Black Culture, An Ideology Built on Racism, by Herman Williams III

Ever so often, I will hear the voice of Civil Rights icon, Dick Gregory ringing in my ears proclaiming: "Black people can never be racist. I can hate you 'cause you're Jewish. I can hate you 'cause you’re Irish Catholic. I can hate you 'cause you’re Hungarian... that's prejudice. Racism means the ability to control someone else's faith and destiny."

Let’s put the cards on the table so everyone will know exactly where this is going. We are in the last quarter of the mystical Mayan year, 2012 − a year, which represents an ending of humankinds’ evolutionary cycle of awakening, and the beginning of a New Age of Enlightenment. With that in mind – enlightenment – it should be noted the truth has a way of cutting to the quick, so reader beware. It's time to address the great hypocrisy especially since we the people, a society of blended races from every corner of the earth seem to keep arguing about race? Well, this little ditty of an essay may be the beginning of the last true debate we’re ever going to have on the subject. A bold statement I know, but the task of ending racism in America is attainable if we go straight to the heart of the matter and call out the very people who, according to Dick Gregory’s definition, qualify as the most racist group of individuals in America.

I have always respected Dick Gregory for his tenacity and courage under fire. Actually met him in the early nineteen-nineties, while working as a producer for the Montel Williams Show. He was a guest on the show and I remember hearing him deliver the above quote in person. But Mr. Gregory, like so many other Civil Rights era leaders were blind to the fact that Black culture or the establishment of a collective mentality based on the physical characteristics of a people, anchored by a false ideology with a separatist agenda is racist to the core!

As a result, the conditions under which Negroes, Coloreds, Blacks, African Americans and Mulattos found themselves post-Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was the direct result of what their so-called leaders failed to do, not the work of evil White men. The bottom-line is Dick Gregory was wrong, because according to his own definition and recent history, Black people are the most racist group of individuals living in America.

Why is this discussion important now, when there are seemingly greater issues at stake in the world? It is important, because there is a presidential election underway involving a so-called Black man and we’ve already had a silly, racist MSMBC co-host (August 16, 2012) crossing the line, using words like “Niggerization.” And how could we forget this headline; Michelle Williams, (August 14, 2012) the New Black Panthers chief of staff threatens the upcoming RNC convention in Tampa, FL. Then there’s the toothless poor black woman, (September 26, 2012) bribed by a free Obama phone controversy, and Colbert King’s (September 28^th) great revelation in the Washington Post; “Racism could sway the election” – really… where the hell has he been the last 100 years?

The best was from the Jay-Z, (September 27, 2012) in an interview with MTV news. He said, "I support Barack, because I gotta respect that sort of vision. I gotta respect a man who is the first black president ever," he said. "To have that sort of vision and a dream, I have to support that." Jay-Z also supports less government, which reveals the truth – he has no idea what Obama stands for – he’s just voting for him because he’s black. That’s exactly how he got elected the first time. Blacks overwhelmingly voted for him because they saw a Black man, while Whites voted for him, believing he was the furthest thing on planet earth from George Bush and the Republicans. Both got the surprise of their lives.

“What’s wrong with that? Every Black person in America should vote for Barack, just because he’s black!” said my African American neighbor the other day. “We ain’t neva had, nor ever thought it was possible to have a black president before – it’s something we should be proud of.” 

He was quite put-off I would even suggest the president hadn’t fulfilled his every hope and dream the last four years in office. Although, he couldn’t come up with a single thing Obama has done to actually help Black people.

Hmm... what if Rush Limbaugh came out tomorrow and said he’s voting for Mitt Romney, just because he’s white and that all white people should vote for him to get Obama out of office? An explosion of outrage would rock the MSM and the country for days! Rush Limbaugh would be labeled a racist and the story would drone on and on, twenty-four seven, until Election Day.

Oh, and… speaking of the president, I have a newsflash for you folks: Barack Obama is not the first Black president of these United States.

