The Beyoncé Effect and the Re-Negrofication of Black America

Recently I have been thinking, that I am glad South African apartheid was gone before Alicia Keyes, Rihanna & Beyoncé were born because I really believe that they would have performed there just to get a check.  Now I am not holding the aforementioned to the platitudes of others like Stevie Wonder or an AliceWalker or MayaAngelou, who in their youth and currently were more conscious and global than the three cited previously, but I am questioning how lost one has to be to take a stance against nations and regimes that treat people like cattle?

 

Recently I just learned that Beyoncé has just informed the world that she will be performing in Israel in this year on June 15. Now I am certain that many who have been hammered and for lack of a better word Beyonceified, do not see this as a big deal.  But I would also speculate that the same folk were not even around let alone born when Apartheid was alive and well in South Africa.

We should all be aware of the issues that presently and historically confront Palestinians, in particular children whom are frequently used as targets while walking to school by West Bank settlers and the Israeli military.  This I hope is a given, but what I am more concerned with, which is rarely addressed, is the manner in which Blacks and Africans are treated in Israel.

Over the past few years, the Israel government, under the panoply of Zionism and the desire for a pure Jewish state, have been rounding up Africans and placing them in detention camps they way Hitler rounded up Jews and placed them in concentration camps. The only reason why, is because they are black and Africa and politicians openly state this to the public. The official policy is to treat them as animals in the exact same fashion South African Whites treated blacks during apartheid and this is not an over statement. This short film can show you in images what my words will never be able to convey.

Africans in Israel are frequently attacked violently in the streets of Israel and there homes, apartments and businesses are often the targets of arson and fire bombings, just like blacks were targeted in the South in the United States during the 1960s. But the Israel government even takes it back to the way in which the United States treated many black women and force sterilize African women in Israel today without their knowledge or permission. Just a few weeks ago, CCTV recorded an Assailant caught beating an African refugee at Tel Aviv port for no apparent reason.

I would go on, but my goal is not to belabor but rather question how could a person not realize that playing in Israel is giving tacit support and approval to an apartheid regime, the same way such was during Apartheid in South Africa?  I really do wonder what many of the entertainers of this generation think (if they think at all) about what they do and what their actions represent. Whether it is Nicki Minaj defacing Malcom X or Lil Wayne denigrating Emmett Till, or Yo Gotti taking the classic ‘I AM A MAN” sign used in the Memphis garbage strikes in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and changing it to “I AM A GANGSTER.”

Albeit consequential, I have decided to call this the Beyoncé effect. She is no different than any of the other examples have mentioned, it just so happen she is the latest to show her ignorance regarding how blacks outside of New York and Houston are being treated today. It is this Beyoncé effect, in my opinion that is causing the re-Negrofication of Black America. And by re-Negrofication I mean the dumbing down of a community to the extent where being informed, well read and supportive of proactive self-determination is a worthless morality when compared to the dollar bill. Re-negrofication takes effort because as Benjamin Franklin said, "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."  

no news is good news

Strange to me but it seems since his Inauguration, there has been little mention of Iraq, outside of the occasional statements made by Secretary Gates or the anticipated troop withdrawals Obama ran his campaign on. No more images even on the great cathode ray tube. When Bush was in office, seems that is all we read, heard and saw.

This says a few thing to me. First our media may be liberal in perspective and doesn’t desire to remind folks that yep, we are still involved in a brutal occupation In Iraq – even under the current administration. Second, that the media is not designed nor does it have a preference for informing the public via news. Last, it reinforces why I have to read newspapers from around the world, other than US papers, conservative or Liberal to get some objective information. I first noticed this when the day before his historic inauguration, no papers nor news stations showed or talked about Israel massive bombings of innocent folks, mostly kids in the Gaza strip (pics here).

If you didn’t know, April was the deadliest month in seven months with respct to US fatalities in Iraq. In fact the civilian death toll has also been steadily increasing . On April 29, 2009 in a news conference President Barack Obama was asked if recent violence in Iraq would affect his timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Strange thing was that same day three car bombs killed at least 51 people in markets in Baghdad. Although Obama answered by saying that we have not “ seen the kinds of huge spikes that you were seeing for a time” and that “the political system is holding and functioning in Iraq." True the number of deaths is not as great as it was in 2007 and 2008 the same time period, but the Iraq's government says that 435 civilians were killed in April, which means the count is likely to be greater than that reported. This by my math represents almost an 40% increase since March.

This is very disturbing because it as if since the number of deaths is lower from the past year that it makes it acceptable, putting in the context of the current President. Even stranger is that during his campaign his mantra was that “the war should have never been fought . But turned around on February 27, while addressing US troops at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina he said the US military “have fought against tyranny and disorder."

After just over 100 days in office, the current Administration is considering reversing course by leaving U.S. troops in Iraq, which makes me think , like all politicians, saying what the folks want to hear is all that count for following up on such actions are not as important as getting elected. But I understand that politics is a big old game. The real deal is that we seem not to be even able to trust our media to give us the real deal. And things may be getting just ready to hit the fan the way the Taliban is putting down and with these new images that the President has said he will not release to the public. Again I had to go to a foreign sources to see 16 of the 44 pics. But in the big picture the war, and folks dying in Iraq, political lies and the like are not as important as American Idol results, Mike Vick getting out of jail, Rihanna and Drake hooking up or Nas and his woman. So make no never mind about me. I guess no news is good news.