I was three years old when I watched my father, mother, and three-week-old baby brother nearly murdered in a hail of bullets during a police raid on our home in September 1973.
My father, Robert Seth Hayes, was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and ever since that day some 37 years ago, he has been a political prisoner in the state of New York. So when I read Cord Jefferson's article, "Is the Tea Party the New Black Panther Party?" on The Root.com, I could not help but remember, and relive, the pain and trauma of that day. I also became frustrated and angry because Jefferson's article is ahistorical and continues the tradition of attacking the Party and misrepresenting its history and legacy. What's more, it does so in a forum that prides itself on getting African American history correct.
Jefferson begins his piece predictably, by drawing on caricatures of the Party - images of armed, angry, Black men going to war against the US government. But the images that are used aren't even of Panther members. His opening lines are accompanied by a photo of Malik Zulu Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), an unaffiliated group founded in 1989 that has no connection to the BPP other than the name that it appropriated.
In fact, original BPP members openly reject the NBPP because its ideology promotes violence, separatism, and nationalism, values my father and other BPP members have long abandoned as part of an effective political ideology and strategy. In fact, the NBPP was successfully sued by Huey P. Newton's foundation in an effort to keep them from calling themselves the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the BPP's original name.
This is just one example of the article's glaring inaccuracies; there are many more Chief among them is the central argument that Tea Partiers waving guns, screaming racial epithets, threatening violence against Black elected officials, and holding anti-tax rallies is similar to the BPP's response to systematic police brutality, which involved developing community-based projects that promoted self defense, Black political power, and freedom from economic exploitation.
Jefferson admits that "reconciling the...Marxist underpinnings of the [BPP ideology] with the laissez-faire philosophy of the Tea Party is impossible," but appears determined to overlook this and other core differences in his effort to make the case that BPP and Tea Party political grievances are similar enough to legitimately link the two. Reducing the BPP to a crazy "fringe" organization primarily characterized by angry, gun-toting radicals displays Jefferson's lack of understanding of the BPP's grassroots political philosophy and commitment to community organizing.
The truth of the matter is that the BPP and the Tea Party are nothing alike. To begin with, the Tea Party offers nothing close to the sophisticated analysis of the political and economic condition of marginalized and oppressed people, whether Black, White, or anything else.
The BPP developed a 10-point platform that articulated better than any other grassroots group of its time a set of demands and reform proposals intended to improve the lives of ordinary people. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has a terrible understanding of the way current political and economic systems operate. They spend their time protesting stimulus programs and healthcare reforms, and recently have embraced Tea Party favorite Rand Paul's advocacy of re-segregating private businesses, but that's not the same as building a movement that enacts change through projects like the free breakfast program for children, as the BPP did. Whether you agree with BPP politics or not, they at least had an actionable agenda.
Jefferson's poor grasp of history and sloppy analysis reaches new, disturbing heights when he suggests that BPP and Tea Party paramilitarism are the same. He writes:
Where the Tea Party and the Black Panther Party appear to connect most perfectly is at their hips, where they keep their guns. The Second Amendment -- and the arsenals it allows -- is a cornerstone of both organizations, and for very similar reasons: fear of governmental authority. Paramilitarism was always at the forefront of the Black Panthers' operations, mostly because they thought, rightly, that the government was out to destroy them. Factual or not, many Tea Partiers believe they are in similar danger...What is the difference between actually, wholly believing the government is after you and the government really being after you?
A serious analysis of the Tea Party's core values, constituents, goals, and rhetoric reveals that the group is not a modern white version of the Black Panther Party, but is instead the very antithesis of the BPP. Despite including former BPP Chairwoman Elaine Brown's refutation of a parallel, Jefferson stubbornly insists on making this connection. He even goes so far as to equate the physical, political, and economic oppression that BPP members and supporters faced with the imagined oppression of Tea Partiers. As evidence of a link, Jefferson quotes Tea Partier Chris Littleton, who argues that current federal programs to ban foods high in salt and sugar from the lunches provided by public schools constitutes one of many serious denials of freedom. "Should the government be in control of the personal diets of families?" asks Littleton, who then concludes, "That's...oppressive." I can't help but wonder if either Littleton or Jefferson ever heard of bag lunches?
Jefferson's clumsy historical analysis continues with his references to Eldridge Cleaver. Cleaver is mentioned several times in the piece and each time he is used to represent the entire BPP. Cleaver, however, did not found the BPP, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton did. While Cleaver did play an integral role in defining the group's message and direction in its heyday, the BPP was not "his gang." Jefferson's closing image of Cleaver running for US Senate as a Republican in his later years is also absurd. By that point, the BPP had long disbanded, and well before then, Cleaver had defected from the group.
