For those Black Americans who lived or moved to the Upper South or the Wild West, there were no “Whites Only” or “Blacks Only” signs. But here and there “signs” appeared innate and permanent. In the “here” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. found a “run down” apartment for “ninety-two dollars.” In the “here” Black men huddled with their backs pressed up against corner buildings. Over “there,” few white men stood around anywhere except for those in uniforms, who wore a holster and carried bully sticks in their hands. Less expensive apartments and homes, over “there,” “in the sunlight of opportunity,” were, nonetheless, fit for human occupants rather than for rodents. The 1964 Civil Rights Act had been signed and stored away.

Black Americans in the Upper South and in the Wild West let it be known that they were not happy with the contrast between the “here” and “there.” Fires blazed through worthless sections of the “here.” “I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots…But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard” (MLK, “The Other America”).

White backlash, King announced, would seem to be the results of these riots and the Black Power Movement. “It may well be that shouts of Black Power and riots in Watts and the Harlems and other areas, are the consequences of the white backlash rather than the cause of them.”

White backlash in the “there” precedes the outcry of Black Americans in the “here.” The Black Power Movement is a response to white backlash. How else to explain the full-scale attack against a generation of people speaking on behalf of the “unheard”? They said we have a right to protect our communities and ourselves against the whites who cruise through our neighborhoods with bully sticks and guns ready. Some rejected the dilapidated schools and the initial implementation of “penal pedagogies” (Giroux and Saltman). Others said they wanted true equality: re-distribution of the wealth derived by the labor of Black Americans.

“But we must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling for genuine equality.”

America said - No! You can entertain as usual. You can display your cultural affectations for our “free” market, or you can die. An exception: join us in our enterprise.

The enterprise encompasses the denial of life to the majority of the world and war-making to quash that life. The enterprise, motivated by fear, lives and for some prospers, through exerting violence. In speech, “The Other America,” delivered on April 14, 1967, King noted that the U.S. “diverted attention from civil rights,” human rights. White backlash included the subsequent deaths of King and other Blacks and the incarceration of many more relegated by the civil rights/human rights struggle to the margins of American consciousness. This repression of Black Americans opened the door for the U.S. to continue the pursuit of its manifest destiny. And its pursuit of world dominance - political, economic, and military - justifies the continued repression of non-allies, people of racial or ethnic or religious differences from the white Protestant American brand.

Full spectrum dominance is white backlash with a vengeance!

Today, “Collaboration Only” signs, otherwise recognized as flags standing high above U.S. military bases scattered across the global, require many to adopt the behavior of a bully, often against its own, in the interest of preserving the U.S. Empire. Join our enterprise or die!

And he, King, died for trying to warn us to be ready for “a true revolution”:

Most distorted the messenger’s message. Since King’s death, the enterprise has billed itself as a global revolution, but it is one, not surprisingly, increasingly anti-human and thus increasingly violent by its nature. This enterprise increasingly supports and applauds the use of violence either verbal or physical against its perceived “enemies.” The “greatest purveyor of violence,” as King said of the U.S., employs its might directly or indirectly. For years, government, corporations, and educational institutions have funded the study of torture and techniques to inflict pain rather than spend the same money and time to teach children how to remain human in the adult world. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death” (“Beyond Vietnam”). A true revolution of values would have to recognize, in the capitalist world order, an unjust enterprise.

But now, 41 years later, there’s an America consisting of two leading and valued sectors: corporatist and consumer. Each sector needs the other; each is content in their sector. Corporatists have taught consumers to see themselves as only buyers of goods, stalkers of malls while consumers have taught the corporatists to see themselves as only hustlers of profits, inventors of things that differentiate one human being from another. Each is wedded to the value of money. This America of corporatists and consumers is “there” in the business-propaganda-complex (everyone wants to be an American and wants American products - values!) and in the cultural-image-complex (as in America depicted as the “a shinning city upon the hill”). The government of the people is the government of the corporatist and consumer and its consumer and not worker. The struggle against this U.S. of A is not only in the “here.” It is outlawed because it’s in the “here.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg returns from Israel and (no surprise) announces that the Israeli military and police force are within their rights to defend its land from “terrorists.” The “terrorists,” of course, are the people of Gaza. “You should rest assured, if anyone in New York was being threatened, my instruction to the NYPD (New York police) would be to use all the resources at their disposal to protect civilians” (Associated Press). In Oakland, California, on New Year’s Eve, the police officers surrounded three or four Black men, and to protect civilians, one innocent Black man, father and worker (butcher), was pushed to the ground and shot (dead) in the back. The death of this 22 year-old Black man, here in America, protects “civilians”! Code - some of us “here” know well. “Civilians” are corporatists and consumers, not “terrorists” and “criminals” who are “distinctly” different and identifiable.

The walled-in people of Gaza, the 1.5 million forced to live on land the size of a post stamp, are being maimed and massacred to protect civilians - and not just the civilians of Israel. Send a 2,000 pound bomb down on the home of a Hamas leader and kill some 20 others, including children - civilians who don’t matter. This atrocity is supported by the world’s bullies - the U.S. and the EU - who grant each other the privilege of being bigger and badder world leaders, bigger and badder terrorists! Who would dare stand to deny the U.S. and the EU the right to lead? Who would dare refuse to collaborate in their enterprise?

