Savant's Words

Also the organized violence of capitalism and institutional racism, the violence of imperialist wars in the Middle East should be called to a halt.

-Savant

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And hopefully white on white violence, white on black violence, white on Asian violence, white on Hispanic violence, and police violence against the citizenry. And--very important--the violence of the have nots against the haves. Very important since in his final days Dr. King was trying to organize a Poor Peoples Movement, a movement of working class people and their allies. Economic justice, and an ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS.

-Savant




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Yes, that's interesting. It so happens that I've picked up a book by sociologist Phil Zuckerman who talks quite a bit about this. The book is called SOCIETY WITHOUT GOD. We discover that there are two nations---Sweden and Denmark--in which a MAJORITY of the population are atheists. And they have much LOWER crime rates than we do, are better educated, live in peaceful and democratic communities, and possess a high level of moral and social consciousness. The religious minority are also very tolerant and civil in their relations with each other, but would probably be seen as backsliders or Christian "libtards " by our Christian Right. No matter what Samoan and other religious reactionaries might say, no matter how much the Christian Right (Protestant or Catholic) might believe that "a society without God would be hell on earth: rampant with immorality, full of evil, and teeming with depravity", this isn't what you find in Denmark and Sweden. Instead you find societies that are "remarkably strong, safe, healthy, moral and prosperous... " (Zuckerman, SOCIETY WITHOUT GOD, p. 4). Another interesting observation by Zuckerman: "The first thing I noticed upon our arrival in Scandinavia was this: NO COPS". Even in larger towns cops seem quite scarce in Scandinavia. You have cops in small American towns than in large Scandinavia cities. Can you imagine that? Scandinavians do not prey on each other and are not afraid of each other. Imagine something like that in religiously saturated America. So called "freedom loving" Christian American would freak out absent the authority of armed cops, armed enforcers of the interest of the 1%.

-Savant

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Now as far as French racism is concerned, the ethnic difference between Arabs and Berbers is probably ignored. They're all Arabs and they're all a degraded race. According to Alice Cherki in FRANTZ FANON: A PORTRAIT, that is precisely how French colonizers in Algeria regarded the "native population." Sometimes the natives were classified as Muslims, but "Muslim" meant Arab, and there was no distinction among "natives " who were Arabs and those who were Berbers. Interestingly enough, "Muslim" began to take on racial meaning. Now this really gets whacked. For obviously there are SECULAR Algerians (whether Arab or Berber), and even a few Christians. But in the colonizing narrative of the French, "native" meant "Arab" (regardless of whether you Arab or Berber, or even part Arab and part Berber). And Muslim became a term for "natives " regardless of whether they still believed in the religion of Islam or not. Religious and racial identity became conflated in the colonizing imagination of the French. Perhaps the nearest I can think of a parallel in American terms, would be anti-Indian racism of whites like Andrew Jackson who referred even to the Christianized "civilized tribes" of Cherokee as "heathen savages.

-Savant



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Coretta: Since you've read Cleaver's SOUL ON ICE, you may as well check out some other stuff by people from the Black Panther era. Perhaps, George Jackson's SOLEDAD BROTHER and ANGELA DAVIS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

-Savant




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It looks like it's a mispronunciation of a French word which itself was a mispronunciation of the Spanish. Webster indicates that the English version of the N-word became current between 1640--1650. By the way, the French word "negre" can mean the same as either the less disreputable English "Negro" or the disreputable N-word with an "I". In Spanish, Negro (with a different pronunciation than English) simply means black. I'm not sure, simply do not know enough about Spanish, to know if "Negro" in Spanish is like the French "negre" used to mean both Negro and "ni***r. " In French, only the context tells you which meaning "negre" has . An observation: While in the Dominican Republic, home of my ex, I noticed they were showing on TV the series known in America as "Roots"- --about the family of Alex Haley. The AMerican TV series was translated into Spanish, and it carried a new title: "Los pobres Negros." Which as best I can tell means "The poor Negroes." I gather from the context at least that the demeaning implications of "ni***r" was not the intent.

-Savant