During the Spanish-American-Cuban war, when the official story had it that the U.S. was liberating Cuba from colonial bondage, half-drunk U.S. soldiers waved dollar bills at Cuban women in the streets while a U.S. General announced that Cubans, far too black for Washington's preferences, were "a dying race." According to the optic of official Washington, centuries of mixing "dagos and niggers" had produced a depraved population completely incapable of self-government.
Supposedly an ally of the raggedly dressed Cuban revolutionary army fighting to rid itself of Spanish rule, Washington in fact denied the Cuban revolutionaries the status of official ally and blocked them from participating in the receiving of Spanish surrender in key Cuban cities. U.S. General Samuel B. M. Young, expressing a common view, dismissed the Cuban soldiers as "a lot of degenerates," rating them "no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa." George M. Barbour, acting as sanitation commissioner of Santiago, chimed in with the view that, "The Cubans are stupid, given to saying and doing all things in the wrong way." He was optimistic, however, that the U.S. would deliver them a bright future. "Under our supervision, the people of Cuba may become a useful race and a credit to the world."
In his annual message to Congress (1899) President McKinley explained that the U.S. had "assumed before the world a grave responsibility for the future good government of Cuba." Sound familiar? This excuse is still being used 109 years later to justify the occupation of Iraq. The Nation magazine, with considerably more realism, commented that the real U.S. objective in Cuba was "to set up a crippled dependency on the United States and call it an independent and sovereign state." That, too, should seem familiar.
In 1895 the Encyclopedia Britannica had invoked scientific authority in defending its claim that "the inherent mental inferiority of blacks" was "an inferiority which is even more marked than their physical differences." Four years later Nathaniel Shaler of Harvard and Edward Cope of the University of Pennsylvania argued that blacks were both physically and mentally retarded. Georgia Professor John Roach Stratton opined that "the negro's tendency to immorality and crime" was irremediable, and that high black rates of lung and venereal disease were proof of "the negro's moral decline."
Contempt for black morals, health, and character was nearly unanimous among whites, who did not question that hatred was a normal racial instinct. In 1907 esteemed Mississippi planter Alfred Holt Stone presented a paper to the American Sociological Society entitled, "Is Race Friction in the United States Growing and Inevitable?" Holt concluded that white blood accounted for what little intelligence blacks possessed and that friction between the races resulted from a "natural contrariety, repugnancy of qualities," which produced a "pressure" in the white man, one felt "almost instinctively in the presence of a mass of people of a different race." American democracy, a product of white intelligence, required "intolerance toward men of another race or color," or else civilization would be doomed by a "mongrelization" like Latin America's. "The superiority of race cannot be preserved without pride of blood and an uncompromising attitude toward the lower races," insisted Stone.
Agreement was widespread among whites that blacks represented an advanced species of racial degradation headed for extinction. At the time the average black man lived just 34 years. Bad food, housing, and sanitation took a fearful toll, encouraging disease to run rampant in sharecropper cabins that had changed little since slavery. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid, and diarrhea snuffed out black lives with alarming frequency. An ex-slaveholder pinned the blame on Emancipation: "We delivered the African man over to the nation in 1865 orderly, fairly industrious, without vice, without disease, without crime. In the hands of the nation, he has become disorderly, idle, vicious, diseased."
Henry Loomis Nelson of the Boston Herald explained in 1902 the reigning white man's burden: "Our troops in the Philippines . . . look upon all Filipinos as of one race and condition, and being dark men, they are therefore 'niggers,' and entitled to all the contempt and harsh treatment administered by white overlords to the most inferior races."
The year before, then Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson asserted that non-white peoples were incapable of Anglo-Saxon virtues like self-government because they were still in the "childhood of their political growth." In 1902, as president of Princeton, Wilson said that Filipinos, regularly denounced as "niggers" by U.S. troops, "must obey as those who are in tutelage" and be denied independence until they learned the "discipline of law." Force being the main instrument of the "discipline of law," President Roosevelt informed Congress the same year that "the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political and economic relations render it incumbent on all civilized and orderly powers to insist on the proper policing of the world." TR made it very clear that he expected the "wretched republics" of Central America and the Caribbean, among others, to do what their white masters to the North dictated to them.
Addressing the racial underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy, Columbia's John Burgess, one of the founders of modern American political science, announced that the Old South had won the Civil War at last: "Now that the United States has embarked on imperial enterprises the North is learning every day by valuable experiences that there are vast differences in political capacity between the races, and that it is the white man's mission, his duty . . . to hold the reins of political power in his own hands for the civilization of the world . . . [the] Republican party, in its work of imposing the sovereignty of the United States upon eight millions of Asiatics (in the Philippines) has changed its views in regard to the political relations of races and has at last virtually accepted the ideas of the South upon that subject."
Burgess was a member of the Dunning School of political science, which had a starkly racial outlook. William Dunning earned a reputation as a brilliant doctoral student at Columbia, later returning to his alma mater to become a professor of philosophy. In this position he used his influence to place professors sympathetic to the old Confederacy in history departments all over the country.
Tender in his treatment of white supremacists, Dunning alternated between ridicule, silence, and contempt in his commentary on blacks. He and the many U.S. leaders who admired his work, described the brief upsurge of democracy following the Civil War as the "nadir of national disgrace," a time when newly enfranchised blacks, corrupt whites, and radical Republicans joined hands to humiliate their betters. The presumably uncivilized experiment of Reconstruction allegedly "pandered to the ignorant negroes," establishing corrupt state governments that ushered in bankruptcy, chaos, and destruction. Fortunately, decent white Southerners drove these governments out of power, restoring sanity to the region by means of the Ku Klux Klan.
Dunning's insights trickled down to the troops on the ground in Haiti, who referred to their guerrilla opponents as "bad niggers as we would call them at home." General Smedley Butler, head of the U.S. Occupation forces, characterized the caco leaders as "shaved apes, absolutely no intelligence whatsoever, just plain low nigger." Other occupation authorities described Haitian peasants in the softer stereotyped terms of U.S. race relations: "docile, happy, idle, irresponsible, kindly, shiftless, pleasure-loving, [and] trustworthy."
These attitudes were hardly absent at the highest reaches of power. President Theodore Roosevelt found Haitians "utterly incapable of existing in independence." Assistant Secretary of State William Phillips agreed, explaining that American intervention was necessary because of the "complete incompetence" of the Haitians and the "failure of an inferior people to maintain the degree of civilization left them by the French, or to develop any capacity of self government entitling them to international respect and confidence."
In the presidential election year of 1920, James Weldon Johnson sparked a national discussion of U.S. Haitian policy with a series of articles he wrote for the Nation. Accusing Washington of fomenting racism, brutality, and economic exploitation, Johnson provoked the Wilson Administration to highlight its alleged "benevolent purpose," and the supposed "gratitude" the Haitian people felt in being occupied for five years. Curiously, it also hurried to stress that it intended to withdraw from Haiti soon. (The occupation continued until 1934).
The Wilson Administration's efforts at Haitian moral uplift over the previous five years had included the gunning down of 3000 men, women, and children during pacification and the restoration of virtual slavery on a highway construction program connecting Camp Haitien and Port au Prince. Marine Corps Major Smedley Butler informed then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt that he shouldn't "ask too many questions as to how we accomplish this work." Roosevelt contained whatever curiosity he may have had.
As election day approached, the New York Times reported on U.S. atrocities in Haiti, citing the "noted traveler and authority on the West Indies," Henry A. Franck: "American marines, largely made up of and officered by Southerners, opened fire with machine guns from airplanes upon defenseless Haitian villages, killing men, women, and children in the open market places. . . natives were slain for 'sport' by a hoodlum element among these same Southerners; and . . . . the ancient corvee system of enforced labor was revived and ruthlessly executed . . ."
Fortunately, there were some bright spots in the early years of the 20th century. One of them was the boxer Jack Johnson. Son of a slave, his first organized fights were "Battle Royals" in Galveston, where eight or more blindfolded blacks bashed each other around the ring to the cheers of white men, who tossed them coins like peanuts at the zoo. Johnson quickly excelled at this curious sport of beating people up, well knowing that his alternatives were picking cotton he couldn't sell, plowing lands he couldn't own, and unloading ships he couldn't travel on.
