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 racism 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 ChickenBones:
A Journal racist. My suspicions lean 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 long-time 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 ofthe 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 on the warpath to eliminate all opposition and all 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 way side. There is in
the present political climate, I'm afraid, little tolerance for in
between. They got all the tanks, gun ships, and missiles, and little
reluctanceto 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 fall back line. That was the
primary project of America's slave ancestors. It was the mind frame that
produced the Spirituals, in which the enslaved 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 described 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 the reasonable and thesensible. Guilt
is no longer a persuasive tool available to liberals andprogressives. Our
enemies have a free hand. There's no longer a USSR, foreignopposition to the
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 tocounteract the guilt and bad conscience."
In public, as we have seen with recent government apologia
for slavery and other memorials, there is "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 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 a Clarence Thomas or those USDA officials lobbying Congress
NOT to pass black farm legislation. Charges of racism and racial discrimination
do not have a snow ball's chance in hell of going anywhere these days and those
who brought that into force, 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 martyrs.
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 Condies and the 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 cousins left behind in order to make a
life. That is, we must again discover positive virtues in forced segregation
and defacto segregated non-mainstream institutions. But we have a racial
liberalism and a diverse population (Latin and Asian Americans and others)
that never existed 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, like
Julian Bond, are now among the worst right wing collaborators, though they had
once 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 $17 billion a year. Attempts by liberals and radicals
to seize those institutions usually fail, though I do not discourage an
effort. In any struggle there are lessons learned. But new institutions and new
mechanisms that mirror the current needed struggles against mainstream party
disenfranchisements will have to be created, as well as a new rhetoric.
As you know, there are those who are creating institutions to escape the
necessary and inevitable struggles ahead of us on U.S. turf. Thatis, there's
another "Back to Africa" movement and the old racerhetoric, a la Garvey and
the Southern abolitionist societies, as well, is afoot. I am not so much against
it, only those politics are for the fewand the exceptional and we have some
recollections of the behavior of former Americanslaves and their Liberian rule
over the "natives." They were unable to outruntheir American souls.
Anyhow, the struggle must go on here and we must see it as a protracted
struggle just as the white supremacy right wing saw theirs as a
protracted struggle. It took them 30 years and now they're back in the driver's
seat. We must look too at our struggle as a long range one, in need of new
tactics and new strategies, operating across the old racial lines.
"New institutions and new mechanisms that mirror the
current needed struggles against mainstream party disenfranchisements 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 assist 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 the
round royal rings to slug it out blindfolded, while the money bags sit on the
sidelines, amused. We need Sharif's fresh thinking and we need more of
it. For the new struggle will not be merely a national (or
racial) one, but an international one.
The new struggles 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 the struggles 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 what now drives the
Euro-American engines.
"We must guard against ‘minorities' being goaded into the
round royal rings to slug it out blindfolded, while the money bags sit on the
sidelines, amused."
That strategy depends on destabilizing government and
societies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We must collaborate with those at
home and abroad for birthing leaders responsive to the needs of the broad
masses. Mules are carrying laptops and mobile phones into the isolated Andes
and devoted men are carrying them into the Ituri forest and the sandy deserts
to fight against corrupt and comfortable leaders. Those of us at the heart of
Western corruption and repression must teach ourselves to be less comfortable
and commit our resources 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].