A Look Back at Consolidated & Their Song ‘Friendly Fascism’

Consolidated Friendly FascismThis song Friendly Fascism, comes courtesy of one of my favorite groups Consolidated, who released this song back in 1991 or 1992… The song back then was pretty powerful, although at the time it went over many people’s heads especially with the defeat of George Bush Sr and the election of Bill Clinton..

With the 92 election, many thought that the worse which was personified via 12 years of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr were behind us…Unfortunately the fascist direction this country was headed continued just with a friendly face, starting with Clinton who was dubbed the ‘First Black President‘, followed by George W Bush who was dubbed a Compassionate Conservative and now Obama who is the target of daily racial attacks and threats which leads to many circling the wagon around him while he does serious dirt both abroad and here at home.. To be honest Ronald Reagan aka the Great Communicator with befuddling demeanor also fooled a lot of people which is why he was elected twice.

Consolidated Anyway if you ever get to check out the entire album Friendly Facism by Consolidated, its worth a listen. It was definitely ahead of its time.  Many of the topics covered and the lyrics are relevant today. If anyone ever went to their shows you will recall they were among the first to fuze multimedia with their stage shows.. After each performance they would hold impromptu town hall and discussions with the audience.. Depending on what part of the country they were in, those discussions could get pretty grueling as many would get angry by their messages..

Another nice aspect of Consolidated was their harsh critique of the entertainment and music industry. Some of what they said then may seem like old hat today, but back at the time many groups pushed to be on platforms like MTV and commercial radio. If you got on them, the last thing you wanted to do was dis them publicly.. Consolidated was relentless and was right on time with their critique..  I like this song below ‘Music Has No Meaning’ and appreciated being sampled in it..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnrfbpofFhk

Several years later, Consolidated teamed up another Bay Area  artist Paris, the Black Panther of Hip Hop to do this dope song Guerillas in the Mist...Love the way they smashed hard on Tom Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymhr2IXWrZw

Donald Sterling Should Be Kicked out Real Estate World He Has Long Dominated

Davey-D-brown-frameIts good to see that folks are stepping up around this nonsense with the Clippers. Big shout out to ColorOfChange.org who have already been hard at work going after sponsors and hitting the Clippers where their pocketbook is. Thus far a number of corporations have already pulled their money.

With that being said, what should not be lost on us is the fact that Donald Sterling impacted folks above and beyond his harsh words. He’s a real estate mogul who discriminated against folks trying to get housing in LA.. The fines he paid in settling he lawsuits against him were among the highest in the country.

Sterling seriously hurt folks. he hurt hard-working average ordinary folks who found it difficult to get housing and the fact that he’s been allowed to operate in LA w/o too many sanctions and that he was being honored by the NAACP in a city where foreclosures and housing shortages are at all time highs, one needs to be asking, how many more think and act like Donald Sterling but haven’t been caught on tape?

SterlingIf the NBA moves to kick him out of the League, we should be asking why hasn’t he been kicked out of the real estate world, with licenses revoked, permits pulled and those done wrong given free housing in return for his transgressions? We need to be asking what elected officials in LA County green lit any of his projects and why?? We need to know if he’s been given tax breaks or special consideration and perks from any of the cities where he owns property. All that needs to be rescinded. When we deal with that issue, that’s where meaningful transformation will take place.

With respect to the NAACP, LA Chapter president Leon Perkins held a press conference stating that Sterling was a guy who provided tickets for over 1000 young Black youth to come to the Clipper games and he donated some money to the chapter. Forget the basketball games, Perkins should’ve been asking what affordable or better yet, what FREE HOUSING has Sterling provided for the poor and underprivileged he is said to despise?

Sterling PlazaSterling owns a lucrative piece of property in Beverly Hills that houses his office known Sterling Plaza. It has that has 7 stories. There was an article that came out a few years ago stating he was the only resident. Has he moved in any of those underprivileged families he sends to his games? Has he granted office space to some Black/ Brown businesses?  That’s something he should’ve been pushed to do  to make amends as part of his housing discrimination settlement.

The point I’m getting at is we must not fall into the trap of seeing Sterling and his words in isolation. He’s part of institutions that have long run roughshod over a lot of folks who don’t get to hold press conferences when done dirty. They unfortunately don’t have Snoop Dogg, Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan speaking out on their behalf. But those folks should be uplifted and the companies and corporations headed by racist individuals like Sterling should be held accountable and made to truly compensate folks. Tickets to a Clipper game don’t cut it..

If Sterling is forced to sell the Clippers he will most likely get close to get at least half billion dollars for that team. He paid 13 million for them. He already worth 1.9 billion dollars. Homeboy will live comfortably. As for the people upended by housing discrimination, foreclosures, redlining etc in a world that Sterling is very much apart of, they may not be doing all that well. How will we champion their plight??  We know the name Donald Sterling, but do we know Thomas J. Barrack, Jr or Penny Pritker and the damage they done in the housing market?? Reflect on that for a minute….

