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Mackie
Questions Rudy
Dear Friends, I
received the questions below from my friend Dr. Mackie
Blanton, now teaching in Turkey. He was at the
University of New Orleans (UNO) when I taught there a couple
of years in the mid-80s. I'm not sure what his specialty
is. But it seems to have something to do with education
psychology. He is also a poet. I published a couple of
his poems in the mid-80s in my rag called CRICKET:
Poems & Other Jazz. And I have published some of his
poems in ChickenBones: A Journal. Take note of
his recent poem Rifts.
He is far more skilled than I and has been far more
successful. At times I feel quite privileged that he has
taken time out of his busy schedule to bother writing
me. I assume readily he has a love and respect for me.
He is also responsible for presenting me, while he was
still at UNO, an award for my
work on
Marcus Bruce Christian.
In the last month
we have had more correspondence than ever. I assume that
is the case because of my responses to the frequency of
racial attacks against blacks in America, most recently
the
kidnapping of a black child by a white police
officer in Baltimore and black participation in this
atrocity. Mackie has been trying to teach me lessons on
how to be critical of the black lower classes and how to
moderate my criticism of racism and racial oppression in
America. This morning I received this long list of
questions from him. At first I thought it had
a poem-like construction, because of the repetitions.
Initially, I thought to dismiss Mackie as a smart ass
and send him some quip. On second thought I decided to
take him seriously and to recast his intellectual attack
as a serious interview. Below you will find his
questions and my responses. Some may find this exchange
instructive and informative.
* * * * *
Mackie:
Rudy, I would like to know why you do not write poems
that express the kind of sentiment we can find in “Can
You Control Yo Hoe” and “Break a Bitch Til I Die,” by
Snoop Dogg, formerly Snoop Doggy Dogg, formerly Cordozar
Calvin Broadus.
Rudy: I am
not in the crack culture and I'm not very good at
rhyming and writing rap lyrics. It may be a generation
thing. But, essentially, I'm not that kind of player and
I've always had a problem making money at any cost.
Mackie: I
know why I don't. I don't because I am not interested in
copying the language and sentiments of plantation
whites, of rednecks, of feebleminded racists. But I want
to know why you don't.
Rudy: I
suspect you may have other faults, like others of us,
which may be just as dangerous, and more insidious than
the behavior of Snoop and other rapsters. They are an
easy target. In some sense that might make us worse than
Snoop Dogg, whom I should remind you has never been one
of my favorite rapsters.
James Brown is
my main man, my childhood model of the greatest of
entertainers. But I can't do the James Brown either. It
may be that my rearing in the countryside and that my
being at the university for a great proportion of my
life just did not prepare me to be a
Snoop Dogg, or even
a James Brown. I've had my regrets.
Mackie: I
also want to know why you can't see that American Blacks
have positively—and
negatively since we are but human beings—
so successfully transformed American life that white boy
adults like
Imus and Eminem, along with black boy adults
like Ludacris
and Snoop Dogg, can make millions for
themselves and for corporate America—and
that shows that white and black together collude in the
ugly side as well as the beneficial side of corporate
America.
Rudy: I can
see the positive and the negative. Here you have done a
poor bit of psychoanalysis. And it seems you are ready
to bring out your guns of character assassination. But,
in any case, our differences, primarily, are ones of
emphasis. You wish to make the fault one of individuals,
that is, to cast racism as a kind of psychological
illness; or like some as a problem of genes. I rather
see the situation as one in which system developers and
system managers find it economically beneficial to
socially and politically control blacks. Billions of
dollars are at stake. All of which has little to do with
persons like Eminem and Snoop Dogg. They have neither
the power and influence nor the capital or understanding
of this larger game to manage the direction and force of
this nation or Congress or elect the Executive. Those
powers are in corporate hands. I see these corporations
and their execs as the primary villains.
Mackie: I
also want to know why you can't see that it's now today
Black men who have condemned Black women to the
continuation of plantation poverty by copycating the
language and sentiment and behavior of past plantation
whites and today's rednecks.
Rudy: I have
heard this insidious rumor for the last two
decades. Coming from middle-class professional Blacks
like yourself. This criticism has done more hurt than
help. It has further alienated black women from black
men. It has played into the tactics of racism and racial
oppression to the point that black women became
exceedingly intolerant of black men so that families and
marriages were destroyed. Destroying black families is
an age-old tactic of American racism and racial
oppression. There are scholarly studies in this regard.
Today, we find over 60% of black women alone as a result
of this kind of repugnant propaganda faulting black
men. This insidious attack was primarily directed at
black working class men and women, who live a much
different reality than black professional men and women.
