirs:
I was scanning articles in the news today and read
the above referenced article written by you and wanted to comment.
Along with reading this article I also read articles about Condi
Rice in Europe talking with NATO leaders on many issues, including
prisoners. So here I sit with your article along with articles
and pictures from Europe. Rice standing front and center with
Europe's white leaders. A single black woman, standing side by
side with white European leaders and she is the one that led.
From the articles to the pictures, it is obvious that this black
woman is the leader of this group. Were have be come in the black
community, when we can see these images and read these articles
and not see pictures or understand the truth.
Your article shows that you, like most of us have
become blind, we see what we want to see and dismiss the obvious,
simply because it does not fit our understanding. Rice may
be the next President of the USA. The first black person to
hold that office and she is a Republican, the same party that
was founded to end slavery, how fitting would that be for us
all. So while I and many other blacks will rejoice in this moment
in history, many will languish in the past, you being one of
those.
Tennessee, USA
Dear Sam,
Stop looking at the color of her skin. Start looking
at her job, her character, and ours. The "single black woman
standing side by side with white European leaders" is the
US Secretary of State on her "Torture Tour," neither
confirming nor denying what we all know to be a fact - that tentacles
of an illegal and secret US gulag stretch through and operate
in a dozen European nations. This black woman, is torturing the
truth and the law not just of this country, but of every nation
she passes through. Rice's lies provide cover for those complicit
governments who can now assure their outraged publics that they
demanded and received assurances that nothing of the sort is passing
through their airports or airspace, or in the law-free zones of
US military bases in those countries.
Nobody on either side of the water believes a word
of it, not even you. This is the wave of the future, and in your
eyes, cause for rejoicing? We may live on the same planet, sir,
but we inhabit different worlds.
Respectfully,
Bruce
A More General Conversation About Our Condition
It is a truism
that people who live and work daily in abusive and dysfunctional
homes and other settings are among the last to see anything wrong.
Some of the truths about America and the world we live are easiest
seen from other shores. BC has a large and influential audience
overseas, and we value their input. Mandla
Maseko is among them:
Dear BC Editors:
I don't want to sound patronizing, but as an outsider I have
always been puzzled by the American paradox: a state of the
art 21st century country and a troglodyte leadership (intent
on solving every problem by bashing others and things with brute
force) and masses who seem to have barely made it through the
dark ages (a credulous pathologically trusting population).
Another paradox is America's simultaneous nurturing of neo-nazi culture and
an irrational support of atrocities by the state of Israel.
It is a dangerous mixture of split personality syndrome that
one day is bound to explode and bring the whole world down with
it.
I have no doubt that America will never relent
on Iraq but it is a path that with every passing second makes
America more in the image and personality of the bogeyman it
is supposed to save humanity from. The irony of it all is that
it has sucked in very naive and innocent people like Condoleezza
Rice who seem not aware that within a decade their names will
go down in history as architects of the greatest and bloodiest
blunder of modern history. Like a Greek tragedy, America marches
towards its own downfall, oblivious of every warning.
The most singular achievement of Bin Ladin has been the
bequeathing of his personality on a modern Christian state
(because that is how George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld see
themselves ) in our part of the world We say he who pursues
the devil with a vengeful heart must be careful that he
does not become a devil himself, or worse still, out-devils
the devil.
Imagine a South Africa where Mandela would come up with a better
and more secure and more cruel Robben Island for his perceived
enemies. America's pursuit of misplaced revenge is the surest
guarantee that very soon she shall fall from her pinnacle; not
at the hands of terrorists as Rice was stupefying and blackmailing
European leaders for their complicity but through her failing
moral vision. In South Africa we have our own problems but the
most valuable lesson we have learnt was the bestowing of true
humanity on our all our people without the help of Judeo-Christian
morality. Mandela did not have people lay hands on him
and neither did he see visions of God.
Today I ask myself will the ex-Austrian actor rise above politics
and grant Mr. Williams a stay of execution? But I tell myself
who has written the actor's script now? Because surely this
man is but acting another role and this time it is reality TV.