The NAACP is Just As Backwards as Clipper Owner Donald Sterling

SterlingThe NAACP was set to give Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling a Lifetime achievement Award… Yes you read that right…On May 15th he was to be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award along with Al Sharpton and the good folks from Walmart who are set to get a Corporation of the Year Award…

Let’s give this some perspective. This Cali NAACP was set to give Sterling a Lifetime Achievement Award even after he paid one of the highest fines in the state for housing discrimination against Latinos and Blacks in LA.. He is on record saying Blacks are vermin who shouldn’t be living on his property. You can look up Sterling and Housing discrimination to get a better understanding of how ratchet this man is… http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/11/donald-sterling-to-pay-2725-million-to-settle-housing-discrimination-lawsuit.html

As for the NAACP.. This is the same outfit that in the 11th hour sided with Monsanto in the 2012 elections to defeat Prop 37 which would’ve required big food companies to label any and all food products that contained GMOS.. The NAACP came out swinging in support of Monsanto..Don’t believe me? There are dozens of articles about the sellout move like this one here–>http://bit.ly/1hCbRhp

(UPDATE) As of this writing the NAACP has decided to rescind their award…That should be a no brainer.. Given Sterling’s record why was he being honored in the first place?? It was backwards thinking even before he made these racist remarks. Shame on them!

ClippersWith respect to Sterling, there are far too many folks who are trying to excuse this by saying that ‘all NBA owners are racists’ ..Not sure what that means?? Do we have them all on tape saying the madness Sterling said?? How many of these owners have been fined for housing discrimination? Is that an excuse for players to take the court today without addressing the issue??

Folks should keep in mind that the NBA routinely suspends players for the slightest infractions.. From dress code violations to talking greasy on or off the court about ref.. Players have been fined and suspended for not standing up and singing the national anthem.. Y’all remember Mahmoud Abdul- Rauf? Players have been suspended for making homophobic remarks such was the case with Kobe Bryant and Tim HardawayDwight Howard was fined for criticizing the refs on his blog a few years ago..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_esLsfWPe30

But in this egregious case with Sterling  you have a circling of the wagons. When the story first broke,  ESPN dragged their feet in reporting it.. They didn’t go in on this until they had Jesse Jackson on the air with them.. We have NBA commissioner Adam Silver doing an ‘investigation’.. Whats to investigate? Homeboy said those inexcusable remarks-end of story..

The only way for this to be resolved is for sterling to be banned from the League..This means he doesn’t get to buy his way out by giving hush money to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the  NAACP or any other ‘leader’ who may pocket the loot and then tell us we should forgive him. F— that!  Since Sterling is a real estate mogul, maybe suitable payment will be paying for all the Black homes foreclosed on in LA. That would be a good first step to atonement…

Miami Heat HoodiesAs for the NBA players?? Those who wore hoodies in support of Trayvon Martin, need to wear hoodies.. (KKK type hoodies ) to protest Sterling. They need to hold a press conference denouncing his remarks and demand he be kicked out of the league.. Trust me if any NBA player transgressed the way Sterling did , there would be no hesitation in financial punitive actions being levied on them.

Black players from the Clippers should hold a press conference and demand to be sold … oops I mean traded or auctioned off. No NBA team should play against the Clippers until Sterling is kicked out! If any Black player tries to defend him, they should be sent a copy of Malcolm’s Message to the Grassroots speech.

One has gotta wonder if the owner of the Clippers was a George Zimmerman supporter or an advocate for killer cop Johannes Mehserle if players on either team would show up to play ball? Sadly we already can guess what the Cali NAACP would do??Instead of playing nice with Sterling, the NAACP should’ve been holding a press conference demanding the players and Black folks in general boycott the Clippers and the NBA until Sterling is gone. They should’ve done this after he paid all that money for the housing discrimination case back in 2003.

May this be a lesson for all.. The owners of some of these teams see Black folks as glorified field hands in stadium/ arena plantations…Don’t look for an apology, get ownership and transform the power dynamics in play…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTL944sdlrE

Racism: The Most Violent Weapon in Human History

Trayvon Martin wore a hoodie in the rain..In the world of Don lemon and Geraldo, maybe He should've had an umbrella instead

Trayvon Martin

Stop denying that race doesn’t matter.

To claim that killings of Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Darius Simmons, Garrick Hopkins, Carl Hopkins, and countless others have nothing to do with race erases generations of white-on-black violence.

And before you trot out some example from history of an African American who killed a white person, or cite some FBI statistics (deflection is a form of denial), hear us:

The history of violence directed at African Americans is grounded in a history of systemic racism; efforts to protect slavery, irrational fear, segregation, Jim Crow, stereotypes and white privilege are all part of this history.  It is what binds together Emmett Till and Jordan Davis, what links together the countless incidents of lynching throughout America’s history with killings of Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride who were seen as “not belonging.”

white mobsThe history of the United States is one where whites have killed with impunity; the murder of African Americans has been carried under a culture that continues to sanction this violence. Our society has refused to hold white killers accountable within the criminal justice system. On the flip side, African Americans have historically and continually experience the opposite: the unequal brunt force of the criminal justice system.  Unlike their white counterparts, who have been let off the hook over and over again, blacks have been policed, locked up, lynched, and executed for s**t they didn’t do.  Just as those involved with countless lynchings and Emmett Till’s killers never faced consequences for killing black people, Michael Dunn and George Zimmerman have been left off the hook.

