King to Martin in Reverse 20 Years later

The Roman poet Caius Valerius Catullus (87–54 BCE) once wrote, “I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.” I like to think that he was speaking about a time in Europe when Christian fundamentalist rulers from kings and politicians to clerics and priest ruled and the punishment for speaking out against these individuals and/or their laws was torture and death for expressing opinions different from those of the primary belief system. These words are no truer today in America when the world is viewed from the perspective of a man of African descent.

I remember that day April 29, 1992 when it all hit the fan. I was a few months away from receiving my PhD and going off to live and work in South Eastern Nigeria for a year for my postdoc. It was the day an all-white Simi Valley jury, despite the videotape, concluded that the evidence was not sufficient to convict LAPD officers Laurence Powell , Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Sergeant Stacey Koon . Upon which, within hours of the verdict, Los Angeles and the nation erupted in riots.

Now a similar occurrence is in the purview of mainstream America that like the Rodney King video has sent shockwaves around the world and enraged the African American community. It is another consequence of the collective unconscious of many white people in America - racial profiling, a two tiered justice system and the continuance of the perception that black males are suspicious and their lives not of equal value to white men. This is the narrative of Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr. (68), Kendrec McDade (19), Aaron Campbell (25), Ariston Waiters (19) and countless others. The strange thing is that this is not the 1890s (decades after reconstruction) or the start of the black codes and Jim Crow, or the 1960s, when killing a black man was a formality considered haute couture by all white juries, it is 2012; a period supposedly that is post racial and run by an Africa America President. The only thing common was that they were all unarmed, considered suspicious and black.

This is the historical, epistemological and ontological reality that Africa Americans, especially men grow up with – that whites in America grow up to incorporate and accept as an unquestionable learned behavior, mostly as a function of a contingency of reinforcement (habit) as Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind. …. This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."

From the unknown runaway slaves to Emitt Till (in picture above) and Medgar Evers and from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, logic advocates such deaths are the response to irrationality particularly in the configuration and embodiment of fear. I say this because as a construct, fear is often presupposed and rarely a product of fact. However, the unfortunate truth is that historically in our society, black men have been portrayed as a people to be feared; savages, unable to be tamed. A point asserted by Frantz Fanon ironically 50 years ago in his 1952 book “Black Skin, White Mask”. Fanon described the man of African descent as "phobogenic object, a stimulus to anxiety."

It is hard for me to accept that the aforementioned rings a historic truth, although asks any white person, they would disagree, either intentionally or unknowingly for their experience are different and they desire to repress their historical relationship with African Americans. They desire to ignore that the rise of the gruesome vigilante ritual of lynching occurred after the demise of slavery and that lynching by either the police or citizen, was a violent way to send a message to African-American to stay in their place, as deemed by more economically and politically powerful whites. In fact it can be argued that the most common reason for lynching in America was to target and intimidate disesteemed racial groups.

The Black Codes were laws passed on the state and local level in the United States to limit the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Moreover, both northern and southern states had passed discriminatory legislation since the early 19th century. What we experience now is no different, being regularly subjected to stop and search procedures based on racially biased drug profiling disproportionate to our representation in the population and actual drug use. We are more likely to be stopped, arrested, brought to trial and convicted of felony charges than white Americans, a consequence of institutional racism that cannot be any different than previous the Black Codes and our present “justice system.” Our present policies and laws continue to sustain what the 1968 Kerner Commission described as "two societies, separate and unequal." America maintains a well-entrenched system of discrimination, subordination, and racial violence just as pervasive. But we cannot take such issues to the Justice system since laws assert that arguments regarding racism or other prejudices are not legally relevant and are a slap in the face of our courts and system of justice.

Marcus Garvey pointed out that in America and around the world, that “the white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way & those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves.” And for anyone to disagree I would ask them to vehemently prove otherwise. There is an irrational and historic perception of African American men by whites. It is a simple fact. Whether it is the “Big Black man theory" espoused by Lawrence Vogelman or the use of used the acronym N.H.I. (no humans involved )to refer to any case involving a breach of the rights of young Black males by the police of Los Angeles.

The actions of the officers in the Rodney King case, just as in Trayvon Martin's and the others cited are blatant criminal offenses. Many would not have occurred if the black codes and Jim Crow laws had not been renamed the “war on drugs and crime," which disproportionately target people of color. And sadly, what Mamie Till said during the period of her son’s death still rings true: “It is doubtful that any Black male growing up in the rural South in the period 1900 to 1940 was not traumatized by a fear of being lynched.”

Is it ironic or morose, that twenty years ago this month that a jury found four white police officers not guilty in the abuse and police brutality of Rodney King, and that now we are dealing with video evidence in the murder of unarmed young black male. This time they didn't make an arrest, to take the shooter to court. At least thier was the arrest of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant in the killing of Emitt Till, although they were found not guilty by an all white jury. They are even trying to smear the name of Trayvon Martin, just like it was done with Emitt Till, when the Memphis Commercial Appeal published an article reporting that Louis Till was executed by the U.S. Army in Italy in 1945 for raping two Italian women and killing a third. The information had been leaked by Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland to the press.Morose definitely, ironic too, since if I reverse their last names in occurrence I am left with Martin King. Ironic indeed, forty years after his murder.

