From activists like Stokely Carmichael to pacifists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leaders of the American civil rights movement preached the moral imperatives of experiencing black consciousness on a universal level. Indeed, they all seemed inspired by the credo on civil rights that Dr. King proclaimed in one phrase in his Letter from Birmingham Jail:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Therefore, imagine the state of black consciousness in America today when one can juxtapose poor and oppressed blacks in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Sudan marching a few hundred miles for raw grains to fight starvation with rich and liberated blacks in America marching a few hundred yards to vent sound and fury signifying nothing, evidently, without giving a damn about the cruel injustice of their fellow blacks in Africa.
Alas, this is the state of black consciousness that was reflected in the respective struggles of blacks in Africa and America last Saturday. And in this context, it is especially ironic that black American leaders organized their march to emulate the civil rights marches of the 1960s that Dr. King perfected as a non-violent (passive aggressive) political strategy. Because they clearly intended to evoke the moral and political pathos of those marches during which blacks were hosed with water and police batons for demanding their voting rights. Unfortunately, it came off like a bad movie sequel that not only fails to equal but actually perverts and diminishes our memory of the original.
In fact, the Atlanta civil rights march of 2005 will be remembered for the perverse and inverse spectacle of blacks fulminating like vicious demagogues with their lips dripping with the words of intimidation, vituperation and, ultimately, self-degradation (as they spewed their most ignorant and misguided hate at fellow blacks). A posse of political and media celebrities – fronted by Rev. Jesse Jackson and Harry Belafonte – led thousands to “Keep the vote alive: Extend the Voting Rights Act”.
They marched and gathered, purportedly, to voice concerns about alleged plans by the Bush Administration to block the renewal of certain provisions of the Act when they expire 2007. But, paradoxically, they also railed against progressive amendments to the Act which include requirements that voters present valid IDs at the polls and that states provide translators for voters not fluent in English.
As it happens, on Monday, Attorney General Albert Gonzales commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Act (and honored the president who signed it) by visiting the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and proclaiming the following on behalf of the Bush Administration:
The Voting Rights Act is one of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation ever enacted [and that] the Justice Department will only endorse changes that make voting easier and cheating harder [hence the voter ID and translator amendments].
Now, it would’ve facilitated an informative and constructive political discourse if one had relevant statements from Saturday’s commemorative march to, indeed, juxtapose with this serene, hopeful and pertinent proclamation by Bush’s Attorney General. Regrettably, the I have a dream speech from this sequel was more dispiriting than inspiring, more discouraging than hopeful, more profane than religious and, alas, more about partisan (Democratic) politics than black civil rights. However, it was delivered with telegenic passion by entertainer Harry Belafonte whose most memorable flourish will go down in infamy as follows:
African-American officials in the Bush administration [notably, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor Condoleezza Rice – are] black tyrants….Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value.
It would be salutary if the sane amongst us (blacks and whites, Jews and Gentiles) could dismiss Belafonte (for these and similar racist remarks) as an inconsequential, delusional and politically incorrect fool strutting his stuff upon a very public stage. Unfortunately, his diatribes resonate with a significant portion of the black community – just as Adolf Hitler’s racial rants found habitation in the minds of so many Germans.
Indeed, an indication of how badly misguided political hatred has defiled the consciousness of today’s civil rights leaders is the fact that Jews were so offended by Belafonte’s remarks that Dr Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, was compelled to issue the following statement:
Some entertainers simply don’t know much about history….The fact is that there were no Jews in Hitler’s hierarchy; the policies of America and Israel are not similar to those of Hitler; and African-American conservatives are not comparable to Nazis.
Such analogies pollute public discourse by trivializing the brutal horrors committed by the Nazis….How can any reasonable person put Hitler and the Nazis in the same sentence as American or Israeli leaders, or black conservatives?
Medoff concluded his remonstration by demanding an apology from Belafonte (and others who echoed his “inaccurate and hurtful” remarks – like Dick Gregory who exposed his racist inclinations by calling a black “conservative” reporter who covered the march “white boy” on national TV).
Jewish leaders like Medoff should be commended for being such zealous keepers of the flame that burns in them to never forget and never allow anyone to trivialize the suffering of their people. And even though he included a passing defense of black conservatives in his statement, it should not fall to Medoff to admonish black leaders about the injustice of comparing other blacks to Nazis.
But black consciousness amongst civil rights leaders in America has degenerated to such a woeful state that hip hop mogul Russell Simmons agitates more for racial justice than Rev. Jesse Jackson or Rev. Al Sharpton. Moreover, it is no wonder that none of them felt similarly compelled to condemn Belafonte’s remarks and express appropriate empathy with Medoff’s statements. After all, these same black leaders have even forfeited their moral authority to condemn a white politician for calling a black federal judge a monkey.
Indeed, it seems all that was needed to validate the self-hating vitriol blacks expressed at Saturday’s march would’ve been for Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to end the day with a rousing rendition of their new single featuring the following insult to Condoleezza Rice:
You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite
You call yourself a patriot. Well, I think your are full of shit!
How come you’re so wrong, my sweet neo-con.
Of course, Mick Jagger singing about morality and political respectability is about as credible as Mick Jagger singing about sobriety and marital fidelity. Nevertheless, he would’ve been a very fitting mascot for that charade masquerading as a civil rights march in Atlanta last Saturday.
Note: It’s no small feat to upstage Rev. Jesse Jackson but that’s exactly what Belafonte and TV Judge Greg Mathis did. In fact, it was Mathis who sent the crowd into political delirium with his rhetorical charge that the
Republican Party leaders are thieves who need to be locked up for stealing the past two presidential elections and presiding over federal budget deficits and the war in Iraq….They all need to be locked up because they are all criminals and they are all thieves.
They shot and missed when they enslaved, segregated and oppressed our people. They shot and missed when they stole the past two presidential elections. They shot and missed when they denied our right to vote.
It does not matter to these black demagogues that Republicans can counter that at least Bush had the character and good sense to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to help him steal his presidency; whereas, the most heralded Democratic president of the 20th Century John F. Kennedy had to wallow in the gutter with the mob and Chicago Mayor Daley’s political thugs to steal his election in 1960.
And, as for calling Republicans (including Powell and Rice) criminals and thieves for presiding over the war in Iraq, Mathis should read Dr King’s eloquent and defiant denunciation of the Vietnam War during which he never demeans the moral authority of his words by hurling puerile insults at the leaders who presided over that war.
How sad though that such patently ignorant rubbish (from Belafonte, Mathis and others) is what black leaders are contributing to national political debate in America today. Dr King must be rolling over in his grave!
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Anonymous says
this is some deep shit man. who are you?