On July 25, 2011, a Monday night, President Obama stood at a podium to talk about the stalemate in Washington concerning the debt ceiling. Immediately following him was Speaker of the House, John Boehner, standing at a podium talking about why he cannot possibly pass a bill that includes any sort of revenue increases (tax hikes). He would not give the president a blank check. At first, I could not believe what I was seeing. John Boehner's platform looked so much more presidential than the actual president's. There was a podium, an American flag in the background, and the corner of a very expensive-looking mahogany desk. If I were to simply glance at the screen, I would've thought that John Boehner were the President addressing the nation from his Oval Office.
When I woke on July 26, 2011, I got it: John Boehner is the unofficial President for a certain segment of white people. Yes, white people have already seceded from the country socially; therefore, they feel no need to cooperate politically. John Boehner is the last hope for a group of white people who are afraid and confused, and who feel that their world is topsy-turvy. With people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who make a living by race-baiting, the fear is real. The fear is tangible. Americans generally live by a fixed-pie mentality: there is only so much wealth to go around, and we must hoard it for ourselves in the name of self-preservation. Beck and Limbaugh get onto the radio and scream, "The ________ folk are coming." You may fill in the blank with your choice of minority group: women, African Americans, Latinos and Hispanics, or homosexual. Whichever low-hanging ethnic fruit is fashionable, they use it to scare white people.
And for the most part, their strategy is as effective as it is old. I can give you a perfect example. After school desegregation, there were many op-eds in local papers which said that school integration would only lead to race-mixing. Throughout the South, after enforcement of school desegregation laws began, white people began to withdraw their children from public schools, and they established Christian Academies. White people also moved away from the city limits and city politics, and into the counties, scarcely even showing their faces in town to vote or purchase groceries. In short, they seceded from their Southern towns socially, and refused to participate politically. Sometimes, they did not support the towns economically, choosing instead to purchase their goods in small cities such as Natchez, McComb, Baton Rouge, or Vicksburg rather than buy from their local grocers where Black people also shopped.
What we're seeing from the Tea Party and their irrational ideological stances, is the secession of white people from American society. Tea Party members are the only people that stand between a world which makes sense, and what a certain segment of scared whites must certainly see as a viable "planet of the apes" (Is there any wonder that the movie is making a resurgence at this exact moment?). In less than a decade, this country will be a majority minority country: combined, there will be more minorities here than white people. By refusing to cooperate politically, and hoping to destroy the country economically, Tea Party members are making the last stand for a certain segment of isolated Americans: the scared white constituents who elected them to keep the fate of the free world out of the hands of a Black man. I have the sneaking suspicion that "big government," to the Tea Party is synonymous with "Black government." When John Boehner and other conservatives say they will not hand over a "blank check" to President Obama, they mean that they're not willing to hand over the government to a Black man, or any other person of color for that matter. One way or the other, they're letting their constituents know who's really in charge: the white man is still in control. Their strategy: crash the economy and put the country back into the hands of a white man. Their rationale: though we may all suffer if the economy defaults and President Obama loses the 2012 election, at least we'll be suffering in a world where white person is in charge, and therefore makes sense.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill Affair: A Symptom
This is not a stinging indictment of Black men. This is not an insidious attack on Black women. Rather, it is a warning: both Black men and Black women must free ourselves of Euro-American patriarchal thinking. If not, Thomas has shown us how we pay at the structural level. Black male-on-Black male crime shows us how we pay at the individual, daily level.
As a people, African Americans, since slavery, have been very bold and somewhat successful in forcing Euro-Americans to practice the words they wrote both in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Despite conscious decisions by the authors of those documents to strike any reference to slavery out of the declaration, and to list Black people as only three-fifth human in the Constitution, African Americans knew the power and the meaning behind the words, "freedom," and "liberty." They, too, as builders of the world's global capitalist economy which freed Europe from a system of oppressive feudalism, wanted the ability to live in "pursuit of happiness." From David Walker to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Jacobs to Langston Hughes to Richard Wright to June Jordan to Eldridge Cleaver to Ernest J. Gaines to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Anne Moody to Malcolm X, Black Americans have cried out against tyranny of white racism and the oppression of white greed.
However, since the times of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, something has been seething within the Black community that we have NEVER adequately addressed. We have always been so watchful of the forces which are suppress us from without. Yet, we have not even attempted to remedy what is tearing us apart from within: Black people's internalization of Euro-American patriarchal thought. It is the acceptance of gender inequality, notions of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority, which threaten to destroy our communities. Young, Black men are dying on the streets every day due not only to poverty and violence, but also to how we define ourselves as gendered people.