Race matters because of continued circulation of racial stereotypes. From Dunn’s views about “thug music” or Zimmerman’s profiling of Martin, or the belief from Theodore Wafer that Renisha McBride’s an intruder has everything to do with race.  How many different jokes about blacks and crime do you hear each day, either from popular culture or from friends?  How often do you confront media reports, video games, films, TV, or conversations that depict African Americans as dangerous, as “thugs,” as threatening criminals?

Michael Dunn

Michael Dunn

One cannot understand Michael Dunn, or George Zimmerman or countless others within a colorblind fantasy.  We must talk about racism, stereotypes and the history of criminalizing black bodies.  Research proves that whites, from college students to police officers, are more likely to misidentify a gun when in a black hand.  According to B. Keith Payne, “Race stereotypes can lead people to claim to see a weapon where there is none. Split-second decisions magnify the bias by limiting people’s ability to control responses.”  Racism thwarts many in white America from seeing how racism kills.

According Project Implicit,  “An analysis of more than 900,000 completed Implicit Association Tests (IAT) at the Project Implicit website suggested that more than 70% of test takers associated White people with good and Black people with bad…”   It is easy to dismiss race and racism but the daily consequences of American racism are real; the trauma and pain, the ongoing history of racial violence, and a culture that is more likely to see black criminality than black innocence.  Racism kills and so does denial.

Geraldo Rivera Blames TrayvonRace matters even in death.  How else can we explain the lack of concern society shows for the anguish of black parents who have lost a child?  The mantra of not speaking ill of the dead is rarely applied to black youth.  For all too many, that means routinely seeing the victims as criminals, as unworthy of sympathy and assumptions of innocence. Instead of being seen as victims, as someone’s son or daughter, someone’s friend that lost their life, they are turned into criminals deserving of death.  Writing about Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, Eric Mann highlights the longstanding history of blaming black youth for their own murders:  [D]eep in the white American psyche” rests the controlling belief and script that sees “the impossibility of Black innocence.” Efforts to convict black youth for their own murders is engrained in the American fabric, enshrined in the history books, and centuries old in the script of white supremacy.  Racism continues to turn the victims of racism into criminals who either deserved to die or did something that resulted in their own death.

Whether citing school suspensions, problems with the law, drug use, clothing choices, being drunk, loud music, whistling, not listening to authority or simply their attitude, the presumption of black guilt, black criminality, and black pathology is reason for black death.  Don’t look at the killers or a history of white supremacy since the “victim” is in fact responsible for his/her death.  The message is clear: Don’t mourn for them; don’t seek justice for them since it is they (and their parents, their “culture”, and their community) that is responsible, not the killers, not the laws, not the gun culture, not the racism, and not America.

Affluenza DefenseWhite youth, on the other hand, even those who go on shooting rampages at in public places, even those who drive drink and kill people, who shoot first and ask question later, are regularly imagined as innocent, good, and all-American. Sometimes this takes place within the court of public opinion and other times within the courts.  We see this regularly in the aftermath of “mass shootings” at least those involving white perpetrators, in white communities, and with white victims. From James Holmes, who perpetrated a mass shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado in 2012, to Adam Lanza, who shot and killed over 20 children at a Connecticut Elementary School, society works to understand the backgrounds of these assailants and questions “why” and “how” these wholesome kids became evil.   Maybe it’s video games; or maybe its affluenza, or it could be mental health issues.  It’s never whiteness, it’s never racism; it’s never white pathology and ultimately that means little accountability

The effort to exonerate white shooters, from Lanza to Zimmerman, from Holmes to Dunn, embodies the power of race.  The failure to mourn Black Death, to protect black life, or the failure to understand the fear and anger reflects entrenched white privilege.  The yearning to cite Black on Black crime demonstrates the historic disregard for black life.

Khali Gibran Muhammad

Khali Gibran Muhammad

“It’s true that black-on-black violence is an exceptionally grave problem. But this does not explain the allure of the violence card, which perpetuates the reassuring notion that violence against black people is not society’s concern but rather a problem for black people to fix on their own,” writes Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. “The implication is that the violence that afflicts black America reflects a failure of lower-class black culture, a breakdown of personal responsibility, a pathological trait of a criminally inclined subgroup — not a problem with social and institutional roots that needs to be addressed through collective effort well beyond the boundaries of black communities.” Is it astonishing the black life is only valued when it can be used to deny white terror, to obscure solutions, and to otherwise blame EBW (everyone but whites). If black life was truly valued, we would all join those demanding justice for Jordan and Trayvon, those working to repeal stand your ground laws, those working to combat the insidious racial stereotypes that sustains anti-black racism.

If Black Death is such a concern for white America there are plenty of ways to get involved; to be a solution. There are plenty of organizations and individuals that are demanding justice for Mark Carson, Islan Nettles, Adrian Broadway, or Ricardo Sanes.  What are we doing for these victims, for countless others?    These are people, not talking points.