Mackie: I
want to know why you can't see that negative Black and
white males are today in this condemnation together.
Rudy: At
heart, I suppose our training and commitment to truth
may be fundamentally different. If black males and white
males are as cozy as you suggest, why don't they vote
collectively; why don't they fight the economic forces
that weigh heavily on both groups? I'll tell you why.
Racism and racial oppression keep them apart and at each
others' throats. How is that the case—because
Congress and other legislatures and the Executive
branches at local and state levels introduce and enact
all kinds of legislation that make white skin privileges
economically beneficial to white workers and white
corporations and white legislators. This has gone on
since the late 17th century and when one set of these
kinds of laws become obsolete and unproductive (like
slavery and Jim Crow laws) they wipe them out and put in
a new set that essentially have the same impact, namely
black domination. Why can't you see this? Is it because
these laws have not had the same impact on you as most
blacks?
Furthermore, why
place the blame solely on rap music and hip hip, an
industry that is not controlled primarily by black
men. The pornography industry has had a thousand
times more of a negative cultural influence and impact
on the perception of black women than the black rapsters.
None has accused black men of controlling the
billion-dollar porno industry. My suspicion is that Imus
and his cohorts got their language not from gangsta rap
cds but from porno videos. None has investigated this
probability.
Mackie: I
want to know why you are waiting in the wings, there in
the woods, for an economic analysis of racism, as if
that is going to give us a solution to how to eliminate
corporate greed, nefarious human nature, male
inferiority, dissembling language, general unhappiness,
and racism itself.
Rudy:
"Waiting"? That's a vile assumption. I put at least
18 hours of productive work in every day, primarily
serving others. And without pay. What are you doing to
eliminate corporate greed? What alliances have you made
with corporations and government forces that make you so
content with their power and influence in perpetuating
racism and racial oppression, not merely at home but
internationally. I prefer a socio-economic analysis
rather than a psycho-cultural one because it is much more
concrete and get us closer to the truth of things and
less likely to get us into imaginative, psycho babble
that only priests and experts like yourself seem to
understand.
Mackie: I want to know why
you give Black men a pass for stupidity and find it
easier to condemn only white racist America.
Rudy: As you
can see from these responses I am not giving you a pass.
The tenor and weight of my condemnations have not so
much been directed at white racist America, as it has
been a criticism directed at black men and black
women who, consciously or unconsciously, act as agents
or middle-men (a buffer) in furthering the policies and
programs of racism and racial oppression. In the sense
or the footsteps of Malcolm when he spoke of the House
Negro Syndrome. Or when Marvin X speaks of two kinds of
White People in America, those with white skin and those
with variations of black skin.
Mackie: I want to know why you find it difficult
to condemn black homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist,
racist America.
Rudy: Now
you are getting more and more vile by the moment. If you
are referring to my lack of condemnation of rap music, I—to
tell you the truth—I
do not believe that rap music is the center—it is merely
on the periphery. And to suggest that the black men who
are involved in rap are the primary purveyors of
anti-Jew, anti-woman, anti-black, anti-gay propaganda
and policies is a most outrageous slander of black men
and black people. But let me say this, I have never
bought a rap album, gangster or not, I have never had
cable TV and so I do not watch those videos and even if
I had the choice, I wouldn't because I understand the
game going on.
Mackie: I also want to know, Rudy, why when Black
men equally condemn white and black backwardness, you
prefer to call us Negroes and not Black men.
Rudy: I do
not think I use the words "Negro" and "black" any
differently than
Frederick Douglass or
Ralph Ellison or
Albert Murray or
Stokely Carmichael or
Rap Brown.
Condemning backwardness is not sufficient. Your class of
blacks condemned the spirituals. Condemned the blues.
Condemned honky-tonks. Condemned those of us who made
corn liquor to subsidize our lack of income. Condemned us
for running numbers when we couldn't find a job.
Condemned our speech. Condemned the clothes we wore.
Condemned our manners and our way of walking. All that
condemnation of yesterday seems so much similar to the
condemnations muttered today about black youth and the
masses of black folk. I fail to condemn because I have
an ardent love for my people. And thus I stand ready to
defend them from those who do not wish to look below the
surface or above the curtains.
Mackie: So
what is it that you really wish to accomplish in this
nation? . . . . All I am asking is that you come clean
about the utopia you desire. . . . Most ideologues of
change hate humanity and wish to change HUMAN NATURE.
