Real Thinking

Again, you need to READ writings of former Black Panther Party people. And do not mistake the ORIGINAL Black Panther Party founded in 1966 with the "new" Black Panthers started in the 1990s, and connected to Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Read PANTHER BABY by Jamal Joseph. Read THE GREATEST THREAT and MARSHALL LAW by Marshall Eddy Conway. Read TO DIE FOR THE PEOPLE and REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE by Huey P. Newton. Check out Bobby Seale's SEIZE THE TIME. Learn about the original 10 point program of the Black Panther Party. Political education, peoples clinics, and various other community building programs of the original Panthers may still be relevant.

-Savant

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In fact, Timothy is quoting from THE TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE which I read several years ago, and which I drew upon in my recent book on King. Interestingly enough, Dr. King wasn't so much condemning the hippie as he was condemning the racist, imperialist society which begat their brand of alienation. They, the hippies, chose to disengage themselves from this corrupt society. King thought that was understandable. So do I. But disengagement is not a solution. King had more chance of working with radicals--leftists whom you despise---who fought racism, exploitation and imperialist war--than with hippies who simply wanted to drop out. But he didn't use the word "hippies" with contempt. They weren't enemy. Hippies weren't bombing churches in Alabama. Hippies were dropping bombs on Vietnam. The enemy were the racists, the imperialists, the militarists and global capitalist predators. Regarding King's analysis in TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE, I agree with most of it. And since you--who expressed SYMPATHY for the reactionary TEA PARTY movement, its white militia contingents notwithstanding---you need to be called on your likening of the Occupy MOvement with the hippies.

The hippies didn't occupy, they mainly withdrew. I know of no exact parallel between a 60s group and Occupy unless it's certain tendencies within the SDS. Not even exactly that since SDS, and white new leftists generally were white university students and intellectuals, while Occupy also included workers, trade unionists, small business folk and (at least in Bmore) some members of the activist Black churches and the NAACP. Occupy was simply not very well organized. But unlike the hippies, they were ACTIVIST. They didn't withdraw or disengage or retreat to hippie communes. And they were opposed to many of the same people to whom Dr. King, the Panthers and Stokely were opposed: corporate capitalists and opportunist politicians selling our the interests of the American people to the highest bidder. But given your support the reactionary, racist tinged Tea Party with their pro-corporate orientations, these simple facts would be a little too much for you miniscule mind to comprehend.

-Savant

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In my mother's house, Dr. King was next to God. But she also admired Stokely and Rap. But after Dr. King was killed mother became very, very pro-Panther. Some Panthers--especially one who was a student in Biology at Morgan State College (now Universit), became a friend of the family. Another Panther brother worked in the same factory as did my mother. And they organized right around the corner from us. Mother would even cook and bake things for the breakfast program. Even now you can find a closet full of old Black Panther newspapers. I've little doubt that I would have joined had I been older or if the BPP could have sustained themselves as a revolutionary movement for at least 10 more years. Assdurratin claims that the Panthers were criminal organization---which, incidentally, is also the line spouted by the FBI in its COINTELPRO propaganda. But I know that it wasn't until the Panthers were gone that my neighborhood was again beset by dope dealers and pimps..(And there is now evidence that the Panthers were right in their claims that the CIA was peddling dope in the hood, and in a lot of other places as well. You can find an article by one of the NY 21 called "Capitalism + Dope=Genocide").

Now that's a good question. I think our economic empowerment and self-determination at some point will require the transcendence of capitaliism itself. But black owned enterprises may improve our situation, especially if they take the form of democratic cooperatives. I suggest democratic cooperatives, even though I don't exclude private enterprises, because in such institutions the AVERAGE person can play a bigger role in securing his/her well being and that of the community. I really would like to see folk take a second look at W.E.B. Du Bois's DUSK OF DAWN, and especially the chapter entitled "The Colored World Within." I've recently published on book on the philosophical thought of Dr. King, and I noticed that he seemed to promote both support for Black enterprises, and the formation of cooperatives among poor and working class Black folk. King discusses some of this in STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM and WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: CHAOS OR COMMUNITY? I also think we can revisit some of the projects of SNCC, and even the 10 Point Program of the Black Panther Party. One sad thing about what happened after the 1960s, is that too much of the political ane economic thought and proposed programs were forgotten. But some of it is still relevant, even more relevant TODAY than in the 1960s.

