Think Cultural appropriation’s bad? Try Cultural misappropriation and see how the hell you feel! How “Come by ya” became “Kumbaya,” and other white fuckery

This, is a serious nit I need to pick, more with my Black Fam than white folk (since stealing and distorting our culture often, and even with our help, is the norm — especially these days). But you guys? You non-boulé folk who’ve not been compromised? SOME of you should know, or at least learn better. And the rest of y’all boulé folk — cut this shit out!

“Come By Ya” (in the Gullah patois of my birth) is in NO WAY a feel-good, folk “camp song” born of some African language (well it wasn’t until white folk chose to steal and rework it that way, that is) — nor is it this JOKE of a touchy-feely, white misappropriation they like to throw around, based on their own white fuckery.

“Come By Ya” was a F*CKIN’ LAMENT of the enslaved Black folk of the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands. It was a pained entreaty, a cry for help — TO.WHITE.JESUS (with whom they’d been deeply indoctrinated) — for spiritual, physical and emotional rescue, from the HORRORS inflicted upon them by those same Bible-thumpin’, so-called Christian, white folk, who’d brought them to Him in the first place!

I’m here to tell you Fam — indoctrination soaked in naked terror really works!

 I was born and raised in Charleston, SC 66 seasons ago. My family are Gullah people born & raised on Edisto Island, a Sea Island not far from the city proper. My maternal grandmother and grandfather were born in 1908 and 1913 respectively. And from her Black Methodist church, to his Black Baptist church, I learned this old, Negro spiritual at both their knees, led by the oldest member of the congregation — my entire, damned life!

The last time I heard and sang it, was at my younger, first cousin, Rhonda’s funeral in January 2018. Held at my grandfather’s church on the Island (at which Mother Emanuel’s new pastor, Rev. Eric C.S. Manning spoke), it was appropriately, the Benediction selection because at that moment, we were all “singin’, cryin’ and needin’ rescue and relief from the pain her death wrought. I remember thinking to myself, “These damed folk, with no damned knowledge of how we, the descendants of formerly enslaved people lived and believed, had bastardized something that for us, meant a soothing — a Balm in Gilead.”

I’ve long since stopped believing in white Jesus but, I’ll NEVER stop loving those spirituals that, over my lifetime, have always made me feel whole and connected to my people.

As usual though, white folk keep trying to take credit for “discovering it” (like that lost-assed Christopher Columbus) or in fact, writing it. From the Library of Congress (please do click on the player and listen to the 1926 song, sung by Henry Wylie of Darien, GA of McIntosh County) and as you read, notice where this white guy claims he got this from):

Kumbaya: History of an Old Song

I am so sick and damned tired of white folk’s first, appropriation, then misappropriation of something that means the world to me. And worse, I’m equally sick and tired of supposedly “educated” Black folk using “Kumbaya” in the same way! Our stories and voices have long been stolen and used to fit the white gaze, so much so that even Black folk don’t have a damned clue of the origins of the words they speak, let alone their meanings and their history— even though we should! But, as Zora taught, “All my skinfolk ain’t my kinfolk.” 

Since the days of slavery, White supremacy hates the not-knowing (which is why the MAGA folk always blow their tops when they hear someone speaking a language they don’t know). And while it’s mostly true the slavers erased our languages and forbade us to speak them, they were sh*t out of luck when it came to my Gullah/Geechee people of the Sea Islands of SC and GA. And because they were SOL, we had Harriett Tubman, Denmark Vesey and The Stono Rebellion just to name a few. But they’re hip to it now and, as usual, under the guise of “helping” (that whole “White Savior” thing) they’ve got a plan to make sure it never happens again. Hell, even Yale’s got their fingers in the Gullah honeypot!

Tarantino and his crew are manipulative asses -- and some Black folk will do anything for fame and fortune

Django Unchained dolls (Courtesy of NECA)

I'd been going back-and-forth about whether I even wanted to see this damned movie, but after seeing this tasteless madness first thing this morning --  Slaves For Sale: “Django Unchained” Action Figures Released -- I won't bother.

And I won't even waste another breath on the Three Inkspots amid the Lily Whites pictured above (it is to them that I alluded, in the second part of the title -- 'nuf said).  I went over to read more about this new, "slave auction" at the source piece here.  I just wanted to see how much of a huge fool Tarantino had made of them and, those of us whose cash he'd already pocketed.  As it turns out -- pret-t-t-y damned huge:

Academy Award-winner Quentin Tarantino is laughing all the way to the bank this week. The controversial film auteur and his longtime studio chief-partner Harvey Weinstein took a gamble on transforming the atrocities of American slavery into comedic, action-packed entertainment. And the new movie, Django Unchained, which opened Christmas day, bested the glitzy Les Miserables at the box office with numbers indicating that the flick could do as well as, or maybe even better than Tarantino’s top-grossers Inglourious Basterds ($120 million) and Pulp Fiction ($107 million). (emphasis mine)

And surprise, surprise -- these "Let's play slavery" action figures were always going to be part of the plan.  Per the piece:

Last fall, the National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA), in tandem with the Weinstein Company, announced a full line of consumer products based on characters from the movie. First up are pose-able eight-inch action figures with tailored clothing, weaponry, and accessories in the likeness of characters played by Foxx, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Remar and Christoph Waltz. The dolls are currently on sale via Amazon.com. (emphasis mine)

Y'all can intellectualize until the cows come home about Tarantino's "artistic brilliance" (just so you can feel all hegemonic and shit) -- but I won't join you.  This is an insult to Black folk plain and simple.  Too bad so many of us don't realize it.

And how come he never rolled-out any Hitler/Nazi action figures, or Jews in the ghettos or the ovens action figures from his Inglorious Basterds piece of "art?"  Please!  This man just shined up some shit and called it gold, and Black folk just jumped in line for his gold rush! {smmfh}

"When you look at Roots, nothing about it rings true in the storytelling, and none of the performances ring true for me either,” Tarantino told The Daily Beast’s Allison Samuels. “I didn’t see it when it first came on, but when I did I couldn’t get over how oversimplified they made everything about that time. It didn’t move me because it claimed to be something it wasn’t.”

Oh, so now, he's "the authority" on telling our story.{smdh}  Reading his utterly, self-serving comments above, I'm reminded of something the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie said at a TED conference:

"It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think of the power structures of the world and it is "nkali," it's a noun that loosely translates to -- "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories, too are defined, by the principal of "nkali." How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told -- are really dependent on power.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definitive story of that person." (emphasis mine)

Instead of racing to your keyboards to collect you some of this "awesome Negrobilia," (tongue planted firmly in cheek here) from Amazon, you might be better served in the long-run, trying to figure out how to get you some damned "nkali" -- and stop letting these white folk define who you are!

Spike sure was right.

Chatting with Sis. Carolyn in the comments made me think of this powerful, young sister and how what she had to say here, was so apropos to this topic:



Related:
- Freedom Rider: A Real Life Django
- A Few Thoughts on Django Unchained
- Quentin Tarantino: Slave Profiteer
- 5 Quick Points Against Django Unchained, Because It’s Not Worth 6.
- Civil War hero Robert Smalls seized the opportunity to be free

Lincoln, the resolute white supremacist -- the Changeling's "homeboy"?

Back, when I was younger, "homeboy" didn't only refer to someone who came from the same place as you.  It was someone of that place, someone with whom you shared a collection of innate life experiences, or, as Baldwin put it below -- a "system of reality":



Whether one wants to own the "system" Baldwin described, or not (and there are many who do not), most of us cannot disown the skin color by which white supremacy judges, attacks and devalues our worth.

During the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates on slavery, The Changeling's "homeboy" made quite clear there was a different "system of reality" at play between Blacks and himself.  In an excerpt from the first debate held in Ottowa, IL (interesting name, given so many slaves escaped American terrorism via the Underground Railroad to Canada, only to "meet the enemy" there as well), he said:

"Now, gentlemen...This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. [Laughter.] I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.  I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. [Great applause.] (emphasis mine)

I guess if you consider him your "homeboy" -- you just ignore the lasting, soul-murdering effects of Lincoln's positioning us as socially, politically, morally, intellectually and physically unequal to white men,in favor of praising his pragmatic arguments against "the institution" (which itself, was fully formed as a result of all those things you ignore).

Was he clear in his white supremacist beliefs?  I sure think so. Was he consistent in those beliefs?  Here's an excerpt from the fourth debate held in Charleston, IL -- you be the judge:

While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. (emphasis mine)

Seems pretty consistent and mighty white of him to me.  I might've even said, "At least he was honest!" -- except for the level of manipulation, guilt-tripping and dishonesty described in Rick Beard's recent New York Times piece, Lincoln's Panama Plan; a plan devised to get as many of our Black asses out of their, United States as he could (as if Sierra Leone and Liberia weren't enough).

