Saturday, October 17, 2015
Savant's New Words
That experience wouldn't give him authority on King, especially not on King's social and political philosophy. It wouldn't verify his claims that King was conservative (if that's his view). At any rate, people from East Baltimore who grew up in the time of King do not all think in the same way. How has Marcus' views any more authority than that others who grew up in aast Baltimore at the same time?(By the way, I encountered VERY FEW Blacks in east Bmore who believed that ALL of the problems of Black America were caused by "whitey". I think it's a MYTH that most Black people think that. They do believe--CORRECTLY--that a large part of the problem is rooted in racism and economic injustice)
As regarding King's philosophy, has honestly studied it? Or does he simply pick words or phrases that suit him to make his point.
I can cherry pick comments from speeches or writings of some Marxists or Anarchists, or revolutionary Blacks like some 1960s Black Panthers.
Overwhelmingly, King was a PROGRESSIVE.
Actually, I NEITHER stated nor implied that those leaders who abandoned or watered down king's vision of economic justice were motivated by self-hatred. In fact, I was thinking about somethig else--though, now that do think about it, who knows? But what i REALLY had in mind was lack of vision and the blinkering of imagination and consciemce by narrow class interests.
Now economic justice DOES NOT exist in either law or fact. If it did, there would be no poverty in the world richest nation. There would be no illiteracy. There would be no joblessness. And everyone who needed decent health care would have it. It was to attain economic justice that King sought to win an ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS during the Poor Peoples Campaign. That economic justice isn't legally guaranteed was well understood by King himself.
Hence his comment: "It is not a Constitutional right that men have jobs, but it is a HUMAN right." (See p.5 of FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS, by Prof. Thomas Jackson or PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR (3))
Unfortunately, economic inequities are structurally built into the economym abd cabbi be renedied without (in King's words) a "radical redistribution in political and economic power."
But he meant from the haves to the have nots. What we've seen over the past 30 years is a redistribution of more of the nation's wealth from the have nots (and have less) to the haves. This must be halted and reversed, maybe by a NEW MOVEMENT for economic justice.
As to the claim that anyone can simply work his/her way out of poverty, that's an old rags-to-riches myth like the divine rights of kings and Santa Claus.
There are alwatys those who will "succeed", but those individuals do not amount to a coutrrargument. You had the wealthy Cuffee brothers even during slavery. You had CJ Walker even during the early 1900s. The state of most people are little affected by this.
Poverty and exploitation are SOCIAL CONDITIONS, not expressions of individual character. And in a period when the electronic revolution threatens to make labor itself obsolete, the "hard work"ethics is virtually irrelevant as indeed it was always false.
-Savant
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I've no evidence that most Blacks in the military marry white women. What is the source of your information? As for Farrakhan, I think he's past his prime; and if he did say that Blacks should avoid the military I doubt that many will listen. But I also doubt that what he said can be the basis for a treason trial. Nor is it likely that Blacks who did avoid the military could on those grounds alone be tried for treason....unless they've passed some new laws I've not heard about
-Savant
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Islam est un religion, pas un race. Mais...Muslim, like Jews, can be RACIALIZED and then disdained for their race. In such cases, Islamophobie est un forme du racism. Something like that happened historically in relation to the Jews. In Christian Europe, jews were initially people who practice the "wrong" religion. But eventually they came to be seen as an alien race. At that point, what we call "anti-Semitis m" becomes not only religious bigotry and intolerance, but racism. And this began to happen well before Nazism, as maybe the prehistory of Nazism. I fear that today something similar may be happening in regard to the Muslims, at least among those bigots who recognize that anti-Jewish or anti-Black racism has lost much of its social acceptability.
