An old Bedouin tale tells of a traveler who allowed his camel to slip its nose under the flap to share the warmth of his tent. As the man sleeps, a frigid desert wind beats upon the tent and he is suddenly awakened to find the camel’s head nuzzling his back. “Well,” he tells himself with a shrug, “it’s very cold out there and he doesn’t take that much room,” and dozes off again.
The night deepens, the wind rises, and the man is awakened again to find the camel’s forelegs pressing against him. “Oh, well, it’s a very, very cold and windy night” he sighed, rolling over to regard his guest. “Besides, there’s still plenty of room inside the tent.”
He falls into a fitful sleep, wakened frequently by the urgent nudgings of the camel, relentlessly inching its way into the tent until, eventually, the man wakes up shivering outside of the tent in the cold dawn—while the camel snores loudly from within.
The moral here is obvious: a kindness, once extended, might be turned to a disadvantage by an ungrateful recipient.
In everyday life, we’ve all experience the houseguest who overstays their welcome, or the co-worker or neighbor who presumes on our generosity to invade our space or borrow our tools, or the SUV driver in a hurry who usurps our right-of-way at the rotary… It’s nothing personal, they’re just scratching an itch—at our expense.
The question for us is: after reaching across the aisle to an ever-more ideological GOP, wooing social conservative evangelicals, and placating corporate America, how much space is left for the millions who voted to end a war, eliminate poverty and disease, and restore a sense of justice and optimism for people who still remember the promise of Martin’s Dream? — Ω
Immigration and citizenship have been central concerns of US policy makers, dating back to the Founders. Generally speaking, laws governing US immigration and citizenship have fixated on race and ethnicity as factors determining eligibility for entry and citizenship — that is, on who would be included among “We the people.”
Over the next few weeks, Cimarrón examines the truths and fallacies attached to immigration — legal and not — and its impact on the Black community’s past and present from the historical perspective of the ongoing struggle for Black Liberation — Ω “Illegal,” Says Who? The simmering controversy over whether/not illegal immigration poses a threat to the African American community is a lively source of debate in Black barbershops and on Black talk-radio. Most Black Americans will readily profess sympathy for the plight of exploited immigrant workers and their families in one breath, while insisting that “they” should not be “rewarded” for breaking “our” laws in the next. Breaking “our” laws? I find this notion curiously disturbing — particularly since history has shown that Black Americans were usually ill-served by The Rule of Law. In fact, for most of our 390-odd years in this country, The Law has preserved an arbitrary social order privileging Whites in every way imaginable — most often at the expense not-Whites. Even the handful of laws enacted to affirm the civil and political rights of Black people have been cynically turned against our interests to defend some White entitlement claim. [More on this in future postings.] In today’s post-slavery, post-civil rights and (according to some) “post-racial” society, the notion that The Rule Law will ultimately provide justice and equity for all who Believe-and-Obey turns history — as we’ve lived it — on its head. Fortunately, our kids aren’t so easily fooled. My wife, Berta, is a fifth grade public school teacher in Boston. Her students are Latino immigrants — or the children of recent immigrants — from the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America. They are designated ELLs (English-language learners) or LEPs (Limited-English Proficient) and struggle with the demands of a society that sees their home language and culture as deficits to overcome. Each year, as part of their American history unit, Room 204 treks Boston’s Black Heritage Trail — 14 sites of historic significance for the city’s Black community. This particular class trip roughly coincided with media fallout from the March 2007 raid by ICE agents on the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford. The seventh stop on the Trail is the John Coburn House at 2 Phillips Street on Beacon Hill. Coburn was a freeborn Black man, and a prominent abolitionist active on the Boston Vigilance Committee, a multiracial group created to block enforcement of federal sanctions against escaped slaves. In 1851, Coburn was among those arrested, tried, and eventually acquitted for rescuing a fugitive slave called “Shadrach.” The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, made a crime of providing aid, comfort, shelter, or employment to any person adjudged a “fugitive from service or labor” (a legal euphemism for “escaped slave”). Fugitive slaves were routinely denied a trial by jury and barred from testifying in their own defense. The Act also provided for special commissioners