Opportunity struck when white boxers pounding each other into hamburger began to seem, well, uncivilized. Sagging gate receipts suggested the sport was obsolete. But then promoters hit on the idea of an interracial bout, which would provide the fans with an opportunity to witness the physical superiority of white men demonstrated on an uncivilized "coon."
Crushing widespread Nordic supremacist expectations, Johnson was soon thrashing white boxers before jeering racist throngs and celebrating victory in the arms of white women. While the racist fans pinched pennies to survive, Johnson strutted the stage in elegant clothes, flashed his gold teeth, and zoomed around in brightly-colored cars on week-long drunks. He made no apologies for a life of prizefighting, saloons, and prositutes, an existence he preferred to any other. While Booker T. Washington advised blacks to outlast prejudice, and W. E. B. DuBois recommended treading cautiously, heeding the disaster of a misstep, Johnson crashed through racial barriers at break-neck speed, refusing to cede ground as part of a more elaborate maneuver.
Loathed like a "nigger" and paid like a King, Johnson was the quintessential American, doing exactly as he pleased, refusing all limits of background, custom, and race. In the 1910 "Fight of the Century" against the hugely favored Jim Jeffries, he chopped the white boxer's face to pieces amidst a stream of mocking banter: "How do you feel Jim? How do you like it? Does it hurt Jim?"
Sources:
Noel J. Kent, "America in 1900," (M. E. Sharpe, 2000)
Julius W. Pratt, "A History of United States Foreign Policy," (Prentice Hall, 1955)
Willard B. Gatewood Jr., "Black America and the White Man's Burden," (University of Illinois, 1975)
David F. Schmitz, "Thank God They're On Our Side - The United States and Right Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965," (University of North Carolina, 1999)
Hans Schmidt, "The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934,' (Rutgers, 1995)
Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States," (Harper, 1995)
David Levering Lewis, "W. E. B. DuBois - Biography of a Race, 1919-1963," (Holt, 2000)
David Levering Lewis, "W. E. B. DuBois - Biography of a Race, 1868-1919," (Holt, 1998)
Randy Roberts, "Papa Jack - Jack Johnson And The Era of White Hopes," (Free Press, 1983)
Page Smith, "A People's History of the Progressive Era and WWI - America Enters the World," (McGraw-Hill, 1985)
-----Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" and "The Madness of King George (illustrations by Matt Wuerker," both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Black History, Very Black History
Liberal shock and awe at the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in U.S. imperial domains must have been a source of bitter amusement to black people, whose two and a half centuries of enslavement here were certainly no human rights picnic, and whose experience with lynching just might be described as a form of torture, however much white people might prefer to believe otherwise.
Most intriguing are the so-called "spectacle lynchings," which were typically given enthusiastic advance billing on the radio and in screaming headlines on the front page of daily newspapers. Thousands of white men were summoned from far and wide, encouraged to bring the wife and kids and make a day of it. In a gleeful, picnic-like atmosphere, son sitting on papa's shoulders to get a better view, a black man was dragged into the presence of the mob, ritually castrated, and burned alive for the entertainment of the cheering crowd, which urged the torturers to go slow so they could savor the victim's every last agonized scream. After the deed was done, the crowd sifted through the embers looking for souvenirs - a charred piece of bone, a severed tooth, a chunk of barbecued flesh - while lamenting how short-lived the day's festivities had been. It was not unknown for some of the victim's body parts to end up in a local store's display case, to keep the memory of good times alive.
These black victims were routinely described as having died "at the hands of persons unknown," though photographs of proudly grinning lynch mobs were regularly published in the newspaper, which should have made identification of the perpetrators a rather straightforward matter, had there been any interest in bringing them to justice. But there wasn't. These barbaric acts were the product of the entire white community, not specific individuals, and if there were whites who had any misgivings about them, they kept them to themselves.
The reigning racial theory behind such events held that whites were genetically pre-ordained to create civilization, while blacks were predisposed for savagery. Whites remained optimistic, however, as it was fervently believed that the civilized master race could guide blacks from savagery to civilization via Christianity.
At the turn of the 20th century the reigning religion of Anglo-Saxonism held that descendants of select German tribes carried a genius for self-government, nation building, technology, and conquest, which had caused them to soar over the "lower races" for the previous 1500 years, especially blacks.
"We are Teutons, God's kings of men," proclaimed ex-Confederate officer Colonel Robert Bingham in 1900. He believed that manhood, suffrage, and personal responsibility were exclusively Anglo-Saxon virtues, and confidently asserted that "every step towards the higher freedom [was] won in the best blood of our race."
Anglo-Saxonists thrilled to the conquest of the world's "waste spaces," i.e., those not yet subject to white domination. Anglo-Saxonism had the backing of "racial science" (eugenics), which posited that racial categories were fixed and final, though somehow still susceptible to corruption via the horrors of "mongrelization." As Thomas Dixon Jr.'s best-selling 1902 novel, "The Leopard's Spots," put it, "One drop of negro blood makes a negro, it kinks the hair, flattens the nose, thickens the lip, puts out the light of intellect, and lights the fires of brutal passions." Since black men were allegedly permanently in heat around white women, lynch mobs were regarded as the only answer to fatal contamination of civilized blood.
The year before Dixon's book came out, one of the most important books published was called "The Mystery Solved: The Negro a Beast." At the time anthropologists placed blacks somewhere between the great apes and the hominids on the evolutionary spectrum. Biologists reported that their average brain weight was less than that of Caucasians and substantially less than that of English-speaking Protestants. Psychologists claimed they were possessed of a primal sexuality and prone to irrationality, especially under stress or in situations of intimacy. Criminologists warned of their allegedly innate brutality and hyper-fertility. Doctors predicted that they would die out from disease and perversion. The consensus among white experts held that blacks had no mental or physical energy, lacked volition, and worked the least they could get away with. They were said to be bereft of civilized artifacts like architecture and literature, while regarding indolence and sunshine as the earthly paradise. Their capacity for thought was said to be brutally rudimentary, although whites remained hysterical with fear that exposing them to book learning would "spoil" their appetite for menial labor. Teddy Roosevelt summed up the problem thusly: "A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane." No one thought he was talking about white people.
Black men who served in the U.S. conquest of the Philippines were treated no better than blacks in general. They departed for the front amidst race riots while headlines screamed "War of the Races is Threatened." When the black 49th Volunteer Infantry left San Francisco, The Call published a huge minstrel-style, front page drawing of the men "cakewalking" up the gangplank. A soldier with ludicrously thick lips and bulging eyes was depicted telling his similarly endowed girlfriend: "Jes' one mo' smack at dem cherub lips." The accompanying caption explained that every black officer had "at least two ladies there to bid goodbye," adding that "when dat coon ban' played de cakewalk, 'the men' used their guns as walking sticks and their file man as a partner" and "danced away for dear life."
Once in the Philippines, white soldiers jeered at their black officers rather than salute them: "What are you coons doing here?" General Otis protested to Washington that black racial loyalties made them overly fond of Filipinos, and that they got along "too well with the native women," causing "demoralization" among the fallen females. A black soldier offered a less theoretical explanation, positing that Filipino women liked blacks better than whites because they do "not push them off the streets, spit at them [or] call them damn 'niggers.'" There's no accounting for taste.
Well-published and highly educated Woodrow Wilson regarded blacks as fit subjects for "darky" stories in cabinet meetings but unfit for high office. Coming to the presidency in 1913, he prepared to reverse longstanding policy by appointing white instead of black ministers to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Blacks had not been admitted to Princeton during Wilson's earlier tenure as president of that university, a policy unique among Ivy League institutions at the time. Their purging from voting rolls and public offices in the wake of Reconstruction Wilson attributed to the "inevitable ascendancy of the whites." After Wilson re-imposed segregation on federal offices, W. E. B. DuBois complained that, "In the Treasury and Post Office Department colored clerks have been herded to themselves as though they were not human beings." DuBois inquired about one "colored clerk" who allegedly "could not actually be segregated" on account of the kind of work he did, so that he had had "a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions of many years."