-Savant
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Aside from his anti-Black racism and his anti-intellectuali sm, I now think (especially given his post here) that he suffers from an inferiority complex. I wonder if he has ever been humiliated or subjected to contempt by educated black and/or white people in UK. I recall him saying something about my academic credentials being "worthless "--possibly because he is envious and resentful that he has none. And despite the fact that my PRIMARY commitment is to Black folk of the impoverished working class (from whence I came myself) and the destitute AA subproletariat, he said that I disdain Blacks who do not have academic degrees. (In fact, I am actually disdainful or at least skeptical of the BLACK ELITE which usually does have degrees and money, and who like Obama or Mayor Rawlings denounce our poor--but not the corporate elite whom they serve--as thugs and criminals). I suspect freddy has been victimized by academically privileged people. If he were a CONSCIOUS brother, he'd be more like Malcolm X or George Jackson---astute, articulate and committed Black men easily the equal or the better of many with the most prestigious degrees from the most prestigious universities in the West. But one of the things that the wave of activism has revealed in Baltimore, is that some of the most PERCEPTIVE Black folk are precisely those brothers and sisters in Gilmore projects (Freddie Gray's home); people who may not get their subject/verb order correct but who can see through the BS of the white corporate propaganda machine much better than many of my colleagues. They don't seem to feel inferior to people with academic degrees nor are they resentful. They merely want to know whether they can RELY on you, on your solidarity. And frankly, it doesn't bother me at all that they call me BROTHER rather than Doctor or Professor. In fact, I am honored, and have no reservation about putting what ever skills I have, and in any way I can, to advance the liberatory struggles of the masses of my black brothers and sisters, and the struggles of all oppressed in this country and on this planet
-Savant
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I work to overthrow the ruling class It is YOU who are kissing the ass of the ruling class, which is why you think of poor people as depraved--why YOU who are continually belittling the poor, but NEVER denounce police terrorism or racism or capitalism. Also, my students are black, white, latin, Asian and others. And they all posses what you lack: intelligence, integrity and a social conscience. And I needn't try to make a fool of you. YOU do a better job of that than I can hope to do, you stupid son of a mongoose.
-Savant (in response to a hater)
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When I last visited France in the late 1980s--1990, Blacks in Paris alone was estimated to be in the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands. In the country as a whole there are now a few millions. There are a few millions in UK as well. Most of Europe doesn't have large numbers. But it is not inconceivable nor impossible that Blacks in France could eventually become proportionately as large as in the USA, or at least Canada. The Black population has grown since I was last in France in 1990, though I don't how much. While I don't consider it to be a foregone conclusion that Blacks will be proportionately as large in France as in Canada (about 9%) or the USA (12% --14%), it is possible. And the Arabs are even larger. France, like other European countries, will likely remain predominantly "white" for the forseeable future; but it will have color spread all through her.
I don't see how a Black or Brown majority can happen in your country in the foreseeable future, but I can see the possibility of a sizeable minority within a generation or two. Aren't Blacks already between 3%--5% of the French population. It was certainly a joy to see so many of my Francophone brothers and sisters over there. When I told my Uncle Oscar about the growth in the number of Blacks over there, he said he wished he could return. "Savant, if I was a young as you I would go back" he said.
-Savant
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Contemporary genetics and biology seems to have already shown that race is (except as a socio-historical category) pure fiction. How essential is genetics to ethnicity? Consider: W.E.B. Du Bois in DUSK OF DAWN notes that there were a few members of his family who after passing for one generation had children, eventually grandchildren, who has no clue or even suspicion of any African ancestry. Of course, that is the exception rather than the rule. But at what point do such descendants cease being African-American. The Nordic looking Jewish fellow student of whom Sartre wrote KNEW that he was Jewish, even though he was secular (probably atheistic), which means he knew of a Jewish identity and history which Germans (and maybe many French) had no clue about. But what happens if you're cut off for such a long time that you lose awareness of membership in any such group? Consider the 10 lost tribes. If they weren't physically exterminated they must have had some descendants. Somebody out there to this day may have some genetic inheritance of the Northern tribes of ancient Israel. But after 2,700 years, they probably are not even aware of it. To what extent do ethnicity depend on genetic inheritance, and to what extent upon culture and ethnic identity or consciousness. To return to Du Bois and the African-American context, the vast majority of African-Americans have not only a certain genetic inheritance but an identity, collective consciousness and (though some would contest this) a culture. But what about Du Bois' kin who passed for white, allowed their children to pass for white (or simply didn't let them know about the AA ancestry), and then their children. Eventually, you get a group who (despite the "one drop rule") have essentially a white American identity. Do you not lose your ethnicity---DNA evidence notwithstanding--- once an identity and consciousness has disappeared?
-Savant
https://shazereverquar.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1-the-destruction-of-black-civiliaztion.pdf
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/15/britains-most-racist-election-smethwick-50-years-on
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