We do wonder where are the white leaders, whether Democratic or Republican, the organizations so concerned about gun violence, the media pundits, and those who like to obfuscate with “black on black crime” in addressing these killings? Where are the calls against Stand Your Ground, given its clear racial consequences?  Where is the support for those organizations and individuals that are challenging America’s pathological and destructive gun culture, or those working in communities like Chicago to combat injustice?  Where is the action and outrage about the violence that ravages Chicago or Detroit?  Where is the demand for something other than more police and lectures about sagging pants and fathers? Or do the concerns begin and end when trying to derail discussions about the continued history of racist violence that continues to plague this nation that continues to lead to deaths of Black Youth.

Stop racist violenceWe ask, what are we going to do about “white on white crime,” “black on black crime,” and the culture of violence that is ravaging communities? What are we all doing in the name of justice, in the name of every lost live?  What are we doing about permissive gun and mental health no matter the neighborhood?  We need to commit ourselves to having honest discussions about racism, inequality, and violence.  We must fight for justice for Trayvon Martin and Renisha McBride, for Adrian Broadway and Mark Carson, for Jordan Davis and Darius Simmons.  Justice will remain an illusion as we refuse to recognize the ways that they and so many others are seen as criminals when alive, remaining as “violent thugs,” in worthy of blame and reproach in death.

If we want to stop the violence, maybe we should look in the mirror, and look at racism, the most violent weapon in human history.  To deny race is to deny this history. To ignore racism and refuse to deal is to allow for the most dangerous weapon to continue to kill and kill without any consequence and intervention.  To wipe clean this history is to erase the pain and trauma of racial terror.  And worse, to keep repeating it, over and over.

Stand up for what’s right

written by  JLove and David Leonard

See, Judge, ACT:

What white folks can do:

Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice. Become a member and get involved directly: http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/

Don’t have time to organize?  At the very least:

-Sign up for ColorofChange.org and sign petitions demanding justice for all

-Donate to ColorofChange, SURJ and/or a multiracial group organizing around racial justice issues

-Post up on social media and circulate KNOWLEDGE so that your community is more informed; build an intentional community committed to justice, change, and accountability!

About the Authors

David Leonard is a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race at Washington State University. http://drdavidjleonard.com/

JLove Calderon is a conscious media maker, social entrepreneur, and author of five books, including her latest: Occupying Privilege; Conversations on Love, Race, and Liberation. www.jlovecalderon.com

You Must Be Married to a N-gger: Anti-African Rallies Explode in Israel

Anti Black rallies in IsraelIt is bothersome, that there is so much hatred for Africans..If its not brothers and sisters being lynched in places like Libya or being hunted down in Mali and Sudan or being demonized and scapegoated here in the US, we have Israel which is supposed to be a beacon for Democracy in the Middle East demonstrating venom and hatred on par with any KKK and Neo-Nazi group…

For many this will comes as no surprise given the fact that Israel aligned itself with South Africa’s Apartheid Regime selling it weapons and helping them develop its nucleur capabilities, when the rest of the world was attempting to free Nelson Mandela and overturn that wretched system of government.

In recent weeks we saw stories surface about Israel segregating its kindergarten classes..You can read about that here in the Daily Beast.

Equally shameful is the NY Times, the so-called ‘paper of record‘ where they ‘publish all the news fit to print‘.  According to film maker Max Blumenthal refused to run the video.. We guess showing Israelis being racist toward Africans is not newsworthy.. Here’s what Blumenthal said about this rejection of his film Israel’s new racism: the persecution of African migrants in the Holy Land

I was asked to submit something by The New York Times op docs, a new section on the website that published short video documentaries. I am known for short video documentaries about the right wing in the US, and extremism in Israel. They solicited a video from me, and when I didn’t produce it in time, they called me for it, saying they wanted it. So I sent them a video I produced with my colleague, David Sheen, an Israeli journalist who is covering the situation of non-Jewish Africans in Israel more extensively than any journalist in the world.

We put together some shocking footage of pogroms against African communities in Tel Aviv, and interviews with human rights activists. I thought it was a well-done documentary about a situation very few Americans were familiar with. We included analysis. We tailored it to their style, and of course it was rejected without an explanation after being solicited. I sent it to some other major websites and they have not even responded to me, when they had often solicited articles from me in the past.

Here’s what film maker David Sheen had to say about his documentary..

I have been carefully chronicling the racist attacks against non-Jewish African asylum-seekers in Israel for several years. In January 2012, an organization in Israel that aids African asylum-seekers, the African Refugee Development Center, asked me to author on their behalf a report to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). After receiving the report in text and video form, the UN committee urged the Israeli government to prevent racist attacks against Africans in Israel.

The Israeli government ignored the UN’s call, and the following month, Israelis firebombed a kindergarten for African children in Tel Aviv, igniting a wave of violence against non-Jewish African people in Israel that is still ongoing. Below are links to the UN reports, in text and video form, social media stories about the recent violence, footage from two years of anti-African rallies, and extended one-on-one interviews about opposition to the presence of Africans in Israel.