He is, in fact, the first multi-racial president and that makes a huge difference, because a Black man could never be elected President in America. Herman Caine is a perfect example of a Black man that could never be elected. Oh yes, he can entertain the nation for a while with his antics, but he’s too easily associated with the stereotypical imprint most white Americans have about blacks to take him serious. On the other hand, a Mulatto, now that’s a whole different ballgame. Everyone knows Barack’s mother was white and his father was an African. I guess you could say he’s an original African American. Of course, if the Reverend Jessie "that was supposed to be me" Jackson had known about Barack in 1986, (when he invented the term African Americans) he would have probably turned white with envy, because the Mulattos have been elbowing Blacks out of the way for years. The rivalry between Blacks and Mulattos has been going on a lot longer than the Palestinian/Israeli conflict – 300 years longer. But that’s a whole other topic, which we will get into at another time.

Getting back to our president. There was an old saying in the south that still rings true for many; a drop of Nigger blood makes you all Nigger! Believe it or not, most Black people still operate under that same perception. But the truth is science has taught us that, genetically speaking, every single human being on planet earth must have at least a drop of Nigger blood in them, if we’re all supposed to have evolved out of Africa.

That thud you just heard was the sound of Darwin’s bronze heads, hitting floors across America, along with a chorus of; "Nigger blood… in me? Piss on that! Maybe Zecharia Sitchin was on to something?"

The most obvious reason President Barack Obama is not the first Black president is because Blackness is not a fact – it is an ideology that was literally invented in the 1960s. To be Black, one must adhere to the ideology of Blackness. At this point, everyone should breath a sign of relief that our president isn’t, because the ideology of Blackness was built upon a foundation of social racism and segregation. That is not an opinion, it is a fact, which we will discuss in a minute. Of course most politicians will say things to align themselves with various groups and I’m sure Obama must have referred to himself, as Black for votes on numerous occasions. Why wouldn’t he? Sometimes you have to use what your daddy gave you, and at other times what your momma gave you to succeed in this world. That’s the advantage of the subtle Mulattos over Blacks – they’re like chameleons – they blend in well with others and are masterful at moving between many worlds. They are also masters at communication and clarifying positions, like this from President Obama’s, Black Enterprise Magazine interview when asked;

                 "How do you respond to criticism that your administration hasn't done enough
      to support black businesses?"  

His response;

                "I'm not the president of black America. I'm the president of the United States of 
     America." 
         
        Byron Tau, August 8, 2012

Nothing this president has done policy-wise, indicates a shift towards a radical, Stokely Carmichaelian (sic) philosophy − the actual father of Black Culture in America. Oh yes I know, each year Black people celebrate the life and accomplishments of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., as a champion of Civil Rights and equality. Yet most do not realize that as a result of his greatest failure – the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the present-day Black Culture that developed shortly thereafter can only be described as a nightmare when compared to his dream. But Dr. King had many accomplices. The man to whom so many Black people owe their very identities was none other than Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, commonly referred to as SNCC. He is also the man credited with coining the phrase Black Power. The word coining I italicized, just to bring home the point that Black culture began as a coined phrase. Here’s what Stokely had to say about Black power in 1966;

“Now we are now engaged in a psychological struggle in this country, and that is whether or not black people will have the right to use the words they want to use without white people giving their sanction to it. (Applause) And that we maintain, whether they like it or not, we gonna use the word “Black Power” and let them address themselves to that; (applause) but that we are not goin’ to wait for white people to sanction Black Power.”

Comparatively, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference headed by Dr. King, preferred the more white people friendly slogan, Freedom Now. The Reverend King it was said, begged Stokely to drop his Black Power slogan. According to David Garrow’s, Pulitzer Prize winning novel Bearing the Cross, several arguments ensued between leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Stokely Carmichael. They were afraid white people wouldn’t understand the radicalism associated with Black power and flee the movement − they were absolutely right.

