British Woman Foretells America's Future?

In February 2017, a woman from Great Britain visiting  Kentucky may have predicted a dark future ahead for the United States of America, Shot of Bourbon reports. But does it really take a psychic to figure that out. Can't an ordinary academic philosopher or history professor give the same warnings?

Rattle Magazine published my poem last month

Almost a month has passed since Rattle Magazine published my poem "Digital Anthropologists Find Our Hashtags" for its Poets Respond series. The poem explores specifically the consecutive shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, by police officers in the first full week of July.

Just hours after I submitted the poem, a sniper killed and wounded police officers in Dallas, Texas. That week of July brimmed too much with violence, grief, and pointed fingers. So, although I was pleased Rattle had accepted the poem, I was also too through with humanity to share at this blog my poem's publication on Tuesday, July 12.

I share it now because since then I've gotten notes and calls from people telling me how they felt about the poem, which you may read at Rattle's site. Acknowledging publication at my blog is appropriate.

The poem was one of two the magazine published that week following the shootings. On Sunday, July  10, the site posted "The Dead Line," a poem by Nicole Homer, a poem that uses repetition to good effect.

Also, the website for the Academy of American Poets, Poets.org, published a poem by the current Poet Laureate for the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, entitled "@ the Crossroads--A Sudden American Poem." Herrera's verse also addresses the present crisis and sorrow of police relationships with black and brown communities. Clearly he wrote his poem after the Dallas tragedy because the epigraph names the slain officers and is dated July 10. Homer and I wrote our poems before Dallas.

Sadly, by the time America solves this problem, by the time we all do the hard work of facing the root causes of this race-related crisis and too often reasonable distrust of police of officers, the world may have volumes of poems exploring or tackling this subject. There is no easy solution here because solutions means behaviors and systems must change, and people fear change, especially when change challenges the foundation of long-held world views and practices.

Verse can soothe, make space for catharsis, and initiate dialogue beyond the heated center. Poetry may not be as popular as it once was in this nation, but the art remains a source humans turn to during troubling hours.

Teaching black children to be slave catchers

Nothing reveals more than U.S. slave narratives (such as the one that follows) the psychological damage done to the enslaved in the U.S.A. and the ways slavery destroyed the black family. The horrific dysfunction of American society during slavery undoubtedly remains with this nation, and we should not forget what happened during that part of history as some people would like us to.

In the following slave narrative, a former slave, Anna Baker, tells an interviewer from the Writers' Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA) about life pre-Civil War and after it. She was a little girl during the slavery era and relays how her master petted her and groomed her to report to him what the adult slaves said and to tell him if anyone planned to run away. She did as he told her but also reported to the slaves what white people said. Anna was less than eight years old doing this.

Symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome are also clear. The former slave, an old woman at the time of the narrative, still talks about "the good white people"making it possible for her to eat. Previously she'd told of the Ku Klux Klan coming for her grandfather. And this is just a snippet of the story.

Some white historians and slavery apologists over the decades have taken some of these narratives in which a slave seems to have liked the master and tried to rewrite this damning history as "a beautiful era" of kind masters and Southern gentility, a period during which black people loved being slaves. The more astute, however, know that slaves learned to dissemble for the sake of survival and if not dissembling about being happy had been conditioned to accept their lives.

The slavery system kept black people illiterate and masters taught slaves only what they wanted them to know. People can be brainwashed into thinking even rapists and sadists are doing what's best.

Slave masters also trained themselves and non-slave-holders to buy their propaganda even creating terminology based on fallacious science, such as the drapetomania diagnosis. That theory promoted under scientific racism that slaves who wanted to escape were mentally ill.

To those who argue black people and other Americans should stop discussing slavery and racism because it perpetuates pain and anger, please understand that the effects of trauma appear to be passed on genetically, so not talking about horror doesn't make its evidence disappear. Furthermore, as many scholars have pointed out, the Civil War did not the end of oppression of black people. The Civil War did not even end slavery, just that type of slavery. After the war came racist backlash during Reconstruction which resulted in Jim Crow laws which birthed the birth/school to "prison pipeline we see today" and other forms of institutionalized racism.

No, we don't talk about racism and slavery too little. We need to talk more. We should talk about this history and hack a its vestiges until justice prevails.

Anna Baker, Ex-slave, Monroe County
FEC
Mrs. Richard Kolb
Rewrite, Pauline Loveless
Edited, Clara E. Stokes

ANNA BAKER
Aberdeen, Mississippi

Anna Baker, 80-year old ex-slave, is tall and well built. She is what the Negroes term a "high brown." Her high forehead and prominent cheek bones indicate that there is a strain of other than the pure African in her blood. She is in fair health.

"Lemme see how old I is. Well, I tells you jus' lak I tol' dat Home Loan man what was here las' week. I 'members a pow'ful lot 'bout slavery times an' 'bout 'fore surrender. I know I was a right smart size den, so's 'cording to dat I mus' be 'roun' 'bout eighty year old. I aint sho' 'bout dat an' I don't want to tell no untruth. I know I was right smart size 'fore de surrender, as I was a-sayin', 'cause I 'members Marster comin' down de road past de house. When I'd see 'im 'way off I'd run to de gate an' start singin' dis song to 'I'm:

'Here come de marster, root toot too!
Here come Marster, comin' my way!
Howdy, Marster, howdy do!
What you gwine a-bring from town today?'

Dat would mos' nigh tickle him to death an' he'd say, 'Loosahna (dat was his pet name for me) what you want today? I'd say, 'Bring me some goobers, or a doll, or some stick candy, or anything. An' you can bet yo' bottom doller he'd always bring me sampan'.

"One reason Marse Morgan thought so much o' me, dey say I was a right peart young'n' an' caught on to anything pretty quick. Marster would tell me, 'Loosanna, if you keep yo' ears open an' tell me what de darkies talk 'bout, dey'll be somp'n' good in it for you.' (He meant for me to listen when dey'd talk 'bout runnin' off an' such.) I'd stay 'roun' de old folks an' make lak I was a-playin'. All de time I'd be a-listenin'. Den I'd go an' tell Marster what I hear'd. But all de time I mus' a-had a right smart mind, 'cause I'd play 'roun' de white folks an' hear what dey'd say an' den go tell de Niggers.—Don't guess de marster ever thought 'bout me doin' dat.

"I was born an' bred 'bout seven miles from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was de baby of de fam'ly. De house was on de right han' side o' de road to town. I had four sisters an' one brother dat I knows of. Dey was named Classie, Jennie, Florence, Allie, an' George. My name was Joanna, but dey done drap de Jo part a long time ago.

"I don't recollec' what my ma's mammy an' pappy was named, but I know dat her pappy was a full blooded Injun. (I guess dat is where I gits my brown color.) Her mammy was a full blooded African though, a great big woman.

