Jim Crow! A Dangerous And Imminent Retrenchment!

I read Na'im Akbar's book "Visions For Black Men" late in the 90's. This is an extract from his official biography, which I include to give you some background before we proceed:

He is what they call a Black Psychologist, an Afrocentric Scholar, sharing his thoughts on national issues with the entire population through books, articles, lectures, seminars, radio talkshows and Internet chatrooms. His message is clear and simple, yet provocative and well grounded: Black people in America are "crazy." Not so much individually, but culturally. This scholar, psychologist, author, business owner, and lecturer was acclaimed by Essence Magazine as “one of the world’s preeminent psychologists and a pioneer in the development of an African-centered approach in modern psychology."

His name is Dr. Na'im Akbar and his ideas have penetrated most aspects of progressive thought affecting the minds of African people throughout the world. His insight and his analysis of the social concerns affecting African-Americans in particular and humanity as a whole is soul stirring, superbly rational and highly informative. Actively quoted and interviewed in print media, broadcast media and the Internet; and celebrated on five continents, Dr. Akbar is one of the greatest Thinkers and Orators of our time.

Background

Dr. Akbar was born and received his early education in the segregated South prior to the desegregation of public and educational facilities. In his late adolescence, he left this exclusively African-American social environment to become a college student at the University of Michigan. He remained at the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan for the completion of his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D., degrees in psychology.

Upon completion of his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he was invited to join the Psychology faculty at prestigious Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He rapidly progressed from an Assistant Professor to the position of Department Chairman within two years and remained at Morehouse as a model teacher and administrator for a total of five years. In 1975 he left Morehouse College to become the Director the Office of Human Development for the (then) Nation of Islam in Chicago and gained international prominence for his publications and ideas which were projected from this post. He subsequently served on the faculty of Norfolk State University and eventually joined the psychology faculty of Florida State University where he has remained since 1979.

Now: In "Visions For Black Men" Dr. Akbar made a cryptically prophetic observation about the rise of Jim Crow and the potential for the resurgence of this nefarious and viral mindset. He accurately described the history of African Americans immediately after the civil war as comparable to our political and economic situation today. Strong African American business sector, college educations, high representation of politicians in both State and Federal government. Before Jim Crow! He then states the prophetic which I loosely paraphrase:

"If Jim Crow happened once, it can happen again."

I agreed with him absolutely then but somewhere in the back of my mind I put such a time far, far into the future. That time is now. It is growing like mold behind walls that seem otherwise pristine. You don't see much of it, and when you address what you see, what you don't see will shock you.

There is a lot of handwriting in that mold all over the walls that surround African American life in this country. It is no longer possible to ignore that African Americans are once again revisiting the reconstruction scene of post civil war America. I tend to think that history repeats itself to give us an opportunity to correct a life lesson that needed a re-test. So here we go:

In 2008 African Americans have the potential to see-in Barack Obama-the most electable African American presidential candidate in the history of this country. The high optimism many feel about this, including an overwhelming level of support from nearly every sector of ethnic America, is exciting to watch unfold. Still, my money is on Na'im Akbar. His rationales were entirely too seamless to take apart and his understanding of race hatred in America, combined with the silence otherwise well intentioned Caucasian Americans respond with when the evil among them go riding in the night make me certain that it is time for African Americans to think seriously about strategies to prevent such a dangerous and imminent retrenchment into Jim Crow-ism.

So Mr. Akbar what would you suggest we do about this threat?

Hmmmm! He's not here right now, so I will, with what I've learned from his most incisive understanding of both sides of this issue suggest in his stead

1. Dialogue: Launch pro-active initiatives that target, not the criminal justice system as the solution for individual acts of race hatred, but that we sit down in town hall like meetings with the organizations whose members perpetrate race crimes. Neo-nazis, KKK, and others. People who act out of ignorance typically do so because ignorance produces fear. If you don't know what is in the dark, fear becomes the predominant emotion. The fact is racists become more agitated when they feel helpless to change their own circumstances, especially their economic circumstances. The economic climate in America is very definitely scaring the crap out of all of us. However, therein lies a solution. We must find and share the commonality of our problems, our worries, our fears with each other. We must humanize each other immediately so we can work together to solve these problems.


2. Preparation-Don't think for five seconds that a newly elected African American President will make all our problems suddenly vanish. This is a recipe for disappointment. It took, not 8 years, but close to half a century for the current economic plight of Americans to develop. It is the result of a failed and irreparable foreign and domestic policy which will take a lot of sacrifice and a lot of work to change. Barack Obama as President will be taking charge of a runaway train loaded with passengers, all screaming for their lives. He will have the unenviable job of cleaning up messes that don't want to be cleaned up. Entrenched interests will attempt to thwart him at every turn, especially when it comes to the entitlements we share, like welfare. The entrenched bureaucracy will fight every change with fangs bared, including the DOD, civil service and others. Already the subject of death threats, he will have no more protection than did JFK when the forces of darkness decide he has to go. Immediately following a successful assassination attempt will come the ugliness we'd best work to avoid, while preparing for it. Preparing for the worst while working for the best is always prudent .