How Obama and Black Politicians Have Reinvented the Negro

Politicians of African descent in America, in concert with the non-concern of their voting constituency have reinvented the Negro, or better yet made the Negro retro chic. What do I mean by this? Well from an etymological perspective, the word Negro is Spanish for black. The Spanish language comes from Latin, which has its origins in Classical Greek. The word Negro is derived from the Greek root word necro, meaning dead. It was a reference to the state of mind for millions of Africans. Politicians thrive and live on the fact that folk are negro as opposed to self determined individuals with the ability to reason and problem solve, thus ensuring their hold in politics. But what they fail to understand that if they truly want to deal with the economic plight of African Americans, they need to face the fact that economic improvement cannot be accomplished within the context of mass incarceration and the environment of the criminal justice arena that foster incessant Jim Crow-like practices. For the same dynamic that led to Jim Crow after the Civil war and emancipation proclamation has led to the present day mass incarceration of African Americans.

Just as slavery, Jim Crow and today’s focus on mass incarceration operates within the context of a system of institutions, policies and laws that function in concert to subordinate and disenfranchise a select group of folk defined mostly on race. Until our political figure heads address this and make this connection, nothing economically will improve in areas with high concentrations of African Americans. Only difference is the type of laws. There used to be “vagrancy laws,” “eye rape,” or “insulting gestures,” that could serve to keep newly freed African American men and former slaves in check. Now they have new names under the war on drugs such as “stop and frisk.” Even the way in which we were incarcerated during the era of the Jim Crow period are similar – to date all white jury’s convict black men for crimes that whites would never be take to trial for. Could you imagine white folks being prosecuted for marijuana possession offenses at the rate young African Americans are today? No because white politicians would change the laws.

More clearly defined, the way the prison and justice industrial complex operates is merely a continuation of the maintained of Eurocentric power and hegemony by changing the rules and names of those rules. In theory the 13th amendment abolished slavery, but it was always accepted by law that slavery still was an acceptable punishment for crime. As it is today, for the way in which law and order is mandated politically today, the only sure result is the arbitrary arrest of African Americans disproportionately to their numbers in the nation and according to the crimes.

If our elected officials from the Executive branch to or local level truly are interested in addressing the economic woes of our community, then they must deal and address mass incarceration and the disparate manner in which the criminal justice system is designed to race-neutrally target African Americans. If they do not, not only do they ignore the math involved in economic revitalization, but are equal in action to a George Wallace who stood in front of Schools in the segregated south blocking the entry of African Americans. We have to have our elected figures address the unconstitutionality of the obviation of our collective 4th amendment rights and fight “stop and frisk” laws and court sanctioned “race-neutral” racial profiling.

Prison is used to force African Americans into a system and existence of oppression and control today as Jim Crow and slavery were employed centuries ago. It is a direct result of the conservative position observed in the Jim Crow period in which they perceived that special laws (abolition of slavery) moved blacks ahead of them in position and standing. This was unacceptable so Jim Craw laws and the black codes were developed and designed to keep poor and uneducated blacks in a permanent subordinate political and economic position for it is their argument, from Goldwater, to Nixon to Regan to Santorum that poverty is caused by black culture.

Our present coteries of African American politicians hide behind the illusion of progress, especially economic progress in terms of the idolatry of having an African America President. Unfortunately their delusional states prevent them from comprehending that there cannot be any real economic progress in our communities if those locked up behind bars and ostracized from the community are not included in the poverty or unemployment statistics. To do so is saying our political representatives are no better than the slave masters and house Negroes and Klansman who maintained hegemony via legal and violent subjugation and marginalization. Thus what we confront via this legal mode of operandi is a caste system equal to that propounded by the Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, for what we faced then in practice and outcome is no different than what we encounter today through our extant criminal justice system’s convention of mass incarceration.

Why? Well first, after the assassinations of King and Malcolm, the civil rights movement stagnated. This was during a period of a rise in conservatism that centered on animosity of the recent and quick gains of Africa Americans. In addition, it was a time in which African American, especially males were not need to sharecrop the fields and technology was replacing low wage jobs unskilled and uneducated African Americans typically received. It was the start in the disproportionate rise in black unemployment, which conveniently happened on the heels of Regan and Clinton’s war on drugs, which made unemployment even worse.

The simple reality is that there is no such thing as a color blind society and that nothing is race neutral as the Justice system would like for us to accept. Please explain to me the difference between hiding behind a white sheet and a badge? To assert such is like asking me to view the world as green, when I see blue skies and black asphalt. I could prove and state that I only see green but the reality is that I see more. Yes the Negro has been reinvented by our present power hungry corpus of black elitist politicians. Before we had poll tax, literacy test and felon disenfranchisement – these were staples of the Jim Crow legal system. However then, we had warrior activist and scholar politicians who were not afraid to voice support for the people if it meant losing their political clout. Today we have marijuana possession laws, stop and frisk, and felon disenfranchisement – staples of mass incarceration under the auspice of fighting a war on drugs. Only thing different is that we have a lot more cowards in leadership lining their pockets than before. Strange, Obama and black politicians quick to say Republicans are at “WAR WITH WOMEN” over the contraception issue, but run like scared dogs with their tails between their legs before they will say there is a “WAR ON BLACK MEN.” Strange, President Obama can call to comfort a Georgetown Law Student who was called a slut but not the parents of Travon Martin.