As a Black woman, I could not be more proud of my literary ancestor, Harriet Jacobs, when she would stop telling her story in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to say (I'm paraphrasing here), "Reader, do not judge by a white woman's standards. I am not a white woman. I have not had the life of a white woman, so do not impose society's standards of behavior and dress for white women on this Black woman's body." This stands in stark contrast to the writings of Frederick Douglass and David Walker which seem to say to their Puritanical audiences, "Yes, I too, can be a patriarch. I deserve to be given the same opportunities and judged by the same standards as a white man." So, Black women have at least attempted since slavery, to define themselves outside of Euro-American standards (Though I'm not sure if we continue to do so during modern times). It seems, though, Black men have always embraced them. One of the most poignant criticisms of this attitude came from Ruth in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. She patiently listens to her husband, Walter, talk about his humiliating job as a chauffeur for a white man, Mr. Arnold, then replies, "So you'd rather be Mr. Arnold than work for him." It would seem so. Walter never considers that his mother and wife work equally humiliating jobs as domestics. How might they feel? He never asks. He simply wants to be the patriarch of the family....in charge of things... in charge of his own person and his family's direction. What about his wife's dreams and desires? Does Ruth want to be anything other than a domestic? Who is she as an individual? We don't know.
Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth had public, sometimes heated, exchanges. Douglass had a disdain for Black women that we seldom learn about. Douglass essentially felt that Black women, by their refusal to simply absorb Euro-American standards of behavior, were the millstone around the neck of Black male progress. Many Black women of the time purposefully refused to become literate. Right or wrong, they felt that absorption of literature outside of the the Bible would lead to absorption of Euro-American standards, and Black women rebelled against this. Though many did stay away from public life, Sojourner Truth openly spoke in public and would challenge Black men like Frederick Douglass for their acceptance of white standards of masculinity.
As a people, we protested the system without making fundamental changes to this "system." We criticized "The Man," but simply changed the color of his face. Clarence Thomas, a Black man, was chosen when a white one would have sufficed. I honestly believe that Dr. Hill knew he'd be "The Man" in blackface, and tried to prevent that. But her quest led to something more. The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair was one of those rare times when we did see Black gender differences play out nationally. It was also a prime opportunity for us to do the hard work of redefining ourselves outside of Euro-American patriarchal standards.
But, we blew it! The lashing out against Anita Hill was shameful and irrational, considering the "system" which benefited from her demise. Clarence Thomas's behavior was well-documented and the President who appointed him was a notorious conservative from a "Zero-Population Growth" family. Black man or white, Clarence Thomas is the keeper of the door of white conservatism and economic elitism: the status quo, the "system" which Black people so vehemently fought against.
From barber shop philosophers to Ivy-League academics such as Orlando Patterson, we once again blamed a Black woman for impeding the progress of Black men. Just like E. Franklin Frazier. Just like W.E.B. DuBois. Just like Frederick Douglass. Dr. Hill became a public representation of Black women who many Black males such as Richard Wright, felt were complicit with white men in psychologically/economically castrating Black men. Over 20 years after the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair, I can say that psychological/economic Black male castration was not Dr. Hill's intention. And after 20 years, with Black males leading for the charge for the dismissal of Shirley Sherrod, I can say that we haven't learned a damn thing from our ignorance.
The appointment of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice, largely with the support of Black people, has cost us dearly: the weakening of affirmative action, the 2000 election of one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history, and the weakening of the ability to bring class action law suits which would curtail system-wide discrimination in huge corporations. When will we, as African Americans, learn to dialogue about gender without attacking one another? When will we begin to teach Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Maria W. Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Anne Moody alongside DuBois, Wright, Malcolm X, and even Martin Luther King, Jr.? Lord knows, I do not want another The Color Purple, which turns Black men into the boogey man. I don't believe the patriarchy should be replaced by a matriarchy. What I believe is that Black men should fundamentally embrace a new definition of masculinity in the United States, because the status quo is killing us.
As a people, African Americans, since slavery, have been very bold and somewhat successful in forcing Euro-Americans to practice the words they wrote both in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Despite conscious decisions by the authors of those documents to strike any reference to slavery out of the declaration, and to list Black people as only three-fifth human in the Constitution, African Americans knew the power and the meaning behind the words, "freedom," and "liberty." They, too, as builders of the world's global capitalist economy which freed Europe from a system of oppressive feudalism, wanted the ability to live in "pursuit of happiness." From David Walker to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Jacobs to Langston Hughes to Richard Wright to June Jordan to Eldridge Cleaver to Ernest J. Gaines to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Anne Moody to Malcolm X, Black Americans have cried out against tyranny of white racism and the oppression of white greed.
However, since the times of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, something has been seething within the Black community that we have NEVER adequately addressed. We have always been so watchful of the forces which are suppress us from without. Yet, we have not even attempted to remedy what is tearing us apart from within: Black people's internalization of Euro-American patriarchal thought. It is the acceptance of gender inequality, notions of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority, which threaten to destroy our communities. Young, Black men are dying on the streets every day due not only to poverty and violence, but also to how we define ourselves as gendered people.