"I recollec' a tale ray mammy tol' me 'bout my gran'pa. When he took up wid my gran'mammy de white man what owned her say, 'If you want to stay wid her I'll give you a home if you'll work for me lak de Niggers do.' He 'greed, 'cause he thought a heap o' his Black Woman. (Dat's what he called her.) Ever'thing was all right 'til one o' dem uppity overseers tried to act smart. He say he gwine a-beat him. My gran'pappy went home dat night an' barred de door. When de overseer an' some o' his frien's come after him, he say he aint gwine a-open dat door. Dey say if he don't dey gwine a-break it in. He tell' em to go 'head.

"Whilst dey was a-breakin' in he filled a shovel full o' red hot coals an' when dey come in he th'owed it at 'em. Den whilst dey was a-hollerin' he run away. He aint never been seen again to dis good day. I'se hear'd since den dat white folks learnt dat if dey started to whip a Injun dey'd better kill him right den or else he might git dem.

"My mammy's name was Harriet Clemens. When I was too little to know anything 'bout it she run off an' lef' us. I don't 'member much 'bout her 'fore she run off, I reckon I was mos' too little.

"She tol' me when she come after us, after de war was over, all 'bout why she had to run away: It was on 'count of de Nigger overseers. (Dey had Niggers over de hoers an' white mens over de plow han's.) Dey kep' a-tryin' to mess 'roun' wid her an' she wouldn' have nothin' to do wid 'em. One time while she was in de fiel' de overseer asked her to go over to de woods wid him an' she said, 'All right, I'll go find a nice place an' wait.' She jus' kep'a-goin. She swum de river an' run away. She slipped back onct or twict at night to see us, but dat was all. She hired out to some folks dat warnt rich' nough to have no' slaves o' dey own. Dey was good to her, too. (She never lacked for work to do.)

"When my ma went off a old woman called Aunt Emmaline kep' me. (She kep' all de orphunt chillun an' dem who's mammas had been sent off to de breedin' quarters. When dem women had chillun dey brung 'em an' let somebody lak Aunt Emmaline raise em.) She was sho' mean to me. I think it was 'cause de marster laked me an' was always a-pettin' me. She was jealous.

"She was always a-tryin' to whip me for somethin' or nother. One time she hit me wid a iron miggin.
(You uses it in churnin'.) It made a bad place on my head. She done it 'cause I let some meal dat she was parchin' burn up. After she done it she got sort a scared an' doctored me up. She put soot on de cut to make it stop bleedin'. Nex' day she made me promise to tell de marster dat I hurt my head when I fell out o' de door dat night he whip Uncle Sim for stealin' a hog. Now I was asleep dat night, but when he asked me I said, 'Aunt Emmaline say tell you I hurt my head fallin' out de door de night you whip Uncle Sim.' Den he say, 'Is dat de truf?' I say, 'Naw sir.' He took Aunt Emmaline down to de gear house an' wore her out. He wouldn' tell off on me. He jus' tol' her dat she had no bus'ness a-lettin' me stay up so late dat I seen him do de whipping'.

"My pa was named George Clemens. Us was all owned by Marster Morgan Clemens. Master Hardy, his daddy, had give us to him when he 'vided out wid de res' o' his chillun. (Marster Morgan was a settled man. He went 'roun' by hisse'f mos' o' de time. He never did marry.)

"My pa went to de war wid Marster Morgan an' he never come back. I don't 'member much 'bout 'em goin', but after dey lef' I 'member de Blue Coats a-comin'. Dey tore de smoke house down an' made a big fire an' cooked all de meat dey could hol'. All us Niggers had a good time, 'cause, dey give us all us wanted. One of 'em put me up on his knee an' asked me if I'd ever seen Marster wid any little bright 'roun' shiny things. (He held his hand up wid his fingers in de shape of a dollar.) I, lak a crazy little Nigger said, 'Sho', Marster draps 'em 'hind de mantelpiece.' Den, if dey didn' tear dat mantel down an' git his money, I's a son-of-a-gun!

"After de war was over my ma got some papers from de progo[FN: provost] marshal. She come to de place an 'tol' de marster she want her chillun. He say she can have all 'cept me. She say she want me, too, dat I was her'n an' she was gwine a-git me. She went back an 'got some more papers an' showed 'em to Marster Morgan. Den he lemme go.

"She come out to de house to git us. At firs' I was scared o' her, 'cause I didn' know who she was. She put me in her lap an' she mos' nigh cried when she seen de back o' my head. Dey was awful sores where de lice had been an' I had scratched 'em. (She sho' jumped Aunt Emmaline 'bout dat.) Us lef' dat day an' went right on to Tuscaloosa. My ma had married again an' she an' him took turns 'bout carrying me when I got tired. Us had to walk de whole seven miles.

"I went to school after dat an' learnt to read an' write. Us had white Yankee teachers. I learnt to read de Bible well' nough an' den I quit.

"I was buried in de water lak de Savior. I's a real Baptis'. De Holy Sperrit sho' come into my heart.

"I b'lieves in de Sperrit. I b'lieves all o' us when us dies is sperrits. Us jus' hovers 'roun' in de sky a-ridin' on de clouds. Course, some folks is born wid a cloud over dey faces. Dey can see things dat us can't. I reckon dey sees de sperrits. I know' bout dem Kloo Kluxes. I had to go to court one time to testify 'bout' em. One night after us had moved to Tuscaloosa dey come after my step-daddy. Whilst my ma an' de res' went an' hid I went to de door. I warnt scared. I says, 'Marster Will, aint dat you?' He say, 'Sho', it's me. Whar's yo' daddy?' I tol' 'im dat he'd gone to town. Den dey head out for 'im. In de meantime my ma she had started out, too. She warned him to hide, so dey didn' git 'im.

"Soon after dat de Yankees hel' a trial in Tuscaloosa. Dey carried me. A man hel' me up an' made me p'int out who it was dat come to our house. I say, 'Dat's de man, aint it Marster Will?' He couldn' say "No", 'cause he'd tol' me twas him dat night. Dey put 'em in jail for six months an' give 'em a big fine.
"Us moved from Tuscaloosa while I was still a young girl an' went to Pickensville, Alabama. Us stayed dar on de river for awhile an' den moved to Columbus, Mississippi. I lived dar 'til I was old 'nough to git out to myself.

"Den I come to Aberdeen an' married Sam Baker. Me an' Sam done well. He made good money an' us bought dis very house I lives in now. Us never had no chillun, but I was lef' one by a cousin o' mine what died. I raised her lak she was my own. I sont her to school an' ever'thing. She lives in Chicago now an' wants me to come live wid her. But shucks! What would a old woman lak me do in a place lak dat?

"I aint got nothin' lef now 'cept a roof over my head. I wouldn' have dat 'cept for de President o' de United States. Dey had loaned me some money to fix up de house to keep it from fallin' down on me. Dey said I'd have fifteen year to pay it back in. Now course, I knowed I'd be dead in dat time, so I signed up wid' em.

"Las' year de men dat collec' nearly worrit me to death a-tryin' to git some money from me. I didn' have none, so dey say dey gwine a-take my home.

