African Americans: Stand Up Like World Warriors

Bill Quigley

21 Nov 2007

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African Americans: Stand Up Like World Warriors

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

"The problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1967 AAwarriorsSayNoImperialism

By 1967 the struggle against official Jim Crow was all but won, a whirlwind victory that secured formal citizenship rights for African Americans, and along the way ushered in various other domestic "liberation" movements. Dr. Martin Luther King, the best-known Black personality of an icon-packed era, understood perfectly well that an historical juncture had been reached. King did not pause, but instead rushed into the newly opened breach to demand that his native land - "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" - cease its systemic, global barbarism. King, the anti-imperialist, had crossed the parochial divide, in answer to "a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war."

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference chief was not alone. His internationalist and Pan-Africanist orientation was deeply rooted in the African American experience, a unique journey into the "belly of the beast," a familiarity with the entrails of evil. Rather than submit to being passively swallowed by the monster, the best part of successive generations of Black people had risen to declare their allegiance to humanity at-large, and to the African continent, in particular. King followed a path that was already deeply trodden, and died as a martyr for peace and self-determination for all peoples.

"King died as a martyr for peace and self-determination for all peoples."

But the "Moses" of his generation, having done so much to knock down Jim Crow's walls, fared little better than the Biblical father Lot in convincing a portion of his flock to reject the temptations of Empire. Many of Dr. King's own professional class, and a section of his former co-fighters in the Civil Rights struggle, revealed themselves as banal job-seekers and business opportunity reapers, whose motives in joining the Black Freedom Movement of the Fifties and Sixties had always been self-serving. They sought aggrandizement for themselves and their class of newly-mobile Blacks, as if the trappings of status and the crumbs of contracts that benefited no one but themselves were fair compensation for the blood of millions past, and the ongoing sufferings of Empire's victims.

Capital formation, rather than social transformation, was the great imperative for this Black breakout crowd of firemen and women, who rushed eagerly into the Master's burning house to extinguish the flames of rebellion, after Dr. King's death. Their anthem was McFadden and Whitehead's song, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now (We're on the Move)" - although they really weren't going or leading anywhere except to sumptuous displays of lunch on the imperial porch. Beholden to no one, this class of misleaders nevertheless demanded fealty from the masses of African Americans for whom the Golden Doors had never opened, but who were expected to revel vicariously in the rewards bestowed by Power on the few. This clique of undeserving narcissists, now totally identified with the engines of imperialism, gave not a damn for the targets on the United States' global hit list, as long as they were cut in for their quota of the spoils.

"This clique of undeserving narcissists gave not a damn for the targets on the United States' global hit list."

By necessity, lip service was paid to the ongoing liberation struggles in Africa - how else could the pretenders to Black leadership maintain the façade of racial relevance? But they would never directly confront imperialism, the system in which they had invested, and which had invested in them as willing accomplices and apologists.

Then, ten years after Dr. King's definitive 1967 break with U.S. mass slaughter in Vietnam, Black America's honor was once again reclaimed. Randall Robinson and his group of never-sell-outs - including pioneering Black labor activist Bill Lucy - created TransAfrica as an African American voice and lobby against Euro-American depredations on the continent. Robinson - a shining example of W.E.B. Dubois's real Talented Tenth, whose obligation is to serve the larger percentile rather than lord over it - placed TransAfrica and an awakened Black public on the path of confrontation with U.S. imperialism's support of white minority-ruled South Africa. It was both inevitable and by design that all the tentacles of Empire - not just those that ravage the African continent - would be subjected to general Black American denunciation. After all, it was the misleaders, not the masses of Black people, that parted with Dr. King and took the imperial path at the critical juncture in 1967.

The Struggle Continues

On November 7 of this year, the TransAfrica Forum celebrated its 30^th anniversary at a gala celebration in Washington, DC. Under vibrant new leadership, the organization vows to continue the "global fight against tyranny, greed, and empire," in the words of recently installed executive director Nicole C. Lee. "The struggle continues as we demand full relief from the unjust, odious debt that the world claims Africa owes. The struggle continues as we fight U.S. militarization in Africa and around the world. The struggle continues as we seek to support African civil society and indigenous institutions working for peace and development."

Anti-imperialism is indivisible - one cannot oppose Empire in one sector of the globe while giving it a free pass, elsewhere. And the lessons learned in one battle against a global tyrant are relevant around the planet. "The plight of 16 million African descendants in Columbia is important to us, since they are the ones who have been most victimized by the so-called war on drugs," said Danny Glover, the actor-activist chairman of TransAfrica Forum. "Although it may be considered an aberration in this country, Katrina happens in the developing world all the time, and those who are impacted by those catastrophes are people of African descent."