Shortly thereafter, the king of soul, James Brown brought it home with, “Say it loud − I’m Black and I’m proud,” and a whole nation of colored people went from Negro to Black, literally over night. For those who are not familiar with Stokely Carmichael, you must read his speeches, many of which are on-line. It is especially important for Black people to reintroduce themselves to the very reason they are Black – you know, get back to your roots, so to speak.

Stokely Carmichael 1966;

“We have to stop apologizing for each other. We must tell our black brothers and sisters who go to college, "Don't take any job for IBM or Wall Street, because you aren't doing anything for us. You are helping this country perpetuate its lies about how democracy rises in this country." They have to come back to the community, where they belong and use their skills to help develop us. We have to tell the doctors, "You can't go to college and come back and charge us $5.00 and $10.00 a visit. You have to charge us 50 cents and be thankful you get that." We have to tell our lawyers not to charge us what they charge, but to be happy to take a case and plead it free of charge.”

Oh yeah, that’s your daddy, “Charge us 50 cents and be thankful you get that!” So according to your founder, you are not a real Black person if you are currently working for white people, or charge Black people fees for services. Folks, the Black Panther Party wasn’t Black enough for Stokely Carmichael. He also invented the term Black Panther Party. And if you’re still taken aback by my previous assertion that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a complete and utter failure, again, I present the father of Blackness in America Stokely Carmichael to see what he had to say about it;

“I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. (Applause) For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black, I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn’t know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, “He’s a human being; don’t stop him.” That bill was for that white man, not for me. I knew it all the time. (Applause, cheers) I knew it all the time. I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, “When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him.” That bill, again, was for white people, not for black people. (Applause) 

            You have to ask yourselves the billion-dollar question; why did the Negro need a Civil Rights Bill if he was a citizen of these United States? We'll get to that answer in a minute.

            So we had two men, with two different slogans representing two diametrically opposed ideologies that can be summed up by their very own words:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," Martin Luther King Jr. 1963, Washington, D.C. 

and…

"We are going to build a movement in this country based on the color of our skins that is going to free us from our oppressors, and we have to do that ourselves." Stokely Carmichael 1966

What did we get? A movement based on the color of their skins and a complete disaster! How deep is the sinkhole that is the disaster called Blackness? Remember the white doll, black doll experiments by psychologists Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark, back in the 1940s? A group of colored children were shown a white doll and a black doll, asking them to choose which doll was prettier, nicer − the one they most wanted to be like − the children picked the white doll every time.

Sixty years later, Kiri Davis a Brooklyn high school student in New York, reenacted the same experiment − black children choosing between white and black dolls. You would think that after all this time the results would be dramatically different wouldn’t they? After all, we've had sixty years of Black Studies, Black History Months, Black History Museums, Black Panthers, Black Power − first Blacks doing just about everything normal people can do, as well as an Oprah Winfrey for gods' sake. Oh, and how could we forget the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, which would be considered racist if we changed its name to Great Whites In Wax, wouldn't it?

Well the results were shocking; (Not for me) Black children still chose the white dolls, proving they hated themselves and their lives just as much today as they did back in the 1940s. And who could blame them? In the 1940s, all they had to deal with was whites hating them. Today, their real enemy is each other.

Think about it; from the early 1980s into the 1990s, North American Blacks had lost all faith in the promises made during the 1960s, leaving them angry and stranded upon inner city islands, which were really modern day plantations called Ghettos. The Federal Government became their masr’ passing out the dough, while growing larger and larger through the establishment of Johnson’s Great Society. Next, the sharks of commerce began to circle the ghettos, looking to get their greedy hands on the steady flow of government cash, plying them with fried foods, liquor, fast food chains and prepackaged crap not fit for consumption by animals, let-alone human beings. But that was ok, because Medicare would be there to pay the bills, once they started getting sick – an inevitable consequence of lifestyle and diet.