"Now I hear tell o' dat barefoot Nigger down at Columbus callin' de president an' him bein' so good to 'im. So I 'cided to write an' tell 'im what a plight dis Nigger was in. I didn' say nothin noxious[FN: obnoxious], but I jus' tol' him plain facts. He writ me right back an' pretty soon he sont a man down to see me. He say I needn' bother no more, dat dey won't take my house 'way from me. An' please de Lawd! Dey aint nobody else been here a-pesterin' me since.

"Dat man tol' me soon as de old age pension went th'ough I'd git thirty dollars a mont' stid[FN: instead] o' de four I's a-gittin' now. Now won't dat be gran'? I could live lak de white folks on dat much.

"I'se had 'ligion all my born days. (I never learnt to read de Bible an' 'terpet de Word 'til I was right smart size, but I mus' o' b'lieved in de Lawd since 'way back.) I'se gwine a-go right 'long an' keep a-trustin' de good Lawd an' I knows ever'thing gwine a-come out all right.

"'Twixt de Lawd an' de good white folks I know I's gwine always have somethin' t'eat. President Roosevelt done 'tended to de roof over my head."

Related: "There Goes the Wind" at the Harvard University Press blog

Black Writers in a Post-Racial Age?

By now, anyone who's been paying attention knows that post-racial is just another myth among America's press clippings. I doubt that the publishing world has ever believed itself to be post-racial though. Consider the watermelon joke at the National Book Awards ceremony just last year when Jacqueline Woodson received her award for Black Girl Dreaming.

And it's hard to ignore that some bookstores still segregate writing by black writers from that by white writers. Even Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison has been sometimes cordoned off. So, there's not much more to say about that.

Still, I share this link to an extraordinarily beautiful and provocative essay by Saeed Jones at BuzzFeed, "Self Portrait of The Artist As Ungrateful Black Writer." For a number of reasons this article resonated with me. I especially appreciated his honesty about the pressure for black writers to be more polite and docile than white writers if they want to have careers:

You can make yourself crazy simply by paying attention. The publishing industry on which my work depends is 89% white. And so, when one of those white people puts their hands in my hair, it’s difficult for me to speak up in the moment, or even months later, because I want to have a career, not just one book. I suspect there are limits to the literary elite’s willingness to tolerate an insistently “angry black writer” in their presence. Writers who speak out too loudly, too often will never be told explicitly “you’ve bitten the hand that feeds you” but there are so many ways to starve.

Yes, the need to eat and live indoors is a thing.

Jones also tells of his experience going to and being at a party with the nearly all-white literary elite and how he felt about that experience as a young, black, gay male. He acknowledges that creepy impression we black writers sometimes get that we are a trophy in someone's effort to prove she or e's open to everyone, even black people. It's a cleansing read.

Slave ship ruins reveal horrid conditions Africans endured

Yesterday's New York Times featured the article "Grim History Traced in Sunken Slave Ship Found Off South Africa." People have been sharing the story on Facebook and Twitter.

The article tells some of the disturbing details of abuse 400 to 500 Africans endured on the São José Paquete Africa before the slave ship sank not far from the Cape of Good Hope. Unfortunately, the detestable conditions they faced were typical of slave ships.

Some people reading the article have been shocked to hear how Africans were forced onto these ships and squeezed into cargo holds like livestock for a four-month journey to the shores of the Americas and Europe.

But Lonnie Bunch, the founder of the African American History Museum at the Smithsonian knows this horrid history and of even worse traumas the enslaved suffered. So, he gets that the lives lost during these treacherous journeys, also known as the Middle Passage, and the lives of those who suffered in bondage later deserve a dignified remembrance.

Here's how their memories will be honored at the museum Bunch runs.

The space in the museum for the items pulled from the sea, he said, will include recordings of voices describing the slave trade — “a place,” Mr. (Lonnie) Bunch said, “for you to mourn and to remember.”

This is the attitude we've hoped the architect behind the current design of the proposed National Slave Ship Museum would have adopted. But his vision as shared with the Times Picayune last week reveals again that he just doesn't get it. Remembering the humans who traveled to this country in shackles as well as those that did not survive the journey should not be an entertaining moment or a time to make everyone feel better than he felt at the Holocaust Museum.

James doesn't understand that a slave ship replica as a tourism boat and the Middle Passage as an indoor "simulation ride"he claims will let museum visitors "experience as a slave their journey at sea" is just wrong. The only outcome of such a presentation will be a distortion of history that creates more tension and misunderstanding between ethnic groups in America.

Please sign the petition, if you haven't already, and share it so we can stop the current plan for the NSSM from moving forward.

National Slave Ship Museum Board denies slave ship replica to cruise Mississippi but I've got video proof of their plan

Supporters of the National Slave Ship Museum, including New Orleans City Councilwoman Latoya Cantrell, participated in an interview that made false claims to Times Picayune reporter Jarvis DeBerry about plans for the National Slave Ship Museum.

Board member Debra Morton unequivocally denied that the museum plans have a full-scale replica of a slave ship that will sail the Mississippi River selling rides to tourists. She, Cantrell, and the architect Clifton James seem to think it's ludicrous that anyone would think the plan included such a thing. And yet they never bothered to contradict the numerous reports about the sailing ship over the years.

However, the video above shows an economic development committee meeting in which the cruising slave ship plan is mentioned twice. Once it's mentioned as a revenue source. So, clearly they planned to sell tickets to board this ship.

I also discovered planners have already received a letter of intention from the Port of New Orleans agreeing for them to use the proposed area of the Celeste Street Wharf, and that they've named their celebrity spokesperson, actor and activist Wendell Pierce (SELMA, Suits, The Wire, Treme).

More surprising however, is the proposal's plan for a simulation ride inside the museum that the architect says will let riders "experience the journey as a slave as they did at sea, a realistic ride that would probably take 4 to 5 minutes."

If these people can't be trusted to tell the plain truth in a media interview, can they be trusted to ensure the integrity of history such as suffering and death during the Middle Passage?

National Slave Ship Museum: A fully-functioning slave ship sailing the Mississippi to entertain you, how about that?

Today I find myself in a bit of an emotional quandary. The National Slave Ship Museum, a project that I thought had died quietly already, appears to be alive and well. According to a local station, the New Orleans City Council approved last night a proposal to build this museum. But raising my eyebrow at this questionable endeavor proposed for the New Orleans Riverfront is not what troubles me. What's really tearing me up is that I must write my objections about a project that is the dream of an elder and a fellow lover of Black History in Louisiana, and encourage him to do no harm.

The National Slave Ship Museum is the dream of black, “amateur historian” Lloyd Lazard, 74. He first proposed the project in the mid-90s, going so far as to lobby the Department of the Interior and gain a thumbs up, reports New Orleans City Business, and he's been at it ever since. I applaud this kind of tenacity, but what will happen after Mr. Lazard passes on?