I went back and forth on whether to link to, or post in its entirety, Lincoln's address, whose arguments were, according to Beard -- "...so audacious that they,retain the ability to shock a reader 150 years later."  After reading it, I thought its "homeboy" impact would be much better felt if readers saw it all at once, in his own words (with my own commentary interspersed, of course). So, here it is:

"Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes"
Abraham Lincoln
August 14, 1862

This afternoon the President of the United States gave audience to a Committee of colored men at the White House. They were introduced by the Rev. J. Mitchell, Commissioner of Emigration. E. M. Thomas, the Chairman, remarked that they were there by invitation to hear what the Executive had to say to them. Having all been seated, the President, after a few preliminary observations, informed them that a sum of money had been appropriated by Congress, and placed at his disposition for the purpose of aiding the colonization in some country of the people, or a portion of them, of African descent, thereby making it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that cause; and why, he asked, should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. You here are freemen I suppose.

A VOICE: Yes, sir. (emphasis mine)

Per Beard's piece, "It was the first time African Americans had been invited to the White House on a policy matter." That in itself, in 1862 was enough to impress them I'm sure (all we need do is consider the behavior of some Black folk who today, were first-time invitees to the Big House after the Changeling was selected).  And Lincoln wasted no time in flashing some cash in return for their complicity in his colonization "scheme" (hm-m-m-m, sounds like reparations if we'd just get the hell out of Dodge, right?  See footnote 1 of the address for how much they were willing to pay in 1862 dollars; She-e-e-t, back then, I might've been inclined to take that damned cash!).

But in his never-wavering white supremacy, he made sure to keep them "in their place" by reminding them of our "physical difference" (which I think disguises their mortal fear of us) and the fact that our mere presence caused suffering among the white race (like we asked to come here via the Black Holocaust of slavery). Hell, how much could they have been "suffering" or "disadvantaged, given they'd worked us like the animals they felt we were, to -- clear land; farm, in order to feed them and make profits; build roads, homes and striking edifices in which they still "govern" (and I use that word loosely); be wet nurses to their damned children; clean their houses; wash and iron their clothes; cook their meals; milk their cows; raise their chickens and gather their eggs, etc., etc.?  Suffering?  Please!

The President---Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. (emphasis mine)

So-o-o, he sees "the greatest wrong inflicted," but still can't see Blacks as equal to whites.  Then, he uses his faux, give-a-shit to try to convince them that it was best for us to get the hell out. Clearly our existence among "those particular angels, angels who, nevertheless, are always willing to give you a helping hand" -- had to come second. The Doctrine of "Divine Right" said so. {smdh}

I do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. It is a fact, about which we all think and feel alike, I and you. We look to our condition, owing to the existence of the two races on this continent. I need not recount to you the effects upon white men, growing out of the institution of Slavery. I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition---the country engaged in war!---our white men cutting one another's throats, none knowing how far it will extend; and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence. (emphasis mine)

The Changeling's "homeboy" is pretty patriarchal with his "I'm not discussing this" attitude.  Doesn't  seem to matter much to him what they might be thinking.  And, "I cannot alter it if I would" sounds like pretty resolute, white supremacy to me.  And then, the guilt-tripping begins in earnest, blaming slavery (the capitalist enterprise into which white men willfully and gleefully plunged for profit) -- not only for "white men cutting one another's throats," but for the war as well (for all you deniers out there).  Way to take NO agency at all in white folks's absolute barbarity against us, AND one another there Abe.  Yeah, this institution y'all needed so badly caused white folk to act like, horror of horrors -- savages!

It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that there are free men among you, who even if they could better their condition are not as much inclined to go out of the country as those, who being slaves could obtain their freedom on this condition. I suppose one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it. You may believe you can live in Washington or elsewhere in the United States the remainder of your life [as easily], perhaps more so than you can in any foreign country, and hence you may come to the conclusion that you have nothing to do with the idea of going to a foreign country. This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case.

But you ought to do something to help those who are not so fortunate as yourselves. There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us. Now, if you could give a start to white people, you would open a wide door for many to be made free. If we deal with those who are not free at the beginning, and whose intellects are clouded by Slavery, we have very poor materials to start with. If intelligent colored men, such as are before me, would move in this matter, much might be accomplished. It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men, and not those who have been systematically oppressed. (emphasis mine)

His "...we should be separated" grand solution is funny.  What would America have looked like had we all left back then?  Accusing them (in no unkind sense, mind you) of being extremely selfish is guilting.  And so is his paternalistically telling these men what they ought to do (all the while keeping at the forefront, how much white folk don't want to deal with Black folk).

Among the many egregious statements made by the "Great Emancipator" in this address, I find these to be among the rankest:  1) Black men, "should give a start" to these barbarians in order for the rest of us to be free?  What kind of shit is that?  The onus should be put on US, to make them act like human beings??  2) Those minds, "clouded by Slavery," are "poor materials to start with?"  Pitting the House Negro's alleged superior thinking against the Field Negro's alleged inferior thinking is so par for white supremacy's course.  3) And this, especially, is the pinnacle of that course, which is still working like a champ to this day -- "It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men, and not those who have been systematically oppressed."

O-h-h-h, given the Changeling's craven idolatry of the guy, were he around today, he would certainly give his little, brown-faced "homeboy" a hearty pat on the head for his performance to date!  I have no particular love for Rev. Jesse Jackson but, the predominantly white, MSM's heyday notwithstanding, he certainly should have stood by his open-mike comment about the Changeling back in 2008 (Okay, maybe not the "nuts" part) -- because he was right about him "talking down to Black folk," mirroring Lincoln's encouragement to these Black men.

There is much to encourage you. For the sake of your race you should sacrifice something of your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the white people. It is a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usage of the world. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself, and claims kindred to the great God who made him. In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men engaged in it; but they were cheered by the future. Gen. Washington himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had remained a British subject. Yet he was a happy man, because he was engaged in benefiting his race---something for the children of his neighbors, having none of his own. (emphasis mine)

"For the sake of your race..."  Okay,  I'm getting plenty weary of the guilt-tripping, aren't you?  And even more, I'm sick of him telling Black folk to be, "as grand in that respect as the white people."  And what exactly does Washington's "commitment" have to do with anything?  He was considered white, just like them.

The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time.  In a certain sense it is a success. The old President of Liberia, Roberts, has just been with me---the first time I ever saw him. He says they have within the bounds of that colony between 300,000 and 400,000 people, or more than in some of our old States, such as Rhode Island or Delaware, or in some of our newer States, and less than in some of our larger ones. They are not all American colonists, or their descendants. Something less than 12,000 have been sent thither from this country. Many of the original settlers have died, yet, like people elsewhere, their offspring outnumber those deceased.

The question is if the colored people are persuaded to go anywhere, why not there? One reason for an unwillingness to do so is that some of you would rather remain within reach of the country of your nativity. I do not know how much attachment you may have toward our race. It does not strike me that you have the greatest reason to love them. But still you are attached to them at all events. (emphasis mine)

First, he tells these men, "in a certain sense," that Liberia is a success.  Yet, he talks about meeting the "old president of Liberia" for the first time.  In a certain sense,  I don't think he knew a damned thing about the successfulness of Liberia (or didn't want to admit how much success had been made as relayed during that first-time visit).

The place I am thinking about having for a colony is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia---not much more than one-fourth as far as Liberia, and within seven days' run by steamers. Unlike Liberia it is on a great line of travel---it is a highway. The country is a very excellent one for any people, and with great natural resources and advantages, and especially because of the similarity of climate with your native land---thus being suited to your physical condition.

The particular place I have in view is to be a great highway from the Atlantic or Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and this particular place has all the advantages for a colony. On both sides there are harbors among the finest in the world. Again, there is evidence of very rich coal mines. A certain amount of coal is valuable in any country, and there may be more than enough for the wants of the country. Why I attach so much importance to coal is, it will afford an opportunity to the inhabitants for immediate employment till they get ready to settle permanently in their homes.

If you take colonists where there is no good landing, there is a bad show; and so where there is nothing to cultivate, and of which to make a farm. But if something is started so that you can get your daily bread as soon as you reach there, it is a great advantage. Coal land is the best thing I know of with which to commence an enterprise.

To return, you have been talked to upon this subject, and told that a speculation is intended by gentlemen, who have an interest in the country, including the coal mines. We have been mistaken all our lives if we do not know whites as well as blacks look to their self-interest. Unless among those deficient of intellect everybody you trade with makes something. You meet with these things here as elsewhere.

If such persons have what will be an advantage to them, the question is whether it cannot be made of advantage to you. You are intelligent, and know that success does not as much depend on external help as on self-reliance. Much, therefore, depends upon yourselves. As to the coal mines, I think I see the means available for your self-reliance.