So spit it out: what outcome do you really want once the
correct solution has been found and applied with
definitive accomplishment (which I believe is impossible
and counter to complicated, complex, beautiful, sinful,
contradictory, ironic human nature)? What's your utopia
like, Rudy? I want to see the final outcome, not the
solution to getting us there.
Rudy:
In short, the full liberation of black
people from white domination. It is that which
Garvey wanted.
It is that which
Du Bois wanted, what
Malcolm wanted,. It is that which
C.L.R. James wanted. It is
that which Julius
Nyerere wanted. It is that which
Mugabe
wants. It is that which any Negro in his right mind
would want. Like in the case of the Irish in Ireland
this liberation project make take many many
centuries, and many still more. But it is a worthy and
noble project in which we must prepare black children to
wage, however long it takes. Do you want that, Mackie?
Or are you fully comfortable with your present status in
the white man's world.
* * * * *
Responses
Rudy: Your rejoinders to "Mackie"
are so lucid, brilliant, and finely-nuanced they should
be published as a broadside. Alas, if we were living in
the days of Dudley Randall's Broadside Press, the
dialogue sequence you just sent would be published next
month as a chapbook, under the title "When Punks Jump Up
to Get Beat Down, vol. 137, no. 4."
—Jonathan
* * * * *
Cherished Brother
Rudy... I applaud your responses & mindset. I truly
enjoyed the dialog between [you and Mackie]. It seems
your friend seeks to push your buttons thereby
provoking debate that he cannot hope to win amongst
civil rights activists like ourselves. Like me he likes
to examine issues from several points of view &
perspectives. It seems he likes playing the Devil's
Advocate. He spewed the same bourgie rhetoric &
complacency that got Condelezza Rice appointed as
sole/token head house kneegrow after Powell had sense
enuf to get out before he ended up being a
patsy/scapegoat like Andrew Young.
Like you I have
much praise for those of us with educations &/or skills
that have overcome & moved on up in the world. It is
their credible voices we need to rescue & guide the
youth & those left behind still wallowing in ignorance.
But I must say that Willy Lynch programming still
poisons the minds & actions of Blacks at
every socio-economic level. It breaks my heart to see
the repulsion for one's own race in the face & choices
of successful snotty/bourgie Blacks unable or unwilling
to reach back & help other deserving but struggling
Black folks. We've been programmed to be "THE FIRST
BLACK ..." OR "THE ONLY BLACK so & so.." Tokenism is
the best weapon of racism. The White Man no longer has
to do much to us... just put another Kneegrow in charge
& watch the fur fly. It is true... as a race we are
incredibly self destructive & unable to unite or agree
on anything..
The Rap Bizness is
all about the dollars & glam. White Man couldn't beat 'em
so he joined them. Too many young Black
hoods/entrepreneurs were using drug money to voice their
POV & launch their careers underground & selling CD's
from the trunks of their cars and not paying one cent in
taxes. R & B artists has been edged out by white pop ,
jazz & blues artists. These prolific yet vulgar young
men carved a niche for themselves in an industry that
had closed their doors to opportunities for new R&B
artists. Its profitable to remake old music & movies
when the white companies/writers/publishers already own
the rights. But Rappers were making it without major
label assistance. Corporate America had to put the fix
in to get a major piece of that pie/action. In a society
where even news anchormen are swearing on air, sex,
violence, vulgarity & decadence pays. Otherwise Rap
would have been censored long ago.
I do NOT buy
gangsta rap nor porn films & such. Its amazing how many
Black men are doing life for rape & sodomizing white
women. Porn films depict women enjoying this abominable
act. In reality women lack the prostate gland that
makes sodomy pleasurable for men despite damaging the
anal orafice. There is nothing but pain for women in
the butt. God's rules are pragmatic. If you go around
putting your privates into a disposal chute you
shouldn't be surprised to get diseases like AIDS. Same
with hetero intercourse with multiple partners. Too
much mixing of foreign DNA & bacteria in the warm, moist
womb.& vagina. Worse is to mix the bacteria from the
anal sex into the vagina. Good ol' common sense &
biology.Like any loving parent God forgives but there
remains penance that must be paid.
Anyway, you make so
many good points I can't cite them all. So I'll just
say "Write On!" Let the church say AMEN! Print it.
Just my opinion... like eyes we all have them. May we
all be blessed.—Crystal
* * * * *
Louis Reyes Rivera here. There are
three areas of concern I'd like to draw both of your
attentions to:
(1) As to the
condemnation of Black women by Black men, I think it
would be good to revisit Frantz Fanon's Black Skins,
White Mask. He laid it all out—the nature of empire, as
it relates to all of what the two of you are
discussing, requires total control over land, labor, and
leg (i.e., natural resources, a viable working force
that accepts its position, and complete control over
what we refer to as female genitalia) . . . While land
and labor have made their way into all history books
concerning the apparatus of empire, the leg part is
often as not omitted.
