"If America does not use her vast resource of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all god"s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too is going to hell."
"Most Americans are unconscious racists."
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today " my own government."
"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the 16th century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population."
"I have a dream."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Are you ready to call this man unpatriotic and racist despite all the good he did?
Obama, Wright and Contested Stories
If you want to understand why Rev. Jeremiah Wright said the U.S. government invented AIDS, or what Barack Obama sought to accomplish in his Philadelphia speech on race, the best commentary is political scientist Marc Howard Ross's book Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict -- even if it never mentions Obama or Wright.
I described Ross's book in my recent American Prospect piece about the smears against Robert Malley and the shoutfest over Israeli-Palestinian history. Ross describes the critical role of the stories that
...ethnic groups build to explain their past, their present, and their relation to their opponents. The narratives are "compelling, coherent" and link "specific events to that group's general understandings."
They are also selective and inaccurate. Disagreement with a group's memory is often perceived as an attack on its identity, if not its existence.
Ross certainly isn't the first to talk about a shared narrative as part of ethnic identity. In Israel, where I've lived for 30 years, there's constant discussion in the tenure-track class of the Israeli narrative and the Palestinian narrative and how they don't fit together. For Israelis, 1948 means independence; for Palestinians, the same date equals catastrophe. For Israelis, the southeast corner of Jerusalem's Old City is the Temple Mount, proof of Jews' ancient connection to their land; for Palestinians, the same place is Al-Aqsa Mosque, the place where Islam and Palestinian nationalism are fused together.
But Ross gives the best description I've seen yet of how such narratives are put together, turning all of history into a justification for group identity today - and also of how strange the story sounds to outsiders. Two groups can live side by side, overlapping, among each other, talk about the same history - and select such different facts, give such different explanations of those facts, that it sounds like they are talking about two distant countries. To one group, the other's story sounds ludicrous. But if you attack a group's story, you attack the very meaning of its world. Criticize your own group's story, even softly, and you are likely to be considered a turncoat. And yet, as Ross also notes, within the same ethnic community, there are also conflicting versions of the story.
Politicians and preachers are often high priests of a group's story. Members of minorities usually know better than to tell their story when the majority is present. Growing up as an American Jew, I learned at an age too young for me to remember that the story we told around the table in my Jewish home - a story out of jokes and horror and jokes about horror - was not to be told at public school.
Observed through Ross's lens, the Wright affair was a standard, bitter fight over narrative. Continue reading at South Jerusalem
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Victim thinking is code-speak for I don't want to hear it or deal with it and shut up. Do not ever say your toe hurts. Malcolm called it "suffering peacefully".
I found the site re the bombing and burning of the town just north of Tulsa Oklahoma!
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
"The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers. "
As tragic as this accounting of American history is I am not struck by surprise that many are unaware. That has been the problem. People only want to embrace the past when it glorifies not when it magnifies evil-doing. The co-opted press of America is a guilty agent of the evil doing and I wrote elsewhere mass suicide is the prescription for duplicity in evil and cowardice in principle.
The Internet scares a lot of people because of its now mostly uncontrolled format. As time rolls on many will try to shut this communication vehicle down for any telling of truth that is not "sanctioned" truth. Fear not, for a greater judge does exist and a tally is being taken. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. The arrogant and deceitful may be surprised when the Lord uses the hands of the people to strike a blow for divine justice.
I am making some popcorn and getting ready for the show.
Senator Barack Obama does face a hard task in trying to take the seat of power in America with all of its history. I do not see him as a messiah and I do not see signs that he thinks himself a messiah. I hear his detractors make this comment often. I see him as the embodiment of an idea. The idea that individuals can rise above a dark history to shine a light on the possibility of a glorious future. There is much we do not know about the man and that remains true for the other man and the woman in the contest --their voluminous public record notwithstanding. But with a leap of faith we may realize a long delayed promise of greatness. Hate in all of its forms is wrong. The article by Mr. Gorenberg is the story of complex reactions to historical manifestations if hate. Some deny it ever existed. Some cannot recognize that progress has been made. Some say the present is not the past and therefore there is no need to bring up the past. Then there are those like me who say the past existed and today I exist, what is the contrast between the two times that make them separate? It is in that analysis that solutions and blame reside, for those honest enough to dare to look without fear or hyperactive self-interest.
The American government is not translucent in how it operates partially by necessity and partially by corruption and therefore paranoia is a wise stance for the historically impacted. Yet it is the responsibility I believe of each individual to view all others as such and operate on a case by case basis. When it comes to judging government behavior, the individual should look at the policies of government and there affect on the historically impacted, to determine if true reconciliation is in effect.