I shall, if I get a sufficient number of you engaged, have provisions made that you shall not be wronged. If you will engage in the enterprise I will spend some of the money intrusted to me. I am not sure you will succeed. The Government may lose the money, but we cannot succeed unless we try; but we think, with care, we can succeed. (emphasis mine)

Now did he think the "similarity of climate" to our "native land" thing was a deal-maker?  Hell, all of the Deep South has that kind of climate (one of the main reasons they brought us here to clear land, prepare fields and grow cotton and rice, among other cash crops)!  And ole Abe was just being totally dishonest about the whole, "rich coal mines" nonsense.  As it turns out, it was merely another, flashing-of-cash-to-come, setting-folk-up-to-fail exercise.  According to Beard's piece, "The Chiriquí venture was, in retrospect, doomed from the start. Ambrose Thompson’s title to the coal lands proved questionable, and a report by the Smithsonian Institution’s Joseph Henry found that the Chiriquí coal was almost worthless as fuel."

The political affairs in Central America are not in quite as satisfactory condition as I wish. There are contending factions in that quarter; but it is true all the factions are agreed alike on the subject of colonization, and want it, and are more generous than we are here. To your colored race they have no objection. Besides, I would endeavor to have you made equals, and have the best assurance that you should be the equals of the best. (emphasis mine)

Another outright lie, as indicated in the last paragraph of footnote 1:  "A letter of authority from Lincoln to Pomeroy was prepared for Lincoln's signature, probably by the State Department, under date of September 10, 1862, but remains unsigned in duplicate copies in the Lincoln Papers. The project was abandoned when first Honduras and later Nicaragua and Costa Rica protested the scheme and hinted that force might be used to prevent the settlement."

Besides lying on Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, can somebody please tell me how he could have us made equals -- in Central America?  By throwing some money around to foment rebellion between the "contending factions "like his "homeboy" does today?  And even if that would have worked, it wouldn't have made us "equal" -- just gone (which is all he wanted anyway).

The practical thing I want to ascertain is whether I can get a number of able-bodied men, with their wives and children, who are willing to go, when I present evidence of encouragement and protection. Could I get a hundred tolerably intelligent men, with their wives and children, to ``cut their own fodder,'' so to speak? Can I have fifty? If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with a mixture of women and children, good things in the family relation, I think I could make a successful commencement. (emphasis mine)

Sounds like an auctioneer doesn't he?

I want you to let me know whether this can be done or not. This is the practical part of my wish to see you. These are subjects of very great importance, worthy of a month's study, [instead] of a speech delivered in an hour. I ask you then to consider seriously not pertaining to yourselves merely, nor for your race, and ours, for the present time, but as one of the things, if successfully managed, for the good of mankind---not confined to the present generation, but as

"From age to age descends the lay,

To millions yet to be,

Till far its echoes roll away,

Into eternity."

The above is merely given as the substance of the President's remarks.

The Chairman of the delegation briefly replied that "they would hold a consultation and in a short time give an answer." The President said: "Take your full time---no hurry at all."

The delegation then withdrew. (emphasis mine)

"For the good of mankind." Now that just warrants nothin' but this:

 

And, going back to Beard's piece, there were better men than Lincoln who agree:

Nevertheless, the publication of Lincoln’s remarks at the meeting generated a furious response from all corners of the anti-slavery world. To Senator John P. Hale, a Radical Republican from New Hampshire, “The idea of removing the whole colored population from this country is one of the most absurd ideas that ever entered into the head of man or woman.” Lincoln’s treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, wrote in his diary, “How much better would be a manly protest against prejudice against color! — and a wise effort to give freemen homes in America!” On Aug. 22 William Lloyd Garrison editorialized that “the nation’s four million slaves are as much the natives of this country as any of their oppressors,” and two weeks later The Pacific Appeal noted that Lincoln’s words “made it evident that he, his cabinet, and most of the people, care but little for justice to the negro.” And Frederick Douglass said that “the President of the United States seems to possess an ever increasing passion for making himself appear silly and ridiculous, if nothing worse.” (emphasis mine)

Unlike Mr. Beard, I experienced no "shock" at all in reading Lincoln's machinations toward these free Black men.  Maybe because, I long ago abandoned the whole "Lincoln-freed-the-slaves" meme as some humanitarian gesture on his part (h-m-m-m-m, his "homeboy," uses that word, "humanitarian" a lot too -- right before he joins the "usual suspects" in some land-grabbing, imperialist, regime changing inhumanity) -- because it was not.  It was merely a focused military strategy to "save the Union," which didn't even apply to those slaves in border states or those in southern states already under Union control.

So let's just be clear -- Lincoln's concern was neither for us, nor our well-being.  His aim was to keep this country as white as he possibly could, which is why he's no "homeboy" of mine.  And while I agree with William Lloyd Garrison above, there are days when this comment I read and saved long ago, makes more and more sense to me:

"Stay where you are celebrated, reconsider where you are tolerated, and flee where you are persecuted."

-- commenter Alex Raventhorne on "....and yet they wonder why POC emigrate"

Related:
-"Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream"/ Lerone Bennett, Jr. (video)
- A Separate Peace
- Emancipation’s Price
- Thomas concedes that ‘we the people’ didn’t include blacks
-Was the Civil War actually about Slavery?
- I'm Black Really. Just Read My Book
- The incredible nothingness of "whiteness"... (you can listen to the entire October 26, 1965, Baldwin v Buckley debate at Cambridge from which the first video was taken here)
- Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land (Randall Robinson interview begins at the 28:27 click)

From "Oh say can you see," to 'decolonial love'--a long, but necessary walk to freedom

Amid all the "Independence Day" talk and Star-Spangled-Banner singing this week, three eerily interrelated offerings on Salon in the past four days got me thinking about how taken together, they give the absolute lie to the reason for celebrating this so recently passed holiday.   To clearly explain the usual jumble of thoughts racing around in this head of mine--"The last shall be first, and the first, last."

-Article #3-

Though I disagree with some of his conclusions, Jefferson Morley's, July 4, "Francis Scott Key on trial," sets the stage for the widely ignored fact (by whites and Blacks alike), that the majority of whites in this"land of the free, home of the brave" never, ever, had the equal inclusion of Blacks as their intention.  We were here as property, merely tools to be used to achieve imperialist ends -- much like today:

The crowds had come to see Key’s case against the abolitionist movement. Just as the slaveholders’ representatives on Capitol Hill were noisily seeking a “gag rule” to prevent debate over slavery on the floor of Congress, so did Key, the famous author of “The Star Spangled Banner,” seek to silence those who would agitate for freedom on the streets of Washington City. In the trial of New York doctor Reuben Crandall, he hoped to defeat the antislavery men in the court of public opinion. The abolitionist, in turn, hoped to discredit Key, sneering about his hometown, “Land of the Free …. Home of the Oppressed.”

The debate between Key and Coxe crystallized how radical new ideas of rights introduced by the free people of color and their white allies in the early 1830s had galvanized popular thinking in America.  These ideas divided Americans into two broad political tendencies that would endure into the 21st century. Key and Coxe were exemplars of what we now know as red and blue politics.  (emphasis mine)

But rather than seeing Key's authoring of "The Star Spangled Banner" as a contradiction, I see it (along with the Declaration of Independence) as confirmation of the total invisibilising of the "Other" in their midst.  As I read the above, I thought about Dr. Clarke's counsel on forming "alliances" from the 1:05 - 5:38 click  here.  Yes, abolitionists were "partners" in ending the slave trade, but we cannot forget about how both  Freetown and Liberia (an idea endorsed by the "Great Emancipator," Abe Lincoln) figured into their equation.  And I have to ask myself, if popular thinking in America had been so galvanized--what the hell happened?  I don't know about you, but for me, more than any other abolitionist, John Brown was one of the very few white men on whose alliance we could always count back then--and to the very end no less.  But that's just me.

"Radical new ideas of rights introduced,"already speaks to the existing and continuing inhumanity of those, with whom we have always been dealing.  That there was a need to "introduce" in the first place, confirms the "white is right" mentality in which most of the populace was engaged, which renders the idea that there was ever a division quite moot. While Key and Coxe may have been "exemplars of what we now know as red and blue politics," ALL white folk then (as they do now), enjoyed the "privilege" of being "white" in these alleged, United States of America (I can't even count the number of times that white kids, similarly situated spewed, "At least I'm not a nigger!).

 So, along with the authors of the "Declaration of Independence," penning this "historic" document in 1776 (one of whom I'm almost certain, but am still trying to nail down, owned my father's side of the family), Francis Scott Key and his 1814, "Star Spangled Banner," along with the much-admired-in-journalism-schools in America, John Stuart Mill, with his 1859, "On Liberty,"  we find the nexus of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy (WSCP)--writ large.  None of those so-called "leaders," up to which most Americans look, nor any of their "contributions" to American society, gave two shits about Blacks, either here or abroad -- yet we continually sing, "Oh say can you see..."