Coming from the
lower side of classes in this culture, I can very easily
say that we are all conditioned into viewing women as
the objective in every brothel.
You might be
interested in knowing that during and since the slavery
epoch(s), the single biggest cash flow that was
available to the masters of slaves came from brothels
inside each of the port cities (Le Cap, San Juan, Vera
Cruz, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, New York City,
Boston, Charleston), especially prostitution of the
women owned. With roughly 500 years (hemispherically
speaking/ 400 marked by chattel slavery and 100 plus
years since), we have all been conditioned to view women
from the standpoint of leg only. The object of desire to
control, not just sleep with, but to control. While it
is true that today we males should know better, you
can't just simply blame the male victims among us for
absorbing the victimizer's modus operandi. It's absorbed
and justified from childhood. It would take just as many
years to engage in eradicating such behavior. After all,
it justifies the erection(s) we are subject to.
(2) We do not train
or prepare our children with the basic cause: that we
have all been lied to about everything, even about the
nature of God. Instead of dealing with that factor and
engaging in the studies that would help us understand
this better, we each cover up our own misunderstandings
and distortions of a moral code in order to justify
ourselves before the eyes of our children. After all, we
come closest to being their models.
To uncover the lies
is to engage in political struggle, which also means to
confront the social arena. Like Malcolm said, "you
wouldn't use that word if you knew what it meant. It's
bloody."
The vast majority
of humans on this planet shirk and shy away from their
responsibilities to themselves (i.e., too many settle
for what they can get but hardly ever consider
revolutionary action). Thus, not only are far too many
of us political conservatives (to what ever degree), too
many don't even want to look upon aspiration as
something to subscribe to that is greater than that
taste of luxury we each might be able to grab hold of.
(3) As to the words
we use (none of which are new, despite the sound and
fury following the Don Imus affair and certainly despite
the uproar towards Gangsta Rap and Gangsta Hop)— this
argument is as old as 1888, the year that marked the end
of chattel slavery and that marked the beginning of
laying down a clear definitive of who we/they
are/were—now that slavery was done away with, a
renaissance in all the arts had to be given its
historical place. From Freedom Songs to Spirituals to
Gospel and the Blues, Ragtime, Swing, BeBop, Hard Bop,
Doo Wop and Hip Hop, Reggae and Calypso, are all
manifestations of that search. Like Sterling Brown once
said, "You figure, if it took Europeans three hundred
years to get their renaissance going, what makes you
think that we could do it in six (years)."
But let me share a
story with you.
I was 16, on one of
those calm summer nights. A friend of mine (four years
older) and I had been reluctant to turn in just yet,
even while it was well past 3am.
So we're sitting on
a project bench relaxing the morning hours, and he turns
to me and says, "Yo, man, you know what I like about
you? You know who you are and you don't try to be
anything other than what you are. You Puerto Rican, and
you don't deny that. But you one of the fellas. And you
know that nobody's gonna get mad or say anything to you
if you used the word [that six-letter 'N' word that I
hate so much, he used right along here]. As a matter of
fact, in all the years I've known you, I've never heard
you use it once. But you know you can, 'cause you one of
the fellas."
He continued, "Now,
you take Papo. He's always using that word like he can.
And he's one of the fellas, but he's Puerto Rican, just
like you, but he's always trying to be what he ain't,
one of us. And that's the difference between you two,
and that's why I like you and respect more than I do
him. You don't ever try to be what you ain't. It's just
that simple!"
While at the time
(this was like 1961), we really didn't know or fully
understand that there's hardly a big enough difference
between Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Unitedstatesians,
Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Panamanians,
Haitians, etc., to warrant the lines my friend was
drawing, we both sort of understood that what he meant
was that he was from the United States African Community
and that I was from somewhere else.
I got up off the
bench, turned to my friend, and says, "Buzzy. I
understand what you mean and I ain't trying to mess with
you none, but there's something you not understanding.
The reason I don't use that word is not because I can't
or can or anything like that. The reason I don't use
that word is because it never enters into my head to use
it. That's not how I would describe you. When I look at
you, when I look at any of the fellas, I don't see that
word. I see more than that. A whole lot more. And that's
with all of y'all. It's not just what I can and can't
do, but that it never enters into my head that I should
use it, no matter what you do or say."