holding concurrent jurisdiction with the U.S. district courts. Then, as now, the legally-sanctioned kidnapping and transportation of alleged fugitives was called “rendition.” At this point, the Park Service Ranger leading the tour paused and asked if anyone had questions about Coburn or fugitive slave laws. “They’re still doing that today,” piped Oris, a sharp-witted 11-year-old. “I mean, like, in New Bedford,” he clarified. The dramatic Bianco factory raid netted some 361 workers — mostly women — suspected of being “illegals.” Within 48-hours, ICE, with ruthless efficiency, had processed, interrogated, and dispatched some 200 workers from an abandoned military base in Massachusetts to detention centers in south Texas. Leaving at least 200 frightened children without a parental caretaker sparked a firestorm of protest among child advocates and civil libertarians. ICE caved to the public outcry and grudgingly released a number of female detainees. Oris saw startling parallels in the perils shared by fugitives slaves in 1851, and undocumented Latino families over 150 years later. Drawing from the story of two American-born Black men from Boston’s past, he found lessons that were still relevant to a child of Dominican immigrants living in Boston’s present. On May 13, last — just over 14 months after the notorious New Bedford raid — ICE made new headlines for the largest immigration raid in US history, a meatpacking plant in Pottsville, Iowa. Pouring out of Blackhawk helicopters, the ICE strikeforce came in “hot,” dressed in black riot gear and heavily armed. This time, 361 workers from Guatemala, Mexico, Israel, and the Ukraine were captured and held without bail for suspicion of “aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of a Social Security number, and other offenses.” The “presumption of innocence” — vaunted cornerstone of American juris prudence — was the first casualty to ICE’s “fast-tracking” tactics, as detainees hurried through perfunctory criminal arraignments in groups of ten shackled at the wrists, waist, and ankles. As I followed this latest coverage, I remembered Oris’ insightful comment. How, I mused, would the contemporary immigration situation look through the lens of Black History? And what might this perspective bring to the broader, and still unfinished, struggle for racial justice? I decided to do a little research on the matter. And with the election of a black man and first-generation immigrant to the presidency, it seemed appropriate to share what I’ve learned about the twisted path and the costs of becoming an “American.” Justice, the Rule of Law, and people of color The Rule of Law structures everyday relations between members of society: it defines rights and privileges, draws distinctions between classes, and settles disputes over property and truth-claims. In the US, the Rule of Law maintained an absolute race-based dictatorship lasting some 250 years, and created an artificial White political majority benefiting rigid racial segregation and subordination, seizure of Indian lands, and selective immigration. As legal scholar, Cheryl Harris noted: The racialization of identity and the racial subordination of Blacks and Native Americans provided the ideological basis for slavery and conquest…Although the systems of oppression of Blacks and Native Americans differed…undergirding both was a racialized conception of property implemented by force of law (1993:1715). Under the Rule of Law, abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass, was a “fugitive,” a Black man living illegally in Massachusetts — from 1838, when he escaped bondage in Baltimore, until the 14th amendment finally extended citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the US. For most of that time, some 30 years, Douglass risked being dragged off the street (or from his bed), shackled and imprisoned by local magistrates, and forcibly returned to his former condition of servitude in Maryland. All perfectly legal. The draconian severity of these measures invariably led to frequent abuses and many false arrests; cases of mistaken identity were commonplace. In 1841, Solomon Northup, a freeborn Black man and property holder from upstate New York, was kidnapped and bundled onto a New Orleans-bound ship, sold on the block, and held in bondage for the next 12 years. His eventual release engendered no apology, no offer of compensation or damages for his wrongful imprisonment, and no punishment for his captors. And despite being a freeman-of-property, Northup was denied the right to confront his captors in court. The US Civil War and Reconstruction formally ended the 260-year regime of slave-based capitalism in the south. However, the defeated states of the former Confederacy quickly found ways to restore the essential social and economic relations of slavery in all but name. By the end of 1865, eight southern states had enacted “Black Codes” imposing race-based constraints on political rights exercised by freedmen (e.g., voting, sitting on a jury, testifying in court, carrying firearms). Some