To the left, if HG Wells phased Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes (and their humunculi Sean Hannity, O'Reilly et al) back in time--well, you see the result. To the right, a sad reality and mirror of life in the present. Which is the truth? Elements of both. Allow me to elaborate...
The marching in Jena's done. The DA's still defiant as ever, the sole defendant's been denied bail. The US Attorney for the West District of Lousiana--a brother--is "monitoring" the situation; Congress is promising hearings "eventually." And strangely, the same folk who demanded Mike Nifong's head (the Durham-Duke lacrosse DA), aren't showing solidarity with the Jena 6. Okay, I'm being facetious with that one. The pundits, right wing sword rattlers and patrons of Reade Seligman & team are in fact, they are gung ho in support for this peckerwood prosecutor; on NPR recently one author of a book making broad, general cries against "cultural bias" and "prosecutorial misconduct" snarkily labeled the Jena rally as "feel-good political correctness." Where's the love? ;-) Soon it will be time for Congressional Black Caucus party weekend...celebs, rappers, actresses. Big fun. And we will all celebrate the milestone, seminal moment of Ethernet nirvana. Banding together to save the Jena 6. Digital grasssroots. As we invented the civil rights tactics now stolen by others, I guess they will borrow this paradigm of the Jena March...Whew!!!
Now Jena's "back to normal." And I stil see ignorance. I see nihilism. I see cruel emptiness. In Jena still? Or in Glenarlow Wilson's town? Yes. But more so in my own backyard. Thousands of young black men assaulting and murdering other black men. Folk who think crime is just something to be tolerated or even something to get a piece of. Warped cultural sensibilities and priorities. Garish, insipid entertainment masquarding as the best we're expected to offer. Riches sought but wealth squandered. Today on a college campus in Delaware--a college campus--let me frigging repeat...A COLLEGE CAMPUS...the pinnacle of a dream our people DIED for...somebody shoots two people over tifling ghettoish nonesense and one of the kids wounded doesn't want to SNITCH. Huh? I'm left with this mean reality: We can't march against white thugs and then tolerate thugs and fools in our own back yard who make it so very easy for these crackers to shrug off the truth, to point the finger right back at us and smirk. Ignore us, let us marginalize ourselves in the real economy, in education, in the real world...
Will the Ethernet buzz to life again in a march of the mind, of culture, of not tolerating the self-destructive, the ghettocracy and ghettofab? Holding a inane funeral for the word "nigger" is nice opera, and Lord we and our self-aggrandizing leaders, from politics to the pulpit are better at opera than Placido Domingo. But we need more than marching here. There's more at stake than six idiots who decided to beat the shit outof some white boy who may or may not have hung those nooses. There were other ways of making a stand, beating your chest in everyone's face till they retreat or notice you. Time for that bravery now. Or else there will be more of the same. More insouciance from these white people who can use our own dirt against us. And there's no marching on camera that can fight that...
11 comments:
Preaching to the choir, Minister Chambers. I agree wholeheartedly and we must not forgot your words as we congratulate ourselves for what was pulled together without any help from the white media.
RE: NPR, I heard that spot, too--Wednesday??? Two guys who wrote a book about the Duke lacrosse thing. The interviewer really nailed one of them when he asked about Jena and then you saw the guy's true "colors."
Six idiots? You had me until then.
Roger Ailes is entitled to a prison term.
Somehow I don't see any of this passion as Bush announces he will destroy the CHIPS program. I suppose the local politicians and our national representatives are indeed too busy in beauty shops and at the couture ordering outfits for Black Caucus? When is your boy Obama going to wake up with some controlled outrage?
SPB: The children's health program veto threat is more indicative about how this fool thinks and the cynical nature of his crew than the Iraq War. Even GOP governors are saying don't do it (Hell...even The Terminator himself has threatened to come in and do a "Commando" on Bush with circular saw blades as Frisbees). Yet I don't hear a righteous peep, you're right. I can attest to Nordstrom's being full-up a politicos and wannabees in the DC area in anticipation of CBC weekend. When the cameras whirr, trus me some of them will crow about CHIPs. But not till then...
The Fox News photo is priceless!
hey, chris -
idiots? lemme use a better word. there are a lot of children at jena high school. please, if you haven't already, check the time line on my site before you label these boys.
the jena 6 did not physically attack that boy until (and this isn't everything in the long chain of small-town events that have led to national protest and outrage): whites sat under a tree, a black child felt he had to ask permission to sit there, nooses were found swinging, the da threatened the black students, someone set fire to a school building, a black student was beaten up by white students, a white (grown) man pulled a shotgun on a group of black teens, and - hello! - the beaten white student provoked the black students by calling them the n-word.
i mean, should the boys have attacked him? of course not. but jena is out of control - was out of control before this last fight even took place.
please, don't label the jena 6 idiots until you look hard at what happened there first. then, you'd know the beaten student was not one of the three who started all this with their noose-hanging "prank," as the superintendent of schools called it. he sympathized with them, however, and was among the last in a very long line of students involved in fights on school property since september of last year.
i love you brother, we go way a ways back, but you lost me at 6 idiots.
eisa
I think we need to examine the defendants in light of their actions, and hold them accountable for their actions BUT we also must measure the injustice of a dual system and casual attitudes about racism as well. I don't think they are mutually exclusive.
Wow, you speak the truth. I haven't read much of your blog, but I think I will be now.
Chris,
thanks for the TRUTH. as i mentioned on another blog, the whole march thing just didn't sit right with on a few levels, but i couldn't put my finger on it. but now i know... it is pretty damn hard to be in a glass house throwing bricks! we have "got to do better", we have got to "get our house in order." without moral authority (and moral superiority), all of the arguments in the world ring hollow when one speaks of the "injustice" in Jena, LA.
the Jena 6 were a bunch of idiots! the purpose of the march was misplaced - Mychal Bell is a repeat offender who incidently should be tried in a juvenile court AND those "thousands" of people should've been screaming for the incarceration of the noose-hangers and white terrorists, rather than trying to FREE a crew of self-described rascals.
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