As a Black woman, I could not be more proud of my literary ancestor, Harriet Jacobs, when she would stop telling her story in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to say (I'm paraphrasing here), "Reader, do not judge by a white woman's standards. I am not a white woman. I have not had the life of a white woman, so do not impose society's standards of behavior and dress for white women on this Black woman's body." This stands in stark contrast to the writings of Frederick Douglass and David Walker which seem to say to their Puritanical audiences, "Yes, I too, can be a patriarch. I deserve to be given the same opportunities and judged by the same standards as a white man." So, Black women have at least attempted since slavery, to define themselves outside of Euro-American standards (Though I'm not sure if we continue to do so during modern times). It seems, though, Black men have always embraced them. One of the most poignant criticisms of this attitude came from Ruth in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. She patiently listens to her husband, Walter, talk about his humiliating job as a chauffeur for a white man, Mr. Arnold, then replies, "So you'd rather be Mr. Arnold than work for him." It would seem so. Walter never considers that his mother and wife work equally humiliating jobs as domestics. How might they feel? He never asks. He simply wants to be the patriarch of the family....in charge of things... in charge of his own person and his family's direction. What about his wife's dreams and desires? Does Ruth want to be anything other than a domestic? Who is she as an individual? We don't know.
Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth had public, sometimes heated, exchanges. Douglass had a disdain for Black women that we seldom learn about. Douglass essentially felt that Black women, by their refusal to simply absorb Euro-American standards of behavior, were the millstone around the neck of Black male progress. Many Black women of the time purposefully refused to become literate. Right or wrong, they felt that absorption of literature outside of the the Bible would lead to absorption of Euro-American standards, and Black women rebelled against this. Though many did stay away from public life, Sojourner Truth openly spoke in public and would challenge Black men like Frederick Douglass for their acceptance of white standards of masculinity.
As a people, we protested the system without making fundamental changes to this "system." We criticized "The Man," but simply changed the color of his face. Clarence Thomas, a Black man, was chosen when a white one would have sufficed. I honestly believe that Dr. Hill knew he'd be "The Man" in blackface, and tried to prevent that. But her quest led to something more. The Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair was one of those rare times when we did see Black gender differences play out nationally. It was also a prime opportunity for us to do the hard work of redefining ourselves outside of Euro-American patriarchal standards.
But, we blew it! The lashing out against Anita Hill was shameful and irrational, considering the "system" which benefited from her demise. Clarence Thomas's behavior was well-documented and the President who appointed him was a notorious conservative from a "Zero-Population Growth" family. Black man or white, Clarence Thomas is the keeper of the door of white conservatism and economic elitism: the status quo, the "system" which Black people so vehemently fought against.
From barber shop philosophers to Ivy-League academics such as Orlando Patterson, we once again blamed a Black woman for impeding the progress of Black men. Just like E. Franklin Frazier. Just like W.E.B. DuBois. Just like Frederick Douglass. Dr. Hill became a public representation of Black women who many Black males such as Richard Wright, felt were complicit with white men in psychologically/economically castrating Black men. Over 20 years after the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill affair, I can say that psychological/economic Black male castration was not Dr. Hill's intention. And after 20 years, with Black males leading for the charge for the dismissal of Shirley Sherrod, I can say that we haven't learned a damn thing from our ignorance.
The appointment of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice, largely with the support of Black people, has cost us dearly: the weakening of affirmative action, the 2000 election of one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history, and the weakening of the ability to bring class action law suits which would curtail system-wide discrimination in huge corporations. When will we, as African Americans, learn to dialogue about gender without attacking one another? When will we begin to teach Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Maria W. Stewart, Anna Julia Cooper, and Anne Moody alongside DuBois, Wright, Malcolm X, and even Martin Luther King, Jr.? Lord knows, I do not want another The Color Purple, which turns Black men into the boogey man. I don't believe the patriarchy should be replaced by a matriarchy. What I believe is that Black men should fundamentally embrace a new definition of masculinity in the United States, because the status quo is killing us.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Black America Owes Anita Hill a Long Overdue Apology
When Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas interrupted my Saturday morning cartoons, I was angry. A little snot-nosed brat at the time, I could not understand the huge ramifications of what was happening around me. As a nine-year-old, this is all I remember of the affair: a Black man, a Black woman, and a pubic hair on a Coke can.
And yes, I remember the conversations surrounding Anita Hill. People hated her. "Why would this dumb bitch try to hold the man back?" "See, that's why Black folk can't get nowhere, we always acting like crabs in a barrel." "Now this the first Black man since Thurgood Marshall to be nominated. Where the white folk dig this bitch up at?" These were just a few of the insidious comments made about Professor Anita Hill around my head. People wanted to kill her. People would throw things at the television when her face came onto the screen.