states limited property ownership, while others excluded Blacks from certain businesses and skilled trades. The Black Codes enforced racially-restrictive labor contracts limiting the job mobility of Black workers, and prosecuting unemployment as a felony (i.e., “idleness” or “vagrancy”) circumvented the 13th amendment’s prohibition against “involuntary servitude.” New mechanisms for managing the emerging system of penal slavery (e.g., “chain gangs,” prison farms, and convict-leasing) were mandated in state legislatures dominated by former slaveholders. Whereas chattel slavery had created the wealth of the plantation capitalists, state-coerced Black labor was vital to rebuilding the south’s industrial and commercial infrastructure in the post-Reconstruction era. The only discernable difference being the slim distinction between unfree labor leased from the state, and unfree labor that was privately owned. Contemporary sweatshop and stoop-labor enterprises borrow heavily from the repressive and exploitive practices ushered in by the Black Codes and refined under Jim Crow. Like the Black convict laborers of yesterday, the precarious legal and social status of today’s undocumented workers enables employers to depress wages across entire industries, undermine occupational safety and health provisions, limit job-mobility, and squash workplace grievances through physical threat and legal intimidation. Much like the fugitive slaves of old, ICE detainees apparently have “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” ICE needs neither probable cause, nor warrants to detain or interrogate individuals, or to seize evidence. Ice is further empowered to conduct its own closed-door “administrative” hearings; and, finally, indigent detainees have no right to due process, legal counsel, or even adequate medical care. In fact, a reasonable person might conclude that ICE’s relentless pursuit and prosecution of "criminal aliens" has less to do with immigration enforcement than grabbing headlines with impressive body counts. What else does history reveal about the Rule of Law and its treatment of not-White people? Law, immigration, and the “Ownership Society” Long before G.W. Bush elevated it to a soundbite, the US was an “ownership society.” At its core, the concept of owning involves the exclusive right to the use, control, and disposition of property. And from the earliest days of English North America, the pursuit of property has fueled wars of conquest subjugating the Indians and appropriating traditional lands, and the system of slavery, which appropriated the labor of kidnapped Africans to cultivate the stolen land. Irony and contradiction has always been a singular feature of this nation’s historical record. For example, in July 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses became the first representative legislature in the so-called New World. Within weeks, however, the future course of democratic governance was shaped when the colony bartered food and water for 20 captive Africans — introducing a new wrinkle to existing class hierarchies. Gradually, beginning with Massachusetts in 1641, the colonies enacted laws defining imported Africans as property held in perpetual bondage. By contrast, White indentured servants were exempted from the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs, even granted a form of limited citizenship and the satisfaction of not being Black — a psycho-emotional consolation prize for their relative impoverishment. Flash forward a few generations to John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and second US president. Adams was confident that the newly-created United States would be “a nation of laws, not of men” — meaning that the coercive power of the state would never be subject to the whims of a despot. However, the Framers soon backed away from the noble promises of the Declaration and, instead of defending the “inalienable rights” of all, the US Constitution (1787) pledged to preserve and uphold the property rights — in land, livestock, and slaves — of the few. Clearly, Adams had failed to appreciate that a system of laws formulated by an elite minority comprised of propertied White men would have little interest in justice for the vast majority of those without property — let alone for the millions held as property. In truth, our hallowed Bill of Rights was mostly an afterthought, appended to the Constitution nearly five years after its ratification. Accordingly, the first two acts of the 1790 Congress — which authorized a national census (applying the “three-fifths rule,” Article 1, Section 2:3) and limited US immigration and naturalization to “white persons” (a legal requirement until 1952) — established the nation’s identity as a white-Christian state, and consigned Native Americans to the curious status of “domestic foreigners.” Many who claimed to oppose slavery — including presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln — assumed that the institution would eventually pass away, and that freed Blacks would willingly return to