Savant's Words

I am impressed at the accomplished of a number of Black women in the cultural arena who are contributing to the re-emergence of a revolutionary consciousness regardless of whether or not they are themselves revolutionaries. I'm thinking of Shola Lynch's film, FREE ANGELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS. I'm thinking about the films of Ava DuVernay's SELMA. (I haven't yet seen her film 13TH, but I intend to). I'm thinking of Michelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW. I'm thinking of Keeanga Yahmatta Taylor's book, FROM BLACK LIVES MATTER TO BLACK LIBERATION.  A NEW MOVEMENT in which a LARGE part of its leadership is Black women, and with a grassroots emphasis  (Friday Mar 10 | post #74)


I'm not so sure about "liberal " white (female or male) alliances during this time. There were efforts on the part of some elements of the white New Left (which was left of liberalism) to form such alliances, but they tended to be short lived. Of course, I'm talking about POLITICAL alliances. In Chicago, Fred Hampton attempted both to consolidate solidarity within the Black community, and to form alliances with REVOLUTIONARIES in Latin, white and sometimes Native American communities. The Young Lords(I think that was their names) was a Latin revolutionary group whom Panthers communicated with. There was a group of radical white working class youth called the Young Patriots with whom there was some communication also. But naturally, the primary base of support for the Black Panthers was the Black community. Fred Hampton was working to redirect black street gangs in Chicago away from gang wars and street crime to revolutionary struggle. He was NOT spending his time "bedding white women," as someone here suggested. And he was assassinated in his sleep by Chicago police (under COINTELPRO) who obviously didn't think that he (or the Panthers in general) was a "joke".  (Thursday Mar 9 | post #73)




The Pilgrims didn't mind butchering Native Americans. And to think that American children have been taught to admire those genocidal Englishmen  (Thursday Mar 9 | post #740)


REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WOMEN: You're AWESOME!
I was around in the time of the Black Panthers. And what you're saying is actually nonsense. But it is commonplace the black men and women who are into gender feuding know little about the history of the Struggle. First of all, it is a MYTH that most Panthers (or other Black male activists) were "bedding " white women. We're talking about the 1960s, not the 1990s or this century. That sort of thing was RARE in those days, and are the EXCEPTION even today. Do you know that as late as the early to 1970s, interracial couples were still so UNCOMMON as to get stares when seen in public? And there's hard DATA, not just subjective opinions on the frequency (or infrequency). of such relations. And while you, who probably have never been involved in any liberation struggle, may believe that the Panthers were a joke--the COMMUNITY didn't think so. And definitely the FBI, who called the Black Panthers the "greatest threat to national security," didn't think so. And the FBI would not have considered them a threat because if they were just handing out lunches and bedding white women. Madam, I'm not some uninformed millennial. If you post about ANYTHING having to do with historical black liberation struggles kindly make sure that you're are informed. Simply being opinionated is not the same as being informed.  (Thursday Mar 9 | post #72)


Jamal Joseph mentions this in his memoir, PANTHER BABY. The Panthers suspected the government was intensifying drugs in the community (through the intermediary of traitorous blacks, of course), and set about trying to disrupt the drug traffic during the early 1970s. Drug dealers helped police identify and arrest Jamal Joseph himself. Some of these scum bags were in the pay of the police anyway, and some cops were deeply involved in the drug traffic. I know that this is still true in Baltimore. But as I noted, even the NONVIOLENT movement in Montgomery in 1955 led to a sharp drop in the crime rate in Black communities. Dr. King himself mentions this in his book STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM. I think it is COLLECTIVE STRUGGLE that is the key. For it involves people in fighting the oppressive system rather than each other; and it helps forge and strengthen bonds of solidarity and community. Similar points seem to be made briefly in a book called FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS: MARTIN LUTHER KING AND THE FIGHT FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE.  (Thursday Mar 9 | post #71)


Your rant doesn't refute a word of what I said. Christian fanatics DID kill millions of women for witchcraft. Christians even killed millions of other Christians in religious wars. The "West" became less beset by religious persecution mainly as the West became more SECULAR. Even then, new ersatz religions like Nazism and Stalinism not only persecuted women but brought back tortures and massacres when the West had formerly thought ended with the Middle Ages, or at least the early modern period.  (Tuesday Mar 7 | post #304)


I don't care about whether or not I'm "mixed" based on who mayor may not have taken advantage of an ancestral grandmother. Most people ("whites " included) may be mixed, if not recently then at some remove. What interests me is whether a person of visibly African descent chooses to identify with Black people and the Black community, and whether they committed to Black liberation. If they are, then I regard them as brothers and sisters even if one of their parents is white and they're lighter than Beyonce. If not, then they don't interest me even if they had NO white blood and are darker than Michelle Obama. What's important is the shape of your CONSCIOUSNESS  (Tuesday Mar 7 | post #46)


At numerous town meetings in the "heartland " of America, constituents of Republican politicos who voted for Il Duce Don Trump are whining. They're discovering that they are losing their health care--care that they wouldn'thave without the Affordable Care Act provisions. Many of these naïve people, most likely blinded by conservatism and racism, didn't even know that the Affordable Care Act WAS Obamacare. They simply hated anything with Obama's name attached to it. Hence many say that they're AGAINST Obama care but FOR the Affordable Care Act. Oh well, some people have to learn the hard way. Other than immigrants and people of color, it is the naïve and benighted members of the white working class, the white poor and the white middle classes who will suffer from Trumpism. Trump and his rich buddies will be laughing all the way to the bank---the banks that are foreclosing on your homes!  (Tuesday Mar 7 | post #1638651)