The deathblow came by way of the music industry, which in the early 1980s, joined forces with corporate entities eyeing the multibillion-dollar privatization of the country’s prison systems, and Gangsta rap was born. According the Ed Burns, (co-creator of The Wire) in a recent Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary he said, “The war on drugs was a war on the Blacks. It was designed basically to take that energy that was coming out of the Civil Rights movement… and destroy it!” Of course teenaged Blacks took the bait, buying into the music industries concept of what the good life was all about and how to obtain it. Shortly thereafter, Black racists were literally exterminating other blacks physically, mentally and spiritually by the hundreds of thousands, while filling the prison systems with hundreds of thousands of black males. What they left behind were vast networks of inner city waist lands devastated by drug lords, riots, poverty, ignorance, over-population, and urban flight.

The Gangsta Lifestyle Fantasy Program or GLFP also downloaded another more sinister message into the hearts and minds of Black youths, stripping away the last vestiges of the false dignity/identity program called Black Pride. The new message: call yourselves Niggers and own it! 
I’ll bet the record executives who invented it, laughed all the way to the bank. The irony of making billions, just by getting Black people to call themselves Niggers over the airwaves, while bragging about killing each other. Mind you, the whole plan didn’t stand a chance of working without some racist, capitulating Blacks agreeing to be front men for the record execs, to assist in brainwashing other Blacks into adopting their very own GLFPs, with a language all their own. The language was called Ebonics, which was really just another way of saying, “We give up on learnin,'” preferring instead to wallow in a state where they are perceived (because of their actions) as inferior, ignorant and separated from the rest of society.

What I find most disturbing is it seems that Blacks have wound up exactly where they began in this country, at least in the eyes of those who thought they knew them best − their owners. From Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s, 1857 majority decision against Dred Scot:

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery… He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion. “

Today, many Blacks show by their actions that they continue to view themselves and peers as, “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations,”  which is exactly why it is so easy to have a callous disregard for the life of another. Think I’m making this up? From CBS online News Chicago, September 27, 2012; “CBS 2’s Walter Jacobson sat down with gang members in Chicago’s troubled Englewood neighborhood to try to find some answers:

                   "There's no solution to the violence," one gang member tells him. "Killing, 
         killing is the solution.""

            By the way, here's a quote from Tom Metzger, a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan I met in the 1990s, having booked both him and his son as guests on various talk shows;

“They say I hate young black men, but the truth is quite opposite. I’m a big fan of   young black men, and I’ll tell you why. You know who kills the most young black men in this country? Young black men, and I’m a big fan of that. So keep buying your guns and killing each other.”

Here’s an exercise; research FBI statistics on Black on Black murder in America from the mid 1970s, when they first began keeping records, until last year. Then research the number of American soldiers who have been killed in all armed conflicts since World War II, and compare the numbers. They will show that Blacks have literally been at war with each other, from the moment they became Black.

Imagine if instead of playing with dolls, Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark had beaten Nils Bejerot (1921–1988) to the punch and discovered the one thing that could have explained a lot about the Negro’s future behavior. Nils Bejerot was a medical professor from Sweden who specialized in addiction research and coined the term Stockholm Syndrome, also known as Survival Identification Syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition in which hostages develop sympathetic attachments to their captors – this behavior is considered common for victims of abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors. Making a case that Negroes were suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, post Emancipation Proclamation, all the way up to and beyond Brown v. Board of Education, is a no brainer. Especially when you consider that Nils came up with the concept after six people were held hostage for a measly six days.

And while we’re on the subject of situational madness, perhaps the greatest conundrum of all concerning the Negro is their continued commitment to the worship of the God of their former master, the Bible and Christianity. The very Bible from which the justification for their enslavement was interpreted as coming from God. Now I understand the Negro going along to get along during the time of enslavement when the only book the masr’ would let a brother read was the Bible. Of course the masr’ knew that once a Negro got religion, along came hope and a reason for the Negro to not be so depressed in his condition of enslavement. You know, singing spirituals while pickin’ cotton and all that.

In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s groundbreaking 1854 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life Among the Lowly she painted a picture for the world to see of the perfect Negro, in ol’ Tom. Here’s a quote from her book:

“Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere, - steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm like a clock.