Chances are he won't. What is Mr. Williams life worth in the
multi trillion dollar farce called American politics? America
represents the worst in our selves: childish, insecure, petulant,
clutching expensive toys, begrudging others, and throwing tantrums,
navel-gazing, selfish and failing to rise up to expectations,
and cloying oneself with the sweetness of life and unaware that
a stomach ache is just minutes away. In Africa these attitudes
have produced a blighted landscape with leaders who hoard the
marbles of wealth for themselves and a population that generally
thinks of escaping and could sell its very soul for a chance
of a lifetime in the West.
Maybe it is times like these that a publication like BC is indeed
important to help us through the painful process of thinking;
of sowing the seeds of change; of conceptualizing a world
beyond the nightmare of the present civilization.
Mandla Maseko
South Africa
An Imperfect Understanding
Some of the black faces in high places do take seriously
what Cornel West has named the call to prophetic leadership.
Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D. IL) is one of these. Last week's
BC contribution by the congressman, Rosa
Parks and the Theory of Constitutional Government, at the
end of which his book, "A
More Perfect Union" was cited, generated this reader's
response:
Dear Editors:
The phrase, "a more perfect union",
might prompt one to inquire wherein lay the first perfection
of the "union"? And, since BC endorses the book, and
presumably the phrase, I put the question to you. I will not,
being the inquirer, expect you to explain the need for any of
the subsequent amendments which address and adjust the
perfect union; nor will I mention the Civil War (oops) or the
state's rights provisions of the Constitution which allowed
the creation and enforcement of Jim Crow laws (oops again),
and I most certainly will not bring up the questions of past
and present lynchings (oh, my God, I did it again). You can
see where this would go if I were to continue not mentioning
things.
Is this perfection? Do we really want 'mo better'
of this? Or am I missing something? Perhaps I should read the
book. I know I should but to tell you the truth, I am afraid
to read it. I am afraid Rep. Jackson will either not mention
such things as did(not) or he will gloss over them.
We Black Folk need to examine the Constitution
of the United States for it's assumptions and presumptions with
regard to the people its authors were addressing.
We really do need to do so.
It is a most interesting exercise, capable of
yielding great insights into the root causes of our current
condition, which condition we bemoan every time there is an
execution or a hurricane Katrina. After that, we might profit
from an examination of why we continue to believe anything of
the Constitution apply to us.
Dear Tirandez,
Sometimes we get captured and held hostage by our
own arguments. We invite you to first free your mind, and secondly
to read the book. It is a compelling piece of work and does answer
all the questions you raise and a lot more besides. If you want
a preview of its arguments you can find one streaming in RealAudio
online here in a speech the congressman made at Harvard a couple
years ago. We at BC have read the book, and
we think so highly of it that we have bought and given away half
a dozen copies. You, however, are too late and must get your
own.
In A More Perfect Union, Congressman Jackson
and Frank Watkins open the door to a uniquely powerful and useful
framework within which to organize for human rights including
the right to a job at a living wage, the right to decent housing,
to universal health care, to a public education of equal and high
quality, to a clean environment and the right to organize unions
and bargain collectively, and several other rights. They propose
organizing and fighting to add these rights to the US Constitution
as amendments.
If, through whatever imaginable struggle, people
in some city or state or nationwide actually won or even made
substantial progress in the direction of winning any of these
rights it is a slam-dunk certainty that some "original-intent-of-the-founding-fathers"
judge would swiftly invalidate it. From a legal standpoint, Constitutional
amendments are unanswerable, and thus are a vehicle to force,
in whatever public spaces are available for debating such questions,
frank discussions stripped of pretense or artifice of why we cannot
achieve decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings, or
universal health care, a clean environment, the right to organize
and bargain collectively, and so on.
Again, we invite you and all our readers to check
out this very useful book. Let us know what you think.
Respectfully,
Bruce
Is it Racist to Question Hispanic Ethnicity?