Below you can see the footage…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxv4Aff3IA

Below is a much longer documentary breaking all this down called Racism Report: Africans in Israel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUivyO5T_34

Rupert Murdoch Unleashes a Vicious Media Attack on Black Folks Over Stop & Frisk

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch

For some this headline and accompanying picture will come as no surprise. What can you expect from the New York Post? It’s always been a trash newspaper designed to prod people and get them upset, angry and fearful. Maybe Australian born Rupert Murdoch who owns the paper did this because of the recent killing in Duncan, Oklahoma of the Australian baseball player..

Perhaps this was his way of striking back to what he perceives as a racially charged wrong doing..  Or maybe he never stopped to realize that the longer you use media outlets to plant seeds of discord which he and his Fox media empire do everyday at every moment, that you will eventually have to face a dumbed down uncaring, angry at the world public..

Instead of fostering dialogue Murdoch seeks to end it and get people to be at odds with one another. He wants his publications to be the modern-day versions of Birth of a Nation film maker DW Griffith, whose destructive work of stereotyping and dehumanizing of Black people led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan who were heroes in this movie,  mass lynchings of Black people all over the country and eventually race riots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4v_yRFf4-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-7SVbLjBw

The layout including the picture of Madonna and her grill are quite deliberate and designed to ratch up more fear of the ‘Black male menace‘ who according to Murdoch, the New York City  council sided with when they voted to hold  NYPD accountable for Stop and Frisk. Expect a massive campaign from Murdoch and folks in the media who think like him to sensationalize and highlight every wrong doing by anyone Black to the point, that people will be begging to reverse yesterday’s vote against Stop and Frisk. Character assassination, negative, dehumanizing media depictions have impacted killed more people than guns ever have or will..

We should also remind folks, with a big mayoral election right around the corner, this is also Murdoch’s attempt to sway voters, by getting them to vote for candidates who will continue support fascist policing policies

On a side note, this week Al Jazerra America just launched and for many who are seeing it it has been a welcome change from the news we normally see here in the states. People like the news stories and the ethnic diversity shown on air. They also like the fact that the people being highlighted are not cheerleaders and paid pundits for particular political parties.

The campaign against AJAM is that they are run by Muslims who are gonna try and covert everyone to Islam and call for Jihad. Xenophobic backwards thinking people are upset that a foreign company is running the media. Sadly those same folks seem to forget that Murdoch is a foreigner and so is his Fox Media empire. But I guess if your white and foreign then its ok..

And yes, for those  who are wondering, I’m well aware in many parts of the world that state run Al Jazerra is just as problematic for some the same way Fox is. But how they squelch dissent in their homeland of Qatar is of little concern to the xenophobic folks objecting to them here in the US..
NY Post Headlines Thugs.06.11 AM

Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Race? What Exactly Does that Look Like & With Whom?

Davey-D-yellow-225-frameEver since President Obama gave his speech on Trayvon Martin and race, I’m been hearing pundit after pundit wax poetic about how now is the time to have ‘a serious conversation‘ on race…’

My question is..’What does that mean?’ Seriously, what does that serious conversation look like and who does it involve?

Do we have some sort of nationally televised panel discussion or is it Hearings on Capitol Hill?

Do we have a C-Span-like version of Tavis Smiley‘s now defunct State of the Black Union? and if so what do we talk about? Racial profiling? Affirmative Action? Attacks on President Obama? Who’s on the panel? Al Sharpton? Tavis? 50 Cent?

Does this serious discussion only involve Black folks, Are we including Asians, Latinos, Native Americans? Do we need to have a conversation on race with Blacks and Latinos?  Asians and Whites? Arabs and Latinos? Arabs and whites?  etc

Within our  respective communities we have a variety of political stripes, so does this serious conversation include Black conservatives?  Are we including Pan Africanists? Revolutionaries? Garveyites? Traditional Civil Rights types? Hip Hop generation folks? LGBT folks? Who are these folks breaking bread with? White radicals? Suburban housewives? Tea Party types? NRA folks? Wall Street bankers? Birthers?

Thomas Norman DeWolf & Sharon Leslie Morgan

Thomas Norman DeWolf & Sharon Leslie Morgan

As far as I’m concerned serious conversations about race have been going on for a very long time..There have long been forward thinking people who have engaged this conversation full time..For example, recently I did an interview with Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan who penned the book Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade. Does our serious conversation look like the work these two have been doing for the past few years where they been touring the country speaking about healing and reconciliation?

Does our serious conversation look like the unlearning Racism and white privilege workshops put on by folks like Tim Wise and author J-Love (Jennifer Calderon)?

Does it look like the work done by  Shakti Butler and the work she outlines in the film ‘Cracking the Codes ‘The System of Racial Inequity’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36XCiGr8muw

Howard PinderhughesOr does it look like the unlearning racism workshops that scholars like Dr Howard Pinderhughes was doing at UC Berkeley back in the early 1980s? Do we draw from the work covered in his book Race in the Hood: Conflict and Violence Among Urban Youth which was penned in 1997?

