The current issue is always free to all readers

If you need the access available to a
and cannot afford the $50 subscription price, request a complimentary subscrpition here.

There are new pirates today, sporting new weaponry.  They manipulate language to justify, legitimize, and control all the treasure they have pillaged.  Once considered unlawful, greedy stateless pillagers, they have now become distinguished “gentlemen” and “gentlewomen” and their vested interest in controlling people and resources has made them acceptable partners (in crime?) with statesmen and stateswomen alike.  They are as warlike as any a pirate of old.  They have taken hold of tropes, images, motifs, symbols, and with them the American citizenry’s imagination.  The deployment and re-deployment of tropes represent the stealth weaponry of modern-day pirates.  

In this age of terror there, terror here, terror everywhere, these pirates want to assure themselves of the average “Joe's” or “Jane’s” cooperation in this partnership between corporations and government institutions. Thus, mega-cultural narratives are always in demand for these discourses (institutionalized discourses), telling the masses who they are and who are “others.”  In short, it does not suggest what you are to think; it demands that you take sides and that you belong to one side or the other.  Often, you have no choice in the matter if you are an orphan or poor, or a woman or gay or lesbian, or you are among the majority of racial or religious groups conquered by those who have a dominate narrative that speaks of their “innocence” and your “evil.”

Everything is about controlling the power to control thought. Controlling mega narratives consists of deploying and re-deploying “tropes,” images and words, stealthy weaponry to coerce the masses to live in accordance with the interests of the conglomerate of pirates.

The repetitious deployment of certain tropes restricts our empathy toward those depicted as subordinate or evil, for example, women, gays and lesbians, racial different groups, Latino/Latina immigrants, the poor and working class.

Vote fraud is the newest battle cry in the war on terror instigated by the pirates determined, in this case, to maintain the subjugation of Black and Latino Americans.  Writes a veteran political organizer, vote fraud is “what happens when too many Black and Latino voters register or show up at the polls.” It is of little relevance that not “a single case where people casting fraudulent ballots came anywhere near tipping a federal election.” That is a fact and evidence of reality to be whitewashed with the words vote fraud and the terrifying image of Black and Latino voters lining up by the droves to cast those ballots—for democrats!  Wrong doing: They are stealing elections!  Behind the outcry and imaginative images of Blacks and Latinos casting ballots is the reality of voter suppression.  The photographed and filmed images of Blacks and Latinos standing in long lines under heavy rainfall well into the evening to cast a vote only to be turned away by pollsters—well, the general public need not be burdened with those images.  The conglomeration of news pirates cannot televise those images on the nightly news.

This is the real tragedy.  The U.S. citizenry feels no urge to register protest, to recognize in these victims of voter suppression a denial of everyone’s right to vote, or to recognize the terrorist threat to the idea of democracy in this country.  Blacks and Latinos are in the space just to the back of, just to the side of, right in the blind spot of white American’s collective conscious—a space best handled by Dick Cheney who, by his own admission, resides on the “dark side, if you will.”

The deployment of such tropes of imagery and its accompanying words—vote fraud!—stimulates the collective imagination to recall previous images of “looting” Blacks during a hurricane.  Thus, Blacks and Latinos creeping about voting polls to steal votes becomes real and assures silence on the part of white America, the “innocent” citizenry depicted in the mega-narratives’ representations of good and evil. These tropes serve as a distraction, hiding the reality of voter suppression, and most importantly, concealing the modern-day narrative sacrifice of Blacks and Latinos.

The mega-narratives of innocence are intended to relegate us to peripheral spaces, metaphoric dark corners wherein our “subhuman” attributes generates the necessary fear and terror to provoke the white American collective conscious (represented by tropes of innocence and purity) to assist in maintaining these spaces.  Do not imagine these are opposing tropes, for they are one and the same aspects (romantic dream/gothic nightmare) of the same mega-narrative of innocence.  The nightmare is what is sacrificed: genocide waged against Native Americans, enslavement of Africans, lynching, rape, exploitation and white Affirmative Action.  The romantic dreams, on the other hand, speak of fathers and their fathers who worked hard, abided by the values and morals of the nation, and deserved the right to everything good this nation has to offer.

The real nightmare, however, is the reality of inadequate schools, poorly funded neighborhoods, the criminal justice system, high unemployed rates or uninsured low-waged work, and a central condition of the chronic indifference of pirates and citizenry alike. Americans pay a passing glance to the altars of sacrifice: the ghettos, barrios, and the growing prison industrial complex that has expanded to include detention centers for Muslims around the world and even American citizens.  Michael Chertoff, the man who cannot respond aggressively to the needs of Black citizens in New Orleans, spends his days as Secretary for Homeland Security sending out tropes to rounding up Latino/a immigrants who are “stealing” jobs in the U.S., below the minimum wage jobs, at that! Immigration and Customs Enforcement respond in kind to these images by raiding homes and places of employment and covering the air and sea between here and Mexico or Latin America with the Latino/a who have dreams too.  But the dream of the narrative of innocence does not extent to them. For them, there is the brutality of mothers forcefully separated from their American born children, the unfairness of arresting a hard-working father at his place of employment, best kept in the dark.  These, too, are images that the pirates will not televise.

Jack Abramoff calls the Mississippi Band of Chockaw Indians “monkeys.” But he is described as a regular guy otherwise.  He was a patriot who, as chair of the College National Republican Committee, was given the opportunity to speak to the National Republican Convention in support of Ronald Reagan.  The latter, as Governor of California, established a moral agenda to rid the state of the likes of a professor, Angela Davis. The whiteness of the heads rolling in the Abramoff case all have a space in the narrative of innocence as stars.  They are innocence itself—until they over do it and expose a paradoxical revelation of evil, too blindingly honest to absorb.  So the pirates of newspeak disseminate tropes which ultimately define such a character and his behavior as a singular event.