"One cannot oppose Empire in one sector of the globe while giving it a free pass, elsewhere."

AAwarriorsPosterBlackFist The beast's appetite for other people's property has not changed. Where the Europeans left off, the regime in Washington intends to continue, this time under the guise of a bogus War on Terror whose terrain coincides with the mineral and oil resources of the planet. "One of the things we've been concerned about is the militarization of the Horn of Africa," said Glover. "We're also concerned about what's happening in the Gulf of Guinea," where the U.S. is demanding the right to establish its own security regime to "safeguard" west Africa's richest oil reserves, under a new U.S. Africa Command, or Africom.

"The plans that have been laid out for Africom have been longstanding plans that seem to now be coming into fruition," said Glover, in an interview at Washington's Hyatt Regency Hotel. "I don't think we are aware as a community of the impact those plans will have on the future development of the continent. We are concerned about the recolonization of Africa - and that's not just a rhetorical statement - about the extraction of raw materials, who's going to be a beneficiary of that, with China on one hand, the U.S. on the other hand, and the EU, all craving those raw materials for their own industrial development."

James Early, a TransAfrica Forum board member and director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife, warns that imperialism is on the march:

"TransAfrica was one of the first to signal to the broad public the dangerous imperial implications of the United States' new Africa Command, headed up by an African American, which, we put forth very early, would be a militarization of Africa, which would deny African self-determination as to how they would meet their challenges and opportunities. In real-politic terms, it means turning away from the African Union in terms of launching operations to deal with their own internal conflicts and to assume its global responsibility, first for its own security and then for taking on global security duties. We live in a global society in which each nation must be responsible for not only its own security, but for the security of others."

In this brief interchange, Dr. Early tackles two questions central to African American political behavior. First, Black America must cease applauding appointments of Black operatives to imperial posts, such as Gen. William "Kip" Ward's leadership of the neocolonial U.S. Africom command. Second, African Americans can and must encourage continental Africans to take their own places on the world stage, to champion self-determination not just for themselves, but for all peoples. Internationalism and solidarity require frank talk among partners in struggle. The African Union, which should be taking responsibility for the crisis points on the continent and wherever Euro-American imperialism raises its head, has not yet lived up to its promise. But that is no reason to invite U.S. intervention, which has never been in the interests of those intervened upon. "When U.S. forces go in," said Early, "our self-determination has been eroded. It reinforces the idea that we cannot do for ourselves." As a general principle, U.S. military intervention should be tolerated "under no circumstances." However, "One has to examine each individual case and the direness of that case from the vantage point of the people who are being murdered and maimed and exploited."

"Internationalism and solidarity require frank talk among partners in struggle."

Darfur is a hard case, but TransAfrica's existence ensures that self-determination will be part of the foreign policy equation among those of us who live in the "belly of the beast."

There must also occur a fundamental break with the false dichotomy of "African" or "Black" issues and "anti-war" issues, especially as the United States prepares to mobilize its Africa Command. "Some people who are working on anti-war issues say, ‘That's an African issue.' But no, it's not," says TransAfrica executive director Nicole Lee. "It's an anti-war issue. How could a U.S. military base on the African continent not be an anti-war issue? And it makes it more important than ever that there is this progressive voice based in the Pan-African tradition that is speaking Truth to Power."

The Internal Contradictions

Since Dr. King's dramatic departure from the parochial Black politics of the Jim Crow era, in 1967, the demographic ground has shifted under our feet. Latin Americans, many of them Afro-Latinos, and continental Africans have become critical players on the urban American scene - so much so that Black politics cannot operate effectively on its own power, alone. TransAfrica's James Early urges that the question be asked, in the most serious manner: "Who is an African American?" What alliances must be forged, domestically, and under what conditions? "We begin to recognize," says Early, "the resonance of Caribbean American communities, and of Afro-Latin communities, of new African communities, many of whom have been citizens for generations. They're not just new immigrants. And if we don't recognize those distinctions, those complexities and differences within our common African heritage and racial identity, then we are headed for internal conflict, because the chauvinism of one historical group will presuppose that it can reflect and represent all groups. That's a recipe for disaster."

Internationally, imperialism recognizes no favorites, no boundaries, and attacks wherever it perceives weakness. African Americans are obligated to take their historical place in the battle to save the planet, to preserve the common patrimony of the Earth from the last-ditch assaults of desperate, late-term capitalism. As Dr. King understood, it is impossible to fight the "triple evils" of racism, economic exploitation and war in only one of many theaters of struggle. The Great African American Transformation that should have happened following the death of Jim Crow, has yet to fully occur - but is forced upon us by events, and by our own self-interest.

We shall overcome globally, or not at all.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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