The blues of the 1830s were the liberals of the day, the opponents of slavery, concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast.  They were so-called abolitionists and they brought three radical ideas into the realm of American politics:

1) Property rights are not unlimited;

2) American citizenship is open to people of any race;

3) The freedom to advocate both is essential

These strong ideals still animate the American liberal tradition nearly two centuries later. Like the anti-slavery men and women of yore, 21st century liberals believe that property rights can be limited for the common good; that American citizenship should be as inclusive as possible; and that freedom of expression is a prerequisite of a free society. Reuben Crandall’s defense attorney Richard Coxe was no abolitionist and he did not argue in court for Negro equality in U.S. v Crandall. But he did lay out a “true blue” case for freedom of expression to protect those who wanted to advance such ideas.

Key’s response was a classic conservative rebuttal. From the start Key denounced Coxe for even defending the advocates of Negro citizenship and those who questioned the slave owners’ expansive definition of property rights. Compared to Coxe, Key had a much narrower conception of freedom of speech. He argued that the antislavery publications could be suppressed in the name of public safety since they might incite violent rebellion. He defended a narrower conception of American citizenship — that it was reserved for the native-born and whites only. And he had a much more expansive understanding of property rights. White men did have a constitutional right to own property in people, Key insisted. (emphasis mine)

{Baldwin whispers at the end of Pg. 64 of  Every Good-bye Ain't Gone:  "...in many ways, from the language of the lawgiver to the language of the liberal -- is that "your people" deserve, in effect, their fate.  Your fate--"your" people's fate--involves being, forever, a little lower than these particular angels, angels who, nevertheless, are always ready to give you a helping hand" (like Coxe}.  It's no wonder Morely tagged them "so-called abolitionists!"  Forget looking at all this through Morely's conservative vs. liberal, red vs. blue lens.  Let's just be clear here:

1. None of this--was about any of us "Others," particularly Blacks (unless of course, there's a get-me-over-the-hump election in the offing). We're all still seen as property, unlimited or no.  We were and remain, mere tools to manipulate to further imperialist ends (many decisions citing Crandall today rarely, if ever, contain a human element);
2. Native Americans in particular, still do not enjoy true "openness" of American citizenship though they were here, long before the neocolonialists came with their fancy court cases (Dartmouth anyone?  A peanut butter and jelly sandwich to the first person who can show me that today its enrollment -- for whom they said it was being built -- is predominantly Native American).  And despite the Changeling's, election year about-face (after deporting more of you than any administration--ever), brown folk just might want to keep Keys's argument about the whole idea of "scorning the idea of multiracial citizenship" in mind.  After all, it's been the WSCP's MO since they claimed this land for all of those Western monarchs).
3. Let's face it Jefferson, while the freedom for advocating for both remains essential, it will still result in proverbial "asses warming the Prison Industrial Complex bench"in red and blue states alike.

As we all put our right hands over our hearts and sing Key's "Star Spangled Banner," thoughts of its author, his beliefs, and the beliefs upon which his country was founded, never really even cross our minds (present company used-to-be included) -- but it should.  Mr. Frederick Douglass explains this way better than I, here.

The rest of Morely's piece documents what happened during the case, historically.  But pardon me if I give no cookies to the jury that rendered the "Not guilty" verdict (just as hindsight is 20-20, so is foresight--nobody wanted their "property rights" infringed upon down the road!).  Besides, they were defending a white man's rights to freedom of speech -- not ours.

As Mr. Baldwin points out in his, "Notes on the House of Bondage":

The situation of the black American is a direct (and deliberate) result of the collusion between the North and South and the Federal Government. A black man in this country does not live under a two-party system but a four-party system. There is the Republican Party in the South, and there is the Republican Party in the North; there is the Democratic Party in the North and the Democratic Party in the South. These entities are Tweedledum and Tweedledee as concerns the ways they have been able, historically, to manipulate the black presence, the black need. At the same time, both parties were (are) protected from the deepest urgencies of black need by the stance of the Federal Government, which could (can) always justify both parties, and itself, by use of the doctrine of "States' rights."

I've absolutely no quarrel with his estimation.

-Article #2-

I include this Jul 4, Glenn Greenwald clip not only because I enjoy his constitutional conversations as he "rails against the machine," but because the title of the segment, "Without rule of law, are all men created equal,"along with Spitzer's intro, provide yet another example of our total invisibility.  Glenn's thesis aside (and yes, I know his being there was to talk about the so-called "elites" employing their infamous foot-on-neck brand of behavior on white folk now, but anyway),  America has always been two populations, one oblivious to the law (of humanity as it relates to us) and the other subject to it (that'd be us).



But as much as I enjoy Glenn (appreciate his nod to the Prison Industrial complex which houses more people who look like me than him), and because he's a member of a decidedly new, "protected class" of so-called allies, I found his response to Spitzer's, "I don't want to spend too much time on history but, has it always been thus?" -- very telling (particularly since I could hear Dr. Clarke's voice, over and over in my head saying, "But watch the alliance!").

Glenn recited a litany of advantages/privileges white folk had back in the 1820s (lest we forget, Key penned his little ditty in 1814), which are the same ones they enjoy today.  And even though Glenn felt the difference then, was "we always affirmed the principle that the rule of law required that everybody played by the same set of rules," his need to add the, "even though we violated it and breached it in all sorts of ways" basically said to me, "Yes, Black folk, it has always been thus for you but no need to talk about that historical fact -- cuz us white folk catchin' hell right now!"  Just sayin'...

-Article #1-

Paula M.L. Moya's, incredible, "The search for decolonial love" interview with Junot Díaz was the best of the three pieces by far (took my old head some time to get through it, having to look some shit up and all).  But I gotta tell ya, I just love it when the interviewer, is as emotionally connected and invested as the interviewee!  Makes for some riveting commentary.

Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist notwithstanding, I'd never heard of, nor read, any of his work. That will change.  One of the things I appreciated most was the honoring of the women whose literary works in their heyday, mightily informed the woman I have become.  Listening to each of them share their understandings, I realized I'd walked a very similar walk, every day, to be free -- even as I struggled against my colonized mind (and what a long and necessary walk it has, and continues to be!)

"I was so pleased when, during your lecture yesterday, you stated — clearly and unapologetically — that you write about race. I have always been struck by the fact that, in all the interviews you have given that I have read, no one ever asks you about race. If it does come up, it is because you bring it up. Yet it has long been apparent to me that race is one of your central concerns."

I was pleased to hear that statement too.  Instead of running away from race, here's a brother running toward it.  And like a runner in a 4-man relay race, he's reaching confidently back for the baton he needs and knows is there -- to keep him going forward toward victory.  That just makes so much more sense to me than the Changeling's "Look forward, not back" nonsense.  As I considered this young brother's recollections which mirrored my own slow, but sure, "coming of age" in many ways, I could certainly feel his "metanoia":

Junot: "Well, first of all, these sisters were pretty clear that redemption was not going to be found in the typical masculine nostrums of nationalism or armed revolution or even that great favorite of a certain class of writerly brother: transracial intimacy. Por favor!  If transracial intimacy was all we needed to be free, then a joint like the Dominican Republic would be the great cradle of freedom — which, I assure you, it is not. Why these sisters struck me as the most dangerous of artists was because in the work of, say, Morrison, or Octavia Butler, we are shown the awful radiant truth of how profoundly constituted we are of our oppressions.  Or, said differently: how indissolubly our identities are bound to the regimes that imprison us. These sisters not only describe the grim labyrinth of power that we are in as neocolonial subjects, but they also point out that we play both Theseus and the Minotaur in this nightmare drama. Most importantly these sisters offered strategies of hope, spinning the threads that will make escape from this labyrinth possible. It wasn’t an easy thread to seize — this movement towards liberation required the kind of internal bearing witness of our own role in the social hell of our world that most people would rather not engage in. It was a tough praxis but a potentially earthshaking one, too. Because rather than strike at this issue or that issue, this internal bearing of witness raised the possibility of denying our oppressive regimes the true source of their powers — which is, of course, our consent, our participation. This kind of praxis doesn’t attack the head of the beast, which will only grow back; it strikes directly at the beast’s heart, which we nurture and keep safe in our own. (Come on now, tell me I'm the only one who didn't know who Theseus and the Minotaur were? -- emphasis mine)

Akin to Baldwin's directive to continually "do your first works over," this internal bearing of witness to which Díaz refers, also requires us to reexamine -- everything.

Paula: This reminds me of a point you made in the question-and-answer session following your lecture yesterday. You said that people of color fuel white supremacy as much as white people do; that it is something we are all implicated in. You went on to suggest that only by first recognizing the social and material realities we live in — by naming and examining the effects of white supremacy — can we hope to transform our practices.

