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
"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?
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. "
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good job being an advocate for a lesser told truth.
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. "
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
This is the stuff they don't dare teach us in school.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/default.htm
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.
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.
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.
http://www.blackwallstreet.freeservers.com/The%20Story.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Race_Riot
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.' ...