There are some in the AA community who believe to this day that the government was involved in introducing crack cocaine into the AA community. The government has debunked/denied this claim (http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm). Yet as one who is a descendant of the historically impacted the story has certain plausibility when viewed through a historical prism. Not viewing it through a historical prism or at least taking the time to think about the possibility would be foolish, reckless, and potentially deadly. It would also be unpatriotic in that as a citizen of this country one is called to analyze the morality of the government at all times to insure it is not shying away from the mandate to be just and fair with all of its citizens.
It is wrong to indict the innocent for the acts of the guilty, but it is also wrong to be guilty and when indicted not accept guilt and the real impact of wrongdoing.
In light of the Tuskegee experiment it is not a stretch for the descendants of people who were targeted by that heinous act to believe that the government could yet again be involved in wrong doing. If in Germany today people started building concentration camps with gas chambers would not a person who is Jewish be justified in being paranoid? Is it not plausible that a Rabbi might entertain the thought that the Germans are coming again to bring death and sadness? Even if what the Germans were doing turned out to be innocuous I could understand Jewish paranoia in such a scenario. This is why one must judge individually not historically. Individuals today were not involved in slavery, or the maintaining of Jim Crow, the Black Codes, or the doctrine of separate but equal. But for a people whose lineage was affected by such they are wise to bring a critical eye in judging the motivations of individuals acting in a historical manner.
The next concept is that of paranoia as related to the proposition that some never move beyond the past. I agree with that proposition. However, think about a scenario where someone kicked you in the behind everyday, all day, for a solid year. Even after they stopped kicking it is possible that a slight wind could irritate a raw spot. The AIDS accusation is a case of that. Government was brutal for centuries and I did not get an official memo that it could never be brutal again, therefore vigilance is considered prudent. This is the way the psyche works for most people I have met. Though I am no longer being kicked I harbor distrust in my social DNA from a time when I in the form of my ancestors was kicked over and over again. When I am pulled over by a police office for no reason my historical behind starts to ache from the wind of injustice embodied in law enforcement. When I get a certain look from some person walking down the street that suggests they think I am a danger or that somehow I am beneath them, my historical backbone becomes irritated/pained. No, I am not being hung from a tree, but my DNA reminds me that I am on soil where this has happened; I live on the proverbial shaky ground.
After reading Mr. Gorenberg's piece a few things come to mind.
First, I need to state these expressed opinions are mine and mine alone. I speak for no one but me.
Step in my shoes is the first concept. Yes, for any conflict there is always opposing sides, or contrasting accounts of how present day reality came to be. Let me be clear here; there is no possibility of me ever looking at the dark history of this country regarding its shameful treatment of people of African descent in any other light than the true light that it was wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no way I could step into the shoes of a slave owner and see good intention in that person"s treatment of the so called salve. There is no way I could step into the shoes of a thief and somehow vindicate historical theft. There is no way I could ever rationalize falsely accusing someone of rape, cutting off their testicles, hanging them from a tree, or burning them on a railroad track as legitimate behavior under any circumstances. There is wrong and there is right in this regard. I can forgive historical wrong but to forget is to leave yourself open for the possibility of history revisited. Surely a person of the Jewish faith realizes that.
Grain, interesting posts--I too believe that without history we have no real understanding of the present and no guide into the future. I found the link to a horrid part of American History that is not taught, not talked about. It is one of those experiences, though, that lives fresh in the Black community, and is very much a part of the current subtext they employ in their dialogue with each other, but that rarely, except in the case of Rev. Wright, explodes onto the national scene.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
There is no need for Black people to exaggerate the wrongs that have been done to them. As Gorenberg says, "Two groups can live side by side, overlapping, among each other, talk about the same history - and select such different facts, give such different explanations of those facts, that it sounds like they are talking about two distant countries." Perhaps between Israelis and Palestinians this is true. But in instances like the total destruction of a town and mass murder of the people, there is really only one side; The Truth.
I've been trying for days to get this link up here. It has been censored, even though it goes to the very heart of this article. History and how it welds a people together. Please post it.
...and so RL you were allowed to post your story but the story ptrobably did not get much circulation. Between what I wrote and what you wrote that might have been a little too much subjective truth and thus this story is on the archive heap.
Good job being an advocate for a lesser told truth.
...and yet it is said, Barack Obama is not transformative. Look how just his presence in the race for president has transformed the conversation. This can only bode well for this country that we all want success for --in our lifetimes and beyond --for the coming generations. If we are not honest and committed to reconciling "real" issues, then we are forever lost, forever divided, and forever distant from true greatness --greatness touted should not be confused for greatness realized.