In 1915 Wilson screened the racist "Birth of a Nation" at the White House, pronouncing the White South's version of Reconstruction, replete with ape-like black legislators and virginal white women threatened by blacks who were virtual walking phalluses, as "all so terribly true." The popular film incited an escalating wave of race riots and lynchings throughout the country. A disgusted W. E. B. DuBois pronounced the movie abominable, "with the Negro represented either as an ignorant fool, a vicious rapist, a venal or unscrupulous politician or a faithful but doddering idiot."
Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, touring U.S.-occupied Haiti in 1917, recommended that the island be directly run by the military, thus avoiding the continuing conflicts between white supremacist U.S. officers and mulatto Haitian elites. While looking forward to this prudent solution to black people's assumed incapacity to govern themselves, Roosevelt devoted himself to official ceremonies, impressing his Haitian hosts with his French, his strict observance of protocol, and his disregard for the color line. On the prospects for Haitians to become civilized, he waxed optimistic: "I cannot agree . . . that just because the Haytian native population does not use knives, forks, cups, etc. that they will never use them. As a matter of fact I feel convinced that during the next generation the Haytian population will adopt the living standards more generally in vogue."
Looking on Haitians as "little more than primitive savages," Roosevelt assisted the Marine occupations of both Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), regarding such actions as noble efforts to civilize the "backward" countries of the world. When Marine Corps Major Smedley Butler machine-gunned 51 Haitians to death at Fort Riviere, Roosevelt made sure he got the Congressional Medal of Honor for it.
When he became president he declined to back anti-lynching legislation, fearing the political clout of Dixiecrats in Congress, while lynchings were publicly announced and carried out even in Washington D.C. Such events allowed a rising Adolf Hitler to boast without rebuttal that Germany treated Jews better than the U.S. treated blacks.
Sources:
Philip Dray, "At The Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America," (Random House, 2002)
Willard B. Gatewood, "Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903," (University of Illinois, 1975)
Willard B. Gatewood, "'Smoked Yankees' And The Struggle For Empire," (University of Illinois, 1971)
Daniel B. Schirmer, "Republic or Empire - American Resistance to the Philippine War," (Schenkman Publishing Company, 1972)
David Levering Lewis, "W. E. B. DuBois - Biography of a Race, 1868-1919," (Henry Holt, 1998)
Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau (with Eve Pell), "To Serve The Devil," vol. 2 (Vintage, 1971)
Blanche Wiesen-Cook, "Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933-1938," (Penguin, 1999)
Noel J. Kent, "America in 1900," (M. E. Sharpe, 2000)
Stuart Creighton Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation - The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1898-1903," (Yale, 1982)
Hans Schmidt, "The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934," (Rutgers, 1995)
------Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," and "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
Most intriguing are the so-called "spectacle lynchings," which were typically given enthusiastic advance billing on the radio and in screaming headlines on the front page of daily newspapers. Thousands of white men were summoned from far and wide, encouraged to bring the wife and kids and make a day of it. In a gleeful, picnic-like atmosphere, son sitting on papa's shoulders to get a better view, a black man was dragged into the presence of the mob, ritually castrated, and burned alive for the entertainment of the cheering crowd, which urged the torturers to go slow so they could savor the victim's every last agonized scream. After the deed was done, the crowd sifted through the embers looking for souvenirs - a charred piece of bone, a severed tooth, a chunk of barbecued flesh - while lamenting how short-lived the day's festivities had been. It was not unknown for some of the victim's body parts to end up in a local store's display case, to keep the memory of good times alive.
These black victims were routinely described as having died "at the hands of persons unknown," though photographs of proudly grinning lynch mobs were regularly published in the newspaper, which should have made identification of the perpetrators a rather straightforward matter, had there been any interest in bringing them to justice. But there wasn't. These barbaric acts were the product of the entire white community, not specific individuals, and if there were whites who had any misgivings about them, they kept them to themselves.
The reigning racial theory behind such events held that whites were genetically pre-ordained to create civilization, while blacks were predisposed for savagery. Whites remained optimistic, however, as it was fervently believed that the civilized master race could guide blacks from savagery to civilization via Christianity.
At the turn of the 20th century the reigning religion of Anglo-Saxonism held that descendants of select German tribes carried a genius for self-government, nation building, technology, and conquest, which had caused them to soar over the "lower races" for the previous 1500 years, especially blacks.
"We are Teutons, God's kings of men," proclaimed ex-Confederate officer Colonel Robert Bingham in 1900. He believed that manhood, suffrage, and personal responsibility were exclusively Anglo-Saxon virtues, and confidently asserted that "every step towards the higher freedom [was] won in the best blood of our race."
Anglo-Saxonists thrilled to the conquest of the world's "waste spaces," i.e., those not yet subject to white domination. Anglo-Saxonism had the backing of "racial science" (eugenics), which posited that racial categories were fixed and final, though somehow still susceptible to corruption via the horrors of "mongrelization." As Thomas Dixon Jr.'s best-selling 1902 novel, "The Leopard's Spots," put it, "One drop of negro blood makes a negro, it kinks the hair, flattens the nose, thickens the lip, puts out the light of intellect, and lights the fires of brutal passions." Since black men were allegedly permanently in heat around white women, lynch mobs were regarded as the only answer to fatal contamination of civilized blood.
The year before Dixon's book came out, one of the most important books published was called "The Mystery Solved: The Negro a Beast." At the time anthropologists placed blacks somewhere between the great apes and the hominids on the evolutionary spectrum. Biologists reported that their average brain weight was less than that of Caucasians and substantially less than that of English-speaking Protestants. Psychologists claimed they were possessed of a primal sexuality and prone to irrationality, especially under stress or in situations of intimacy. Criminologists warned of their allegedly innate brutality and hyper-fertility. Doctors predicted that they would die out from disease and perversion. The consensus among white experts held that blacks had no mental or physical energy, lacked volition, and worked the least they could get away with. They were said to be bereft of civilized artifacts like architecture and literature, while regarding indolence and sunshine as the earthly paradise. Their capacity for thought was said to be brutally rudimentary, although whites remained hysterical with fear that exposing them to book learning would "spoil" their appetite for menial labor. Teddy Roosevelt summed up the problem thusly: "A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane." No one thought he was talking about white people.
Black men who served in the U.S. conquest of the Philippines were treated no better than blacks in general. They departed for the front amidst race riots while headlines screamed "War of the Races is Threatened." When the black 49th Volunteer Infantry left San Francisco, The Call published a huge minstrel-style, front page drawing of the men "cakewalking" up the gangplank. A soldier with ludicrously thick lips and bulging eyes was depicted telling his similarly endowed girlfriend: "Jes' one mo' smack at dem cherub lips." The accompanying caption explained that every black officer had "at least two ladies there to bid goodbye," adding that "when dat coon ban' played de cakewalk, 'the men' used their guns as walking sticks and their file man as a partner" and "danced away for dear life."
Once in the Philippines, white soldiers jeered at their black officers rather than salute them: "What are you coons doing here?" General Otis protested to Washington that black racial loyalties made them overly fond of Filipinos, and that they got along "too well with the native women," causing "demoralization" among the fallen females. A black soldier offered a less theoretical explanation, positing that Filipino women liked blacks better than whites because they do "not push them off the streets, spit at them [or] call them damn 'niggers.'" There's no accounting for taste.
Well-published and highly educated Woodrow Wilson regarded blacks as fit subjects for "darky" stories in cabinet meetings but unfit for high office. Coming to the presidency in 1913, he prepared to reverse longstanding policy by appointing white instead of black ministers to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Blacks had not been admitted to Princeton during Wilson's earlier tenure as president of that university, a policy unique among Ivy League institutions at the time. Their purging from voting rolls and public offices in the wake of Reconstruction Wilson attributed to the "inevitable ascendancy of the whites." After Wilson re-imposed segregation on federal offices, W. E. B. DuBois complained that, "In the Treasury and Post Office Department colored clerks have been herded to themselves as though they were not human beings." DuBois inquired about one "colored clerk" who allegedly "could not actually be segregated" on account of the kind of work he did, so that he had had "a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions of many years."
In 1915 Wilson screened the racist "Birth of a Nation" at the White House, pronouncing the White South's version of Reconstruction, replete with ape-like black legislators and virginal white women threatened by blacks who were virtual walking phalluses, as "all so terribly true." The popular film incited an escalating wave of race riots and lynchings throughout the country. A disgusted W. E. B. DuBois pronounced the movie abominable, "with the Negro represented either as an ignorant fool, a vicious rapist, a venal or unscrupulous politician or a faithful but doddering idiot."
Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, touring U.S.-occupied Haiti in 1917, recommended that the island be directly run by the military, thus avoiding the continuing conflicts between white supremacist U.S. officers and mulatto Haitian elites. While looking forward to this prudent solution to black people's assumed incapacity to govern themselves, Roosevelt devoted himself to official ceremonies, impressing his Haitian hosts with his French, his strict observance of protocol, and his disregard for the color line. On the prospects for Haitians to become civilized, he waxed optimistic: "I cannot agree . . . that just because the Haytian native population does not use knives, forks, cups, etc. that they will never use them. As a matter of fact I feel convinced that during the next generation the Haytian population will adopt the living standards more generally in vogue."
Looking on Haitians as "little more than primitive savages," Roosevelt assisted the Marine occupations of both Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), regarding such actions as noble efforts to civilize the "backward" countries of the world. When Marine Corps Major Smedley Butler machine-gunned 51 Haitians to death at Fort Riviere, Roosevelt made sure he got the Congressional Medal of Honor for it.
When he became president he declined to back anti-lynching legislation, fearing the political clout of Dixiecrats in Congress, while lynchings were publicly announced and carried out even in Washington D.C. Such events allowed a rising Adolf Hitler to boast without rebuttal that Germany treated Jews better than the U.S. treated blacks.
Sources:
Philip Dray, "At The Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America," (Random House, 2002)
Willard B. Gatewood, "Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903," (University of Illinois, 1975)
Willard B. Gatewood, "'Smoked Yankees' And The Struggle For Empire," (University of Illinois, 1971)
Daniel B. Schirmer, "Republic or Empire - American Resistance to the Philippine War," (Schenkman Publishing Company, 1972)
David Levering Lewis, "W. E. B. DuBois - Biography of a Race, 1868-1919," (Henry Holt, 1998)
Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau (with Eve Pell), "To Serve The Devil," vol. 2 (Vintage, 1971)
Blanche Wiesen-Cook, "Eleanor Roosevelt, 1933-1938," (Penguin, 1999)
Noel J. Kent, "America in 1900," (M. E. Sharpe, 2000)
Stuart Creighton Miller, "Benevolent Assimilation - The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1898-1903," (Yale, 1982)
Hans Schmidt, "The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934," (Rutgers, 1995)
------Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire," and "The Madness of King George" (illustrations by Matt Wuerker), both from Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Bulletins!
Bush Meant Purge, not Surge
The president has been taking a laxative and meant to tell the world that it was successful, mistakenly using the word “surge” instead of “purge”. Compliant media believed he was referring to the increased troop movement in Iraq, and not the increased bowel movement at the White House, and so endlessly repeated his mistake. The nation was led to believe the surge in Iraq, which has failed, was working, while the purge in Washington, which was unknown, had actually succeeded. Democrats have vowed to cleanse their own digestive tracts before developing any foreign policy tract that might confuse major media.
McCain call for less laxatives, more wars
Senator McCain, whose years in prison developed in him a deep affection for war and his cell mates, has called for more of both. Retired veterans responded by swamping recruiting stations, including the one in beautiful downtown Berkeley, with requests to become war counselors. “Our future victims in wars forecast by heroic former prisoner and future president McCain, will need the help and counsel of those who have experience” said an American Legion consultant, dressed in his Social Security t-shirt with Medicare emergency warning decal on his VFW helmet .
Deranged poet called Bill Clinton “black”: Demented athlete calls Barack Obama “white”...
When a famous black writer, during an hysterical fit of orgasmic joy , called Bill Clinton the nation’s first black president, many asked if she had ever danced with him. Others asked if she’d taken her meds. When Senator Obama recently questioned Clinton's rhythmic ability, famed athlete and suspected murderer OJ Simpson said that if elected, just as Clinton was our first white black president, Obama would become our first black white president. The Anti Defamation League called for an end to this kind of vicious and hateful anti Semitism.
Exit Polls in all states show Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich as winners
While the actual vote totals seemed to indicate otherwise, voters questioned as they left their polling places overwhelmingly chose Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, also selecting American Idol as best show on TV and picking the Giants to win the Super Bowl. Exit polling has long been suspect for being even less scientific than entrance polling, but these results caused many scholars at the Center for the Study of Centers to rethink the entire foundation of their centers. When several spot polls showed that Angelina Jolie would defeat Hillary Clinton by 85-15%, and that Denzel Washington carried the nation by 75% when pitted against Obama, and 90% when matched against McCain, experts said “either these people are really stupid, there’s something here we haven’t figured out, or, we’re absolute morons.” The center’s director offered no comment. Nor did the ADL.
Fed Urges Surge of Purges , calls U.S. Economy “A vast CDO”
Characterizing the entire American economy as a massive collateralized debt obligation (CDO), the directors of the Fed called for an exodus from financial markets as the only salvation for the nation. Wall Street was closed, foreign exchanges went dark, and the ADL protested use of the anti-Semitic term “exodus”.
Famed Shrink says Terrorist Voices heard by snoops are Internal
Messages intercepted by government and private industry spies, thought to be terrorist code words provoking various colored alerts throughout the nation, have been characterized as inner voices heard by disturbed personalities. A world famous psychologist who has studied primates under stress, married people during the holidays, and shoppers at fire sales, proclaimed that most messages seen as menacing are the result of over stressed listeners hearing their internal problems coming back to them, filtered through their own psychosomatic networks.
Calling it a newer and more dangerous form of schizophrenia which he has labeled “islamophobia”, Dr Bill Sofaman of the Institute for the Study of Institutes claims this new disorder originated shortly after the 911 disaster. Many who thought they heard people speaking Arabic were actually hearing their own inner gibberish, and its menacing and incoherent syllables were translated by them into plans to blow up important American places, like finished basements or golf courses, made by people who hated our democratic and love centered way of life, and our Judeo-Christian pacifism.
President Bush claimed that the only voice he hears is that of Jesus, telling him who to kill and when, as opposed to someone like Al Gore, who hears Jesus but asks him silly questions like what would he do. “Jesus is busy, you don't ask, you just listen” said Bush. Dr Sofaman said “ you see what i mean?”
Stay Tuned?
The president has been taking a laxative and meant to tell the world that it was successful, mistakenly using the word “surge” instead of “purge”. Compliant media believed he was referring to the increased troop movement in Iraq, and not the increased bowel movement at the White House, and so endlessly repeated his mistake. The nation was led to believe the surge in Iraq, which has failed, was working, while the purge in Washington, which was unknown, had actually succeeded. Democrats have vowed to cleanse their own digestive tracts before developing any foreign policy tract that might confuse major media.
McCain call for less laxatives, more wars
Senator McCain, whose years in prison developed in him a deep affection for war and his cell mates, has called for more of both. Retired veterans responded by swamping recruiting stations, including the one in beautiful downtown Berkeley, with requests to become war counselors. “Our future victims in wars forecast by heroic former prisoner and future president McCain, will need the help and counsel of those who have experience” said an American Legion consultant, dressed in his Social Security t-shirt with Medicare emergency warning decal on his VFW helmet .
Deranged poet called Bill Clinton “black”: Demented athlete calls Barack Obama “white”...
When a famous black writer, during an hysterical fit of orgasmic joy , called Bill Clinton the nation’s first black president, many asked if she had ever danced with him. Others asked if she’d taken her meds. When Senator Obama recently questioned Clinton's rhythmic ability, famed athlete and suspected murderer OJ Simpson said that if elected, just as Clinton was our first white black president, Obama would become our first black white president. The Anti Defamation League called for an end to this kind of vicious and hateful anti Semitism.
Exit Polls in all states show Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich as winners
While the actual vote totals seemed to indicate otherwise, voters questioned as they left their polling places overwhelmingly chose Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, also selecting American Idol as best show on TV and picking the Giants to win the Super Bowl. Exit polling has long been suspect for being even less scientific than entrance polling, but these results caused many scholars at the Center for the Study of Centers to rethink the entire foundation of their centers. When several spot polls showed that Angelina Jolie would defeat Hillary Clinton by 85-15%, and that Denzel Washington carried the nation by 75% when pitted against Obama, and 90% when matched against McCain, experts said “either these people are really stupid, there’s something here we haven’t figured out, or, we’re absolute morons.” The center’s director offered no comment. Nor did the ADL.