In 2005, the proposal for the museum was included in a riverfront revitalization plan for New Orleans (.pdf). In 2013, the key players stepped forward again and registered National Slave Ship Museum, Inc., with the state of Louisiana as a non-profit corporation. Antoinette Harrell-Miller of Kentwood, Louisiana, a genealogist, is listed as a director. Clifton James of the Urban Design Research Center, the architect who designed the proposed complex that's pictured above, is listed as its agent along with Lazard.

I'm not against museums about slavery or any attempt to educate the public about this sordid era of American and world history. Also, I'm glad that a group of black Louisianans have taken the initiative to stand up for Black History amid idealizations of the past fostered in this state.

My concern is that this project sounds like something that could easily devolve into a garish, Disneyesque-knock-off theme park (Epcot not Magic Kingdom). If not so grand as Disney, then maybe it will be the colorful Yeehaw! of Opryland in Nashville. So, one minute a slave ship, the next a party on deck with a brass band. I mean, this is New Orleans.

On the Council's approval of the plan, WVUE reports:

“The proposed $170 million museum will include a life-size interactive slave ship built inside a new five-story building and a riverfront park with an amphitheater and two replica African villages.

The museum complex will also include a Creole Caribbean African restaurant, an herb and vegetable garden, a DNA lab, an exhibit and meeting space.

As a part of the museum experience, visitors will have the opportunity to travel aboard a fully functioning replica slave ship that will sail to Natchez, Miss., and Scott's Bluff in Baton Rouge, located near Southern University.” (emphasis added by me)

Does this sound like a museum that will educate the nation about the loss of thousands of lives during the Middle Passage and the enslavement of millions of Africans around the world through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? Or does it sound more like a Fantasy Land complete with riverboat rides?

A "fully-functioning replica slave ship" sailing down the Mississippi River with tourists would be an abomination.

The loss of black lives under the slave trade and the enslavement of black people in America should be treated with the same solemnity and sacred care shown victims remembered with the United States Holocaust Museum not the brashness of a theme park passing for museum.

The people involved in this project (Lazard, Harrell-Miller, James) seem to be sincere, community-oriented people and activists. Lazard wants to not only feature American slavery but slavery around the world. Still, their vision for a museum about the dehumanizing horrors of the slave trade feels short-sighted and distorted. As you may grasp, this vision to approach slavery as consumable amusement "museum" is the root of my objection.

Louisiana has a problem reconciling with its slavery history. The tourism industry here repeatedly prefers to sugar coat or blatantly lie about slavery's atrocities, and it sounds like this proposed venture will be no different. For instance, one article at the Uptown Messenger, after mentioning that Lazard sees a vision similar to the World War II Museum and the Holocaust museum (or the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center), continues with this quote from someone else who may be involved:

“One component of it is incredible horror and destruction, but they’re mostly places of hope and victory and heroes,” said Michael Mayer, a West End boat builder.

Well, that's just what America needs given its current dysfunction on race and the Black experience, a slave ship museum that lets visitors leave feeling they've been in a place of hope surrounded by victory and heroes. Instead of grasping the depravity and horror of it all, folks can stroll along with their children saying, "See that! Everybody's overcome. Slavery all worked out for the mutual good."

I hope that's not what Mr. Mayer meant, but that's what I envision happening. How would that outcome be helpful?

Also, any comparison between the Underground Railroad and a slave ship is ludicrous. Through one black people seek self-determination; through the other they are chattel.

This project calls to mind that slave-ship video game that turned out to be a promotion for a slavery documentary. Thinking it was real, people protested, wondering who would want to interact with slavery as entertainment.

And another thought arises: How strange that the white man who turned Whitney Plantation into a slave museum painstakingly ensured visitors could not leave comforted and thinking "it's all good," but with this proposed slave ship museum we see a group of seemingly sincere black people bending over backwards to make a slave ship experience enjoyable, to fashion black suffering as an attraction. Is it possible this project needs a dash of white guilt?

I can't help but feel this project has probably mushroomed into a toxic cloud of imprudence since Lazard first shared his dream.

Gena Haskett of Los Angeles, writing on Facebook, also cannot fathom how such a presentation of the Middle Passage and slave trade would be acceptable to anyone concerned about education and African-American history.

"Will they re-create the rapes, the physical abuse and the tossing overboard of sick and dying Africans? Sea water and feces are not good smells to have near a restaurant. I have more questions but I'm feeling queasy from the ones I just presented. Not good. Not good at all to base it on abduction ships."

New Orleans, my hometown, has a rich history that includes being a major port through which slaves came from Africa, and as anyone can gather through the state of Louisiana’s plantation tourism, the enslavement of Africans was big business throughout the state. But this plantation and slavery tourism has always been painful and problematic.

With the exception of the Whitney Plantation exhibit that focuses on the lives of slaves instead of the "genteel" lives of their masters, the cruelty and horrors of slavery have been largely sanitized by the local tourism industry. Certainly this sanitizing has served not to tell the public the truth but to glorify and mythologize the antebellum South.

So, despite the most likely good intentions of the people involved to date, I am concerned that the proposed National Slave Ship Museum ultimately will fall into this same kind of minimizing that trivializes the hellish lives of the enslaved or turn the tragedy of the Middle Passage into some kind of amusement park ride.

I am also concerned that in the end the slave ship museum will be little more than a money-making operation no matter its “non-profit” status now, and so it will become just another way black bodies are exploited by the local, state, and Federal governments as well as major corporations. Nonetheless, I am not asking simply that this museum project end.

I am asking for national dialogue and complete transparency in the process, including sourcing, research, staffing, management, and funding. Also, since it’s called the National Slave Ship Museum, I ask that that the national community be made more aware of the plans. We need a deeper discussion about whether this is project is on the right road and much broader oversight. New Orleans, after all, is not the guardian of the legacy of slavery alone nor may it alone presume to speak for the millions killed or crippled by the slave trade.We are, after all, still living with its damage.

But how did this slave-ship museum project get this far? Why didn't one of our black city council members declare, "Hell no! On our ancestors' graves and again, no! Not like this. Never like this."

Please sign the petition demanding that the New Orleans City Council sends this museum's planners back to the drawing board. Click here and sign.

Beauty, Race, and the Death of Amede Ardoin

On Facebook, I have written briefly about the beautiful book of poetry, If you abandon me, comment je vas faire: An Amédé Ardoin Songbook, by former Louisiana poet laureate Darrell Bourque, but I have not said much about the man honored by the book, Amédé Ardoin.

Ardoin was a black man who is considered to be the father of Zydeco/Creole/Cajun music by many in Louisiana. At the very least, he was a singer/songwriter and "accordion virtuoso." Sometime around 1940, the story goes, Ardoin was assaulted by a group of angry white men and later died.

While playing at an event before a white crowd, the singer asked for a towel to wipe the sweat from his brow. A white woman handed him her handkerchief. This gesture angered some white men who may or may not have been from Louisiana, and they followed Ardoin home, beat him, and ran over him with a car or carriage, crushing his vocal cords.

Unable to sing again, he fell into a deep depression. He died in an asylum later and was buried in an unmarked grave. I can't help think but of Zora Neale Hurston now who died in a home for the indigent and was also buried in an unmarked grave until Alice Walker resurrected Hurston's legacy.