Do we look at the International Race Relations Roundtables that were done in New Zealand back in 2004 and build off those findings? or do we hark back to the Race Round Tables that were done in Michigan since 1942? Those serious discussions on race have been going on for decades, what has worked? What hasn’t worked? Is Michigan a model for us because after the riots in 1943 when mobs of whites came after Black folks? Those riots got everyone together to deal with the so-called Negro problem back then? 24 years later when Detroit exploded in riots in 1967 that ‘Negro Problem’ was addressed again by the Michigan roundtables with the attempts to bring about racial harmony. What can we draw from those attempts?

Do we look at the attempts made by places like Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland when they opened their doors to the Jewish community and Rabbi Michael Lerner to have a service focusing on improving race relations? It was called Solidarity Sunday.. Lerner’s remarks are HERE
End Racism

Does our serious discussions on race look like the work that was done at  World Conference on Racism. These conferences have been going on since 1978, with the first one addressing the issue of Apartheid in South Africa..In 2009, the World Conference on Racism was held in Geneva, Switzerland.. President Obama had promised folks before he was elected that he would attend.

He was well aware that President Bush’s delegation had walked out the conference in 2001 when it was held in Durban,  South Africa. At that time the US was upset that the global attendees had declared Zionism as a major form of racism and that the US legacy of slavery was something that needed to be seriously addressed. Our country felt this was unfair and bounced mid way through the conference.

Globally speaking all sorts of countries around the world were seriously upset about the US walking out, but before shyt hit the fan in a big way, our collective attention got diverted because of the 9-11 attacks which happened a day or two after the conference was over..

Obama got a game plan about this gun control stuff

Obama backed out of the 2009 World Race Conference after being pressured

President Obama noted that he was different then Bush and would have us at this conference, but after AIPAC and Israel got at dude and he decided not to attend at the 11th hour resulting in US and some of her key European allies pulling out.

I bring all this up to ask whether or not there be another World Conference on Racism and will Obama attend? We should also ask, if the World Conference which has been in existence for darn near 30 years, is the place to have that ‘serious conversation’ on race? Do we build upon the work there or start from scratch?

In the meantime, most of us may wanna start that serious conversation on race on our own and by keeping a few things in mind..

1-Learn to listen. Learning to listen and not getting caught up with what some dub ‘Oppression Olympic’ conversations where we compare atrocities and try to one up one another while invalidating the experiences of others. We should ideally be striving to listen with the understanding that racism has resulted in trauma.. It’s intergenerational. It’s personal. It’s systemic. A one time conversation won’t make things go away overnight..Healing is important and healing is defined differently by many.

Are we looking at the work people like Dr Joy DuGruy are doing around intergeneration trauma..Her book and lectures on post traumatic slave syndrome are informative. We see similar approaches toward healing in Native American communities.. This documentary called Journey to Forgiveness is one example worth peeping..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZwF9NnQbWM


2- Recognizing that there are all sorts of political, economic and social power dynamics at play when dealing with race..How the playing field gets leveled in those areas is important..Understanding how class factors in to all this is important.. In other words the conversation traditional Civil Rights leaders may have on race may be very different that the one we are having in our neighborhoods and amongst our family and friends. Some of this is related to age. Some of this is geographical.

Trayvon-Martin-brownFor example, when the when there was national discussions about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman being a vigilante, we often saw this couched by pundits as one a time occurrence vs something that was systemic.

Where I’m at in Oakland, California Zimmerman’s vigilantism was seen as part of larger climate of intolerance which also manifested itself in Brown communities with xenophobic Minutemen and ‘neighborhood border watchers’ using the name US Border Guard who were shooting and attacking Brown folks with impunity.

Investigations by both police and independent media outlets have revealed many of these vigilante border watchers are members of Neo-Nazi groups..peep that HERE . The case of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores who begged for her life before being shot along with her father by Minutemen vigilantes in Arizona who suspected they were in the country illegally is one prime example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgcVMvl-k7A

In other circles, Trayvon’s murder was connected to the large numbers of police killings. In fact the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in the wake of Trayvon’s murder did an exhausted study which brought to life that every 28 hours a black person was killed by police, security or wannabe police.  In many circles Trayvon’s murder was rarely spoken without referencing the MXGM Report.. Watching numerous pundits not talk or write about border killings or the MXGM Report was an indication that folks have very different perspectives on addressing racially charged issues.

Race matters3-Allowing yourself to become culturally literate.. This means goings beyond memorizing a few dates, times and historical figures. It means knowing more than a few songs from genres outside your comfort zone.. It goes beyond dating outside your race and thinking that you’re an instant expert because of that..Ideally this may mean going out of our way to find ways to stay informed about other communities. Do we read publications of other ethnic groups? Do we watch documentaries dealing with other people’s issues?  Do we have list of websites to go that cover a wide breathof other communities. For example, I like to peep  websites like Colorlines and Racialicious.

4-Determining what justice looks like..Is it an apology? Is it people being punished? Is it people being compensated? We should also be clear as to what we are fighting. Are we fighting systems of oppression and institutionalized racism or are we dealing with day to day bias and prejudice?  Can and should we put both on the same plane? Yes, I have lots of white friends, but how has that ended or is working toward ending systemic racism?

Another way of looking at this is noting that I have friends who are police officers. How has that friendship ended police brutality? Does my friendship mean that we pull back or no longer address the systemic problems within police departments?