Jefferson's mishandling of history is not only dishonest, it's also dangerous. In fact, it reminds me of the famous quote by Spanish American philosopher George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." When our history is so carelessly blurred, we do not know the right questions to ask or the right steps to take to rectify the societal ills that plague us today.
Those who think concerns about historical accuracy are limited to academics need only look at Texas and Arizona, where lawmakers are attempting to erase important moments in our nation's history from public school textbooks. Indeed, it is a sad coincidence that The Root.com saw fit to publish this historically inaccurate, intellectually insincere article a year after its founding father, Henry Louis Gates Jr., came face to face with the very real vestiges of the unjust systems and structures that BPP members like my father fought tirelessly against.
As was the case for my family, and even for Skip Gates, these unjust systems and structures didn't merely threaten to raise our taxes, they threatened our lives and livelihoods. But for my family especially, and for so many others like us, when those who represented these systems and structures came looking for us, they didn't coming to our front doors politely, knocking first. They busted through, shooting first.
Cross-posted from Race-Talk.
http://www.steinershow.org/radio/the-marc-steiner-show/may-27-2010-hour-2
Cord Jefferson is from Arizona. I think that explains all.
Jefferson's article is a joke and does nothing short of trying to mask convoluted editorializing as scholarship. He is no pioneer in this regard and in fact, relies on a miseducated public (on such matters as the true nature of the BPP) to give weight to his blasphemous editorial.
Unfortunately, to the victor go the spoils and thus the privilege of writing history. Reducing the accomplishments and brilliance of the BPP to a bunch of angry black folk's in: turtlenecks, leather jackets, berets, wielding guns and "kill whitey" slogans, only serves to perpetuate an inaccurate and marginalizing account the BPP and social justice efforts in general.
The BPP and the Tea Party are nothing alike. Like most things that are all hype and devoid of substance, the Tea Party has no clearly defined goals and relies on sensationalization and fear to garner support. It's nothing more than a social club for "post-racial" racists.
The absolute certainty that someone (the Government is mentioned) was out to wipe out the blacks. And the utter dismissal of the Tea Party understanding of existing and proposed Government policies.
This shows a clear tendency towards "if it is not what I believe it must be false".
Which is what you're clearly showing with a dismissal of the notion that the government would conduct operations against blacks. Good lord, they followed Dr. King around as a possible subversive. It's amazing to me that with the knowledge that the government went in guns blazing in Waco and Ruby Ridge, that it's somehow far fetched in an era of racial tensions the government would have no qualms about going after blacks.
That's a BIG difference and they should be ashamed of themselves for tarnishing what the original party stood for.
Were they such one would think they would be proud to identify themselves!
Please send me on the link that justifies this, I promise to read.
All I've found so far came from http://trueslant.com/saralibby/2010/05/12/arizona-follows-texas-lead-in-whitewashing-education/
stating that Arizona has a law that “prohibit classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group”. This article didn't approve, but it reads to me like Arizona is taking an stand against racism, not "...attempting to erase important moments in our nation's history from public school textbooks." as Crystal suggests.
So please supply a link if Arizona is really is trying to erase important moments in history. I sincerely want to know.
In some instances, forgetting it nearly guarantees it will re-occur. See the recent economic meltdown which is a direct parallel to de-regulation from the 1990s - de-regulation of policies that were enacted in the 1930s in order to prevent such and worked for over half a century. Worked out great, didn't it?
I grew up in Phoenix and took ethnic studies classes in high school as an ELECTIVE. I was not encouraged to overthrow the government, secede and be Mexico North, or to hate white people (of which I am one) to the benefit of Hispanics or any other group. There is no requirement for graduation, and the idea that such classes are not useful in teaching US history is absolutely absurd.
The TX history books as approved do not include the word 'slavery'. If that's not whitewashing US history I don't know what is.
Rather than reading comments about it, here is the actual bill:
http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/h.hb2281_03-18-10_houseengrossed.doc.htm
Note how they exclude the Holocaust, which would otherwise encourage Jewish solidarity.
Yet when you get a hold of the truth and thats kibbles and bits of pieces a little at a time,it really took me back. No one ever told me about the soup kitchens and tutorial and school programs they set up and ran in the inner cities in LA.,Chicago and other places. I well remember how Angela Davis was vilified and sent to prison for a very long time.
The violent side was proliferated in the Media and I don't think it wise to draw down on a heavily armed Establishment that out numbers you probably a hundred to one. However, whats not told is they were within their rights to do so on many occasions. These people were the Patrick Henry's of the modern Civil Rights movement and unlike Henry most found liberty through death. I'am by no means saying everything they did was right or put them up for saint hood, but the real story of the Black Panthers should be put right. Most were far from the vilification that was used to purge them from society. Mistakes were made on both sides basically what I'm trying to say there's no shame in having been a Black Panther.
aka Momma panther.