Junot: How can you change something if you won’t even acknowledge its existence, or if you downplay its significance? White supremacy is the great silence of our world, and in it is embedded much of what ails us as a planet...And yet here’s the rub: If a critique of white supremacy doesn’t first flow through you, doesn’t first implicate you, then you have missed the mark; you have, in fact, almost guaranteed its survival and reproduction. There’s that old saying: The devil’s greatest trick is that he convinced people that he doesn’t exist. Well, white supremacy’s greatest trick is that it has convinced people that, if it exists at all, it exists always in other people, never in us.

Now if there was any damned truth at all to D'Souza's nonsense here,  I'd say THAT was the greatest trick--EVAH!  But since the Changeling is constantly complicit in some of the most colonial shit -- EVAH (Libya/Uganda/AFRICOM anyone?), no need to get my hopes up.   Rereading Badwin's, Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone, I found many of the same threads running through both his and Junot's observations (which somehow consoles me greatly).

Junot:  The kind of love that I was interested in, that my characters long for intuitively, is the only kind of love that could liberate them from that horrible legacy of colonial violence.  I am speaking about decolonial love....Is it possible to love one’s broken-by-the-coloniality-of-power self in another broken-by-the-coloniality-of-power person? (emphasis mine)

I wonder how many of us can honestly answer that question?   How many of us are willing to shed our, "Oh say can you see," colonized minds, for the "decolonial love" about which  Díaz speaks?  As I read around the internet, it seems not very many of us.

The interview goes so much deeper than I have room to do here.  Try to get through the entire thing and then -- think.  I'm certain you'll come to some critical conclusions of your own.

Related:
-Decolonizing Black Power Studies w Dr. Quito Swan

Griot, Dr. John Henrik Clarke (1915 - 1998) - still teaching generations, both young AND old!

An "NAACP Image Awards" nod and another "Homegoing" - "Priscilla's Story"

Now I'll be the first to tell you - I've got little or nothing for the NAACP.  They've been such a great disappointment to me in so many ways - particularly since the selection of the Changeling.  However, as I sat watching the "NAACP Image Awards" last night, I was so glad I'd not totally written them off.

I watched, because I thought there'd be a better tribute to Whitney Houston than that offered at the Grammys.  Nothing against young sister, Jennifer Hudson, but I just felt a coming together of OUR people, would honor Sister Whitney in a way she truly deserved - and I was right.



Lawd ha' mercy!  Yolanda Adams took my crisis-of-faith, back-slidin' self - TO CHURCH!  And as they said the Lord said during creation - "It was good."  Tears rolled down my face as she belted out "I Love the Lord."  And as she wove in the sounds of praise like my Grandmama's old-lady-peopled, Edisto Island, Methodist senior choir, I must admit, my hands raised themselves up in the air as I sat at my table.  Yolanda, I thank you for that my sister!  It dealt with me in an extraordinary way.

My other joy, was my people's full-throated support of Viola Davis and "The Help" (I know, I know - I said I wasn't going to watch it, but  did - on the plane to Africa).  Though I had mega-issues with this white woman telling our story (including her treatment of the woman upon whom Aibileen was based), I found myself feeling pride in the way Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer paid homage to my now-gone-home, great-grandmother; grandmother; mother; my mother's sisters still here - and to my dear, dear, Miss Dora, all of them, at one time or another having been "The Help."

Ms. Dora was my mother's best friend who, spending most of her entire life being "The Help," sent all her children to college, owns her own home in Charleston and still managed to have a great time with my mother on their annual NFL bus trips, here, there and everywhere!  I'm reminded of a church trip she made to DC when I was going to Georgetown back in 2008.  I picked her up at her hotel, brought her to my little apartment in NE, and then - I took her to the Kennedy Center to see "The Color Purple."  What a wonderful time we both had!

After I took her back to the hotel, we sat and talked about my Mama - and cried til it was time for me to go.  Ms. Dora hugged me close and said, "Debi, you're gonna be alright Child."  And that too, was good.  Viola, Octavia, Miss Dora - all I can fix my mouth to say is - "Thank you all so very much for being our help!"

~#~

My cousin, Lesa at home, sent me this link last night and I just had to post it because it was wonderfully inspirational for me!  You see, I've been following crumbs of my own for awhile now, trying to piece together my own ancestral heritage in the same way as Alex Haley and Ms. Polite's father in the following video (minus the help of Joe Opala of course - who I'm sure has no idea how much his research into my Gullah Culture kick-started my journey!).

My search, now centered on The Gambia, began as a serendipitous invitation from Gerald Pinedo saying, "You should come!  Every Black American should go home at least once in their life!"   But once I set foot on that soil, the absolutely striking similarities to my Edisto Island roots took over and now, they just won't let me go!  Maybe Sierra Leone should be my focus, I don't know.  But what I found in The Gambia so far, is surely a part of me as well.  I'll be posting much more about it as time passes, but in the meantime, enjoy this wonderful education about "whose we are" which enables us to continue standing:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Brief Interlude…

First of all, a belated Happy New Year!!!

In retrospect...

Just a few 2011 things that I started writing about, but - as has increasingly been the case with me - sat, as drafts:

• It’s official. We’ve got bragging rights to our First, Black Murderer-in-Chief. No need to really go further into that except to say - Black folk, please stop conflating him with MLK!  That many of you see him as the realization of Dr. King’s dream is certainly your prerogative, but to me - it seems evidence of some deeply embedded PTSD (Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder).
• Am I the only one that finds this man-made coral reef incredibly insensitive, and at the very least - skeevy?

(Here's the transcript if you care:  "Bodies" Make Up Fake Coral Reef)

I remember a former co-worker in the Keys covering the calamitous sinking of the landing ship, USS Spiegel Grove off Key Largo in 2003.  Now that made sense to me.  But this?  Not so much.

I’m all for saving the environment, but really Jason?  I suppose the fact that there’s hundreds of years of remains of REAL Black bodies in all that water as a result of the slave trade matters not to this Brit.  And why should it?  Let's not forget, "The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa" (along with its later iterations) with its monopoly on the slave trade - certainly travelled the Carribean, tossing overboard and/or dropping off LIVE cargo all along the way).  As I said, I find the sinking of some of these warships much more palatable. But that’s just me.

Look, kudos to those who’ve dedicated themselves to the various “Occupy” movements across the country - but I’ll pass. Any movement calling itself “Occupy” anything, leaves a bad taste in my mouth – LIKE BLOOD. From my indigenous brothers and sisters here in America and abroad, to the Africans, from whom I’m descended – I think there’s been w-a-a-y more than enough damned “OCCUPYING” going on.  This piece last year confirms that, Occupy Oakland Faces a Troubled Police Dept. - and Historic Mayor:

While President Obama was telling the small crowd at a $7500-a-plate fundraiser in San Francisco that “Change is possible,” Pooda Miller was across the bay trying to get her plate back from the Oakland Police Department. “They came, pulled out rifles, shot us up with tear gas and took all our stuff,” said Miller, at an afternoon rally condemning the violent evacuation of more than 170 peaceful, unarmed Occupy Oaklanders by 500 heavily-armed members of the Oakland Police Department and other local departments yesterday morning.

With a long metal police fence separating Miller and other members of Occupy Oakland from their confiscated items—tents, water, food, clothes, medicine, plates—and now possessed by the police, Miller grabbed a big blue and white bullhorn that looked like it was almost half of her 4-foot, 5-inch frame...

...The sound of Miller’s ire shot across the protective masks of all of the officers standing at alert on the other side of the metal police fence, but her loudest, most acidic anger was saved for the baton-wielding officer who, like herself and other officers, was a young African-American woman.

“Who are you serving?” screamed Miller at the top of her high pitched voice, turned raspy from hours of denouncing. “You’re being used. You’re getting paid with our tax money to put down your own people! Why are you doing this to your own people?” 

Miller’s questions about the role of race in the policing of Occupy Oakland points to what is and will continue to be the larger question in Oakland and other U.S. cities where former “minorities” are becoming majorities: What does it mean when those charged with defending elite interests against multi-racial and increasingly non-white activists are themselves multiracial and non-white? The ongoing protests, mayor recall, phone calls, emails and other pressure and pushback of Occupy Oakland are no longer aimed at cigar-smoking white men. They are aimed at a power structure in Oakland whose public face looks more like Miller and other non-white protesters.

Miller and others are calling for the recall of Jean Quan, who made history as Oakland’s first Asian-American mayor...and they are complaining about the use of excessive police violence authorized by Interim Chief Howard Jordan, an African American. Such conflicts between former minorities are becoming the norm in what more conservative commentators call the “post-racial” era ushered in by the election of Obama...

(I swear I heard my sister-elder, Audre Lorde whispering, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" when I read the above paragraph!)