The video below tells more about this gifted man, Ardoin, whose life was brutally shortened.

You can listen Bourque's interview with Susan Larson on WWNO at this link and hear him read some of his work from his Ardoin chapbook and other collections. I love to hear him read and talk.

Profits from If You Abandon Me go toward creating a memorial of some sort for Ardoin.

'Selma' Director Ava DuVernay Talks with MHP About Women in the Civil Rights Movement (Video)

‘Selma’ director Ava DuVernay visits #nerdland Film director Ava DuVernay, nominated for a Golden Globe for the critically-acclaimed “Selma,” joined host Melissa Harris-Perry Sunday for an extensive interview. Watch the full conversation, on MHPshow.com.

Melissa Harris Perry played clips of her interview with Selma director Ava DuVernay on her MSNBC show earlier today. They discussed Martin Luther King Jr.'s infidelity and how DuVernay chose to explore it from Coretta Scott King's perspective, and the two talked about DuVernay's decision to focus on the women in the movement in her award-nominated film.

Later they discussed the LBJ controversy around the movie, which is an "unfortunate distraction," says DuVernay, from the importance of the film and what Civil Rights leaders accomplished. The film is not about President Lyndon B. Johnson, she declares. I agree.

From the perspective of ethics while crafting creative nonfiction, I can nitpick her decision to misrepresent LBJ as being against voting rights for African-Americans (and I have nitpicked it on Facebook before), but I also think that ultimately this is a minor issue in the shadow of the film's significance and DuVernay's vision.

So, I disagree with former Johnson aide Joseph A. Califano Jr.'s assertion that the film should be barred from awards and no one should see it. That's just petty, old white man pouting. Furthermore, he exaggerates greatly when he says the Selma campaign and the march across the bridge was LBJ's idea. I listened to the recording of the conversation between LBJ and MLK that Califano references, and while it's clear LBJ was not anti-voting rights, it's equally clear he was not the mind behind the Selma strategy.

I think Califano misinterprets King's relative silence as LBJ talks to him as that of an ignorant man being advised to take actions he has not already considered rather than simply a wise man letting the President of the United States of America talk. Plus, the Selma campaign was already underway before King's talk with LBJ on January 15, 1965.

DuVernay, who is up for a Golden Globe tonight, says her goal with Selma was to recreate the spirit of the movement. She was not trying to recreate history in detail.

Notice that I did not step to the "Well, look at Spielberg's Lincoln and that Frederick Douglass was left out completely" argument to support DuVernay's decision. MHP tugged on that one today, but for me, "tit for tat" arguments are usually emerge from small thoughts.

Apparently King is shown in an authentically human way, too, in the movie. We see him taking out the trash, joking about diets with friends, and loving music, say people who have seen the film already. So, I look forward to a more realistic portrayal of this great but humanly flawed man.

The best thing this movie can do is make the current and future generation of young people grasp the cost of freedom for African-Americans. Unfortunately, too many remain clueless about the past that created the present. DuVernay says that as she went around the country with the film she discovered deep ignorance about what happened in Selma. Some people thought the name "Selma" was the name the name of a character played by Oprah Winfrey.

I'd like to say I'm shocked, but in viewing the key words used when people are searching for my Martin Luther King Jr. poem, "Remembering a Life," I detect a great deal of ignorance about King himself. Some people think that King is someone who wrote a famous poem called "I Have a Dream." So, given that people remain ignorant of who Dr. King was despite the spotlight we shine on him, is it any surprise people don't know the actual history of that walk across the bridge in Selma? It's not as though this moment is covered much in schools.

Selma opened in theaters a few days ago.

Blacksplain vs. Mansplain vs. Whitesplain vs. Poem

I wrote the poem "Song of the Fatigued Blacksplaining Folk" during National Poetry Month of this year, and recently turned it into a digital poster that's embedded farther down in this blog post. As the title indicates, and to borrow the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, "I am tired of being sick and tired" of explaining racism in America and how racist policies hurt not only people of color but the entire country.

Of course, living under Jim Crow laws, Ms. Hamer had a much tougher life than I did. Still, I get frustrated sometimes because some of the words that come out of the mouths of some white people sound like they'd be fine with returning to Jim Crow. Yes, there are many "white allies," who want America to live up to its credo, but there area also many who refuse to even attempt to understand systemic racism and how it contributes to many of the problems found in black communities, especially poor black communities.

Also, the last two years have been more difficult than usual because of the increase in the number of unarmed black people killed by either police officers or by white citizens. Both the officers and the vigilantes tend to claim they felt threatened even when the black person, often a young black male, is unarmed. Essentially they assert black people's bodies are weapons.

I had the pleasure of reading my poem at the Poetry Buffet at Latter Library on St. Charles Avenue earlier this fall. The multi-ethnic audience appeared to enjoy it.

© 2014 Nordette N. Adams

Click picture to enlarge.

You may have heard the invented words mansplain, which is a combination of man and explain, and whitesplain, as in white people explaining. The word blacksplain is a combination of black, meaning black people, and explain. However, unlike mansplain, which is the word given to a condescending explanation a male gives to a female, the word blacksplain is usually not associated with condescension, unless, of course, a white person is defining it who's shown him or herself to be a racist jackass. If that's you, then a black person may have blacksplained something to you in a condescending manner before.

Usually to blacksplain is to explain some aspect of black culture, history, heritage, or experience to a person who is not black. That person may be a sincere person who is asking a potentially offensive question but does not mean to offend. Or that person may be a racist jackass who still doesn't understand that America works this way: A black person has to be able to shift between white culture and black culture/white world and black world easily in order to be successful. But often white people don't have to know anything significant and factual about black people in order to be successful.

Frequently black people end up blacksplaining on some racism-related topic. For example, at UrbanDictionary.com, the first definition of blacksplain is actually an example of racist hate speech that's allowed to remain there probably because their editors are hipsters (see hipster racism) who think it's okay to have the offensive defintion since a more accurate definition follows it. In reality, the definition of blacksplain on that website is very similar to how n*gg*r used to be defined in the Webster's dictionary as "a Negro person." Only the worst stereotypes are included in the definition, but they let it ride because I guess they consider themselves "urban."

The word urban is often used as a euphemism for people of color, primarily black people, Latinos, and Mexicans, but as is the often the case, on one hand its used to marginalize people of color and on the other a white person uses it to make money. An even better example of that phenomena would be the success of Thug Kitchen. At CNN, healthy food activists Bryant Terry does an excellent job of blacksplaining why Thug Kitchen is problematic.

Now for the term whitesplain, it usually means that a white person is speaking condescendingly to a black person or other person of color when giving a white person's definition of racism (often wholly inadequate and stuck on overt racism) or is explaining why everything in America is fair and just: black people just need to work harder, and what about that "black on black crime" and those fatherless households. Another example of whitesplaining involves a white person telling a black person that in their eyes skin color is irrelevant. "I see everyone as the same. I'm color blind," they say, even as they speak to the black person in ways that make skin color very relevant.