You mean honest, as niggers go," said Haley, helping himself to a glass of brandy.

No; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; and I believe he really did get it. I've trusted him, since then, with everything I have, - money, house, horses, - and let him come and go round the country; and I always found him true and square in everything."

When you consider that Mrs. Stowe was a modern day equivalent of a right wing religious fanatic, as well as an Abolitionist, then it’s easy to understand why the character of Uncle Tom struck a cord. Here was a Negro, albeit a fictional character they could finally relate to, because he was a God fearing Christian. Of course, even the perfect Negro had to run into complications – Uncle Tom was beaten to death by his master in a Christ-like twist. He sacrificed himself to save his friends – runaway slaves. But before his master beat him to death, Tom forgave him, happy he was leaving this world to see his Lord in Heaven. The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies – to Whites – Negroes weren’t allowed to read, unless you were a Mulatto living in the master’s house. The book started so much trouble, that when President Abraham Lincoln met H. B. Stowe he said, “So you’re the little lady who started this big war?”

From a humanistic perspective, the absolute worst thing you could give a slave was a Bible and the hope of a false Messiah. You know the first story they’re going to latch onto is the one about Moses, freeing the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. Why wouldn’t they have similar expectations? The problem was they didn’t bother to read the fine print about the Hebrews, not Negroes being God’s chosen people. That very fact should have sent up a red flag from the get-go! So the first 300-plus years in this country, every single slave that died with a Bible in their hands had hoped for the master’s Savior, who never came. Because the only happiness a Negro could hope for in America, was death and a place called (The Island) Heaven, which interestingly enough, involved a whole lot of bowing down and Holy, Holy Holies, twenty-four seven, which sounds a lot like enslavement!

But this is the year 2012. Surely, after close to four hundred years of praying to the masr’s God, you would think that Black people could just look around at their own garbage strewn, broken down, crack infested, gangbanged, dirt poor, murderous streets and buy a clue that perhaps they’ve been praying to the wrong God? Even before the Negro was dragged to these shores, he saw the real agenda of Christianity:

     “If we talk about education we have to educate ourselves, not with Hegel or Plato or the
      missionaries who came to Africa with the Bible and we had the land – and when they left
      we had the Bible and they had the land.” Stokely Carmichael, 1966.

Four years ago, Blacks were crying rivers of tears, filled with joy over seeing Barack Obama being inaugurated as the president of this country thanking Jesus, Mary, Allah and all the Saints for answering their prayers. But like so many prayers answered by the Boomerang God of their former masr’, the prayers backfire and Blacks wind up getting hit in the head with;

               "I'm not the president of black America. I'm the president of the United States of 
    America."

The question blacks should be asking themselves is this; how could the God of a people who consider themselves superior to the Negro in every way, be on the Negro’s side for anything? See how that can fuck with your head for 400 years? The moment a Negro goes down that path and begins to worship this God, he becomes a sinner who deserves to be somebody’s slave? Because according to your former masr’ any White person, even so-called Trailer Trash is better than you! For the record, try being Black and Mormon and see what that does for your self-esteem. And Black people wonder why their kids are so vicious and out of control – they have lost all respect for old-headed Negroes or anyone else who tells them Jesus will make the bullet holes go away, or put money into their pockets.

I’m 59 years old. I lived through the whole Civil Rights era, with my eyes wide open. All of my friends had two parents living in the same house. Our parents beat it into our heads that in order to be successful in America, we had to strive for excellence in everything we tried to accomplish, and work twice as hard as our White counterparts. Yes, we were colored, we were Negroes − people hated us, we were discriminated against, but guess what? We still loved each other, and looked out for each other. We were proud of each other’s accomplishments. I actually had colored friends – lived in a colored neighborhood – was in the Boy Scouts and Explorers Scouts with the best group of guys ever. If someone got out of line, you had a fistfight – no weapons.

