Staying Alive for the New Struggle
by BAR
contributing editor Rudolph Lewis
"Whites in power generally feel they have a free hand to
do and say almost anything they please."
To speak of racism is to be portrayed as a racist....
The battles with racists are about staying alive in our
souls - Anonymous
Hot, arid winds of race hatred are blowing toward those who
desire a more just, multi-political America. I received an email recently
labeling the work I do at ChickenBone: A Journal, racist. My suspicions of the
author leaned toward one of those fair-haired persons who benefit most from
racism. But fears of political repression are all over the map. A retiring
college administrator with a Ph.D. (a longtime acquaintance) charged me with
being an anti-Semite because I did not act favorably to the anti-Barry Bonds
comments made by one of his Jewish friends. A Florida Republican state senator
soliciting sex in a public toilet blamed his homosexual urges on the fear of
black men.
These are indeed extraordinary times. With the success of
the Right Wing in all three branches of government, whites in power generally
feel they have a free hand to do and say almost anything they please, and so
they are the warpath to eliminate all opposition and criticism. They have won
the war and their object now is to set up a new regime to hold onto their
gains. Either one falls in line, or falls by the wayside. There is in the
present political climate, I'm afraid, little tolerance for in-between. They've
got all the tanks, gun ships, and missiles, and little reluctance to use them
on civilians.
"Fears of political repression are all over the map."
We have been in retreat from Martin's Dream for the last
several decades. "Staying alive in our souls" is now our fallback line. That was
the primary project of America's slave ancestors. It was the mind frame that
produced the Spirituals, in which the enslave American Negro poured "his most
poignant yearnings," and a great variety of slave folklore, animal tales, etc.
In some sense it was not a literature of argument and not a literature of what
Richard Wright called "hate and bitterness," begging for relief. It was a coded
discourse to sustain despairing souls through burning hot sun-filled summer
fields and cold bitter wind-blowing winter nights, a cohesive preparation for
the right moment of advantage. But we must do this and more.
The new relevant literature in this new political era must
be as Arthur Huff Fauset Negro folklore, one of "moralism, sober and almost
grim, shrewd and frequently subtle." He felt that this was the essence of the
"African originals." That is, they were derived from tribal societies in which
individual expression was extremely monitored and censored. That era is upon
us. The Republicans and the Democrats close ranks in passing reactionary
"security" legislation. They have done millions wrong and now they arm
themselves to squash any organizing against their political repression.
"The Republicans and the Democrats close ranks in passing
reactionary ‘security' legislation."
We have gone beyond the rational and reasonable and the
sensible. Guilt is no longer a persuasive tool available to liberals and
progressives. Our enemies have a free hand. There's no longer a USSR, foreign
opposition to U.S. bullies. These new power elites have an answer (excuse) for
every misdeed. As Albert Murray pointed out in his Omni-Americans,
"putting the bad mouth" on such madmen from a soapbox is no longer an effective
strategy, for "all political establishments" always have "built-in devices to
counteract the guilt and bad conscience."
In public, as we have seen with recent government apologia
for slavery and other memorials, there is a "crestfallen acknowledgement and
little else, compensating for [their] crimes by feeling genuinely sorry for the
victim." They are quite willing to allow us to "blow off hot air," to indulge
militant ranting, to toss around talk of "reparations," for a moment. But watch
them: they "settle back into routine." Those complainants become marked
targets, like Aristide of Haiti; agents are sent out to chop off feet, or
refresh the work force or their agents with new recruits.
The clock has not so much been turned back, as much as the
game has become more sophisticated, like that of the psychologically trained
torturer. The stupid Bull Connors and George Wallaces have passed the baton to
a new high tech, think tank generation of white supremacists. We were
self-deluded into retirement, believing true progress had been achieved when
only the field of play had changed. Civil rights legislation and government
agencies to execute the new laws indeed allowed certain freedoms and certain
advantages. But all that was only temporarily enforced. Republicans convinced
white Americans that they didn't really have to become less white or change
their hearts.
"The stupid Bull Connors and
George Wallaces have passed the baton to a new high tech, think tank generation
of white supremacists."
These right wing fanatics promised to disarm and denude
those forceful mechanisms and installed a different set of government
bureaucrats, like Clarence Thomas or those USDA officials lobbying Congress NOT
to pass black farm legislation. Charges of racism and racial discrimination do
not have a snowball's chance in hell of going anywhere these days and those who
gave force to such charges, like Stokely Carmichael, Thurgood Marshall, Oliver
Hill and Fannie Lou Hamer, are dying off like flies. Such talented and devoted
men and women are rare. It takes generations to produce such specimens of
humanity.