It's possible also for a black person to whitesplain the world because frequently you may come across black people who have internalized the white supremacist propaganda against black people and don't think much of their own black skin and culture. For instance, it's possible that a black person wrote the first blacksplain definition at UrbanDictionary.com. Ironically that definition reads like whitesplaining.

But I'm not going to write here again all the reasons I am tried and worn out from blacksplaining. If you're interested in why that may be, though, please read my post on Toni Morrison's 1975 lecture. I'll just say here that I was a lot less tired before Trayvon Martin's death and the violent deaths of black people who have followed him since then and who were pre-judged and killed because they are black. And I'm really disappointed in myself that I've written this blog post that has some blacksplaining in it again.

#Ferguson to #ICantBreathe

I really should take up fine art again because I need a more physical art for the sake of mental therapy. But I haven't seriously drawn or attempted to paint in decades. I'm a writer. Still, lately I have found myself making little digital graphic cards to capture moments during this stressful period of seeing justice fail. We have received less than two weeks apart the decisions of two Grand Juries not to indict white police officers who have killed unarmed black men, namely Mike Brown and Eric Garner.

While making these documentation cards and digital protest signs have given me a measure of relief, they're not the what a trained graphic designer would produce. And that's okay with me because sometimes the most effective signs at protests are amateurish, ones written crookedly on piece of a box cardboard.

All of these have been posted on Twitter or Facebook or both, but I thought it made sense to put them in one post on my blog. They have been presented it here in order of most recent to earliest.

The list includes the side eye for Pat Lynch's insensitive statement, "If you're speaking, then you can breathe!"; a picture of Missouri's attorney general's statement that the law that allowed Darren Wilson to escape indictment needs to be eliminated and that it's unconstitutional; a recap of part of a CNN discussion with Sunny Hostin and men who support the Staten Island Grand Jury's decision; a Van Jones quote; a snarky commentary on McCulloch's failure to prosecute Wilson; a poem, and a video. For a look at the cards in their actual size, click here.

© 2014, Nordette N. Adams

Nazis Next Door, Gruber, and More USA Secrets (video)

Description:

Because of a legal loophole, some Nazis who came to America after World War II and were kicked out of the country years ago are still receiving government benefits today. Eric Lichtblau, author of “The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men” joins to discuss.

This is rather appalling. The United States of America protected and hid Nazis, and Nazis here and now get government handouts. I mean, bona fide white people who also entered the country outside of legal immigration channels and who committed abominable crimes are out there getting free government money. They're out there living off the taxes paid by hard-working Americans! Hmm. Do they vote, too?

Well, I am not surprised. The U.S. government has rarely been transparent in its doings, which is why I think the conservatives who are going on and on about Jonathan Gruber's "stupidity of the American voters" video, one of several, shows that many of them don't seem to get that sleight of hand is not a new thing in Washington D.C. They seem to think it's something the current administration invented under President Obama.

But here's an article at The Upshot that explains why there's nothing shocking about Gruber's video. Nothing at all. Furthermore, given that Gruber's talking about the Affordable Care Act's language cloaking a tax increase, I think the "stupidity of the American voter" is a reference to moderates who don't understand how the ACA works, not those clearly on the Left who wanted a single payer, universal healthcare system. People on the Left are not anti-tax increase. That's a Right wing thing.

And all those objections the Republicans voiced during the crafting of the ACA? That was posturing, red meat to appease the base. Disguising a tax increase is always about appeasing the Right. People who were paying attention, though, understood what was happening, recognized the trade-off. I did at least.

Twitter's tripping over Raven Symone's colorless approach

On twitter, folks have been tripping over a statement actress Raven Symone made in her recent interview on the Oprah Winfrey Network. The Disney-groomed star has declared herself colorless. Oprah, great mother to the misguided, tried to warn Symone that she'd take some heat for her assertion, but the younger woman didn't care.

And Oprah's probably already let it go because she knew the furor was coming. Look at how the Queen of TV hugs the former Cosby Show star in the picture below, showing the girl lots of love. Don't be mad. I'm not. Raven Symone and the rest of us need all the love we can get. But Symone, in this case, may need more because she's swallowed a chunk of racist propaganda and doesn't know she's in danger of choking.

E! Online quotes the conversation:

"I'm tired of being labeled," she said. "I'm an American. I'm not an African American; I'm an American."

"Oh, girl," a surprised Winfrey said. "Don't set up Twitter on fire...Oh, my lord. What did you just say?"

"I mean, I don't know where my roots go to," Raven explained. "I don't know how far back they go...I don't know what country in Africa I'm from, but I do know that my roots are in Louisiana. I'm an American. And that's a colorless person."

She says that she connects with Caucasian, Indian, Asian, and Black. I do wonder where she thinks the Black comes from, though, if not Africa.

Despite being "from Louisiana," Symone apparently has forgotten that there's a term for being of mixed ethnicity down here. It's called "Creole." (Side note: Beyonce's family also has Louisiana Cajun/Creole roots.)

But even within that category, people still make a distinction. There's "Black Creole" and "White Creole."

So, what people hear when a person of African descent talks like Symone's talking is this: "I don't want to be Black." And they're not being unfair when they say that's what they hear. Notice that Symone did not specify first that she would not like to be labeled any of those other "races" or ethnic groups with whom she connects. And she didn't sound as though she merely has a philosophical or spiritual objection to being "labeled" a specific "color." She said she was "tired" of it, which indicates irritation, frustration.

I've got to quote Jesus here, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" because I've observed that whenever people make statements like hers in this so-called "post-racial" era, they focus on eliminating the Blackness label not Whiteness, which shows what's really in their hearts or on their minds even if they don't know it.

However, this is not just a Raven Symone issue. Many of the light-skinned "Black" Creoles of the past down here, those who appeared racially ambiguous said for the longest the same kind of thing Symone did. They declared that they are a group in between. Nonetheless, if you read the histories of such discussions, rarely is anyone decrying that they have sometimes been mistaken for White and want people to also acknowledge their Blackness. Almost always what angers them is that someone has called them "Colored, Negro, Black, or African-American."

Here I acknowledge that many light-skinned Black people do not think that way. I'm just making this point about "Black" Creole complaints because it's a fact that some take pride in their French, Spanish, and Native American roots but actively seek to distract attention from their African roots.

Symone is also not alone in her age group with this attitude. I've run into multiple 20-somethings, all of them dark brown to nearing blue black, who have said, "I'm not African-American! I'm an American." All of the Black 20-somethings that I've heard say this are educationally privileged, meaning they have college degrees.

Our education system is doing a poor job if these young people don't see the implications of the "Don't call me African-American. I'm just an American" statement. And they really think it's a perfectly logical assertion that shows how fair-minded and enlightened they are, as one young lady's tweet illustrates.