There’s the personal and there’s the systemic.. What are we really fighting?  Are we trying to bring awareness and end racism within our own circles? Its one thing to talk publicly about the need to end racism, while ignoring the bigotry and ignorance at home with family members and friends.

Along these lines are we putting into play ideas of how a society free of a system dominated by White Supremacy looks like?  Have we peeped scholars like Neely Fuller to understand what White supremacy is? As people of color are we deliberate or unwitting tools of white supremacy? Are white folks asking questions as to how they being used and enabling this system?

There’s no one size fits all model..For some it may mean exchanging books and having discussions. For others it may mean doing retreats and having purposeful discussions with a specific goal in mind. For others its simply means getting certain types of legislation passed. Still others feel having a healthy understanding of a variety of political and social philosophies that govern folks from particular backgrounds is a way to start making inroads into improving race relations.

Any that’s some food for thought..

-Davey D-

Jasiri X: George Zimmerman is a ‘Creepy Azz Cracka’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwHhemgXp-Q

George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman

I’m Loving what Pittsburgh rapper Jasiri X just did around this George Zimmerman Trial..here’s what he had to say:

I decided to put my thoughts about the Zimmerman trial, the ruling on the Voting Rights Act, and Race in America into a 16 bar verse:

Oh you was born black welcome to the curse race

Oh you was born brown you sure this is your birthplace

This is America the home of the white man

Where every other American gets a hyphen

People of color police shoot us on site man

And then be like damn I was just frightened

See just the color of my skin is intimidating

Here I’m a criminal just based on my pigmentation

We need God our only mass is incarceration

We need Jesus cause these preachers got the heart of Satan

They toast to our death celebrating with ice cream

Vanilla with the cake cone must be a white thing

They wanna stop us from voting well what do rights mean?

If the end result of our struggle can just be wiped clean

And Zimmerman is a creepy ass cracka

A racist child murdering liar and bad actor

 

Marco Rubio Tells Jay-Z: He Must Learn.. We Tell Rubio He Should Learn As Well

jay-z sideAccording to USA Today, Jay-Z is applying to become a baseball agent with Major League Baseball Players Association receiving his application to  be certified was received last week.

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Sports and CAA Sports announced last week New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano was their first client.

Jay-Z, who denied he was selling his shares of the Brooklyn Nets in the song Open Letter‘ obviously is to avoid any sort of potential problems and conflict with the MLBPA.

If Jay-Z gets certified, this may put a whole new twist on his trip to Cuba.. As folks may know Cuba’s amateur Baseball is deemed a powerhouse on the world stage.. Currently many in MLB have raided Latin American countries including the Dominican Republic looking for the next superstars.. Perhaps Jay-Z’s visit to Cuba was a way to get a head start on looking for great players in that country.. who knows? It’s not something to rule out..

Marco_Rubio,_Official_Portrait,_112th_Congress

Senator Marco Rubio

On another note Senator Marco Rubio, a self subscribed Hip Hop head and Jay-Z fan responded to Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba saying he should get informed..Then he dropped a couple of misleading gems to cloud the issue.. He said on ABC News with Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl

“I think Jay-Z needs to get informed.  One of his heroes is Che Guevara.  Che Guevara was a racist.  Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he’s propping up,”

What Rubio was referring to was Che’s diary notes written when he was 24 years old where he noted that

“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”

He also noted that Blacks didn’t bath too much..

Che Guevara

Che Guevara

Such remarks were written and espoused by Che who at the time had little contact with Black folks and brought into a lot of the myths an stereotypes.. He also changed over the years and his thinking evolved.. As was noted in an article by our good friends at Afro Punk who famously addressed this issue a couple of years ago,  Che not only evolved his thinking but also fought in All-African armies in Cuba  and in the Congo..where he went to fight after the death of leader Patrice Lumumba. He called for school integration before the US was down to address the issue.. Peep the article here..http://www.afropunk.com/profiles/blogs/che-guevara-a-racist-a-glimpse

Che went to the United Nations to denounce the organization for not doing enough to end Apartheid Rule.. He came down hard on the US for her treatment of Black people..In his speech before the United Nations Che said

“Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men—how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?

You can peep the entire speech here; http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1964/12/11.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wdo6FwAPyng

Malcolm X talked about Civil Rights & Black church leadership taking funds to compromise on key positions during the March on Washington

Malcolm X admired Che and invited him to speak at OAAU Meeting

With respect to Jay-Z educating himself.. Rubio is right, Jay-Z should. He should educate himself about the harsh, hostile hatred shared by many of the rich wealthy 1% plantation owners towards Cuba’s Black population who aligned themselves with the Batista Regime who were overthrown by Castro. Many of those 1%ers fled from Cuba to Miami and for years held on to the same racial disdain for Black folks that Rubio accuses Che of holding. And I’m saying this as someone whose father lived in Miami, Liberty City since the 60s and was very active up until his passing two years ago.. We won’t even talk about the scapegoating and racial hostility directed at Haitians which is a whole chapter onto itself.. But I’m sure in 2013 Rubio would argue that things are different now and that people’s attitudes have changed.. Well we do know that Che had evolved the same as Malcolm X who expressed admiration for Che and even invited him to speak at the Audubon Ballroom to speak at a meeting for OAAU [Organization of Afro-American Unity.. You can read about that HERE

During the interview with ABC News, Rubio  “Secondly, I think if Jay-Z was truly interested in the true state of affairs in Cuba, he would have met people that are being oppressed, including a hip-hop artist in Cuba who is right now being oppressed and persecuted and is undergoing a hunger strike because of his political lyrics.”