The presence of suicide bombers in a scenario labeled “democracy” means what? What does a suicide bomber say about equality among the Earth’s people under the terror of the U.S. Empire? What would any of us do when the policies are stacked against you and you are forced to accept a steady diet of military and enforcement power, embargoes and starvation, unemployment, and negotiations means compromise for you and a revisionist interpretation of your right to land, to freedom? If you remember the theft of your land, if you remember 1948, and if you organize to ease the suffering of people and to defend their human right to exist under the thumb of a country supported by the world’s powers, and you become even more of a target to be crushed - what would you do? Can anyone honestly admit that they can’t comprehend the anger and hostility of the Palestinian people? Can anyone honestly admit that the Palestinians have not the right to resist?

The U.S.’s special relationship with Israel permits it to keep guard on the non-cooperative States in the Middle East. To say it is about oil only is to speak of the economic manipulation and to ignore the deeply ingrained racial manipulation of the area. On January 6, 2009, a 40 year resident of Israel, Victoria Buch, wrote that it took her many years to understand the “the very existence” of her country:

[It] is based on an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The project started many years ago. Its seed can be traced to the basic fallacy of the Zionist movement, which set out to establish a Jewish-national state in a location already inhabited by another nation. Under these conditions, one has, at most, a moral right to strive for a bi-national state; establishing a national state implies, more or less by definition, ethnic cleansing of the previous inhabitants (“The Real Estate War in Gaza: The History and ‘Morals’ of Ethnic Cleansing”).

But a “bi-national state” is not beneficial to the U.S. Empire. Ethnic cleansing is a better solution!

Human Watch (HW) officials are reporting the possible use of white phosphorus by the Israeli military. HW points to the “similar characteristics” of the “lethal shells” (Guardian, January 6, 2009). The, “phosphorous shells are not illegal if they are used to create a smokescreen or to illuminate targets, rather than as a weapon against people.” But we know better or should. White phosphorous was used by the U.S. in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. The substance burns to the bone and is known to lead to cancer, if the victim survives. See the similar characteristics of these lethal partners in crime? Comprehend the hatred of the terrorists (U.S. and Israel) by imagining white phosphorous on your skin. And in the “here,” right under the nose of American civilians, tasers “accidentally” fired at unarmed Black Americans are a substitute for the old fashioned lynching rope.

Repress the true revolution of values and rid the “civilian” world of evil! Much easier! “The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sectors of mankind as stand in their way…Be he human or be he brute - the hindrance must be got rid of,” wrote philosopher Herbert Spencer.

The familiar practice of apartheid, walled off existences of the non-civilians and brutal tactics of repressing struggle and resistance is an attempt to kill the spirit the people of Gaza. Ask any Black or Latino/a or working class American still involved with the struggle for equality and human rights if social apartheid isn’t practiced in the U.S. for just that reason. The U.S. government, with its corporate partners, on behalf of the “civilians,” has become an expert at repressing a true revolution of values. “Civilians” are taught to despise voices of dissent. It’s the Pavlovian method for training dogs - only this tactic of repressing struggle is conducted on human beings. Israeli’s U.S. made bombs are intended to push the people of Gaza into a civil war with Hamas. The bullies of the world hope the people of Gaza, the women and children in particular, will associate the “very high explosive weapons” made of “tungsten alloy” (Global Research, January 6, 2009) with Hamas - rather than Israel and the U.S. Empire. Divide and conquer! White backlash. Peace is repression, runaway profits, and multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses for CEOs. And for the “civilians” over there, there are the mantras of “positive thinking” calling for “individual success” stories to keep the lid on the necessity for a community to struggle against the rulers. Americans, King understood 41 years ago in the midst of the Vietnam War and the repression of Black voices in the Upper South and Wild West, “are more concerned about tranquility and status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity” (“The Other America”).

So yes - the U.S. government cheers and applauds Israel’s right to defend itself against the “enemy,” the “terrorists” - who are dead children and dead mothers of children. Silence from the incoming President of the Empire, why of course. And the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malike is shocked by the silence?

Does President-elect Barrack Obama know? Apparently, he was shown the Zapruder film early, so as not to take any chances with change by waiting until the evening of Inauguration Day. Take a close look at Obama’s cabinet selections. Take a look at the interests his nominees support, and see if you can find an anti-war or anti-racist or anti-capitalist among them!

The tragedy in this merger of multiple tragedies is that some Black Americans believe along with President-elect Obama and Condi Rice that the terrorists are the Palestinians and the Palestinians are terrorists. Americans support the idea (distributed daily by corporate media) that “poor dead others” are “poor dead others” - with no connection to them and the privileges they take for granted. The “poor dead children and their mothers” are “collateral damage” - just like in the movies! The young woman’s voice on the radio makes it all seem so common and normal. So over “there” and not “here, thank God.”

Collaborate or die has de-humanized people “there” as it has attempted to break the spirit of us “here.”

But have no doubt about it, Martin Luther King, Jr. is weeping on this birthday!

Forty-one years later, we need to consider the hypocrisy of national and even some Black insincere remembrances of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Did King give his life for corporatists and consumers? Would he have stood by while this government allows for the total disregard and repression of workers’ struggles in America? What would he have said about this nation serving as an anchor from which nation’s like Israel can carry out ethnic cleansing?

Who do you fool when you are unwilling to untangle your mind from the death grip of the corporatist-consumer enterprise? The “long and bitter, but beautiful” work of struggle for a new world needs you!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.