Africa. So while the US might indeed become a nation of immigrants, the Founders assumed they would be White and could prove it in court. Consequently, from the beginning, determinations of who could lawfully “become an American” was intimately bound up with racial profiling Five years after Solomon Northup’s release, the US Supreme Court attempted to settle the matter of the Black man’s place in US society in Dred Scott v. Sandford, declaring that: “[U]pon the facts stated… “Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri within the meaning of the constitution of the United States, and not entitled as such to sue in its courts.” A decade, and one bloody civil war later, slavery was no more and Black men would soon gain the franchise, the essential marker of citizenship. Yet, it would still take a full century before the federal government would actually enforce the provisions of the 14th and 15th amendments — and 140 years before a Black man would occupy the Oval Office. Lastly, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court not only endorsed state laws mandating racial segregation, drawing a dubious distinction between “social” and “political” rights, it recognized the quality of “whiteness” as a form of personal property — making interracial intimacy and racial “passing” crimes against property. The Plessy decision was situated in a period characterized by growing international — some might say, “imperialist” — aspirations. In this context, “whiteness” and “being an American” were conflated and defending White Supremacy became an implicit assumption guiding the pursuit of US national security and foreign policy interests to this day. Of course, whenever the Rule of Law proved insufficient — or overly cumbersome — responsibility for defending White Supremacy was readily assumed by armed mobs, or paramilitary terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan or today’s anti-immigrant Minute Men. The Rule of Law vs. Simple Justice, who decides? In April 1963, a full century after Emancipation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. penned his famous “Letter” from a cramped jail cell in Birmingham. King challenged critics of non-violent direct action, asserting “that there were two types of laws: just and unjust.” An unjust law was: (1) a law imposed by “a numerical or power majority group” on a minority group, that is not binding on the majority; (2) a law that purposely denied the minority any voice in its making; and, lastly, (3) a law conceived and enforced in a climate of ignorance, deceitful self-interest, and complacency. Conversely, a just law reflects both the popular will and respect for minorities. Just laws are binding on all society members, mindful of disparate outcomes and unintended consequences, and only enacted after broad and open debate. Dr. King’s rule-of-thumb: unjust laws degrade and oppress; just laws uplift and liberate. Quoting St. Augustine, Dr. King insisted that, “an unjust law is no law at all,” finally concluding that, “one has not only a legal but a moral right to disobey unjust laws.” Some people maintain that disobeying any law, no matter how unfair or misguided, merely encourages the indiscriminant breaking of all laws, leading ultimately to chaos and a general social decline — the Slippery Slope Argument. This time-worn line of reasoning is further buttressed by the Costly Consequences Argument, which posits that widespread lawlessness imposes an unfair burden, or social cost, on the entire community. The social ferment unleashed by the civil rights struggle not only hastened the final demise of Jim Crow, but the dismantling of most legal barriers to non-European immigration. And, so what? (¿Y Qué?) Since 9/11, irrational fear over US border security barely mask a dramatic escalation of the long-running “culture wars” — the right-wing crusade targeting those criminal, morally deviant, and mostly non-white, native- and foreign-born “Others” threatening America’s Anglo-centric, Christian Ideal merely by being here. The Minute Men grabbed national headlines in 2005 for its outspoken advocacy of strict border-control measures, including fielding a mostly-White cadre of armed volunteers patrolling southern border areas. In 2003, the Bush administration overhauled the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) — “La Migra” — creating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the umbrella of the Department for Homeland Security (DHS). And just as the operational logic of the War on Drugs criminalized young Black and Latino men (for being young, poor, unskilled, and not white), it’s hardly surprising that the centerpiece of the domestic arm on the equally dubious “War on Terror” is a beefed up immigration policy “targeting fugitive aliens” for “aggressive litigation and prosecution.” ICE is known for its pre-dawn, “no-knock” home invasions whereby the terrified occupants — often legal immigrants and foreign-born US citizens innocent of wrong-doing — are held at gunpoint and verbally abused while their possessions are ransacked. Recently, ICE scooped up an L.A.