It got quiet after
that. He had to think about what I'd said and what it
meant. Sure enough, within the next ten minutes, we both
agreed to break ranks and turn in.
Here I was, 16, and
it wasn't until years later that I had actually realized
the meaning, the implications in what I had said to my
friend. We'd known each other since I was like 11 years
old. And he had taken note that NOT ONCE had he
heard that damn word ever come out of my mouth. [And you
got to appreciate that there were at least 40 of us who
hung together every single day of our teenage youth.
Since I had grown
up in a Black Community, I had to have heard it all my
life, yet never once did I care to savor its sound or
use it to describe another human being, and certainly
not anyone I cared for. I must have known, since the
first time I'd ever heard it, that there was something
wrong with the sound, the meaning, the application and
usage.
But all of my
friends did use it, and regularly, even in jest, even as
an endearment, and, just as often as not, would use it
in regards to my own person. The few times that this did
happen, I tended to laugh it off, but never once throw
it back into someone's face. So, too, the words we males
often use against women were words that never really sat
well with me.
Notwithstanding any
of the above, like it or not, language starts it all --
how you see yourself, how you want to see yourself, and
what words are consistently so used as to condition you
into using them too, even when you know that others will
use them only in a manner that belittles you and amuses
them. Later.
—Louis.
* * * * *
Dear Friends, I received the questions
below from my friend Dr. Mackie Blanton, now teaching in
Turkey. [....] I assume readily he has a love and
respect for me. He is also responsible for presenting me
an award for my work on
Marcus Bruce Christian.—Rudy
Yes, absolutely. I
had often reminisced about you with folks who still
remember you up to the time I retired from UNO in 2005.
I have always been happy that I never lost track of you.
I have always loved and respected you, without irony. I
have always loved your contributions to art and have
recently become intrigued by how we seem to seem to
disagree on so much, that I know we agree on, just
because our explanatory language is different. So in
some sense I suppose we are both moving targets. But you
know, your art and artistry will outlast your politics,
which is why I do not like, nor trust, social change
ideologies, and am not as optimistic as you are that
human nature can be changed. I appreciate your having
stayed with me through the thick of our exchanges. I'll
sift through what I have learned from them.—Mackie
* * * * *
Who & What’s Killing Black Babies? /
Black American males inhabit a universe in which
joblessness is frequently the norm
Wolfowitz Must Go! /
Racism, Wealth and IQ /
Black Male Oppression in USA
Deepens /
Africans mark abolition of slave trade
Government Corruption Threatens Flow of Nigerian Oil
/
Latest Trend in Corporate America
* * * * *
19th-Century Statements of Racism & Racial Oppression
"The virtuous aspirations of our
children must be continually checked by the
knowledge that no matter how upright their conduct,
they will be looked upon as less worthy than the
lowest wretch who wears a white skin.
Daily Star
(Alabama) 21 May 1867
[James S. Allen,
Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy (1937),
pp. 237-238]
John Ridge (1823),
Cherokee leader,
a man of considerable
wealth, supplied . . . this scornful definition
of racial oppression of the Indian --
An Indian . . . is frowned upon
by the meanest peasant, and the scum of the
earth are considered sacred in comparison to the
son of nature. If an Indian is educated in the
sciences, has a good knowledge of the classics,
astronomy, mathematics, moral and natural
philosophy and his conduct equally modest and
polite, yet he is an Indian, and the most stupid
and illiterate white man will disdain and
triumph over this worthy individual. It is
disgusting to enter the house of a white man and
be stared at full face in inquisitive ignorance.
Thurman Wilkins,
Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family
and the Decimation of a People (1970), p.
145.
* * * * *
Invention of the White Race
Theodore
Allen begins Volume 1 by reviewing the many
histories of American racism written in the 20th
century. Dividing the arguments into the
psycho-cultural school and the socio-economic school
of thought, he teases out the strengths and flaws of
their scholarship. Allen then posits racial
oppression as a deliberate ruling-class decision
(constantly undergoing renewal) to prevent
property-less European Americans from allying
themselves with enslaved and free African Americans
by offering the European Americans privileges based
on white skin. His solution is to study "racism"
rather than "race" because studies of race always
devolve onto discussions of the body--onto those who
are perceived to possess race--and thus avoids the
real issue. . . . It is a strong, well researched,
tightly argued work. He proves that the "white race"
can be "gotten on a technicality" because it was and
is indeed an invented rather than a natural
category. Amazon Reviewer
* * * * *
posted 17 April 2007 * * *
* *
posted 17 November 2008 |