...Many like Miller and other Occupy Oaklanders are having second thoughts about what feels like the affirmative actioning of policing and state violence. Others, like Ofelia Cuevas of the University of California’s Center for New Racial Studies, see the workings of a not-so-21st-century pattern of policing and power.

“Having people of color policing people of color is not new,” said Cuevas. “This was part of policing history in California from the beginning. In the 1940s, while the federal government was interning Japanese Americans in camps, officials in Los Angeles were starting to recruit black police officers as a way to decrease police brutality.”

Cuevas noted that big city mayors like Quan or Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are, by electoral and structural necessity, required to act like any of their predecessors, who headed up police forces that attacked, surveilled and even killed those perceived as a threat to the establishment...

...“Being mayor is being pro-police. They perceive that it’s their job to crush what they consider threats to the status quo,” said Cuevas.

Regardless of who is Mayor or police chief, keeping the status quo is the last thing that Gaston Lau, a 21 year-old english major at University of California, Berkeley, sees as an option. “[Quan’s] support for this amount of police brutality here is ridiculous,” said Lau, who held a placard that said “Down, Down with Jean Quan.”

“The future power struggles are not just going to be about fights between one race and another,” said Lau. “They’re mostly going to be about class, which is a big part about what the whole Occupy movement is about.”

Lau is hopeful that the movement will inspire younger Asian Pacific Islanders to engage with the issues of the Occupy moment, but worries about the generational conflict such a political engagement entails. “Some older Chinese might see having one of our own as mayor as a source of pride, but we need to help them understand how Quan and police act against us.”

Despite the internal and external challenges posed by multicultural powers putting down multicultural movements, Lau is, like his Occupy Oakland peers, undeterred. Clashes between Occupiers and Oakland police continued into last night as protesters tried to reclaim the park and police met them with tear gas. The movement has vowed to continue attempting to return to the space. “Whether or not the mayor is Asian,” Lau said, “when she acts against the people, then we will respond as the people.” (all emphasis mine)

I'm definitely with Pooda, whose views perfectly reflect what Dr. King shared with Mr. Belafonte - five days before he was murdered.  See interview below (I don't do ads here if I can help it, so kindly ignore that shout-out at the end - I just couldn't find the original):



(and seems not much has changed Mr. Belafonte.)

As for Lau, I can only partially agree, because the idea that the new battle is about “class only" is, IMHO - a calculated distraction. Forget his nod to "generational conflict," we are EONS away from being post-racial, not only in America - but globally!

• Because I lived, worked and paid taxes in PG County for a time, this one was unfortunately expected, pretty damned hilarious, and very William Jefferson-esque:  Jack Johnson Hid $80k In Wife's Bra As FBI Listened In

A married pair of top officials in a Maryland county is accused of tampering with evidence after FBI agents said they recorded the husband telling his wife to flush a $100,000 check from a real estate developer down the toilet and to stuff almost $80,000 in cash in her underwear...

..."To all the citizens of Prince George's County, you know me. I've served you long and I've served you well and most of you know me well. I cannot go into these allegations because my lawyers will kill me if I do. I'm innocent of these charges. I just can't wait for the facts to come out. When they come out, I am absolutely convinced that we will be vindicated." (emphasis mine)

Um, Jack? This doesn't sound like vindication to me:  Jack Johnson, former Prince George’s exec, sentenced to 7 years in corruption.  As my sister, Cinie used to say - Silly wabbit!

And finally this from The Daily Caller in what used-to-be the "Chocolate City:"


Still waiting on the Changeling I guess...{smdh}

A couple ruminations and an update...

I.  State-sponsored murder is still murder - particularly so, if there's "Too Much Doubt."

I've read many an article on the Troy Davis case but, this Dispatch from Death Row:  Saving Troy Davis With a Family's Love brings a definite ray of sunshine amid all this sadness - his nephew.

(Photo Courtesy Amnesty International)

I can't say whether he's innocent or guilty.  But what I can say is - this case should not only be giving the state of Georgia serious pause, but every, single person in this country (Don't fool yourself, it can surely happen to anyone).

This isn't a civil case, where the standard of proof is satisfied by either,  "a preponderance of the evidence" or, "clear and convincing evidence."  This, is a criminal case, and the standard of proof -seeing as people's freedom and/or their very lives hang in the balance - is "beyond a reasonable doubt."  Given the numerous recantations and the, at least one, alternative suspect, I'd say the "beyond..." part, absent an evidentiary hearing on the new evidence, comes up a little short.

And no, I'm not discounting the fact, that the family of the slain officer is also in pain here.  I just keep asking myself - "They've waited all this time, what difference would the additional time it'd take for an evidentiary hearing make now?"  Certainly, that's preferable to having the state murder an innocent man in their name - right?

Angela Davis said, in this 2003 video - "Capital punishment is a legacy of slavery.  It's a sediment of  slavery."  Others, too, have made that connection:

Troy Davis, victim of judicial lynching, and on a lighter, but still on-point note - U.S. Prison/Industrial Complex - The New Slavery & The Sickness In The American System.

UPDATE - Tomorrow, Georgia Murders Troy Davis

II.  Some more of that - "Change" y'all wanna believe in.

For some time now, I've just been trying to make sense of this world in which we now live.  Believe me when I tell you - it's becoming increasingly difficult.  And just when I thought I'd reached my peak of disgust with the smoke-and-mirrors, "tenth dimensional" chess playing and unquenchable thirst for money and power - I read this last week:  U.S. Appeals to Palestinians to Stall U.N. Vote on Statehood - and just shook my head, yet again.

This, is why people rode and died?  So that - our own lived experience here notwithstanding - people who look like us can impose the same thing on e'erybody else??  Strange, I never thought supremacy was the goal.  Seems I was mistaken:

The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over a plan by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations...The administration has circulated a proposal for renewed peace talks with the Israelis in the hopes of persuading the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon the bid for recognition at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly beginning Sept. 20.

The administration has made it clear to Mr. Abbas that it will veto any request presented to the United Nations Security Council to make a Palestinian state a new member outright. (emphasis mine)

This man (that y'all keep conflating with MLK) seems a lit-tle, too, willing, to shed what King believed about freedom and self-determination, in exchange for a fast-track to complicity with that Israeli foot, grinding on the necks of these brown folk, who've for decades now, been cordoned off and treated like interlopers in their own land - no?

Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in the opposition. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a wave of anger could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world at a time when the region is already in tumult. President Obama would be put in the position of threatening to veto recognition of the aspirations of most Palestinians or risk alienating Israel and its political supporters in the United States.

Let those emphasized portions sink in for a minute...

Damn that "All in the Game" foolishness!  That is some real WTFery right there.  After his, hat-in-hand to AIPAC on the campaign trail performance, here he is again - actin' like the, "Can I have more, Sir?" puppet-of-an-overseer that he is.  And what's worse (for America)?  Most people know it (except for some, who can't see anything but Israel):

• Obama should support Palestinian statehood
• Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period.
• Turkey takes over the Arab Spring
• Jack Straw urges MPs to back Palestinian statehood bid
• Saudi prince calls on U.S. to back Palestinian U.N. status (more than that!) 
• Palestine Goes to the UN
• Israel's diplomatic drive to block Palestinian UN bid
• The crime of apartheid 

UPDATE:  I spoke to my friend, Eric after that electioneering visit to CCNV.  As his latest post reveals, the Changeling continues to be, exactly who I thought he was.

Happy Belated Juneteenth!

The confluence of the mysterious hospitalization and as yet, unexplained death of the 30 year-old brother of the second son's girlfriend, followed by the 30th birthday of my first-born son the next day and then, Father's Day (among other peripheral goings-on!) - contributed to Juneteenth slipping my mind yesterday.  Though a day late and a dollar short, I thought since I'm actually sitting in Texas - I'd re-post a re-post in acknowledgement:  Juneteenth - My 4th of July.  

A "Homegoing" - Part 4b: Links, lineage and the legacy of "Black Rice"

I left Ibrahim to his sand painting and went to the lobby where I found Gerald and John laughing and talking animatedly with a young woman in uniform.

Reminding me of a younger version of my older sister, she had the same unmade-up smooth, dark skin, almond-shaped eyes, great cheekbones and a beautiful, slightly gapped-toothed grin.  Her name was Mariatou and she was Mandinka.

She reached to shake my hand and holding it with my right hand, I put my other arm around her shoulder, laughing as said, "Sorry - I'm a hugger!"  The ice immediately broken, she was a hugger too (and the exact same age as my youngest)!

Working at the Center not far from her village, the guys had taken a break to pick her up when she got off work and brought her to Banjul to meet me - and they were going back, leaving me to my own devices for the evening.  But first, we all got a little better acquainted over a Guinness for Gerald and me, and Fantas for John and Mariatou.

"She's no bumster!" Gerald assured me, saying he'd known Mariatou ever since he started building the Center years ago.  He trusted her implicitly - and knowing Gerald - so did I.