 -Savant

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I neither glorify nor deify anyone. But you glorify and deify not only Nkrumah (who deserves respect, not adoration) but even such ersatz ideas as the Stalinist and Nazi "superstate. " I consider that the Black Panther Party from maybe 1968 until about 1972 was the most ADVANCED movement in Black America that had any popular support. Brother Stokely eventually fled in 1969--which I can understand given the murderous activities of the FBI--and when he returned he had essentially a non-program, as far as Black America is concerned--i.e., the unification of Africa under scientific socialism. Try organizing a movement in Harlem, Chicago or my native East Baltimore with that. You can hardly organize Africa with that. By the way, if they don't do political education in the AAPRP any longer, then it would have been due to disrupters like you. In fact, you claimed to have been a member of the original BPP and the AAPRP. I was too young to join the BPP. and opted not to join the AAPRP in the 1980s. But noticing your disruptive, Cointelpro style tactics in AA Forum, I would not be surprised if YOU were a COINTELPRO agent in BOTH the BPP and the AAPRP.

 -Savant

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 Notice that I was speaking of Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Dubois and Harriet Tubman. I was speaking of Ella Baker and other righteous sisters in the struggle. And Assdurratin calls them "low life scums who happen to be female." And he wonders why I think he's a reactionary, a misogynist, and maybe even a COINTELPRO style operative. If you look as COINTELPRO documents who see FBI directives including tactics of personal defamation, character assassination, and disinformation. I wonder if SNCC, with which Ella Baker help start was a scum organization? Oh, but that would then include brother Stokely. Strange I definitely recall seeing a photo of Fannie Lou Hamer on the same platform with Malcolm X! And we know how HE has been defamed by enemies of Black folk and of freedom. What kind of game is Abdurratln playing? And why does Abdurratln continuously resort to PERSONAL defamation? Can't carry a debate on RATIONAL grounds. His boisterous methods readily remind one of the tactics used by Nazi Brownshirts in their path to power. They remind me of the methods of Stalinists which Richard Wright described in AN AMERIAN HUNGER. I don't think this is just a coincidence. The Panthers used to say about someone with Auntie Abdurratln's characteristics that he was "either a pig or a fool." I've long known he was a fool, and now I'm suspecting him to be a pig.

 -Savant

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By the way, you woulld probably appreciate a new book entitled "IN A SINGLE GARMENT OF DESTINY: A GLOBAL VISION OF JUSTICE. It's a new volume of Dr. King's writings and speeches specifically focusing on his analysis of INTERNATIONAL conditions and relatiions, ?There is an especially sizeable collection of his work on Africa's struggle for feedom and her resistance to colonialism and imperialism. There especially alot on the fight against Apartheid in south Africa. He even has an article entitled 'My Talk with Ben Bella." And therer is also discussion of the situation in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. I saw this information in my campus email this morning. I will get a desk copy--one of the perks of academic life. But the cost is only $16 for the paperback edition published by Beacon Press. Beacon publishes a lot of progressive and left-of-center stuff. I normally wouldn't suggest a book which I've not yet read. But my inspection of the table of contents mainly show works by Dr. King which I'm already familiar with. And they are edited by Dr. Lewis Baldwin, and AA king scholar and professor of religion at Vanderbilt University. it may be even cheaper on Amazon.com. Ok, I'm outta here. Later on, bro.

-Savant

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I guess the first thing we have to keep in mind is that Africans, like all other human beings, are not an monlolithic mass. Just as some African American men and women can related to Africans, befriend them, and in some cases LOVE them, the same can be said for some Africans in relationship to us. Some African-Americans are distrustful or even hostile toward Africans. Some Africans feel likewise. There are no doubt a lot of reasons for this, and it would be worthy of some examination. I've both male and female kindred who are married to men adn women from the Motherland. While I don't justify distrust, prejudice and the stereotyping of folk, there's anough blame on both sides to make one pause before passing judgment. But again, what I would like to know are the circumstances of the persons who do joined in vows of love across the awful Middle Passage. Why are they different? Education? Upbringing? MOST Black men are neither in prison nor dying of AIDS. That's a racist myth. Equally stupid is the myth of the black "welfare queen" popularized during the Reagan era, and alll the other trash about Black women. That this sort of trash is spouted by white racists like "bergermeiste r" hardly surprises me. But it does both me that I hear similar racist stereotypes--ant-B lack racist venom--spouted at each other by some Black people in Topix.

