Savant on the Ferguson Police

Now that even the Department of Justice have come to conclusions similar to mine (and even suggesting that the Ferguson police dept needs to be dismantled) =with Obama admitting that police abuse and violence in Ferguson isn't an isolated incident--I wonder those in denial about fascistic police violence will justify themselves.

-Savant

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The multiracial mass demonstrations against police terror suggest otherwise. And the prominence or racism in this fight notwithstanding, it is not a race war. It is ultimately a struggle between the haves and have-nots---the rampant police killings of Blacks being actually WARNING SHOTS indicating what is in store for the whole of America.

Only fascists and fools are looking forward to a race war.

-Savant

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What is of more interest to me is why the African American left, well schooled in Du Bois, Fanon and others (and therefore not easily seduced by a simplistic race analysis) weren't more aware of the crisis in the Sudan. Or if they (or some of them) were aware, why didn't they inform the larger community (at least as best they could given limited resources)?. Louis Farrakhan is another matter. His unprincipled apologetics for the (or at least looking the other way, which is as bad) wouldn't explain why a 90% Black Christian America hasn't been more aware than it was. Most of us would have had no inclination to ignore or exonerate atrocities because they were committed by Muslims, especially as there was no such reservation denouncing Christian racists and tyrants. Moreover, even a simplistic race analysis doesn't fully explain it. Papa Doc in Haiti, Mobutu, Chief Buthelezi and other Blacks of similar ilk have been roundly denounced by Malcolm X, Dr. King, leaders of the Black Panther Party, and many others. In his memoir MARSHALL LAW: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A BALTIMORE BLACK PANTHER, my dear brother and elder in the Struggle, Marshall Eddy Conway mentions (p. 192) that he himself became (1975--1980) a Sunni Muslim. But brother Eddy also mentioned that he moved away from Islam when in his study he learned more about the history of Islam in Africa. It was at least as bad as Christianity and its spread "had resulted in the destruction of many African cultures and societies."(p .192). But Eddy was one of the LEADERS of the Black Panther Party in Bmore, and nobody's fool. But if I go back to all that old Panther literature in mama's closet, I certainly DO see their denunciation of oppression and exploitation by whites, blacks or anyone else. But not an analysis of situations like that in Sudan. Malcolm X once included on his platform in Harlem a revolutionary leader from former Tanganyika who helped overthrow a Muslim Arab tyranny. But I don't see in any writings of his that I can recall awareness of situations like that in Sudan. Perhaps, to be fair, the struggle against colonialism was the big all-consuming issue back then. Yet Fanon, in THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, not only warned that exploitation can wear a black face as well as a white one, but also that religious antagonism were a threat to the progressive future of Africa. Of course, the crisis in Sudan developed over time. But it should have been understood much sooner than it was, and by far more people.

-Savant

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It was reported in our press, for example, the AFRO-AMERICAN NEWSPAPER. And some others. But it never got anything like the attention that the struggles in South Africa got. In fact, I doubt how many AA folk even knew about this. Some intellectuals whom I know, including Cornel West, Leonard Harris, Lucius Outlaw and others talked about it. But I don't recall there was much motion on it. I've heard some former Panthers speak on it. But nothing like the massive solidarity that eventually emerged in the fight against apartheid. I was at mass rallies in Black churches in the 1980s, and I recall Black dockworkers striking and refusing to transport goods from Rhodesia and South Africa. (Progressive white workers did so as well). But I fear that there was far too little attention to this, I knew about South Africa when I was in the 6th grade. I am embarrassed to admit that I was a college graduate before I even started getting wind of what was happening in Sudan. As I explained once in 1990 to some people in the office of PRESENCE AFRICAINE (in Paris), there were certain advantages Blacks South Africans had in winning our support. One is that there were a good number of South Africans living in America, far more than from Portuguese controlled Africa, let alone Sudan. There was correspondence between people like Martin Luther King( check out IN A SINGLE GARMENT OF DESTINY, ec. by Lewis V. Baldwin)and Malcolm X--both of who spoke of this publicly. Moreover, the Soweto massacre of 1976 and subsequent repressions forced thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of South Africans into exile. Many arrived in the USA, and we began hearing first hand what was going on. AA churches, schools, media, universities and civic organizations embraced them. And it hit the media. Many of us were outraged, for it was even worse than we imagined. ("Those baastards!" I heard my mother tearfully crying when I came home and she and my sister viewed the TV in horror. "Not even Bull Connor gunned our people in the streets. And their killing CHILDREN over there!") As South African refugees flooded into the USA there was another advantage. They spoke English, unlike victims of Portugal or Arab Sudan. Apartheid, though far worse, was strikingly similar to what American Blacks underwent--and quite recently when South Africans started arriving in large numbers in the 1970s & 80s. And they were Christian (mainly Protestant) as were at least 90% of Black America. And it turns out that many of the more educated ones familiarized themselves with the writings of Martin and Malcolm and Fanon in their Black consciousness movement. It was an easier connect. But I think the Portuguese oppression was more well known among us than oppression in Sudan. Sudan slowly began getting more attention after Mandela's victory in South Africa. And we began to hear a few voices saying:' "Well there's another repressive white minority regime further north of South Africa. Have you heard of Sudan?"

-Savant

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If Freddie paid attention to the situation in Ferguson then he should have notice that the protest in Ferguson (and the nation) BEGAN in Black communities but quickly became MULTIRACIAL, whites, Asians, Latins and others much in solidarity with us. Even the corporate media admitted that these were probably the largest multiracial demonstrations against racism and for justice since the 1960s. And with the exception of Fox News it was acknowledged almost universally that the protests in Ferguson (and nationwide) was 99% NONVIOLENT. But there's no guarantee that they will remain so if police violence continues.
I won't engage at length his talk about "laissez-faire" , "free enterprise" and the self-correcting powers of the market. I believe in those myths of the market as much as I believe in Ouija boards, ghosts and goblins. Aside from some mom and pop operation of small or (at most) medium stature, what exists in REALITY is monopoly capitalism, electronic global capital with its widening divide between haves and have-nots. And it is this which threatens what little democracy is left in America. But since economic exploitation in America is also racialized we find BOTH increasing class inequality and increasing inequality of wealth along racial lines.
It is time to end this system whose defense requires (or at least precipitates) police repression. At any rate, people are increasingly on the move again; and everyone will have to decide whether he or she is with the liberation struggles, with the Establishment, or just with the program of being a fence sitter. History waits for no one.

-Savant