Having been a former, British colony, the official language taught in schools - is English, so there was no language barrier between the two of us.  She turned to me and said, "If you would like, tomorrow, I will take you to my village so you can see true Gambian culture!"  While the hotel provided a comfortable "familiar" to which I could return each night, I'd certainly not crossed that "distance, deliberately created" to which Mr. Baldwin referred, just to sit in it!  I told her I would very much like.

For some time now, I've been following the bread crumbs that link my South Carolina Gullah heritage, to a lineage and legacy that had been marginalized my entire life.  I knew nothing of Africa save those images of starving Biafran babies with swollen bellies and flies all over them in televised pleas for donations from white folk from UNICEF when I was around 12 (something about which my cousin reminded me when I talked to her on the phone right after I got back.  "Why you wanna go over there? Remember dem babies?!  My explanation was very long-winded.).

The history we learned in Catholic school inculcated our minds with visions of savages on that "Dark Continent over there," where benevolent missionaries risked themselves to spread the civilizing gospel - an oxymoron that always makes me think of this enduring (if not exact), Jomo Kenyatta quote:

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land.  They taught us to pray with our eyes closed.  When we opened them, we had the Bible in our hand and they had the land.

In addition to visiting her mother's compound and rice farm, she said she'd also take me to visit her father's compound.  The immediate, confused (read - ignorant American) look on my face had everybody cracking up!  Once they got over the bends, they explained that her family was Muslim and it was perfectly acceptable in The Gambia for her father to have a second wife - and he did.  Saying, that as a visitor, I could respect that as a part of the culture however - "Couldn't be me."

By the time we  finished our drinks and said goodbye, I was excited and ready for the next day because I felt an education coming on that I'd never had before!

I went back out near the pool where a local cultural group was performing to smoke a cigarette.  Okay, this is the part where I tell you my non-computer-wonk-ass, recently and accidentally deleted quite a few photos and videos I'd been organizing to post in this series - among them - a video of this cultural group doing a ceremonial circumcision dance.  However, with the help of the recently returned husband, I was able to recover some of them (taking a computer class or two - just as soon as I quit kicking my own ass for that mess!).  I did find a pretty shitty video I'd taken on my new phone that night (still don't know what I'm doing with that damned thing either!) 

Anyway, I know it's hard to see here, but take my word for it - that "temple of my familiar" was doing some kind of serious liberation-dance on my  soul as I watched this group perform!  It immediately reminded me of that, "standin' on the history" nod in this trailer for "Faubourg Tremé: the Untold Story of Black New Orleans":

I went back inside brimming with anticipation.  Like a kid getting ready for the first day of school, I laid some Capri jeans, a top, some clean underwear and a pair of thonged, flip-flop sandals out on the second twin-bed and tried to go to sleep so I'd be well rested (didn't unpack, Gerald had informed me he'd made those "arrangements").  After tossing and turning for about an hour, I decided the only way sleep was coming soon, was "on the wings of Lunesta."  I took one and passed the hell out.

Once again, unaided by the alarm, I got up early and went to breakfast.  I came back and anxiously got ready even though she wasn't coming until sometime around noon.  When she finally called from the lobby, I grabbed my straw, hold-everything bag and headed out.  She explained, "Since we were on our own today, we'll have to take a taxi."  I said okay and we walked out to the street to flag one.

As it turns out, it was three taxis and a multi-passenger sort of mini-bus called a "tonka-tonka!"  I don't remember all of the villages through which we traveled and changed taxis, but I know we traveled south through Serrekunda and down to the "traffic light" in Brikama, a bustling crossroads.  There, we caught a tonka-tonka headed west to her village.  It let us out on the main road at the head of the road leading to her mother's compound.

I can only describe that ride as a cross-continental, "back-to-the-future" experience!  Squeezed into my seat by the crush of people and goods on the tonka-tonka, Rev. Deas and his own "multi-passenger bus" (actually at first, it was a big station wagon, then he got a passenger-panel van-looking thing) popped into my head.  He'd leave his church on the island every Saturday morning around 6 a.m. and pick up people who didn't have cars and needed/wanted to go "to town" to shop - for a fee.  Like in Brikama, there was even a sister "traffic light" of sorts (more a blinking light) through which he traveled, where you could get picked up or dropped off.  We called it the "Tin Store light" and it was a little more than halfway between the country and the city.

Mostly, he'd drop everybody off near the Edwards five-and-dime on King St. wherefrom they'd disperse via city bus, taxis or rides from family or friends.  If they weren't staying over, they'd reassemble at the same spot  - with everything they bought (clothes, groceries, you name it!) - at the pre-appointed 6 p.m. for the drive back to the island.  Judging by how far toward the beach you lived, you knew you'd either be getting out soon, or - be squeezed up against a door, or a person, for a little while longer.  But just like on the tonka-tonka, you'd get a little breathing room once passengers were disgorged along the way. 

You could also "Catch Rev. Deas" one-way, from town to the country as Mama would have us do when we wanted to go hang-out with the cousins on Saturday night (my brother and I hung-out with the the uncle and cousins our age - my sister, aunts and older cousins went out partying!).  She'd come pick us up the next day after church.  And no, we didn't miss church.  No matter how late we stayed up - or out, we went to my grandmother's A.M.E. church, or my grandfather's Baptist church services at 11 a.m. -sharp.  Stragglers who'd made my grandmother late to "chuch," were invited to pick their switch from any of the bushes outside in the yard.

From the first taxi ride out of Banjul, to the tonka-tonka, the trip through the countryside flooded my brain with back-in-the-day memories of leaving "the city" of Charleston and heading to my grandmother's house out on the island - "in the country."  The further south you went on Highway 17 in that 45 minutes, paved roads gave way to - Legend Oaks, forming a cool canopy over your journey through a landscape dotted with farms and little homes (some mere shacks) with their doors and window frames painted blue to keep out evil spirits; and "Do-Drop Inns" along the main road, not far from the little family stores, pregnant with a little bit of everything you needed (ours was "Doll's Store, a short walk from my grandmother's house - though a ride was much better if you could get one!); and dirt roads, leading to similar family "compounds," with relatives' houses a mere, hop, skip and a jump away.

Of course, as with countless other areas in this country where Black folk have lived - especially near water -gentrification has reared its ugly head, forever changing the landscape and invisibilizing the Blacks who remain.

As we walked the dirt road to the compound, I kept asking her, "How come my feet are covered with sand and yours aren't??"  We were both wearing the same kind of thonged sandals, yet my feet, below the ankle, were covered in sand while hers were not.  She laughed and said, "Because I'm used to it."  I laughed saying, "Look, I walked dirt roads just like these when I was young - sometimes barefoot, sometimes not - but I never remember being so used to it I didn't get sand between my toes!  Hell, "fly-toe" was always on my mind !" (Don't know the medical term for it - but we got it in the creases of our toes - often.)
  

Being greeted by, and introduced to, several people along the way, we reached the compound, encircled by a cinder-block fence where she, her mother and her older sister and children lived.  Fussing about how the children had thrown stuff on the ground after she'd just swept around the entrance before she left, I was reminded of how my Mama complained about the very same thing whenever she got off work and I'd not swept the sidewalk clean of all sand and debris in the front of our rented, Reid St. abode downtown.  The old Charleston House had a small yard, but no grass, so one of my after-school chores was to make sure the front was clean and dust-free.  As Mariatou groused, I heard Mama in my head, calling my name in her usual loud, pronouncing-every-syllable way - "Deb-o-r-a-h-h-h!  How come you ain't swept these steps yet!"

Inside the compound, there were chickens, goats and a well where they drew water (Yes, I said "well" and "drew water" - there is no public water service to the village.  We entered the one-level house from a covered porch leading into the living room.  It was a simple, unadorned structure, with swept-clean, concrete floors, two couches and room enough for everybody in the family.  A wall unit faced the door with family photos, accompanied by some large bowls on the top, and a TV in the center.

I met one of her older sisters who also spoke English, along with a friend of hers who was visiting with her one and half year-old son.  As soon as that boy saw me, he started to cry loudly, yelling, "Tubaab!  Tubaab!" (the Gambian word for foreigner - usually white) in between breaths.  When I reached for him, he cowered in his mother's arms, just shaking his head and crying uncontrollably.  I'd never met a little one I couldn't cajole into my arms, but this little guy, so keenly aware of my different-ness even though I was Black too, wasn't havin' any of it.  Everybody laughed as I backed away saying, "No problem, Man!  I ain't tryin' to make you cry!"  He finally settled down, but continued to watched me cautiously.
 

Mariatou took me down a short hall to show me her room, and the large bed, covered with a mosquito net that her father had had made for her.  Back in the front-room, she told me the large bowls atop the wall unit were serving bowls from which everyone in the family ate - together.  She proudly took down a picture of her eldest sister who's been living in Sweden for the past 13 years or so.  She'd been married to a Gambian man, but had divorced him and left the country, not having returned since then.