Raven Symone's intention was to say that she wants to be seen more than just her skin color and sexuality. She wants to be seen as EQUAL.
— Sabrina Ann (@SsabrinaAnn13) October 6, 2014

I get it. I get it. These young people want to feel accepted in America and for who they are, which is more than their physical appearance or ancestral origins. This desire to be accepted for who we are does not go away as we age. I do hope, however, that with age a sociological and political maturity arises in people that let's them see how short-sighted and insular that statement reveals them to be, not so much in terms of how they feel about themselves, but in whether they care about perpetuating the subjugation of African peoples, their descendants, and other oppressed groups.

Also, this "I'm colorless" mantra is not strictly an American phenomenon. Two years ago, a woman whose parents came to America from the Dominican Republic wrote on Blogher, "I'm Not Black. Why Do You Care?" I don't think I commented on that post, but I'll say here now, "I don't care what she calls herself," but I do care about how these kinds of statements feed into the racist rhetoric that to be of African descent, to be Black, is to be undesirable.

Generally, I don't argue with young people who make these kinds of statements. I try to cut them slack when it comes to opening their mouths and revealing their youthful ignorance. Symone and other people who are insufficiently-educated on global race matters and history are African-Diaspora illiterate. They are unaware that they are victims of Euro-American cultural brainwashing.

When I say African Diaspora, I'm referring to the dispersal of Africans from Africa as well as their displacement and oppression brought about by slavery, colonization, and segregation. Being Diaspora literate helps people understand Black culture on its own terms. When combined with the practices of critical literacy, Diaspora literacy can help people dissect and decipher rhetoric within texts categorized as academic or scientific as well as those that are political and "historical." These literacies encourage readers to examine the rhetorical methods these texts employ to perpetuate dehumanizing societal beliefs or persuade action against specific ethnic, religious, or gendered groups. In other words, people who are Diaspora and critically literate can see the bullshit being shoveled down society's throat that keep its members believing lies about Africa and its peoples.

Scholarship, scientific inquiry, policy proposals, and historical texts, no matter how much the authors declare themselves objective, have the world views of their authors embedded in them either boldly or subtly. Honest researchers, however, fight the human tendency to favor data that favors what they already believe or to ignore information that contradicts their beliefs.

 A good example of scholars failing to resist that tendency would be the work of archaeologists who either consciously or subconsciously accepted white supremacist rhetoric about sub-Saharan Africans and therefore denied for more than a century that the "Kushites overthrew the ancient Egyptians." With this denial, they perpetuated negative stereotypes of sub-Saharan Africa as a land without language, skill, or culture.

And even literary texts, such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness, have ideological pillars that should be examined. For more about racist tropes in that book, see Chinua Achebe's Hopes and Impediments.

All that said, Symone and other miseducated people can believe whatever they choose to believe and live under whatever philosophy that helps them sleep better at night or love themselves adequately. I, however, prefer to live with truth even if it means I endure some restless nights. Living with the truth furthers hope that one day we will all be free and live in a country of sincere inclusiveness not imprudent erasure. Denial of the truth hinders that day's arrival. People don't solve problems they can't see.

So, herein lies the truth: To deny or try to bury your African heritage knowing you are of African descent is to co-sign white supremacist policies and doctrines that oppress people of African descent. This denial flows from internalized racism and magnifies self-hatred.

To shun being called African-American or gay when you are Black and gay and to also make the statement, "I just want to be equal" or "I'm just American" is to cooperate in your own oppression. Such statements logically imply their inverse, which is people of African descent and people other than straight cannot be considered equal or American.

The question is if race, color, sexual orientation really don't matter to you and you know you have Black roots and are gay, why does it bother you that people refer to you as either?

The question is if you mean no disrespect to your African genes, why go out of your way to bury references to the African in you?

This instinct to bury Blackness makes you complicit in Black erasure, genocide, both physical and psychological. In other words, when you publicly promote the color-blind, gender-blind, or sexuality-blind approaches to solving social justice issues or, supposedly, to promote harmony, you are doing the opposite. You are complicit and a potential collaborator with the very systems you supposedly want to condemn.

We have keep having to review these elementary principles. Why can't there just be a book we give people when they show their ignorance on this topic? Don't answer that. I know the answer.

Nonetheless, just as Raven Symone is "tired of being labeled . . . African-American," I'm tired that people keep making statements that disparage being of African descent. The next time someone does an interview and they've got these issues about Blackness, I hope they'll keep it to themselves, and one day, maybe, when they wake up, they can attend remedial classes and figure out not who the hell they are but who do they want to be. For all our sakes, I hope it's someone more concerned about how the oppressed are treated than they are about being "labeled" a member of the oppressed

Each new generation of historically oppressed peoples must be educated to critically assess the targeted, dehumanizing propaganda of hegemony or that generation will unwittingly dance down a path to its own slaughter.

Race is a social construct, true, but the same world that constructed it has neither abolished its construction nor is it willing to let us demolish it without a fight. Race may not be real, but perception is everything. Race as construct, therefore, is real. Declaring alone "there is no spoon" does not topple the power that created the illusion of the spoon.

Blackness and how we perceive Africa and peoples of African descent is also a construct in terms of the qualities and attributes society assigns to Blackness and African. Reshaping negative perceptions does not rest in denying who created those perceptions and how they continue to have power over people's lives.

Self-ascribed colorlessness or declarations of color-blindness are manifestations of human dysfunction not progress. But if you don't get what I'm saying, then maybe you'll get it when Jane Elliot explains it here. Ironically, she said what she said on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

All that said, let's leave Raven Symone to her own devices. When you have fame and money in America, you can live in whichever bubble you choose, even the ones that contribute to the oppression of others and keep you blind. Let her live in her imaginary colorless world.

Toni Morrison's 1975 lecture on race, politics, and art freed me to say, "Do your own work!" (Audio)

Here is the audio of a lecture novelist and scholar Toni Morrison delivered in 1975 in Portland, Oregon. It includes the question and answer period and is posted on the Portland library's Sound Cloud page. Portland University's Special Collections describes the audio:

This discussion, presented by the Portland State Black Studies Center, was Part 2 of 2 in a "Public Dialogue on the American Dream Theme." Panel members were novelist Toni Morrison, poet and PSU professor Primus St. John, Lewis & Clark professor John Callahan, Judy Callahan, and Lloyd Baker.

The audio quality could be better, but I listened to it and then searched for the transcript, which I found at Dr. Keisha E. McKenzie's website.

Here is the Morrison quote that resonated with me:

"[K]now the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing."

When I first saw that quote on Facebook, before I knew its source in Morrison's ouvre, I felt it so deeply that I immediately knew it was true, and grasping that truth liberated me. I decided to stop blacksplaining Black people to White people, which is something too many White people on the Internet demand that Black people do. They approach with direct questions or uninformed comments. "How can you say that?" or "Slavery's in the past. Why can't Black people get over it?" or "If you people wouldn't talk about race, we would not have these problems."