The Radio BC commentary by Co-Publisher
Glen Ford on whether Hispanics were an ethnic group (see December
1, 2005) is one that readers are still writing us about. Here
is a sample of what they reacted to:
Hispanic Americans come from many nations. In
their ancestral countries, they often comprise many separate
ethnicities. A Peruvian Indian is ethnically different than
a member of the white elite of that country, and remains so
w hen both groups of Peruvians emigrate to the United States,
where both are ethnically different than Afro-Caribbean Hispanic
immigrants. Calling all Hispanics in the U.S. one ethnic group
in effect denies their actual, varied ethnicity. Hispanics in
the U.S. are many people. Often, Hispanics in the U.S. who hail
from the same country are ethnically different.
No, it is a stretch of social science to lump
Hispanics together as one ethnicity, although it is certainly
possible that at some time in the future a portion of the various
Hispanic ethnicities will forge a common culture and worldview
within the U.S., as have African Americans over the centuries.
But that remains to be seen.
We think that the most important and incisive of
these communications are the ones that came to us from Hispanics
themselves, and so offer them for the inspection of our readers.
Dear Mr. Ford:
"Hispanic" is a racist term invented
by the US Census Bureau. Users of that term fall into a racist
trap of ethnic homogenization, as evidenced by your failure
to consider the differences between an "ethnic" group
and a human group united by culture, language and common history.
We are mixed people; "MESTIZOS," we are Native American,
African American, Asian, and European, all in one. Please don't
insult us calling us "Hispanics" - Hispanics are our
former oppressors from Spain.
Warm regards,
Mario Lamo
We were pleased to get a letter from Mr. Joseph
Puentes, who was good enough to both link to us and to provide
us with a set of descriptions of the intricacies of inter-ethnic
relationships among people who speak Spanish:
Coyote, Mulatto, Negro
The Indigenous community need go no further than the baptism
records of the late 18th century and early 19th century to find
that a significant percentage of the population was Black. The
scribes had many terms to describe the percentages of a person's
racial lineage:
1. Mestizo: Spanish father and Indian mother
2. Castizo: Spanish father and Mestizo mother
3. Espomolo: Spanish mother and Castizo father
4. Mulatto: Spanish and black African
5. Moor: Spanish and Mulatto
6. Albino: Spanish father and Moor mother
7. Throwback: Spanish father and Albino mother
8. Wolf: Throwback father and Indian mother
9. Zambiago: Wolf father and Indian mother
10. Cambujo: Zambiago father and Indian mother
11. Alvarazado: Cambujo father and Mulatto mother
12. Borquino: Alvarazado father and Mulatto mother
13. Coyote: Borquino father and Mulatto mother
14. Chamizo: Coyote father and Mulatto mother
15. Coyote-Mestizo: Cahmizo father and Mestizo
mother
16. Ahi Te Estas: Coyote-Mestizo father and Mulatto
mother
Read the article
by Joseph Puentes.
From an Afro-Peruvian
And this also arrived in our email box, from an
Afro-Peruvian who knows the difference that his own society makes,
in terms of ethnicity. Mr. Verastegui was kind enough to respond
to the Inter
Press article we republished on November 24, 2005, titled,
"In Peru, Afro-Descendants Fight Ingrained Racism, Invisibility."
Hello BC Editors:
Excellent article on Peruvian racial discrimination.
As a Peruvian with some African origins, I have always felt
that there exists racism and there is still lots to be done.
Thank you very much.
Nicolas Verastegui
BC Editor Glen Ford got to this
one first, so we let him reply:
It is very clear that there are vast racial - and,
therefore, ethnic - differences among Hispanics. It is also clear
that Black Americans have not stepped up to the plate, to address
these most important questions. It is a great failing of our polity.
We at BC are most concerned with how Black people
comport themselves in this changing world.
What we firmly believe, is that we must recognize
the individuality of all people. It is not up to us to decide
who people are, any more than it was up to white people to object
to our mass declaration that we were Black, in 1968. "Say
It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," was a political statement
- and one that no white person could argue against.
In the same way, people who speak the Spanish language
have a great project ahead of them. They may create a polity,
or they may not. It is not out job to say yes or no; it is their
job to do it.
Are They Taking Black Babies?