-born 29-year-old, described by relatives as “mildly developmentally disabled,” and deported him to Mexico for failing to provide proof of US citizenship. After three months wandering along the border, the young man was finally found and returned to his family. In response to widespread criticism over this incident, an ICE spokesperson flatly denied responsibility for verifying the actual citizenship status of detainees slated for rendition. Many critics of ICE’s enforcement-only policy are suggesting that the raid on Iowa-based Agriprocessors was not quite kosher: that, in fact, ICE might be complicit in the company’s unlawful efforts to break a union organizing drive at the plant. Whether this allegation is true and reflective of a pattern of official abuse, or not, there is mounting evidence that ICE blatantly violated its detainees’ rights to counsel and due process. And the word from the top is that Pottsville is being studied as a model for future ICE workplace actions. The incoming administration will be under a national microscope throughout its first 100 days. Nevertheless, we suspect that President-elect Obama is keenly aware that Latinos provided the margin of victory in his election — withdrawing support from the GOP following McCain’s dramatic reversal on the question of immigrant rights. Obama’s obvious political savvy and the urgency to address the rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment — in particular, the recent outburst of anti-Latino violence — should push resolution of this thorny question to the top of his policy agenda. Let’s “hope” that Mr. Obama’s vision of “change” is guided by Dr. King’s timeless idea that, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
For weeks after her high-profile October 28 arrest, local print and broadcast media have heaped scorn and derision upon former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, accused of extorting $23,500 in an FBI sting — captured stuffing her bra in a grainy video still. With her fellow senators, the media, public opinion, and the Black ministers arrayed against her, Wilkerson resigned her seat and retreated into seclusion.
Hinting at more revelations to come, FBI agents next rousted Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner on November 21, whisking him away in handcuffs to a federal district court arraignment in Worcester. Reader responses to the arrest posted at Boston.com that afternoon were overwhelmingly, even gleefully, negative — tending to focus more on the man’s radical politics than on the allegations of wrong-doing leveled against him.
Worse still, the Globe is aggressively marketing the notion of a rising, intergenerational rift threatening to topple the Old Guard — thoseveterans of the civil rights era, variously described as “dinosaurs,” “mired in the status quo,” or “race-baiters.”
Reading “Insiders seek to recast black politics in Boston,” by Michael Levenson (Boston Globe, 12/2/08) my first reaction was, “is this all he mined from a forty-minute telephone interview and three long follow up calls?” The idea that there’s a brewing political coup d’etat against incumbent Black leaders generated the article’s provocative headline and a photo depicting presumed “insiders,” Kevin Peterson, Rev. Mark Scott and Ego Ezedi brainstorming “how to reinvigorate Black politics in Boston.”
Consistent with the Globe’s youth-insurgency scenario, Peterson predicts dire consequences for the Black community if fails to “generate a new corps of leaders…[to] realign and develop a new philosophy and practice.” Scott, echoing a recent nationally-televised interview of mentor Rev. Eugene Rivers, equates social justice struggle with the politics of “complaint, grievance, and deficits.” According to Scott’s logic, then, fighting for justice contributes little to society.
Care to hazard a guess on who will comprise this New Leadership stratum, or what the general content of their New Leadership Philosophy might entail?
The Globe article follows the basic trajectory of recent editorials, metro-columns, and news coverage of the bribery scandal: Black incumbents abuse their power; Black incumbents are out of touch; Black incumbents nurture dependence on racial politics; and Black incumbents are sabotaging efforts of the African American community to move forward.
Since resigning her Senate seat last month, Dianne Wilkerson has kept a surprisingly low profile; taking a radically different tack, Counselor Turner is not only vigorously protesting his innocence, but aggressively challenging the motives and tactics of his accusers and detractors — the US Justice Department and tabloid media.
“Naturally there are no racial overtones to this,” stated Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office. “We are looking at public corruption at any level and it really doesn’t matter to us ethnicity, religion or other factors…The idea that this has some racial overtone or is racially motivated is not correct” (“The man they knew,” Boston Globe, 11/22/08).