Fed Urges Surge of Purges , calls U.S. Economy “A vast CDO”
Characterizing the entire American economy as a massive collateralized debt obligation (CDO), the directors of the Fed called for an exodus from financial markets as the only salvation for the nation. Wall Street was closed, foreign exchanges went dark, and the ADL protested use of the anti-Semitic term “exodus”.
Famed Shrink says Terrorist Voices heard by snoops are Internal
Messages intercepted by government and private industry spies, thought to be terrorist code words provoking various colored alerts throughout the nation, have been characterized as inner voices heard by disturbed personalities. A world famous psychologist who has studied primates under stress, married people during the holidays, and shoppers at fire sales, proclaimed that most messages seen as menacing are the result of over stressed listeners hearing their internal problems coming back to them, filtered through their own psychosomatic networks.
Calling it a newer and more dangerous form of schizophrenia which he has labeled “islamophobia”, Dr Bill Sofaman of the Institute for the Study of Institutes claims this new disorder originated shortly after the 911 disaster. Many who thought they heard people speaking Arabic were actually hearing their own inner gibberish, and its menacing and incoherent syllables were translated by them into plans to blow up important American places, like finished basements or golf courses, made by people who hated our democratic and love centered way of life, and our Judeo-Christian pacifism.
President Bush claimed that the only voice he hears is that of Jesus, telling him who to kill and when, as opposed to someone like Al Gore, who hears Jesus but asks him silly questions like what would he do. “Jesus is busy, you don't ask, you just listen” said Bush. Dr Sofaman said “ you see what i mean?”
Stay Tuned?
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Lame Duck Nation
America is staggering on the ropes . Alienated from the world
as never before and retaining support only from governments so
dependent on the empire they are as useless to their people as the
American regime is to ours . We’ve lost any pretense of moral leadership, if we ever had any, and only retain military power to coerce the world. And that is diminishing as imperial overreach adds to the problems of a bloodied warrior in the global ring, assaulted by spectators as well as opponents. Analogies to wrestling or boxing actually offend those violent sports, one of which is mostly theater, and the other dedicated to beating, rather than murdering the opposition.
Still, the broken down brawler has the power to cause far more chaos
before falling down for the count, taking tens of thousands more to the
grave with him. While our hapless half-wit and his slightly less malevolent adversaries continue offering supernatural explanations for reality, even intervention by the corporate warlords who truly rule may be too
late to avoid more pain .
Continued ranting about the alleged menace from Iran , and saturation of consciousness with presidential primaries and other corporate commercials, cannot fully distract from an economy that grows worse every day. The public suffers information denial syndrome, inflicted by corporate mind management. But its experience is far more practical than the theories of economic fundamentalists, who might better pray for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than create policy that might get us out of our fix.
We are under a domain of capitalism that has created a multi-trillion
dollar debt that can never be repaid, and should be canceled . The credit organs of our commercially diseased anatomy won’t respond to the puny stimulus proposed by Wall Street clergy. It will take massive infusions of financial Viagra to keep them from becoming permanently flaccid. The masturbatory focus on the economy's private parts has created the widest gap between the rich and the rest of us since the Great Depression. Complete contempt for a public sector has almost totally destroyed what was once at least a primitive welfare state , replacing it with a private credit financed shopping mall where everyone buys with plastic, because nobody has any cash .
Social programs have been equated with communist terrorism, and
government expenditures only deemed acceptable for waging imperial wars and increasing wealth for those who already have far too much . With
individual consumers urged to find self esteem by shopping themselves into social despair, a perverse market system sells collective immorality and labels it individual liberation. We are mesmerized into personal consumption , while our social order erodes under savage competition that finds the rich and their affluent servants gaining all the benefits, while everyone else absorbs all the costs.
Acting more and more like a cornered rat, our leadership threatens increased violence in the rest of the world, some of which is likely to come back home in ways worse than 911. Seeking discussion about this from participants in the political status quo protection racket is like seeking charity at a Vegas casino . Their short term crackpot schemes, like putting a few billion dollars into individual hands so we can buy more stuff for ourselves , is the problem, not the solution . We need hundreds of billions of dollars put into the collective hands of a government controlled by a real democratic majority, so that our problems might begin to be dealt with. And those problems are not only economic.
After Bush’s miserable failure to rally former lackeys into becoming enemies of Iran, and after the imbecilic provocation in the Persian Gulf, Israel continued its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza with a renewed vigor. Clearly, one nation responded to the ravings of an irrational leader from the USA. Echoing the party line of corporate Democratic candidates - or perhaps they pre-quoted him? - the CEO of the Jewish Apartheid state proclaimed that all options were on the table when it came to the menace of Iranian nuclear weapons, which do not exist. Unlike Israel’s, which all the world knows about, with only the American government remaining mute despite having clear evidence of their existence since 1974. A near majority of citizens call for impeachment of the increasingly hallucinatory president, but the loyal opposition leader says that option is off the table. Got it kids? When it comes to the public’s wishes to get rid of the malignant moron, everything’s off the table, but everything’s on the table when supporting Israel’s wishes to get rid of Iran. Who’s in charge here?
A hopeful minority expects change with the next regime , but it may take a massive overdose of ecstasy, heroin and cocaine to offer that illusion . There will be what pundits call nuanced differences in many areas, but none at all in the horror that continues in Palestine, where the continuously savaged population, in hopeless despair at the treacherous complicity of American leadership, may yet take a retaliatory toll of their oppressors that could bring an explosion of violence beyond the present carnage . And we should not forget the suicidal warriors of Al Quaida, who are committed to get the West out of their world, with a high priority of ending American partnership with Israel in the destruction of Palestine.
Under these rapidly disintegrating conditions, the staggering empire must be stopped before its collapse destroys us all. Will the American people gain control of their renegade system, as the result of an aroused democratic struggle from within? Or will the global menace ultimately be contained , from the outside? We’d better hope it’s the first, which may not be pretty, because if it’s the second, it could be very, very ugly.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
as never before and retaining support only from governments so
dependent on the empire they are as useless to their people as the
American regime is to ours . We’ve lost any pretense of moral leadership, if we ever had any, and only retain military power to coerce the world. And that is diminishing as imperial overreach adds to the problems of a bloodied warrior in the global ring, assaulted by spectators as well as opponents. Analogies to wrestling or boxing actually offend those violent sports, one of which is mostly theater, and the other dedicated to beating, rather than murdering the opposition.
Still, the broken down brawler has the power to cause far more chaos
before falling down for the count, taking tens of thousands more to the
grave with him. While our hapless half-wit and his slightly less malevolent adversaries continue offering supernatural explanations for reality, even intervention by the corporate warlords who truly rule may be too
late to avoid more pain .
Continued ranting about the alleged menace from Iran , and saturation of consciousness with presidential primaries and other corporate commercials, cannot fully distract from an economy that grows worse every day. The public suffers information denial syndrome, inflicted by corporate mind management. But its experience is far more practical than the theories of economic fundamentalists, who might better pray for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow than create policy that might get us out of our fix.
We are under a domain of capitalism that has created a multi-trillion
dollar debt that can never be repaid, and should be canceled . The credit organs of our commercially diseased anatomy won’t respond to the puny stimulus proposed by Wall Street clergy. It will take massive infusions of financial Viagra to keep them from becoming permanently flaccid. The masturbatory focus on the economy's private parts has created the widest gap between the rich and the rest of us since the Great Depression. Complete contempt for a public sector has almost totally destroyed what was once at least a primitive welfare state , replacing it with a private credit financed shopping mall where everyone buys with plastic, because nobody has any cash .
Social programs have been equated with communist terrorism, and
government expenditures only deemed acceptable for waging imperial wars and increasing wealth for those who already have far too much . With
individual consumers urged to find self esteem by shopping themselves into social despair, a perverse market system sells collective immorality and labels it individual liberation. We are mesmerized into personal consumption , while our social order erodes under savage competition that finds the rich and their affluent servants gaining all the benefits, while everyone else absorbs all the costs.