Perhaps what you would have to tell me might be more engaging if it were more directly relevant to the topic of this thread. Frankly, whether or not you "marry up or down" (which expression smacks of class prejudice), Black or non-Black is your own business. And whether a sister (or Black man) marries "in" or "out" doesn't tell me whether she's a revolutionary. Whether she's with a brother with less education than her (like Betty Shabazz) or with equal or more education (like Coretta Scott or my own lady), by itself doesn't tell me whether or not she's a revolutionary black woman. But if you want to dwell on personal relations, let me suggest that I would be marrying "down" if I were married to a Black woman like Condie Rice. For the level of a woman's consciousness has a lot to do with whether or not I'd consider HER a suitable mate. It's obviously not the ONLY thing since hardly anyone mates with someone based solely on their politics. But it's an important element. And frankly, all other things being equal I'd prefer a sister from the projects with a high school education--someone whom many "educated " black women would see as a "hood rat"--who has her head on straight, to a pretentious bourgeois girl with a consciousness twisted by status anxiety, vanity, greed and materialistic narcissism. I met many of the latter while at Vanderbilt University, bourgeois girls with about as much social consciousness as an aardvark. And with the vision of a mole. And I found many of them, and the Negro males as well, different from the backward white conservative mainstream ONLY in their skin color. But in truth there are probably REVOLUTIONARY Black women, and revolutionary Black men as well, who marry "out" as well as those who "marry in." And it is THEY who interest me. New movements are not being created by sisters obsessed with IR relations and gender wars. But they do have PROGRESSIVE gender values and politics regardless of with whom they mate. Now that's RELEVANT and REVOLUTIONARY!  (Tuesday Mar 7 | post #59)



Delusional people believe in such entities. At any rate, when Christians were killing MILLONS of women in Europe for witchcraft it had nothing to do with war, and unless it was Christian patriarchy's war on women. When King Leopold slew millions of Congolese in the name of Christianizing and civilizing them, he was not at war. Well...unless we understand colonialism to be perpetual war against the indigenous people by the colonizer--with duplicitous Christian rationalizations, of course. But all that aside, Spotted girl's loony and ignorant rantings is almost enough to make me wonder if there isn't such a thing as demon possession after all. LOL! Naw, there's a more plausible psychological explanation. LOL!  (Monday Mar 6 | post #299)


Actually, what you take to be the rule is itself the EXCEPTION. Black men and women ane ven CHILDREN could not have created, let alone won significant victories, during the civil rights movement if things were as you say. And neither now or then are most Black men spiting on Black women, or vice versa. Whether or not historical facts "lie," I question whether you have the facts straight. And no matter how much you or others want to dance around this fact, MOST Black men and women relate more to EACH OTHER than to anyone else. Indeed, the problem is less a matter of Black women being left behind than the MASSES of Black men and women alike being left behind (except when hustled for votes or exploited) by the elite Negro political class. White women get more sympathy when victimized or perceived as being victimized. Black people, male or female, do not. It is true that more attention lately has been given to police murders and brutality against Blacks. And most victims of police slayings (about 75%) are Black men, just as most victims of lynching were Black men. But the only reason we even hear of Freddie Gray of Sandra Bland is because a MOVEMENT using contemporary recording technology has exposed it. Until recently such killing were simply dismissed as cops doing what they had to do to contain Black "thugs" and "criminals ". And to stay on topic, we might note that the work of this exposure is primarily that which has been done by millennial Blacks, a majority of whom are REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WOMEN.  (Monday Mar 6 | post #57)


OK, despite a death in the family. I am back to work and hope to get a leae of absence in Fall. But...the Democrats have NONE of those groups. Black Lives Matter spokespersons even refused to meet with Obama, and Hillary had a BLM woman curtly expelled from a pro-Hillary function. (Hillary supported the 1994 Crime Bill and demonized Black youth as "super predators. BLM and Michelle Alexander reminded the Black community of that. Hence, while Hillary still got most Black votes, a disaffected community simply voted in smaller proportions. In short, we wer excited by Hillary. And I opted to vote Green rather than vote either for a neoliberal opportunist (Clinton) or a whacked out reactionary ,Trump) I actually KNOW some members of BLM, including some who are students of mine. ASK them what they think of EITHER the Democrats or Republicans. (I believe either in AlterNet.org or Truthout.org you can find an article entitled "The Black Struggle in not a Sound Bite." It includes an analysis by a BLM woman who explains why she refused to meet with Obama. On the other hand the Republican Party pretty much have absorbed the Tea Party. As for the NAACP--one would have to be extremely far to the Right to imagine that bourgeois organization to be a fringe--they're an old civil rights organization who were often seen in the 1960s as too stodgy, conservative and cautious to be a reliable force in the Movement. The New Black Panthers seems to have had connections with the Nation of Islam, at least in its early days. If you're original Panthers of the 1960s, you know they were way left of the so-called New Panthers. And the New Panthers have no connection with the Democratic Party. (In fact, they and NOI frequently denounced Obama as an Uncle Tom and sell out. I've seen their leaflets and occasional pamphlets). Frankly, I've had it with both parties. They're both subservient to corporate money and interests, but in somewhat different ways. The Republican party is more like the medieval subservient wife of the corporate overlord. The Democratic Party is more like the subservient courtesan.

-Savant