The routine denials ring hollow given the FBI’s long and sordid history of repression against radical dissent and grassroots reform movements. For some 15 years (1956-1971) the FBI devoted considerable time, energy and manpower to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, neutralize, and otherwise discredit” the various expression of the Black freedom movement (our term for the so-called civil rights movement, back in the day). Bureau tactics evolved from the wholesale roundup and deportation of dissidents in the Palmer Raids, into COINTELPRO’s covert attacks against so-called “Black Nationalist hate groups,” into the systematic harrassment and shaming of Black politicians including Mervyn Dynmally (D-CA), Richard Arrignton (former mayor, Birmingham AL), William H. Gray 3d (D-PA), and others — likely inspired by the racist philosophical concept called Fruhmenschen (“primitive man”), which assumes that Blacks, as a group are inherently unsuited for leadership. And, indeed, the Bureau, which Turner has called “an evil institution,” is even known to target its own agents for racial harrassment.
In light of this troubling history, US Attorney Michael Sullivan has been understandably tight-lipped about Turner’s contention that his pending prosecution was racially-motivated.
However, local media pundits have been quite vocal in proclaiming Turner’s complaints of biased media coverage completely unfounded — intended to cast himself as a victim.
“An argument of racial oppression overlooks the parade of white politicians taken down in Massachusetts,” declared Globe opinion columnist, Joan Vennochi (“Turner plays the race card,” 12/7/08). For Venocchi, raising the possibility that Turner was set up is merely another instance of “playing the race card.” Citing Charles Flaherty, Tom Finneran, and Salvatore DiMasi as examples of ethically-challenged white politicians falling before FBI scrutiny, she dismissively concludes, “Perhaps there is a conspiracy to go after Beacon Hill legislative leaders?”
Yet, it’s obvious that the careers of certain federal felons are never permanently disabled — or even greatly inconvenienced — by the experience.
Flaherty, who pleaded guilty in 1996 to a Federal tax evasion charge and lying under oath about cooking his own books to justify bogus deductions, is today a successful Beacon Hill lobbyist representing the state’s lucrative gambling interests.
Finneran, succeeding Flaherty as Speaker of the House, was indicted on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2001; however, his public shaming wasn’t an obstacle to securing a talk show slot at WRKO-radio, or to joining his former mentor on the Hill as a well-paid, and still well-connected, lobbyist for the liquor industry.
Apparently, in Massachusetts, even a disgraced politician can expect a soft landing into lucrative private-sector employment — that is, if he’s White. How likely is it that a convicted Wilkerson or Turner might so readily remake themselves as Beacon Hill powerbrokers or radio personalities?
Over at Metro, Vennochi’s colleagues, Kevin Cullen and Adrian Walker, also insist that Turner’s charges of media bias are baseless — only trading Vennochi’s subtle sarcasm for a bit of boldfaced character assassination.
“Turner isn’t corrupt, he’s nuts,” Cullen asserted (“Double standard,” 11/24/08). Charging that Turner, “who blames racism for everything but the weather,” is counting on liberal reverse-racism to silence press criticism. And then there’s that crack about “[Turner’s] pal, that guy who runs North Korea and looks like Roy Orbison in a cheap suit.” Shades of Caribou Barbie, Turner’s “pal,” indeed.
Where Cullen relies on off-kilter humor and innuendo, Walker, a longtime Turner critic, trades on his racial credentials to inject more venom: “The man is either full of righteous anger or just plain delusional” (“Spin cycle to wind down,” 12/5/08). Still, Walker is correct on one point: “The court of public opinion is nothing if not easily manipulated.” He should know.
Meanwhile, the skilled use of unflattering photographs, cropped to portray Turner in the worst possible light, paint him as arrogant, erratic, disruptive, and divisive—a crazed rabble-rouser unworthy of respect or a fair hearing. But, wait, the FBI isn’t prosecuting Turner for being a radical activist — at least, not officially.
One might reasonably ask, what does the media’s negative appraisal of Councilor Chuck Turner’s character have to do with specific FBI allegations of malfeasance?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
In this information-saturated society, where traditional media is hard-pressed to compete with new forms of mass communication, the tabloid media's pursuit of the sensational, the unusual or the perverse leaves it particularly susceptible to cooptation by government sources needing a non-official channel for disseminating damaging or prejudicial information — or, propaganda. The readiness of prominent media personalities to engage in covert campaigns stigmatizing certain disfavored groups or individuals was vividly revealed in the “outing” of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame.