I thank you as a fellow citizen for your diligence in this regard. The song goes "We shall overcome", not "Some shall overcome". I make no distinctions based on race that determine worthiness. Such distinctions by me are founded upon long standing principles of good, and of evil. Who amongst us shall do the good work of making us a more perfect union by acknowledging past evil and avoiding duplication of such tendencies in the present and beyond? That is the relevant question under-girding the necessary analysis of a people and of a nation. This is the work undone.
2nd attempt--
I found the site re the bombing and burning of this American town!
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
"The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers. "
Found it:
The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
Still looking for the page about that midwest farmtown, but found this in the meantime.
This is the stuff they don't dare teach us in school.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/default.htm
If you want to understand why Rev. Jeremiah Wright said the US government invented AIDS, the most useful place to look would be a book titled "The River", in which a journalist outlines the effects and methods of an experimental vaccine program for polio that operated in Africa, I think the Congo, from the mid-1950's, in which chimpazee tissue was used to culture the vaccine. As I recall, this was an international affair, with scientists from Europe and the US funded by US and European drug company and government grants, in which African subjects in the communities around the vaccine acculturation center were vaccinated with test serum, with no knowledge of any threat to their health.
The serum proved problematic and tainted by simian disease and eventually, the center was abandoned. Years later, some of the earliest known cases of AIDS appeared in clusters in the little towns wherein the test subjects resided. All surviving scientists involved deny any link between the vaccine program and AIDS, but some researchers have drawn other, damning conclusions.
It would have been more accurate for Reverend Wright to have blamed white people generally, as so many Europeans were involved. But the idea that African test subjects, in the minds of the experimenters, were of less value and humanity , and therefore more fitting subjects for a dangerous drug trial, is alive and well today, when drug companies seek out for their uses the politically powerless and economically desperate all over the world.
Medical Apartheid
http://www.s193082824.onlinehome.us/
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge"a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government"s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.
And not to lessen in any way the horrors of those experiments, but the US Government has been experimenting on us all for years. From nuclear tests on soldiers aboard ships in the Pacific, to tracking the effects of radiation on citizens downwind from all the Nevada above ground explosions. They've laced people's drinks with LSD, given our serving soldiers "immunization shots" without sufficient testing, and insisted that our children receive a battery of inoculations (some of which are of value) that just 50 years ago would have been unheard of. They've allowed industry to pollute our environment with the deadliest of manmade chemicals, and then told us that "a little bit is ok!" We are a nation of guinea pigs, and the rising incidence of previously rare cancers, autism, birth defects, and age related degenerative mental diseases are the result!
I found the site re the bombing and burning of this American town!
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
"The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--a model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.
The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers. "
There was during the Thirties, in Kansas I believe, a Black town that was doing well. Thriving Black owned businesses, above average employment; a happy town. Until their white neighbors from surrounding towns got jealous. In the first and only knowm air bombardment on American soil, bi-planes stationed nearby and home made bombs were used to wreck total devastation on these people. The town was invaded, burned to the ground and never rebuilt.
I'm sorry I can't remember its name--someone on this blog will, but this is exactly the sort of genocidal racism that black People in America faced, and continue to, face! It's not paranoia when they actually are out to get you. The Brits had their Opium Wars in China; the US its "Air America" heroin shipped out of Viet Nam courtesy of the military ; the CIA and the Crack Epidemic out of South and Central America straight into the ghettos of LA.
This has been going on for a long, long time. And there are two primary reason that White America doesn't hear about it: One, the Corporate Media ignores this story, for obvious reasons, so it never gets told. And, two, most Black leaders may talk about these things to their people, but are smart enough to know they will be branded as nut jobs, or worse, "Unamerican" if they speak these things openly. As we've seen recently, it is still not safe to speak the truth to power in this country.
Your talking about the Tulsa Race Riots in Tulsa Oklahoma. The Segregated black part of town was very prosperous with strong business community until the entire section (35 blocks) was burned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Race_Riot
Thanks so much, Joe! I finally found it a while ago and got it posted, above. People need to know the truth, no matter how ugly or hurtful it may be--It's better than letting a lie fester.
It will continue to fester with the unwilling but I see water from ice melting.
For those of you interested in learning more about the hidden history of the Black Experience in America, visit this site that talks about the attack I refer to, above.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
Interesting post, with which I can find alot of agreement. However, in the case of Rev. Wright, I think that we are largely talking about the prophetic strain in Protestant religion. For years I attended a liberal Protestant church, mostly white, where statements like those Wright made were part of working up the congregation to recognize the the basic evil in much of our government towards the marginalized (persons of color, gays, the poor). Hyperbole was the method, and yes, part perhaps of the rhetoric the congregation expected. You certainly can consider the liberal Church as having a group identity and narrative, but it is not an ethnic identitiy as the congregation was multicultural.