Oh. My. Lord. If Black people knew then what we know now....Black America owes Dr. Anita Hill a long-overdue apology. In our haste to elevate a Black man to one of the most prestigious, respected, and powerful positions in the land, we didn't even stop to look at who nominated Clarence Thomas: a socially conservative, Republican President from a zero population growth family. Professor Hill was trying to save us, but she couldn't save us from our scornful selves. And over twenty years later, we are paying the price.
When Democratic presidents nominate Supreme Court justices, Republicans always yell about "activist judges." They understand that no people in the country have as much power to change the landscape and culture of the country as those individuals who sit on the Supreme Court. Unlike other policy makers, Supreme Court justices don't have term limits.
Whereas conservative lawmakers yell this phrase out to instill fear in their constituents about liberal-leaning judges, no Supreme Court justices have been more politically active than Scalia and Thomas. However, they tend to vote AGAINST poor folk and minorities. On all things that may help minorities and poor folk, Scalia and Thomas have both voted overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the unfair and unbalanced status quo. For an alphabetical listing of Thomas's rulings as well as concurrences, please see http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/author.php?thomas.
Thomas, having benefited from affirmative action, ruled it unconstitutional. Thomas, having been appointed by his father, ruled in favor of George Bush II becoming president when he stole the election in 2000. Thomas, whose wife is an active Tea Party member which is in turn funded by corporations, made a remarkable ruling in favor of corporations recently: he made it very difficult for people to bring class action law suits against huge companies like Wal-Mart. Sigh...
Anita Hill, even though I was entirely too young to know what was going on, from the bottom of my ignorant heart, I'm sorry. I wish I could have supported you. I wish we could have foreseen how you tried to save us from this activist, conservative judge whose only duty on the bench seems to be to do the bidding of his corporate-funded masters. I know that for the good of the country, this apology is much too late, but please accept it. You were right all along....
I will post again on Anita Hill in about two weeks. Anita Hill is a prime example of how Black men have routinely not supported Black women or trusted their leadership and judgement. You'd think we would've learned our lesson, but the Shirley Sherrod fiasco proves that we are still struggling to think of Black women as leaders, and that we are still embarrassed by Black women when we should be supporting them.
And yes, I remember the conversations surrounding Anita Hill. People hated her. "Why would this dumb bitch try to hold the man back?" "See, that's why Black folk can't get nowhere, we always acting like crabs in a barrel." "Now this the first Black man since Thurgood Marshall to be nominated. Where the white folk dig this bitch up at?" These were just a few of the insidious comments made about Professor Anita Hill around my head. People wanted to kill her. People would throw things at the television when her face came onto the screen.
Oh. My. Lord. If Black people knew then what we know now....Black America owes Dr. Anita Hill a long-overdue apology. In our haste to elevate a Black man to one of the most prestigious, respected, and powerful positions in the land, we didn't even stop to look at who nominated Clarence Thomas: a socially conservative, Republican President from a zero population growth family. Professor Hill was trying to save us, but she couldn't save us from our scornful selves. And over twenty years later, we are paying the price.
When Democratic presidents nominate Supreme Court justices, Republicans always yell about "activist judges." They understand that no people in the country have as much power to change the landscape and culture of the country as those individuals who sit on the Supreme Court. Unlike other policy makers, Supreme Court justices don't have term limits.
Whereas conservative lawmakers yell this phrase out to instill fear in their constituents about liberal-leaning judges, no Supreme Court justices have been more politically active than Scalia and Thomas. However, they tend to vote AGAINST poor folk and minorities. On all things that may help minorities and poor folk, Scalia and Thomas have both voted overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the unfair and unbalanced status quo. For an alphabetical listing of Thomas's rulings as well as concurrences, please see http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/author.php?thomas.
Thomas, having benefited from affirmative action, ruled it unconstitutional. Thomas, having been appointed by his father, ruled in favor of George Bush II becoming president when he stole the election in 2000. Thomas, whose wife is an active Tea Party member which is in turn funded by corporations, made a remarkable ruling in favor of corporations recently: he made it very difficult for people to bring class action law suits against huge companies like Wal-Mart. Sigh...
Anita Hill, even though I was entirely too young to know what was going on, from the bottom of my ignorant heart, I'm sorry. I wish I could have supported you. I wish we could have foreseen how you tried to save us from this activist, conservative judge whose only duty on the bench seems to be to do the bidding of his corporate-funded masters. I know that for the good of the country, this apology is much too late, but please accept it. You were right all along....
I will post again on Anita Hill in about two weeks. Anita Hill is a prime example of how Black men have routinely not supported Black women or trusted their leadership and judgement. You'd think we would've learned our lesson, but the Shirley Sherrod fiasco proves that we are still struggling to think of Black women as leaders, and that we are still embarrassed by Black women when we should be supporting them.
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