These individual men become “darkened” figures in a “human” tragedy rather than white racist men who represent a lot of white Americans.  They can get away with so much “stealing” because they are just regular “people” who partook too much of the bounty and did not think to share the loot with the white middle class.

Don Imus is another regular guy who was honored by Senator James McCain and John Kerry and Barack Obama before hurtled racist and sexist remarks about the Black women on the Rutgers University basketball team. MSNBC gave him employment.  He received a salary above the minimum wage—way above.  He lived well and was able to be.

How many Blacks, particularly Black women (aside from Oprah) have been given such a platform? Black women who have been battling the fantastically nightmarish tropes deployed against their lived experiences were not given a platform to respond to Imus’ comments.  I do not hear anyone suggesting that he be replaced by a Black woman who would be allowed to be—to be Black—and speak honestly about the origins of Imus’ images of Black women.

Imus did not speak with a stealthy tongue; he was too coarse for the new era of terror.  News pirates had to rescue the moment and echo Imus’ explanation for his outburst: Gansta Rap. The origin of his remarks is not Gansta Rap, a particular brand of Hip-Hop, given a central location because it assists in the demonization of Black women.  Gansta Rap and the narrative of innocence are interdependent.  The latter provides a space for the creation and the dissemination of tropes that speak and represent Black women as “bitches and hos.”

Blackness is the original symbol of fear, terror, evil, and violence. Among the potential sacrificial candidates, Black people, by virtue of our skin color, are perfect representatives for the imaginative site of transgression. I remember a couple of years ago watching the film Frieda about the life of Frieda Kahlo at a white liberal colleague.  In the film, Kahlo has an affair with a young classmate when she is a teenager.  Along with her marriage to Diego Rivera, the film represents with her affairs with Trotsky, an unnamed white woman, and Josephine Baker.  While Baker and Kahlo are engaged in sex, my colleague informed me that Baker was a known whore. “She slept with anyone.” I know this older white woman did not listen to Gansta Rap.

The message is the same, only the faces have changed to present desperate young Black men “educated” by the pirates tropes to trade their mothers, sisters, and daughters for Cadillacs, mansions, and gold chains—to, in fact, replicate the appropriation of Black labor in the kidnapping and selling of their own people to merchant pirates. But the narrative of innocence prohibits remembrance of the historical crimes of the pirates, just as it deliberately forces Black children to forget themselves. “To control a people,” John Henrik Clarke wrote, “you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.” Only remain in the “dark corner” of their narrative of history.

Seung-Hui Cho’s crime, interpreted by news pundits/pirates became spectacle, and as such, it has its place in the narrative of innocence.  Privileged descriptions of Cho as a “loner” and a “mentally ill” young man, masked his own reference to being “bullied.” Bullying does not justify killing but what does “bullying” mean in the life of a Korean in the U.S.?  Should we not de-code “bullying”? And if we did, would we not come close to understanding the experiences of so many Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Muslims in the U.S. of being relegated to dark corners and being punched from every which way? Is there something in the way George W. Bush responds to uncooperative leaders around the world?

It is sad to hear of the death of anyone.  The death of young people is even worse to accept.  But young people the same age are killed or commit suicide daily in the ghettos and barrios of U.S. cities.  Do American citizens grief for them? Shootings and bombings take place daily in Iraq.  Two to three times as many women and children are killed, and McCain sings: “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” next! It’s an adventure, a patriotic duty to spread American democracy to the Middle East.  What do the people in Iraq really want?  The roar of Blackwater’s trucks, loaded with billions of dollars, is too loud to hear them asking for a restoration of water, food, and electricity, for an end to the occupation by U.S. troops and private contractors, and for an end to the killing!

But these deaths and those of the young in the ghettos and barrios are “different,” according to the narrative. Race matters.  The whiteness of innocence is real death for those who are to remain in the dark corners of the narrative of innocence.  We are not playing with fictive images of terror—but with real terror! The Louisiana State government indulges in the national narrative and falls in line with sacrificing Blackness as a prerequisite to their dream of vanilla city—New Orleans.  There is no outrage like that heard when Ray Nagin uttered words provoking the image of a “chocolate city.”

The new pirates are not wordsmiths; they are thieves of the Word and the gift of human imagination. They craft stealthy language to make hollowed spirits of the oppressed and privileged alike.  In the mega-narrative, all Americans are not equal and democracy is not a dream of everyone.  Privilege matters.  White privilege. This is the narrative deployed around the world, signed by those who are in control of the discourse.

But all is not bad news.  The power of this tyrannical narrative of innocence is not absolute; it is not invincible, for “where there is power,” Foucault tells us, “there is resistance.”  This resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”  We have spoken to power time and time again and our words have shown our strength and ingenuity.

We know the pirates cannot speak for us, and they certainly cannot be allowed to represent us to ourselves and the world.  Do not abdicate our powerful task of resistance by saying we cannot recall, cannot remember over and over again.  Remembering our tradition of radicalism frees us from the dark corners and, thus, de-centers the narrative of innocence.  This power rests in our hearts and minds.

BC Columnist Dr. Jean Daniels writes a column for The City Capital Hues in Madison Wisconsin and is a Lecturer at Madison Area Technical College, MATC. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.