This is an interesting assertion on  a number of levels. First the Cuban rap artists who is on hunger strike has become a cause celebre His name is Angel Yunier Remon Arzuaga better known as Critico de Arte. Most people up until Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba never heard of this artist and would be hard pressed to name a song or the political party Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) he is affiliated with..He’s a tool of convenience..He’s a talking point for those trying to win a political argument. Sadly his plight and the plight of many like him are of very little concern to Rubio and people who think like him..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSoszQXgzik

Hunger strikeI find it fascinating that Rubio would talk about this young man’s hunger strike but as a United States Senator has ignored the massive hunger strikes here in US prisons..Last year there was a big one in several Georgia State prisons.. Rubio was absent from that.. You can read about that one here http://blackagendareport.com/georgia-jackson-state-prisoners-hunger-strike-day15

There were prison hunger strikes in California most notably Pelican Bay the year before which Rubio was silent about .. You can read that Here: http://solitarywatch.com/2012/07/03/one-year-anniversary-of-pelican-bay-hunger-strike-against-solitary-confinement/

What’s most disturbing about this prison strike in California since we are talking about the state clamping down on dissident voices in Cuba is whats went on here in the US with the media Blackouts of the prison strikes  http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/21/headlines/media_ban_imposed_as_california_prison_hunger_strike_enters_4th_week

As we speak there are hunger strikes going on at our own Guantanamo Bay. In addition to torturing people who are held as enemy combatants, meaning they haven’t even gone on trial yet, we have guards shooting at those hunger strikers .. Again this is going on right now.. in April of 2013. http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/15/headlines/military_guards_fire_on_gitmo_hunger_strikers

The hunger strike which involves more than 100 prisoners has been going on since March http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/13/over_100_guantanamo_prisoners_on_hunger

With respect to political beliefs we can talk for hours about our own political prisoners, many of them former Black Panthers.. some have been locked away in solitary confinement for over 40 years..  http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/28/after_40_years_in_solitary_in

We would be here for days if we talk about the countries our government led by Senators like Marco Rubio are in alignment with and have strong ties who routinely prison dissident voices.. Try speaking out against the government in China or Saudi Arabia or even Egypt where they actually have a censorship czar. No one’s speech should be silenced, even the rapper in Cuba..But if our foreign policy is going to be galvanized by that while we ignore more egregious behaviors in our own backyard, we are beyond hypocritical.

Lastly for those who don’t know there has been serious cultural exchange going on between the Hip Hop community here in the US and the annual Hip Hop Festival they have in Cuba.. It’s been going on since 1995. Quite a few artists have been there numerous times and the bond between artists from here and Cuba has been strong.. It was just recently Las Krudus came by our show and spoke at length about the arts, racism and politics both at home in Cuba and here. It’s by no means all peaches and cream..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j2lBr42sFg

-Davey D-

It Ain’t EZ by Dlabrie w/ San Quinn, Keyanna Bean and Aviel

D'Labrie San QuinnA year ago a young innocent black teenager named Trayvon Martin was killed because of the color of his skin, the cowardly killer has been thus far protected and coddled by the “law”.

Trayvon would be getting ready for prom and graduation and instead his parents mourn. RACISM and the attempted holocaust of Black people in America still exist in various ways (much of the damage has already been done) this is one of them although may seem suddle and coincidental to sum. ITS NOT ITS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF..

As if there needs to be any more proof of the Black struggle in the US i guess we must still SPEAK LOUDLY and ACT even LOUDER to fight these types of injustice. dont think for a minute that slavery, black poverty, crack epidemic,, the mass incarceration of black people, the black death rate and Trayvon are not all directly related. Obama or not these things are often swept under the rug or dismissed as Conspiracy Theories.

So if hearing it from Malcolm, Angela , Bobby, Rosa , Nelson , 2pac , Queen Latifah wasn’t enough you gonna hear it from me too til im gone RIP Trayvon Martin and fuck Zimmerman and every other Zimmerman out there rather neighborhood watch, cop, teacher ,government official , confederate flag waver, kkk, skinhead, or just plain regular bitter racist around the way if you got problems with Black people then you got problems with me and all my fam and that includes all my people of many beautiful backgrounds and nationalities.

Its never been JUST A BLACK THING but divide and conquer works very well!! On this day dont get wrapped up in rhetoric and dont turn apathetic. Just play your role and acknowledge whats really going on here!! If i hear one more person blame rap and nba players and the illuminati and gangs IMA GO CRAZY JUST WAKE UP AND CALL IT WHAT THE FUCK IT IS!! WE AINT GOIN OUT LIKE TARGET PRACTICE & SHEEP!!

-D-labrie-

http://youtu.be/5yNUjJMP46A