In short, the movement for integration is dead. Liberalism
is in its coffin, the lid sealed; the dirt has been tossed in. And what
masquerades as liberalism breathes through tubes. Only the Condis and Colins
are acceptable. That is as far as diversity will be allowed in this new era.
Different colors but not different politics. If you can't get with the program,
you'll have to find some other game to play. In some sense, this is where Du
Bois was in the 30s when he lost faith in the efficacy of "integration,"
advocating instead a retreat from outworn politics and a renewal of reliance
from below, depending on our own resources.
Those black professionals who do not want to become
right-wing conservatives will be tossed out of their institutions. They will be
forced to embrace their brothers and sisters left behind in order to make a
life. That is, we must again discover positive virtues in forces segregation
and de facto segregated non-mainstream institutions. But we have a
racial liberalism and a diverse non-white population (Latin and Asian Americans
and others) that never existed in such numbers before, advantages that Du Bois
never imagined for democratic struggle.
"Liberalism is in its coffin, the lid sealed; the dirt has
been tossed in."
The traditional black institutions (colleges, civil rights
organizations, churches, etc.), however, are no safe haven, for their
administrators are now among the worst right-wing collaborators, though many
had once been militant social activists. MLK knew such religious men like T.D.
Jakes develop in every generation and promise heaven above and financial
rewards below with collection plates filled with corporate and government
dollars to the tune of $1.7 billion a year. Attempts by liberals and radicals
to seize these institutions usually fail, though I do not discourage the
effort. In any struggle there are lessons learned. But new institutions and new
mechanisms that mirror the current need for struggle against mainstream party
disenfranchisement will have to be created, as well as a new rhetoric.
As you know, there are also those who are creating
institutions to escape the necessary and inevitable struggles ahead of us on
U.S. turf. That is, there's another "Back to Africa" movement afoot and the old
race rhetoric, a la Marcus Garvey and the southern abolitionist societies, as
well. I am not so much against these tendencies; it is only that these
strategies are for the few and the exceptional. We also have recollections of
the behavior of American ex-slaves and their Liberian rule over the "natives."
They were unable to outrun their American souls.
Anyhow, the struggle must go on here and we must see it as a
protracted struggle, just as the white supremacist right wing saw theirs as a
protracted struggle. It took them 30 years and now they're back in the driver's
seat. We too must look at our struggle as a long range one, in need of new
tactics and new strategies, operating across old racial lines.
"New institutions and new mechanisms that mirror the
current need for struggle against mainstream party disenfranchisement will have
to be created."
I doubt any of my generation will be here to see the fruits
of this new struggle. But we indeed must commit ourselves to do whatever is in
our power now to the new young leaders who must come to the fore to carry the
blood-stained banner. We need to make our minds up quickly and help them to lay
out the parameters for that struggle.
These new organizations and institutions must mirror the
kind of America we truly desire. Such concepts as Amin Sharif's "Fourth World"
need more consideration. We must guard against "minorities" being goaded into
round royal rings to slug it out blindfolded, while the moneybags sit on the
sidelines, amused. We need Sharif's fresh thinking and we need more of it,
because the new struggle will not be merely a national (or racial) one, but
international in scope and content.
The new struggle will occur more intensely in both Europe
and the United States, the control centers for the new global oppressive
forces. In both regions the issues and confrontations will be exceedingly
similar. Vast numbers of "colored" people will be moving globally north, not
south, as we see with displaced Sudanese migrating to Israel and Sweden. Cheap
voluntary labor is now what drives the Euro-American engines.
"We must guard against ‘minorities' being goaded into
round royal rings to slug it out blindfolded, while the moneybags sit on the
sidelines, amused."
The foes' strategy depends on destabilizing governments and
societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We must collaborate with
progressive forces at home and abroad to birth leaders responsive to the needs
of the broad masses. As we speak, mules are carrying laptops and mobile phones
into the isolated Andes and into the Ituri forest and the sandy deserts to
fight against corruption and comfortable leaders. Those of us at the heart of
Western corruption and repression must teach ourselves to be less comfortable
and commit ourselves to the coming and inevitable democratic struggles.
Rudolph Lewis is publisher
and editor of ChickenBones: A Journal of Literary and Artistic African-American
Themes. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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