Some White people think it's Black people's obligation to explain to White people the Euro-American (White)-construct of Blackness that White people's ancestors created and White people living today perpetuate. They demand that we explain how it operates to oppress us, never acknowledging that structural racism exists and continues to oppress us. They also seem to think that they get to define what racism is and is not just as their ancestors sought to define us.

I don't mean that I won't ever write another essay on race in America. I mean that I will attempt to avoid answering those White people in depth who rudely or disrespectfully respond to anything I've written or said in a way that shows me they either did not read my essay or blog post. I tend to provide links and sources to support what I say, so I think commenters are stupid when they ask questions for which a detailed response is readily found in the essay itself.

If someone doesn't have enough respect for the work on the page or screen to read what's already been said and to check out the links or sources before they challenge assertions, then I don't have enough respect for that person to respond to the foolish comment. Usually people's resistance to reading and checking out sources indicates they really don't want to know about the Black struggle and are set on insulting my intelligence, so then I'm through. It's as simple as that. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a dumb question or comment.

And I will take and have taken this approach with Black people, too, who don't know their own history and ask questions disrespectfully or whose comment shows that they are coming strictly from an ideological perspective without any foundation in history and current facts. In general, I mean Black people who think that because they are Black they can say the same dumb crap that racist White people say and engage me. NO. For instance, don't begin speaking to me with false statements such as, "If our youth would pull up their pants, everything would be wonderful and the police would not bother them."

However, if the person seems to sincerely want to have a conversation and listen because they read my essay or post, then that's different. We can talk. I'll listen to them and respond. But I reserve the right to respond with a reading list.

Here is the Portland lecture:


I also appreciated this clip from an interview with the author.

What did Martin Luther King Jr. mean, "A riot is the language of the unheard"?

Last year about this time, a whole year before the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of 18-year-old Mike Brown, CBS's 60 Minutes posted an overtime segment featuring Martin Luther King, Jr. The segment is part of last year's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington. Its headline is the King quote you may have heard repeated since the tear gas began to cloud Ferguson's night air:

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

The overtime piece features Mike Wallace's 1966 interview with King in which he asked the Civil Rights leader how he felt about a growing number of Black people rejecting non-violent methods. Here is part of what was said, but I hope you watch the full video interview yourself.

MIKE WALLACE: There's an increasingly vocal minority who disagree totally with your tactics, Dr. King.

KING: There's no doubt about that. I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this. The vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through non-violent resistance, and I don't think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

WALLACE: How many summers like this do you imagine that we can expect?

KING: Well, I would say this: we don't have long. The mood of the Negro community now is one of urgency, one of saying that we aren't going to wait. That we've got to have our freedom. We've waited too long. So that I would say that every summer we're going to have this kind of vigorous protest. My hope is that it will be non-violent. I would hope that we can avoid riots because riots are self-defeating and socially destructive. I would hope that we can avoid riots, but that we would be as militant and as determined next summer and through the winter as we have been this summer. And I think the answer about how long it will take will depend on the federal government, on the city halls of our various cities, and on White America to a large extent. This is where we are at this point, and I think White America will determine how long it will be and which way we go in the future.

Lagniappe: I also recommend this editorial by Rebecca Carroll at the Guardian, "Why are white people scared of black people's rage at Mike Brown's death?" Carroll addresses her complaint directly to a white audience. Here's a key passage:

You are the ones who created this godforsaken racist system by using your circumstantial power and privilege 400 years ago to institutionalize white supremacy. Now use that power and privilege you still have, 400 years later, to dismantle it.

And please don’t quibble about whether you have any direct lineage to the architects of racism. You are benefitting from it, so you have a direct responsibility to figure out how to undo it. Because maybe you’ve seen what happens when we black people try to undo it in 2014 – they call in the National Guard.

Finally, if you've been wondering where people who are more informed about what's happening in Ferguson get their news, try this Vox.com list of reporters who are tweeting news live from the ground in Ferguson.

The last post on "Black people are apes and monkeys," I hope

This post has been syndicated at BlogHer.com.

I hope this will be the last thing I ever write about the history of White people portraying Black people as monkeys, but unfortunately, at some point I'll probably have to write something on this topic again. This racist insult repeats, repeats, repeats.

Did you hear about the Just Add A Kid T-Shirt debacle? The clothing company is in hot water over this picture that someone took and shared on Twitter. The picture of the black child placed above a monkey's body with a banana is not on the T-shirt itself, but on the hanger cover used to display the monkey T-shirt. The covers make it possible for any retail worker to match the any one of the company's T-shirts with any child on a cover.

The T-shirt manufacturer is claiming "it's all a misunderstanding," but some concerned consumers are saying that the T-Shirt manufacturer should have foreseen that eventually a black child would be matched with one of the monkey shirts in a sales display, and the fall-out would not be good for the company. So, either they should not have made the monkey T-shirt, or they should have found another way to promote the shirts.

I must say this as clearly as I can: White people who consider themselves “educated” in America and yet claim to not recognize the false, tired, and cruel doctrine that portrays people of African descent to be “more ape than human” either have not been paying attention or are being disingenuous in the fruitless effort to distance themselves from their privilege. The racist equation that monkey or ape=African or of African descent is a centuries-old and well-known Euro-American (and white supremacist) teaching that has been exported to other parts of the world.

This propaganda began to be promoted more aggressively during the so-called "Age of Enlightenment" when African identity began to be used as a foil to European identity. Europe was positioned as the continent of light; Africa was positioned as one of darkness. (This image of Africa was later re-enforced in popular culture via the highly-touted novel Heart of Darkness.)

Linnaues' System Naturae published in the 1700s and long upheld as “scientific” information encoded the message that black=closer-to-ape and did so with images. Even the "great" thinkers of Europe, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant, accepted and perpetuated the doctrine that Black people were subhuman, near ape status (see Elliot P. Skinner’s essay on Black identity as well as other sources).

Later in the 1800s, Charles White of the Royal Infirmary under so-called “scientific race theory” perpetuated this racist message with his classification of races. He designated black people as inferior and more related to apes.

It’s been documented that during World War II, White American soldiers circulated rumors that Black men had tails in their pants in an effort to stem miscegenation. When Black soldiers arrived in Hawaii, the local people ran from them, thinking they were animals.

During attempts to integrate schools, more than one White parent exclaimed, “I don’t want to send my children to school with monkeys and apes.” A little research of the era bears this out.

Since President Obama’s been in office even the national news has covered racist pictures of him portrayed as a monkey. And a quick search in Google images using the key words “Obama and monkey” will support that statement.

So, given that this trope has been perpetuated by science, has bled into popular culture, has been exported to countries around the globe—China included---and has remained active for more than 300 years (it was even used to justify slavery), I doubt that a store clerk matching hanger heads to T-shirts was unaware of it and its implications. Consequently, I agree with any commenters who have said that the manufacturer should have foreseen this.

If someone says that they saw this T-shirt display or picture and did not immediately see the racial implications, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of civil discussion, but I will not accept an argument that extends that doubt to a corporation. Marketing professionals should know these cultural angles, and if they don’t, they’re in the wrong business.