Acting more and more like a cornered rat, our leadership threatens increased violence in the rest of the world, some of which is likely to come back home in ways worse than 911. Seeking discussion about this from participants in the political status quo protection racket is like seeking charity at a Vegas casino . Their short term crackpot schemes, like putting a few billion dollars into individual hands so we can buy more stuff for ourselves , is the problem, not the solution . We need hundreds of billions of dollars put into the collective hands of a government controlled by a real democratic majority, so that our problems might begin to be dealt with. And those problems are not only economic.
After Bush’s miserable failure to rally former lackeys into becoming enemies of Iran, and after the imbecilic provocation in the Persian Gulf, Israel continued its slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza with a renewed vigor. Clearly, one nation responded to the ravings of an irrational leader from the USA. Echoing the party line of corporate Democratic candidates - or perhaps they pre-quoted him? - the CEO of the Jewish Apartheid state proclaimed that all options were on the table when it came to the menace of Iranian nuclear weapons, which do not exist. Unlike Israel’s, which all the world knows about, with only the American government remaining mute despite having clear evidence of their existence since 1974. A near majority of citizens call for impeachment of the increasingly hallucinatory president, but the loyal opposition leader says that option is off the table. Got it kids? When it comes to the public’s wishes to get rid of the malignant moron, everything’s off the table, but everything’s on the table when supporting Israel’s wishes to get rid of Iran. Who’s in charge here?
A hopeful minority expects change with the next regime , but it may take a massive overdose of ecstasy, heroin and cocaine to offer that illusion . There will be what pundits call nuanced differences in many areas, but none at all in the horror that continues in Palestine, where the continuously savaged population, in hopeless despair at the treacherous complicity of American leadership, may yet take a retaliatory toll of their oppressors that could bring an explosion of violence beyond the present carnage . And we should not forget the suicidal warriors of Al Quaida, who are committed to get the West out of their world, with a high priority of ending American partnership with Israel in the destruction of Palestine.
Under these rapidly disintegrating conditions, the staggering empire must be stopped before its collapse destroys us all. Will the American people gain control of their renegade system, as the result of an aroused democratic struggle from within? Or will the global menace ultimately be contained , from the outside? We’d better hope it’s the first, which may not be pretty, because if it’s the second, it could be very, very ugly.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Alas, Dear Martin
“Yours is by no means a great nation, but you could be a great people. History is giving you the chance. Seize the time.”
-----Arundhati Roy, Riverside Memorial Church, May 13, 2003
In the four decades since Dr. King was killed the custodians of official history have administered a second assassination, converting King from an impassioned rebel to an alabaster saint. In school books Dr. King is now memorialized as a dull but important "African-American preacher" who went to college to "better himself," believed in God and his "fellow man," and won a Nobel Prize for Peace along with the admiration of "both whites and blacks" for his respectable beliefs and non-violent reminders of the U.S.A.'s essential goodness. Down Orwell's memory hole has gone his feverish intensity, tactical genius, and anguished incomprehension of a society permeated by racism, exploitation, and deceit.
The whitewashing of his public image is bad enough, but the return of apartheid schooling, the vast gulag of the U.S. prison system (with its hugely disproportionate black population), and the perpetuation of widespread poverty through neo-liberal austerity, all openly mock what Dr. King stood for. If he could return to see what his legacy has become, he would no doubt shake his head sadly and urge us to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to end the appalling suffering imposed by Washington's steadily declining empire. But paying one's dues has never been popular, so we continue to celebrate Dr. King's "dream" as though it were compatible with huge segregated populations mired in poverty and despair.
What has become of integration? It has been abandoned, and the early victories of the Civil Rights era have been reversed. And we should note that it died not from Klan violence but from years of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan approved as "benign neglect." Public schools that today bear the name of Dr. King are bastions of de facto segregation. Informal apartheid prevails even in racially-mixed areas where it would not require long-distance busing to achieve integrated schooling. In such areas it takes a considerable effort to maintain the unnatural practice of segregation and this effort is continually made. It appears that Dr. King took us to the mountaintop so we could beat a hasty retreat from the breathtaking view of the Promised Land and return to the suffocating isolation of the wilderness.
In his book, "Shame of the Nation," educator Jonathan Kozol reports that in a Seattle neighborhood in which half the families are Caucasian, 95% of the students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School are black, Hispanic, Indian, or Asian. The Caucasian families have their children bussed to predominantly white schools. As in elementary schools all across the country, a wall poster at Thurgood Marshall celebrates the fact that “the dream is alive,” in spite of the racial dynamic that prevails there and elsewhere. A student Kozol spoke with who actually knew who Thurgood Marshall was and what he had tried to accomplish averred that he was “pretty sure” Thurgood Marshall Elementary was not a segregated school because there were two white children attending classes on the same floor where his classroom was. That child has learned his lesson well. Just as a drop of black blood makes a person black, so a speck of white in an ocean of black and brown makes the sea "integrated."
Here's more of what Kozol found visiting U.S. public schools four decades after passage of the Civil Rights Act. In San Diego a school named after Rosa Parks had a student body 86% black and Latino, but less than 2% white. In Los Angeles, there was a school named in honor of Dr. King which was 99% black and Latino. In Milwaukee there was a Dr. King school where black children composed 99% of the student body. Another school named after King, in Cleveland, had a 99% black student population. The graduation rate was 38%. In Philadelphia, 98% of children at a high school named after King were black. At a Boston middle school named after Dr. King, 98% of the students were black or Latino.
In New York City, a primary school named for Langston Hughes was 99% black and Latino, while a middle school named after Jackie Robinson was 96% black and Latino. A high school named after Fannie Lou Hamer had a student body 98% black or Latino. In Harlem there was a Thurgood Marshall School that was also 98% black or Latino. In the South Bronx a middle school named for Paul Robeson had a white enrollment that was less than one-half of one percent. Free at last?
Whenever poverty and racial tensions explode in violence, as they inevitably must in a segregated social order, the corporate media prove themselves ever ready to lecture public schools on Dr. King’s legacy of non-violence. But the Media Czars have inordinate difficulty in even seeing the apartheid conditions that Dr. King strove to eliminate, and never even mention his call for integrating all of society's institutions. Predictably, any reference to racial oppression, concentrated poverty, and informal segregation is dismissed as “victim thinking." Bootstrapism is the order of the day.
A junior high school student Kozol spoke with nearly a generation ago in East St. Louis, commented aptly on our habit of celebrating Dr. King's dream while steadfastly ignoring the enveloping racial nightmare we have yet to overcome. “Every year in February we are told to read the same old speech of Martin Luther King. We read it every year. ‘I have a dream . . . ‘ It does begin to seem - what is the word? Perfunctory.” Asked to explain what she meant, she added: “We have a school in East St. Louis named for Dr. King. The school is full of sewer water and the doors are locked with chains. Every student in that school is black. It’s like a terrible joke on history.”
This will not change with a black president, or indeed, with any form of symbolic representation. Only an engaged citizenry determined to overcome the crippling legacy of slavery, segregation, and the hollow rhetoric of bootstrapism, can win the day. Calling this forth from within ourselves is a lot more important than canonizing Dr. King, who never cared about the accolades anyway.
In short, the only fitting way to honor Dr. King is to create a just society.
Let's get on with it.
Sources:
Jonathan Kozol, "Shame of the Nation - The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America", pp. 22-4, 27-8
Kozol, "Savage Inequalities - Children in America's Schools," pp. 34-5
--------Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (Illustrations by Matt Wuerker), and "Portraits of Empire," both with Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
-----Arundhati Roy, Riverside Memorial Church, May 13, 2003
In the four decades since Dr. King was killed the custodians of official history have administered a second assassination, converting King from an impassioned rebel to an alabaster saint. In school books Dr. King is now memorialized as a dull but important "African-American preacher" who went to college to "better himself," believed in God and his "fellow man," and won a Nobel Prize for Peace along with the admiration of "both whites and blacks" for his respectable beliefs and non-violent reminders of the U.S.A.'s essential goodness. Down Orwell's memory hole has gone his feverish intensity, tactical genius, and anguished incomprehension of a society permeated by racism, exploitation, and deceit.
