March 13, 2007

CAREFULLY!

"But then, what else happens? 1619, you've got white slaves and you've got black slaves. You have the first representative assembly that takes place as modeled on the corporation, but it is attempt at democratic elections, the first representative assembly. They gathered July 30, 1619. They cancelled August 4, because it got too hot. And thirteen days later, here comes the boat with the first Africans. And at that time, slavery was not racialized.
"You had white slaves and you had black slaves.
But the white slaves, you look on the register, 1621, they had names like James Stewart and Charles McGregor. But you look on the right side and you see negro, negro, negro, negro. So even before slavery became a perpetual and inheritable structure of domination that would exploit the labor of Africans and devalue their sense of who they were and view their bodies as an abomination, you already had the black problematic of namelessness. White supremacy was already setting in as another dominant ideology to ensure that these working people do not come together.
"It's a creation of different worlds, so that the de facto white supremacist segregation that would be part and parcel of the formation of the American Empire would constitute very different worlds and constitute a major challenge to what it means to be a leftist in America from 1776 up until 1963, given the overthrow of American apartheid, which took place in the ’60s"
-Cornel West, 2007


Clarity. Psychology. Logic.
"Now there's one modern day lie that we want to attack and then move on very
quickly and that is the lie that says anything all black is bad. Now, you’re all
a college university crowd. You’ve taken your basic logic course. You know about
a major premise and minor premise. So people have been telling me anything all
black is bad. Let’s make that our major premise. Major premise: Anything all
black is bad. Minor premise or particular premise: I am all black.
Therefore...
I’m never going to be put in that trick bag; I am all black
and I’m all good, dig it. Anything all black is not necessarily bad. Anything
all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that’s what
white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting their same fears
and guilt on us, and we won’t have it, we won't have it. Let them handle their
own fears and their own guilt. Let them find their own psychologists. We refuse
to be the therapy for white society any longer. We have gone mad trying to do
it. We have gone stark raving mad trying to do it. "
-Stokely Carmichael,
1966



Different worlds, still, as according to the FBI (Kwame Ture)


Careful! - Wu Tang Clan

Somethin in the slum went rum-pum-pum-pum...
Yo somethin in the street went, BANG BANG
Makin it hard for you to do your THANG THANG
Clarity -- tracking shot. Wu Tang versus "Mr. Spectacle".
"Naggers got guns! Naggers got guns! Naggers got guns!" --Bobby Seale imitating police reaction to one of the first Black Panther community patrols in Oakland, California. (from AK Press released recording of rally in 1968).

Syringes, rubber bands, needles, the 60's...

film: Murder of Fred Hampton: mock trial.
this was the real life trial of Fred Hampton, carried out by Chicago police and FBI:





I put a spell on you, Nina Simone: shot counter shot.



references:
( "What it Means to be Leftist in the 21st Century" -- Cornel West)
( "Black Power" -- Stokely C.)

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