Her mother was out at the farm which was a short distance away, so we decided to visit her Dad's compound first.   His second wife was sitting outside the front door with some kids playing around her.  She was a young, light-skinned woman (she'd been two years behind Mariatou in school) with two little ones under 4 years old.  Here's a short video of them that I was able to restore.  The two little ones on his left are his, and the other little girl is a playmate.

Afterward, we went inside and he asked his wife to make us some chai tea.  We sat for awhile, discussing a little politics (to include the Changeling); a little religion (Muslim/Christian); a little about his country and how proud he was of Mariatou.  She beamed.  We had another cup of tea and then she said, if we were going to the farm, we'd better get going.  I thanked her father for the tea and conversation, said goodbye to the children and his wife and we left.

On the walk back to the main road where we'd get a taxi to the rice farm, she talked about how much she loved her father and I told her I could see it.  She said she knew it was hard for me to understand, but - I interrupted her saying,  "I came here to observe and learn, not to judge.  Like I said before - as a visitor, I respect that it's a part of your culture and I've not come here to change it, however - Couldn't be me.  And anyway, all that really matters is that you love him and understand it, right?" 

As she smiled and held my hand as we walked back to the main road - me flip-flopping sand everywhere - I had yet another déjà vu moment, remembering the countless times my cousin, Myra and I had walked, hand-in-hand, from our grandmother's house to her house around the bend.  It made me smile as we got into the taxi ride and went to her Mum's rice farm.

"Black Rice"

"African growers and pounders of rice, enslaved in the Americas, desired to consume their dietary staple in the lands of their bondage.  In South Carolina they found and environment eminently suitable for the cultivation of rice.  The wetlands where they experimented with rice growing in fact showed planters the way to use an African indigenous knowledge system for their own mercantile objectives.  Slaves with expertise in rice farming used that knowledge to negotiate a system of labor demands similar to that known to them with indigenous African slavery.  Planters, on the other hand, saw the means to control this black expertise for the their own ends.  During the charter generations of slavery in South Carolina, this African and gendered knowledge system did result in a mitigated form of labor over that known in other slave societies of the Americas...

... African knowledge of rice farming established, then, the basis for the Carolina economy.  But by the mid-eighteenth century rice plantations had increasingly come to resemble those of sugar, imposing brutal demands on labor.  Slaves with knowledge of growing rice had to submit to the ultimate irony of seeing their traditional agriculture emerge as the first food commodity traded across oceans on a large scale by capitalists who then took complete credit for discovering such an "ingenious" crop for the Carolina and Georgia floodplains.  For this reason, the words "black rice" fittingly describe their struggle to endure slavery amid the enormity of the travail they faced to survive." (emphasis mine)

- Black Rice - Judith A. Carney
Chapter 4: This Was "Woman's Wuck"

The taxi deposited us again, at the head of the road leading to the rice farm. As we reached an opening in what I thought was merely tall grass (turns out it was rice growing, as far as the eye could see!), Mariatou held my hand, guiding me through a path over low, marshy ground to a clearing where we came upon a group of women (flip-flops were not what I should have been wearing!). They were Mandinka, one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa; Wolof and, Jola (Diola - French transliteration) - all coming together, co-op like, to help her mother get all the rice cut.

She greeted them respectfully, asking where her mother was.  A woman, later introduced to me as her aunt, Fatou (name given to the eldest girl in the family) pointed across the field and called out her name, "Kaddy!  Kaddy!"  She looked up and waved and started making her way toward us.  While we waited, Mariatou introduced me to each of the women, translating my return greetings in each of the women's languages.  Watching as they quickly worked the already cut mound of rice into neat little bundles on the ground, I was at once, humbled and empowered by this gathering of strong women working together.

As she explained to them that I'd never seen rice in its natural state before,one of the women, Bintou (name given to the youngest girl in the family), gave me her knife, grabbed my hand smiling and showed me how to cut and bundle the rice with Mariatou translating her instructions. We all laughed out loud when I made one, exactly like the ones on the ground. Mariatou explained that once all the rice was cut and bundled, they would carry it back to the compound and pound it, removing the husks - and from that pounding, comes the white grains we see in grocery stores! The rice would later be bagged and stored - some to eat, some to sell (And no rest for the weary! In a recent conversation with Mariatou, she advised Kaddy'd already planted, among other vegetables, some tomatoes, ground nuts (peanuts) - a popular export, ground eggs (eggplants) and sweet potatoes!)

Her mother finally made her way across the field to where we were standing. With a big smile, she greeted me first, with a firm handshake - and then a hug. She'd never gone to school, so she spoke no English. Mariatou translated for us as we talked about me, America, her daughter, my grandmother - and rice.

They still had plenty work to do, so she walked us back through the field to the main road. Walking ahead of us, I kept hearing this clicking sound - like the one you make trying to "scratch" whatever's irritating that space in your nasal cavity.  I asked Mariatou what it was and she said it was her mother, scaring away any snakes that might be up ahead. All bug-eyed and nervous now, I said, "Snakes! I think we need to walk a little bit faster!" It hadn't even occurred to me that there had to have been snakes in the marshy field!

This outing had definitely been déjà vu all over again! By the time we came along, "the African and gendered knowledge system of rice growing" was mirrored in my grandmother's fields. And it WAS "woman's wuck." From season to season, she was out there from "dayclean" to sundown - hoeing, planting and harvesting vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers; yellow, zuchini and acorn squash; peanuts; watermelon; corn; okra and sweet potatoes.

Those of us (mostly female) big enough to go and "pick" on the white man's farms, did - earning money based on how many bushel baskets were picked. At day's end, half went to my grandmother and we got to keep the other half. After the first few times out, she kept me home to run her roadside stand, selling her home-grown vegetables to the white folk headed to the beach saying, "Debbie, you pick too slo', hunnah can' mek no money like dat!" Fine with me, I hated the way okra ate up my hands and arms anyway.

The European marginalization, followed by their usual appropriation of yet another important part of our culture was, and continues to be, despicable. But most importantly, it was soul-crushing. In reviewing Carney's book, Drew Gilpin Faust of The New York Times said it most succinctly:

"Between the end of the 17th century and the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of people of African descent toiled in swamps, ditches and fields cultivating rice, a crop that by the time of the American Revolution had created a planter aristocracy wealthier than any other group in the British colonies. The high concentrations of slaves in rice-growing areas produced as well a black culture that remained closer to its African roots than that of any other North American slave society. Yet even in South Carolina, where they were a majority of the population, blacks have remained underrepresented in the historical record, partly because they were unable to leave the rich written legacy that immortalized their owners, partly because historians have failed to look closely enough at the evidence that has survived. In "Black Rice," Judith A. Carney, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, finds new "ways to give voice to the historical silences of slavery." Exploring crops, landscapes and agricultural practices in Africa and America, she demonstrates the critical role Africans played in the creation of the system of rice production that provided the foundation of Carolina's wealth." (emphasis mine)

Imagine if, instead of having been made to feel ashamed of our language and this legacy all of our lives, Black folk - especially women - had grown up knowing and learning about, and being proud of, the major contributions we'd made to these United States!!

I'd lay money on the fact that it would have made a huge difference - not only in how we now see our soul-crushed selves in this country and the world, but also in how we see our brothers and sisters in the diaspora. I doubt any of us would then, be lining up behind the Changeling (second-generation African that he is) and his white handlers as they wage war on an African country whose only imminent threat to this country is the rejection of neo-colonialist hegemony through self-determination.

If you are Black and from South Carolina in general, or the Sea Islands in particular - I recommend a thorough reading of Carney's book, along with those of Peter H. Wood ("Black Majority"),Wilbur Cross ("Gullah Culture in America"), Lorenzo Dow Turner ("Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect"), J.H. Easterby ("The South Carolina Rice Plantation") and Prof. Daniel C. Littlefield.

I promise, you will not only come away with a much better understanding of what our people brought to America's table (no pun intended), but also, and most importantly - with a feeling of immense pride and connectedness based on what's expressed here, in the introduction to Carney's book:

The millions of Africans who were dragged to the New World were not blank slates upon which European civilizations would write at will.  They were peoples with complex social, political, and religious systems of their own.  By forced transportation and incessant violence slavery was able to interdict the transfer of those systems as systems; none could be carried intact across the sea.  But it could not crush the intellects, habits of mind, and spirits of its victims.  They survived in spite of everything, their children survived and in them survived Africa. (all emphasis mine)

-Sidney W. Mintz, introduction to the 1990 edition of

The Myth of the Negro Past by Melville Herskovitz 

To be continued:  A "Homegoing" - Part 5a:  Neocolonialism, Juffureh and The Center