The whitewashing of his public image is bad enough, but the return of apartheid schooling, the vast gulag of the U.S. prison system (with its hugely disproportionate black population), and the perpetuation of widespread poverty through neo-liberal austerity, all openly mock what Dr. King stood for. If he could return to see what his legacy has become, he would no doubt shake his head sadly and urge us to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to end the appalling suffering imposed by Washington's steadily declining empire. But paying one's dues has never been popular, so we continue to celebrate Dr. King's "dream" as though it were compatible with huge segregated populations mired in poverty and despair.
What has become of integration? It has been abandoned, and the early victories of the Civil Rights era have been reversed. And we should note that it died not from Klan violence but from years of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan approved as "benign neglect." Public schools that today bear the name of Dr. King are bastions of de facto segregation. Informal apartheid prevails even in racially-mixed areas where it would not require long-distance busing to achieve integrated schooling. In such areas it takes a considerable effort to maintain the unnatural practice of segregation and this effort is continually made. It appears that Dr. King took us to the mountaintop so we could beat a hasty retreat from the breathtaking view of the Promised Land and return to the suffocating isolation of the wilderness.
In his book, "Shame of the Nation," educator Jonathan Kozol reports that in a Seattle neighborhood in which half the families are Caucasian, 95% of the students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School are black, Hispanic, Indian, or Asian. The Caucasian families have their children bussed to predominantly white schools. As in elementary schools all across the country, a wall poster at Thurgood Marshall celebrates the fact that “the dream is alive,” in spite of the racial dynamic that prevails there and elsewhere. A student Kozol spoke with who actually knew who Thurgood Marshall was and what he had tried to accomplish averred that he was “pretty sure” Thurgood Marshall Elementary was not a segregated school because there were two white children attending classes on the same floor where his classroom was. That child has learned his lesson well. Just as a drop of black blood makes a person black, so a speck of white in an ocean of black and brown makes the sea "integrated."
Here's more of what Kozol found visiting U.S. public schools four decades after passage of the Civil Rights Act. In San Diego a school named after Rosa Parks had a student body 86% black and Latino, but less than 2% white. In Los Angeles, there was a school named in honor of Dr. King which was 99% black and Latino. In Milwaukee there was a Dr. King school where black children composed 99% of the student body. Another school named after King, in Cleveland, had a 99% black student population. The graduation rate was 38%. In Philadelphia, 98% of children at a high school named after King were black. At a Boston middle school named after Dr. King, 98% of the students were black or Latino.
In New York City, a primary school named for Langston Hughes was 99% black and Latino, while a middle school named after Jackie Robinson was 96% black and Latino. A high school named after Fannie Lou Hamer had a student body 98% black or Latino. In Harlem there was a Thurgood Marshall School that was also 98% black or Latino. In the South Bronx a middle school named for Paul Robeson had a white enrollment that was less than one-half of one percent. Free at last?
Whenever poverty and racial tensions explode in violence, as they inevitably must in a segregated social order, the corporate media prove themselves ever ready to lecture public schools on Dr. King’s legacy of non-violence. But the Media Czars have inordinate difficulty in even seeing the apartheid conditions that Dr. King strove to eliminate, and never even mention his call for integrating all of society's institutions. Predictably, any reference to racial oppression, concentrated poverty, and informal segregation is dismissed as “victim thinking." Bootstrapism is the order of the day.
A junior high school student Kozol spoke with nearly a generation ago in East St. Louis, commented aptly on our habit of celebrating Dr. King's dream while steadfastly ignoring the enveloping racial nightmare we have yet to overcome. “Every year in February we are told to read the same old speech of Martin Luther King. We read it every year. ‘I have a dream . . . ‘ It does begin to seem - what is the word? Perfunctory.” Asked to explain what she meant, she added: “We have a school in East St. Louis named for Dr. King. The school is full of sewer water and the doors are locked with chains. Every student in that school is black. It’s like a terrible joke on history.”
This will not change with a black president, or indeed, with any form of symbolic representation. Only an engaged citizenry determined to overcome the crippling legacy of slavery, segregation, and the hollow rhetoric of bootstrapism, can win the day. Calling this forth from within ourselves is a lot more important than canonizing Dr. King, who never cared about the accolades anyway.
In short, the only fitting way to honor Dr. King is to create a just society.
Let's get on with it.
Sources:
Jonathan Kozol, "Shame of the Nation - The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America", pp. 22-4, 27-8
Kozol, "Savage Inequalities - Children in America's Schools," pp. 34-5
--------Michael K. Smith is the author of "The Madness of King George" (Illustrations by Matt Wuerker), and "Portraits of Empire," both with Common Courage Press. He can be reached at proheresy@yahoo.com
Friday, January 11, 2008
Duck, Cover, Upchuck
Duck, Cover, Upchuck
So the evil Iranians menaced our warships, and all just because those ships were sailing in their waters, thousands of miles from our own shores. Isn't it shocking? And the fact that our media repeated every word of the absolutely ridiculous and hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous story as though it was all true? Why that’s just our democratic freedom in action.
While AIPAC and the evangelical zionists in Washington were all pressing the panic button, millions of Americans had to be laughing if not crying at this patently absurd scare story, but our leadership either rattled word sabers or remained in stunned silence waiting for its orders. Was this a Comedy Central production, with idiotic dialog that might be expected during the writers strike?
Luckily, once again the fissures in our ruling class revealed themselves, as only one day after this science fiction story broke, another revelation was made even though millions knew it years ago: the famed Tonkin Gulf incident which got us into the Viet Nam war was a contrived nonevent. The president and congress, with only one outspoken dissent, rushed into a war that killed millions of Southeast Asians, more than fifty thousand Americans and tore the nation apart for years , for a fiendish lie foisted on the people by a disgraceful government and a willing and compliant media .
Could it happen again? Of course, given the gullibility of so many under the thought control of so few, but sectors of the ruling class who fear the current regime will destroy their system, rose to the occasion once again. That's the good news, the bad being that among our alleged representatives there was either collective silence or the usual rumblings of anti-Iranian bigotry and war talk. What’s a democratic nation to do?
Of course, the resounding laughter and snorts of disbelief from so many helped to bring more rational stories to the surface. Like, the whole thing was a fabrication, due to nervousness on the part of young sailors, or a production of the Iranian version of The Daily Show. And the timing, to coincide with our Doofus leader’s visit to our fifty first state, Israel? Just a coincidence, having nothing to do with Israel’s endless war against Islam, and especially Iran, seen as the center of threats to the Jewish apartheid settler state, now that Saddam’s Iraq is no more. But though the temptation to laugh hysterically is always there, these idiots in power cannot be dismissed easily, especially with the sorry lot of alleged opponents running for Corporate America’s top government service position: the presidency .
Listening to the pundit putzocrats shaping our consciousness on the next election won’t help much at all, given the paparazzi nature of their coverage and analysis. A public seemingly polled every fifteen minutes and with an attention span changing faster than their numbers can be dialed has already confused the witch doctors of media into beginning the ending of the beginning of one or another campaign deemed the hot pick of the week, then glorifying inane comments and pointless statements by any candidate who seems photogenic enough for page one highlights on the non news hour. After polls totally miscalculated one vote, a richly financed establishment favorite was said to have become the “comeback” candidate, and this after a grand total of two small turnouts of voters in two very small states totaling a tiny fractional percentile of the national population , and as tiny a fraction of their respective eligible voter populations. Wowee!
In this environment, an honest poll taken of everyone in the country would probably show that more than seventy percent weren’t even remotely concerned about the elections to come later this year, while a small group would be passionately involved, though not nearly as well informed about the candidates as they were about some celebrity's bout with divorce, drugs or sex. The best financed presidential wannabes said to be against the war all vote to fund it, and make weasel statements about ending the war in the right way, responsibly redeploying troops, or only leaving enough there to protect our bases. And these oily word meisters receive screaming support from a supporter base as desperate for hope as starving children for a crust of bread, thus reduced to accepting the intellectual garbage stuffed into their heads and even praying that they can mentally digest it and that all will turn out well when it is recycled at the toilet. Which seems to be where things are at the moment.
Ready to flush? Not all at once, please.
So the evil Iranians menaced our warships, and all just because those ships were sailing in their waters, thousands of miles from our own shores. Isn't it shocking? And the fact that our media repeated every word of the absolutely ridiculous and hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous story as though it was all true? Why that’s just our democratic freedom in action.