I hope Na'im Akbar is wrong. He hasn't been so far. Not about anything I've read of him. We would be wise to listen to thinkers like these.

Apology For Genocide!

Extract from a speech delivered by Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia On 13 Feb. 2008 the first day of session for the Australian Parliament-Thanks Kate's Quilt

"There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time.

That is why the parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nations soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.

Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in parliament say sorry to the stolen generations.

Today I honour that commitment.

I said we would do so early in the life of the new parliament.

Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd parliament of the Commonwealth.

Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great commonwealth, for all Australians - those who are indigenous and those who are not - to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation."

Kevin Rudd...I salute you.

There seems to be a spate of these apologies in the offing here of late. The tone and intent of them being reconciliatory with promises to do better. On their face, a true man can do no less than accept the spirit in which such apologies are offered. After all the people of our current generation inherited the crimes of their ancestors the way we-aboriginal peoples, no matter where we are, inherited the damage done by those crimes. Still, the fact that these crimes occurred, the fact that the our destinies forever changed because of them and the fact that even now these acts of ancestral terrorism have crippling effects on these generations affected drive home the importance of creating effective deterrents to the recurrence of such nightmares in the future. Unfortunately, China will soon have to make such an apology about Darfur, along with several corporations vested in the deaths, displacement and misery of millions of indigenous African people over a region supposedly rich in oil.

My Letter to the JDL Regarding Their Attack On Will Smith

I had absolutely no problem understanding the tone, context and intent of Will Smith's commentary on Adolf Hitler. Will is a man of consummate effort at creating and maintaining a positive presence in a world where gangsta rappers use the power of the media to create a very dangerous fear in the minds of people with the power to call out the cattle cars on a group of people easily considerable as dangerous and unproductive. He has always erred towards the positive in all I have witnessed of him. You owe him an apology, if for no other reason than his own 'race legacy' of oppression and enslavement absolutely precludes that he would consider Hitler as anything other than a monster. There was no apology for Hitler in the statement I read as quoted by your source. There was, instead a very incisive understanding of the nature of evil.

Evil always has a 'good' reason to do what it does. Whether it's blinding oneself to the deadly oppression of apartheid while enriching self trading in gold and diamonds, or justifying the displacement of people from land they've lived on for thousands of years with euphemisms like "Manifest Destiny" or "God's promise to Abraham" three thousand to five thousand years ago. The ultimate test of good or evil is really too simple for Jews, Arabs, Christian, Blacks, Hindus or anybody else to misconstrue. If what you do to another causes suffering, disease, displacement or death, you are creating evil for that person or group of people, even if you have convinced yourself of the rightness of it. No righteous person will ever believe that Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, or Christ condones the suffering of even one person at the hands of another. Even if God tells a righteous man to do evil to another, that man in his best judgment would question just what 'God' was talking to him and tell him to do his own dirty work.

The correctness of Will Smith's comment bear scrutiny in this very instance, where-because of a largely emotional response at best, a pathological, post-traumatic stress reaction at worst-the JDL is willing to ruin his career, boycott his films and otherwise cause him harm. Having said all this, let's try the same quote and exchange the appellation "Hitler with the appellation "JDL":

Even the "JDL" didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today'," said Will. "I think They woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, set out to do what they thought was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.

In case you don't know how to analyze stuff like this, let's try it again. IF you re-read the statement without the patented knee-jerk PSD reaction, [let's do it together] you will find something altogether different and altogether reasonable. Here I will highlight the operative words that indicate context, tone and intent. Follow me on this:

Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today'," said Will. "I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.

Now who is the idiot who found a statement anywhere in this, where Will Smith said anything about Hitler being good? Dammit! It's not there. Nowhere!

So now we have a clue about why human beings cannot-for the life of themselves-live without stupid, backward logic disasters like war! For all the vaunted genius of the race, and I mean the 'human race'-Jews included-thinking things through before nuking babies, and other non-involved parties of these vile reactionary behaviors, is not a strong suite, especially of the people we give such power.

I think the JDL should review this and other ridiculous positions it takes on such matters. In this case you are definitely wrong, in many others your posture comes off dangerously strident, not only for people you fear but for your own self image. A woman who screams stridently that every man who speaks to her is sexually harassing her will soon be considered a candidate for the psyche ward.

You owe Will Smith an apology. You owe yourselves to adjust the tone, intensity and perceptive skills of an organization which relies on it's credibility to accomplish a very necessary and worthwhile function in our world. It would also help if you evolved into the Human Defense League, maybe even the Life Defense League.

Man will always be the last to see his own psychoses. But when they are righteously illuminated, he has the responsibility to himself and all affected, to get to the bottom of it and heal it. Happy New Year! Peace On Earth!