Add to this unhealthy brew the pronounced shift away from a healthy journalistic skepticism about government (trust the dealer but count the cards )to a toxic form of cynicism that encourages fatalism and estrangement (shoot the dealer, burn the cards), and the result is overheated, cheap-shot journalism —and “Zippergate.”
The US media establishment has a long and well-documented history of meddling in the political affairs of Black communities across the nation — selectively shaping popular opinion of Black political leaders and reform movements to either discredit and devalue challengers, or endorse and promote defenders of the status quo. In fact, even though criticizing and challenging the records and behaviors of public figures is well within the legitimate scope of media reporting, one wonders why so many (white) pundits and (white) columnists seem to relish opportunities for demeaning and disrespecting public figures who happen to be not-White?
In the post-Reconstruction period, Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass endured serial attacks on his integrity and competence for protesting post-Reconstruction concessions that preserved White supremacy. By contrast, when Jim Crow apologist Booker T. Washington assured Whites that “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation on questions of social equality is the extremest folly,” he was all but canonized by the national and Southern regional press.
Likewise, the meteoric rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. — too often viewed as the political and ideological foil to the militancy of Malcolm X, John Lewis and H. Rap Brown — was easily surpassed by his dramatic fall after “breaking the silence” on the war in Vietnam, calling for a “revolution in values” that recognized the essential humanity of the poor and oppressed everywhere.
Perhaps the most surprising outcome of Obama’s historic victory is the media’s growing enchantment with the notion that “a new paradigm of leadership, eschewing racially polarizing tactics and emphasizing collaboration and cooperation” will sweep away the Old and lead Boston’s Black community to the Promised Land of a post-racial America. How fortunate for us that the Globe has already determined who these leaders are.
Finishing Levenson’s article, the puzzling thrust of his follow up questions were now apparent: what was the “tone” of the meeting, he probed — “was there tension in the room…were some people frustrated…I heard there were tears.”
Tension? Frustration? Intergenerational conflict? Tears? With a bit of critical reflection, the not-so-Invisible Hand of an editorial agenda seeking attribution is obvious.
come from a family of teachers, storytellers, artists, and activists—wise people, strong people, respected people, gumbo and con gris people, Black people. The eldest of seven, I was born in Harlem and raised in the South Bronx. I’m a project kid, and New York to the bone.
As a child, I was at once bookish, curious and, often, recklessly adventurous—“hard-headed,” as the Old Folks would say. And I probably earned the many spankings received for my antics—though I never doubted the motivations of the adults of my multi-national extended family. I knew that I was much-loved.
My father’s people are Jamaicans, by way of Santiago de Cuba. His father left Cuba in the early 1900s, touching down in SavannahGA and Charleston SC. My father, Harold, was a WW2 vet who had served overseas as an NCO in an all-black MP battalion. Honorably discharged in 1946, he moved to NYC where his dream of attending art school was blocked by an Army benefits counselor who advised him that there was no such thing as a Black graphic artist—however, he could sign up for training as a meat cutter. Likewise, when the GI Bill was paving pathways to suburban home ownership for White veterans, my father was repeatedly denied a mortgage loan until Urban Renewal stalled in the late 1960s and banks were suddenly anxious to make federally-insured loans to anyone willing to buy in the devastated South Bronx. Harold died in 1991.
My mother, Doris, was born in New Orleans, the only child of a divorced, single-mother who worked as a domestic until well into her 80s. They moved to NYC at the tail-end of WW2. Mom was proud of her Creole-Cherokee heritage and, with her long dark hair and café con leche skin, was often mistaken for Latina. She smiled easily, was a devoted jazz fan, chain-smoked Winstons and enjoyed her evening beer. Mom invented tasty fusions of Cuban-Creole food. Doris also kept the sadness of multiple miscarriages that even her strong Catholic faith could not salve. She died in 1977, of heart failure, not yet 50—I was 28, and my baby sister was all of 10-years-old.