While AIPAC and the evangelical zionists in Washington were all pressing the panic button, millions of Americans had to be laughing if not crying at this patently absurd scare story, but our leadership either rattled word sabers or remained in stunned silence waiting for its orders. Was this a Comedy Central production, with idiotic dialog that might be expected during the writers strike?
Luckily, once again the fissures in our ruling class revealed themselves, as only one day after this science fiction story broke, another revelation was made even though millions knew it years ago: the famed Tonkin Gulf incident which got us into the Viet Nam war was a contrived nonevent. The president and congress, with only one outspoken dissent, rushed into a war that killed millions of Southeast Asians, more than fifty thousand Americans and tore the nation apart for years , for a fiendish lie foisted on the people by a disgraceful government and a willing and compliant media .
Could it happen again? Of course, given the gullibility of so many under the thought control of so few, but sectors of the ruling class who fear the current regime will destroy their system, rose to the occasion once again. That's the good news, the bad being that among our alleged representatives there was either collective silence or the usual rumblings of anti-Iranian bigotry and war talk. What’s a democratic nation to do?
Of course, the resounding laughter and snorts of disbelief from so many helped to bring more rational stories to the surface. Like, the whole thing was a fabrication, due to nervousness on the part of young sailors, or a production of the Iranian version of The Daily Show. And the timing, to coincide with our Doofus leader’s visit to our fifty first state, Israel? Just a coincidence, having nothing to do with Israel’s endless war against Islam, and especially Iran, seen as the center of threats to the Jewish apartheid settler state, now that Saddam’s Iraq is no more. But though the temptation to laugh hysterically is always there, these idiots in power cannot be dismissed easily, especially with the sorry lot of alleged opponents running for Corporate America’s top government service position: the presidency .
Listening to the pundit putzocrats shaping our consciousness on the next election won’t help much at all, given the paparazzi nature of their coverage and analysis. A public seemingly polled every fifteen minutes and with an attention span changing faster than their numbers can be dialed has already confused the witch doctors of media into beginning the ending of the beginning of one or another campaign deemed the hot pick of the week, then glorifying inane comments and pointless statements by any candidate who seems photogenic enough for page one highlights on the non news hour. After polls totally miscalculated one vote, a richly financed establishment favorite was said to have become the “comeback” candidate, and this after a grand total of two small turnouts of voters in two very small states totaling a tiny fractional percentile of the national population , and as tiny a fraction of their respective eligible voter populations. Wowee!
In this environment, an honest poll taken of everyone in the country would probably show that more than seventy percent weren’t even remotely concerned about the elections to come later this year, while a small group would be passionately involved, though not nearly as well informed about the candidates as they were about some celebrity's bout with divorce, drugs or sex. The best financed presidential wannabes said to be against the war all vote to fund it, and make weasel statements about ending the war in the right way, responsibly redeploying troops, or only leaving enough there to protect our bases. And these oily word meisters receive screaming support from a supporter base as desperate for hope as starving children for a crust of bread, thus reduced to accepting the intellectual garbage stuffed into their heads and even praying that they can mentally digest it and that all will turn out well when it is recycled at the toilet. Which seems to be where things are at the moment.
Ready to flush? Not all at once, please.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Venezuelan president confesses to supermodel Naomi Campbell
January 6, 2008, Univision.com (Translation by Michael K. Smith)
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has conceded an interview to the supermodel Naomi Campbell in which he characterizes the government of the United States as "genocidal" and praises Cuban leader Fidel Castro as "the world leader with the most style."
In the interview, which will be published in the next issue of the British magazine GQ, Chavez brands the president of the United States as "completely insane," and insists that Bush and his cabinet tried to kill him.
The Venezuelan president labels Condoleezza Rice "Secretary of State of a genocidal government," and is delighted that her boss, Bush, is now close to leaving the White House.
"We are witnessing the fall of the Empire. When the world is frightened, it is one step before the fall. Just like in the story, the Emperor has no clothes, and we have seen his ass."
Venezuela is a country rich in oil, which causes the president to state in the interview that: "Oil will run out in half of the globe, but here we have crude for another hundred years."
"Fidel always tells me not to say that, and exclaims that each time I do, I place myself in Bush's (gun) sight," declares the Venezuelan leader.
Chavez says of his country that it is a model of respect for human rights.
"We are beginning a peaceful revolution. We don't have a single political prisoner. We haven't killed anyone. We have prohibited arresting people for political reasons," he stated.
"The presumption of innocence applies to everyone, and here human rights are respected. I don't believe there is any other country in the world with greater freedom of expression than Venezuela," he insists.
On the elegance of the president of Cuba, Chavez pointed out that "his uniform is impeccable. His boots are well shined and his beard is elegant."
Asked by the supermodel if he knows the British pop music group "The Spice Girls," Chavez says he remembers them, although he adds that he knows England's Queen Elizabeth II personally.
When Naomi Campbell asks if he knows the heir to the British throne, Chavez responds: "I like the Prince. Now he has Camilla, his new girl friend. She isn't as attractive (as Diana of Wales), isn't that right?"
Continuing in a frivolous mood, the model wants to know if Chavez would allow himself to be seen with his chest undressed like Russian president Vladimir Putin, to which Chavez responds, "Why not?", inviting Campbell to feel his muscles.
Chavez showed the interviewer his library and its paintings, and confessed to her that he likes to sing.
"If he weren't president, he would be a very successful Latino singer," comments Campbell, who states that she didn't go to Venezuela to judge Chavez the politician, but rather to interview "Chavez the man."
In her final comments, the model reflects that "Chavez says what he thinks," and confesses that he seemed to her a person "without fear, but not threatening or irrational."
"I hope that the relations between Venezuela and the United States improve in the immediate future. Apart from whatever the future may have in store, for me (Chavez) will always be a rebellious angel."
The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has conceded an interview to the supermodel Naomi Campbell in which he characterizes the government of the United States as "genocidal" and praises Cuban leader Fidel Castro as "the world leader with the most style."
In the interview, which will be published in the next issue of the British magazine GQ, Chavez brands the president of the United States as "completely insane," and insists that Bush and his cabinet tried to kill him.
The Venezuelan president labels Condoleezza Rice "Secretary of State of a genocidal government," and is delighted that her boss, Bush, is now close to leaving the White House.
"We are witnessing the fall of the Empire. When the world is frightened, it is one step before the fall. Just like in the story, the Emperor has no clothes, and we have seen his ass."
Venezuela is a country rich in oil, which causes the president to state in the interview that: "Oil will run out in half of the globe, but here we have crude for another hundred years."
"Fidel always tells me not to say that, and exclaims that each time I do, I place myself in Bush's (gun) sight," declares the Venezuelan leader.
Chavez says of his country that it is a model of respect for human rights.
"We are beginning a peaceful revolution. We don't have a single political prisoner. We haven't killed anyone. We have prohibited arresting people for political reasons," he stated.
"The presumption of innocence applies to everyone, and here human rights are respected. I don't believe there is any other country in the world with greater freedom of expression than Venezuela," he insists.
On the elegance of the president of Cuba, Chavez pointed out that "his uniform is impeccable. His boots are well shined and his beard is elegant."
Asked by the supermodel if he knows the British pop music group "The Spice Girls," Chavez says he remembers them, although he adds that he knows England's Queen Elizabeth II personally.
When Naomi Campbell asks if he knows the heir to the British throne, Chavez responds: "I like the Prince. Now he has Camilla, his new girl friend. She isn't as attractive (as Diana of Wales), isn't that right?"
Continuing in a frivolous mood, the model wants to know if Chavez would allow himself to be seen with his chest undressed like Russian president Vladimir Putin, to which Chavez responds, "Why not?", inviting Campbell to feel his muscles.
Chavez showed the interviewer his library and its paintings, and confessed to her that he likes to sing.
"If he weren't president, he would be a very successful Latino singer," comments Campbell, who states that she didn't go to Venezuela to judge Chavez the politician, but rather to interview "Chavez the man."
In her final comments, the model reflects that "Chavez says what he thinks," and confesses that he seemed to her a person "without fear, but not threatening or irrational."
"I hope that the relations between Venezuela and the United States improve in the immediate future. Apart from whatever the future may have in store, for me (Chavez) will always be a rebellious angel."
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