Not a lot of 'context' on this issue that I've found on the 'Web, but see also...
http://hnn.us/articles/48444.html
"God Damn America" in Black and White
By Edward J. Blum
[Mr. Blum is a professor of history at San Diego State University and the author of 'W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet' (2007) and 'Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898' (2005).]
... 'What is striking, historically, is that there is nothing new in Wright"s sermon and how often African American perspectives on so-called American Christian nationalism are ignored. It seems that each year, at least a handful of books come out trying to discern whether the United States was founded as a "Christian nation." Most recently, this can be seen in Steven Waldman"s Liberating the Founders. But so often historians have approached the topic from the perspective of elite whites, and not the people who were building the nation from its foundation, hoeing the fields and raising the cotton, washing the clothes and preparing the meals. (One exception to this is David Howard-Pitney"s wonderful The African-American Jeremiad.) If we look closely at African American perspectives of Christian nationalism, we find Reverend Wright firmly in a long oppositional and rhetorical tradition.' ...
Is anyone going to comment on the expansion of NATO? I have questions about it and the election is seven months away.
Are we dismantling our nuclear arsenal? Will the military we cannot afford to maintain become the New World Order Millitary under NATO? Will NATO be the new world police? Will they fight WTO battles? What does this mean to China and Russian relations? With the world in a depression because Bush stupidity. will there be enough hungry people willing to join this kiler force?
Democrats do not have a porblem with race, Republican corporate media has a problelm with race. Let's get on with the important issues. PLEASE
The essence of religious identity - create a narrative that creates an identity that supports the narrative. Create physical structures to make the narrative and the identity corporeal, and use the corporeal to support the narrative and the identity.
Mix faith with delusion until you achieve belief. Here it helps if your narrative has pretensions to being a valid historical record.
Raise money and invest it in your identity. Most narratives support material things for the leaders; these are manifest evidence of the rewards of Belief. If your carnal desires extend beyond the limits of your narrative, then, for Gods sake, be discrete!
Your article is to be commended, although it would be nice to see exposition on the topic more. From the start of the Wright flap, I felt that this was more about cultural identity stories than about actual Obama philosophy. I saw the remnants of the "angry AA candidate" early in the campaign, but Ferarro, frankly, nipped that one in the bud. And I give Obama credit. He let it be nipped. He protested a few times out of ego/pride, but he knocked off the race card.
I felt all along that he played up Wright as a mentor to offset what he THOUGHT would be his weakness, his name. The "Muslim" connection. And then, like so many of our 'best' solutions in life, it boomeranged on him.
But I do agree, that this is about cultural stories. I understood Wright in that context. I think all the criticisms launched are legitimate. It IS hate-mongering. It DOES reinforce victim thinking. It IS a philosophy that sets apart people as opposed to uniting them with real solutions and common ground. It IS appalling that people mix spiritual guidance with hate.
So I"m not at all making excuses. However, the truth of life is that we must pass on the horrors of our past to the next generation in hopes that they will ensure these actions do not win support in the future. Wright is a story-teller. He carries that message.
The most obvious buttressing to 'victim thinking' available is the ongoing persecution of the victim by the powerful. Of course 'hate-mongering' is alarming, but even more alarming for those with some regard for the mental health of the victimized would be the victim's embrace of their torturer.
Implicit in the notions expressed in your comment is the conceit that the age of racial repression in the US is entirely behind us. But it isn't. An example-- The disparity in sentencing by race among first time offenders for identical amounts of illicit drugs remains scandalously unequal, with Blacks 50 times more likely to receive jail time than whites. That's right: 50 times.
This whole take on race relations reminds me of something I saw on The Simpsons. After a terrible storm, the sign in front of the church read "God welcomes His victims". Blacks should eschew their identities as victims and yearn to unite with their oppressors, despite the fact that it was their oppressors who kept them isolated and oppressed , but now have grown tired of their own history and wish the victims could forget it as easily as they have.
I was going to respond to AnninCA but after reading what you wrote the word why came to mind. Bravo for an excellent summation of the problem and the ignorance. I appreciate your formulation.
AnninCA, for once I actually kind of agree with you, except two parts. I don't think Obama ever played up Wright. He answered when the Wright clips were played ad nauseum, but I don't remember him playing it up. And, the part where you say "It DOES reinforce victim thinking" i have to disagree with. As a black person, when I hear what Wright said, I don't feel like more of a victim. I feel empowered not to let some of the injustices that have occurred for centuries continue to occur. I would feel like a victim if he said something like "Now don't you all worry or be angry about all of the injustices that this country has inflicted upon you. You just be grateful that these good white people have been so nice to you and given you so much like welfare and affirmative action." THAT would make me feel like a helpless victim.
Which, of course, is exactly what Barack's "race" speech after the Wright scandal was about. Something to think about.
Posted April 7, 2008 | 10:19 AM (EST)