Dear BC Editors:
I have an interesting topic of discussion for 'The
Black Commentator." A New Orleans native currently
displaced by Hurricane Katrina recently gave birth at a hospital
in Mobile. Her baby was taken away from her because the
mother tested positive for marijuana. It was a very small,
almost undetectable amount. The mother says she smoked
marijuana for the first time during the storm after learning
her best friend died while trying to escape through an attic
in New Orleans. The mother was also one of thousands trapped
in the Louisiana Superdome. She doesn't feel she should
be punished for what she says was a necessary evil to keep her
sanity. The question now is should this mother be reunited
with her kids? Hopefully you can use this as a springboard
to the broader issue of babies being taken away at birth due
to drugs found in either the children or their parents.
Sincerely,
Brian Johnson
Associate Editor Bruce Dixon replies:
Mr. Johnson,
We are certainly aware that many jurisdictions arbitrarily
separate poor and mostly black families on the slightest excuse.
Being convicted of a felony, having trace amounts of drugs on
one's person, in one's home or automobile, or just being accused
of a crime have all been grounds for unwarranted separation of
children from parents, and sometimes the permanent loss of parental
rights. The topic surely deserves wider discussion, in BC
or elsewhere. If you or some other member of BC's
erudite and influential audience, writes a good article on the
subject, we are ready to print it.
Respectfully,
Bruce
The Dogs of War: Who's Dogs Are They?
Many among our audience were stimulated to respond
to the December
8, 2005 Radio BC recording, titled, "Iraq:
Who Let the Dogs Loose?" Here is a sample:
The Americans think they can rule by decree. Apparently,
that works here, in the United States. They say ridiculous things
in the White House, and a slavish media treats their insane statements
as if they make sense. Iraqis have no such obligation. They have
their own society, and work by their own rules. What the United
States has done is empower the Dawa and Sciri parties of Shi'ite
Iraqis, and to arm them. These parties now control the Interior
Ministry, which is the home of the Iraqi armed forces that President
Bush constantly brags about. The Americans have also spent billions
of dollars in training the Pesh Merga of Kurdish Iraq - the armed
forces of the two major Kurdish political parties. Two parties
that went to war with each other, and will again. Therefore, the
Iraqi armed forces are, in fact, an amalgamation of Iraqi political
parties. This is what the United States has wrought: they have
armed the factions that will fight the civil war. It is not a
war that will end in corporate America's favor.
A Mr. Mark Hope - who is a hopeful man - wrote to
us:
I listened to and watched Saddam's trial on the
BBC newspaper. I'm not surprised that this is not seen on American
News. What I would like to know is why no one mentions that Saddam
and President Bush were once friends? I understand that many times
people obtain friends that they shouldn't have had as friends
and they do things with theses people that they shouldn't, but
this is a question that troubles me and I'm sure it troubles other
people. I don't personally know that theses two were friends,
so this maybe hearsay. But I think this is very interesting.
Mark Hope
Bruce replies:
Mr. Hope,
BC publisher Glen Ford saw this
email before I did, and answered it. I really don't think I can
improve on his answer, so here it is.
Dear Mr. Hope:
Bush Sr. and Saddam were political allies. The Baath
Party was enlisted by the CIA in the late Sixties to massacre
the Iraqi Communist Party - which they accomplished. Then, after
the Iranian revolution, Saddam was encouraged to commit aggression
against that regime. Bush Sr. was a key player in that game, as
CIA chief, later vice President under Reagan. Eight years of
war consumed both societies. When it was finally over - because
of mutual exhaustion - the Bush Sr. regime turned on Saddam.
There is no honor among these players.
But Bush the Younger is a different animal. He is
not part of the club, as was his father. His mentors are the ideologues
Karl Rove, who made young George governor of Texas and has been
the most effective Republican strategist in a generation, and
Vice President Dick Cheney, as evil a character as can be imagined
- and the real ruler of the regime.
This is why the Bush Jr. White House is so dangerous.
They are not part of the club, and recognize no rules. They are
capable of, literally, anything.
Sincerely,
Glen Ford, BC Editor
We at BC treasure the communication
with our readers, and encourage you to write. We intend to print
a selection of the reader email we receive, along with sensible
replies to them each week.
I'm Bruce Dixon. And I'm on your beat.
Please send your correspondence to Associate Editor
Bruce A. Dixon at [email protected].
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