-Savant
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Now there's a lot packed into your post, and I will try to respond to different parts of it in different posts, and maybe different times. First our different approaches to racism. There is a greater tendency among Black Americans than among whites to see racism as an INSTITUTIONALIZED system of power and privilege, not just prejudice and animosity. For us, it's just a matter of white attitudes, but more fundamentally white power and privilege. Whites may encounter Black animsoity, as we certainly have encountered their seven more. But whites do not experience any oppressive Black power because, unlike imperial white power, it mainly does not exist. Blacks in America--as numerous surveys have shown--are also more cognizant than whites of an unjust class structure as well. but it is mainly among the more "radical " or revolutionary African Americans that there is a clear connection in mind between RACISM and CAPITALISM. Dr. King, Malcolm X, the 1960s Black Panthers, the African Blood Brotherhood, Dr. Du Bois, Angela DAvis, Cornel West, Savant and many others see racism and capitalism as being inextricably interwined. Hence they commonly come to the conclusion that the fight against racism cannot be definitively won without winning the fight against capitalism as well. Moreover, some sutdies show that this attitude is at least implicitly present (though not well thought out) among AA working class and poor folk than among our Blacik bourgeois and petty bourgeois. Nonetheless, the "leadership " of the Black community, and most of the leaders of the Civil rights Movement were men 9sometimes women) of our petty bourgeios and bourgeois strata. This deeply affects strategies for fighting and perceiving racism politically

-Savant

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 Now there's a lot packed into your post, and I will try to respond to different parts of it in different posts, and maybe different times. First our different approaches to racism. There is a greater tendency among Black Americans than among whites to see racism as an INSTITUTIONALIZED system of power and privilege, not just prejudice and animosity. For us, it's just a matter of white attitudes, but more fundamentally white power and privilege. Whites may encounter Black animsoity, as we certainly have encountered their seven more. But whites do not experience any oppressive Black power because, unlike imperial white power, it mainly does not exist. Blacks in America--as numerous surveys have shown--are also more cognizant than whites of an unjust class structure as well. but it is mainly among the more "radical" or revolutionary African Americans that there is a clear connection in mind between RACISM and CAPITALISM. Dr. King, Malcolm X, the 1960s Black Panthers, the African Blood Brotherhood, Dr. Du Bois, Angela DAvis, Cornel West, Savant and many others see racism and capitalism as being inextricably interwined. Hence they commonly come to the conclusion that the fight against racism cannot be definitively won without winning the fight against capitalism as well. Moreover, some sutdies show that this attitude is at least implicitly present (though not well thought out) among AA working class and poor folk than among our Blacik bourgeois and petty bourgeois. Nonetheless, the "leadership" of the Black community, and most of the leaders of the Civil rights Movement were men 9sometimes women) of our petty bourgeios and bourgeois strata. This deeply affects strategies for fighting and perceiving racism politically 

-Savant

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 Excellently stated...and has taught me that maybe the bulk of AAs are stagnated "at best" because of in-house sabotages (outside of ignorances to capitalistic motivation of racism)...it is also probably due to the Black elite benefiting at the expensive of the Black masses (in a similar way of how the While elite manipulate the White masses)...hence why many may push the idea of "class over race"...and purposely becoming an obstacle for "Black" strategies to dismantle institutionalized racism & sexism (and I only stress Black because Blacks suffer the most,and others are too ignorant & maybe fearful to understand they suffer as well from allowing a racist & sexist system to continue).... Challenging such an "infrastructural' is a bit tricky in a capitalist society..where the masses of both white and Black citizens have been completely convinced (brainwashed) to act accordingly to "basic" racist & sexits ideas and expected behavior. Class-divided societies , be it based on race or gender, is always a breeding ground for social inequalities to the detriment of the masses and the economic benefit of the selected "favored" few.

 -Proud Sis

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 Yes, and we need to take a look at the new shapes that racism and classism are taking since the 1960s. Michelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW and Angela y. Davis' stuff on the "prison industrial complex" are things worth looking at. Again, I will be back when I can get a break.. Off to class. Later on, Sis

 -Savant

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 Have a great day...and when you get a chance..can you share some reflections and insight on what you believe is preventing (Black) Africa today from establishing independent power in connection with racism, sexism, etc.(I know corruption is HUGE).. and your feelings on how we are approaching our problems...I do believe we can learn from one another.. What are your ideas on how to build MORE relationships (including romantic) between AAs and Black Africans...Do you feel that African descendants should one day make an exodus back to Africa (like Israel)? -Proud Sis