My Great Aunt, Mrs. Enola Lewis, “Aunt Sissy,” owned a brownstone apartment building on W.117th St., just off Lenox Ave. She gathered a broad, extended family of Black and Brown people from many parts of the states, the Caribbean, and Central America around her. Steamingdishesofgumbo, red beans, and jambalaya were the medium of engagement and bonding. She also tended the only tree on the block—protecting it fiercely against the presumptions of the odd wino or stray dog. Aunt Sissy was also aneigh-borhood activist in her own right, and a veteran of the Harlem Rent Strikes of the 1930s, raising funds for the Scottsboro Boys defense, and campaigning for Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. the first Black man elected to New York City Council. She was a founding member of her neighborhood’s block organization, and was a well-respected fixture in the community. She came out of retirement in 1976 to resume active membership as the street slid into serious decline. Aunt Sissy passed quietly the following year.
My earliest memory of being Black was as a six-year-old in 1955, when they dragged the mutilated body of Emmett Till, a Black Chicago teenager, from that Mississippi swamp. I found the photos of his autopsy and funeral in a magazine laying innocuously under a coffee table in my parent’s livingroom. Till had been brutally beaten and murdered by a group of white men because he was young and foolish, and had broken one of their most sacred cultural taboos: he dared speak to a White woman. Till’s death was meant as an object-lesson to other Black men on knowing one’s “place” in White America. My accidental encounter with those horrifying images shook the world I knew, and my childhood ended, abruptly.
I was full of questions that made most of the adults around me visibly uncomfortable: why did they do this to a boy? Why has no one been punished? And could they ever do something like that to me, or to my two baby brothers? Fortunately, “Aunt Sissy” listened intently and, rather than offering vague assurances, helped me to transform fear and dread into the righteous anger and dogged determination she’d brought with her from rural Louisiana at the turn of the last century. “Honey,” she’d say, “You can die fighting—or just lay down and die—butno one ever leaves this world alive.”
The 60s were a period of widespread social ferment—a time when most African Americans were just getting used to the notion that “Black Was Beautiful.” I quickly tired of just watching the black-and-white TV images of peaceful protesters confronting firehoses and police dogs, or footage of the not-so-peaceful Long Hot Summers bringing down fire and fierce police retaliation, or the many grainy newspaper photos of young men shipped home in flag-draped coffins from someplace called “Vietnam.” I was age 16 in 1965 when I heard the call to join this battle, and I’ve been fighting on its many fronts ever since.
Some people might consider me a curious throwback to an earlier time, asking why I keep going after 40 years of constant, uphill struggle, rewarded by numerous setbacks. For me, the answer is deceptively simple: I’m never going to get any Whiter— besides, you can’t defeat someone who refuses to stay down and submit (I think Fidel said something to that effect). Moreover, I have the example set by our Ancestors, particularly the daring “Cimarrón,” to sustain me.
The schoolbook history of the Western Hemisphere papers over many acts of wholesale kidnapping, terrorism and genocide—shameful episodes that have shaped what too many people consider “natural” arrangements of wealth, status and power. But if one cares to listen, history also tells powerful stories of resistance to this aggression, oppression, and exploitation. From the earliest days of the European invasion, there have been stories of the Cimarrón—Africans in the Americas who escaped bondage in Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Also called “Maroons,” the Cimarrón bonded with Native peoples to establish free communities high in the mountains, or in the deepest swamps—and then waged war on their former masters to defend their freedom and liberate those left behind. More than anything, the story of the Cimarrón challenges the outlandish myth that the Americas were carved from Wilderness by the heroic deeds and sacrifices of White Soldiers, White Settlers, and White Statesmen. The Cimarrón never compromised, never avoided their duty to the people, and never conceded defeat. Today, the Cimarrón live on in the hearts and deeds of everyone willing to take up the struggle for justice, dignity, and respect.
Like its namesake, Cimarrón seeks to establish a liberated zone engaging a free-thinking people in wide-ranging critical dialogue on contemporary global politics, popular culture, and issues related to social identity. “No one is ‘free’ until all are freed” was the sacred promise of the Cimarrón. And we intend to honor that pledge. —Cimarrón Ω
Afro-Cuban-American, born in Harlem & raised in the South Bronx, a project kid & organic intellectual, product of the 60s, and NYC to the bone. 'nuff said?