But in a very short period of time, between 1963 and 1968 it all went to Hell, and I was referred to as the “Little Nigger” who refused to call himself Black − the “Uncle Tom” they called me. Mind you, none of them had actually read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they just heard it’s what you call Niggers who try to act white. But there was no way I was going to be bullied into accepting an ideology I didn’t agree with.

I knew how to read and I could look up the word black in the dictionary. The moment I saw: devoid of light as one of the definitions, I knew calling myself black couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

In Bearing The Cross, when the Reverend King was asked about Stokely Carmichael's insistence upon using the slogan Black Power, as opposed to Freedom Now he said, “Blackness came not from strength, but from a feeling of weakness and desperation."

Words have meaning. Language and culture are inextricably intertwined. How the culture defines words matter. On this soil, there can only be one Culture − American Culture. So-called Black Culture, African American Culture, or for that matter Italian American, Greek, or Polish. Those who’s ancestors built this country with their blood, sweat, tears, and wealth are inextricably joined as a people under one all encompassing identity – Americans! And I’m not talking about the mindless rah, rah, patriotic rancor governments stir up in the people when the want to take the country into illegal wars for profit. I’m talking about the kind of Americans who are under the equal protection of a system of laws we have in this country.

So at a time when the all the Negro had to do was claim himself as an American – the very thing that would have rendered him equal to every other American in the only place that mattered – the Supreme Court, the SCLC high-jacked the Civil Rights movement and chose Jesus, marchin’, Johnson’s Civil Rights Act, his Great Society and Blackness over getting paid! And make no mistake, this is no fantasy or Reparations for slavery nonsense, this was the real deal, based on the laws of the land – the Constitution of these United States.

“We have to tell them the only way anybody eliminates poverty in this country is to give poor people money. You don't have to Headstart, Uplift and Upward-Bound them into your culture. Just give us the money you stole from us, that's all.” Stokely Carmichael, 1966

If the so-called Black leadership had actually listened to Stokely Carmichael, every Negro child in the 1960s would have gone to college – Negroes would have brought homes, started businesses and landed squarely in the upper middle class. The disaster would have been avoided. Why didn’t it happen? It goes back to Dick Gregory’s definition, “racism means the ability to control someone else's faith and destiny," because, as I stated in the beginning of this essay, the conditions under which the Negro, Colored, Black, African American and Mulattos found themselves was the direct result of what their leaders failed to do.

And what they failed to do begins with perhaps the most important document ever written, having to do with the Negro’s status upon American soil – again, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s 1857 majority decision in the Dred Scot case. The importance of the Dred Scot decision from an historical reference is crucial in understanding the actions of the South post-Emancipation Proclamation. Chief Justice Taney’s insights give us a precise overview of the prevailing social agenda at the times, as well as a clear manifesto of the burgeoning American elitists and their views of the Negro’s place in American culture. When he spoke, the South listened:

                           "The plaintiff [Dred Scott]... was, with his wife and children, held as slaves
                 by the defendant [Sanford], in the State of Missouri; and he brought this
                 action in the   Circuit Court of the United States for [Missouri], to assert the
                 title of himself and his family to freedom. The declaration is . . . that he and
                 the defendant are  citizens of different States; that..he is a citizen of 
                 Missouri, and the defendant a citizen of New York.

                                                                  ********

                The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported 
                into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political
                community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the   
                United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges,  
                and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen? One of which  
                rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases 
                specified in the Constitution...The words "people of the United States" and
                "citizens" are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing.

                            They both describe the political body who ... form the sovereignty, and who 
                hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives.
                The question before us is whether the class of persons described in 
                the plea in abatement [people of Aftican ancestry] compose a portion of 
                this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? 
                
               We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended 
                to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can there-   
                fore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides  
                for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were
                at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who
                had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or 
                not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges
                but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose 
                to grant them."    

“Whether emancipated or not?” This is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Count, not some back woods hick sitting on a wooden bench. There is a bronze statue in Baltimore's Mt Vernon of Taney facing south protecting George Washington's back, and all that was holy in America – the right of white men to assert their authority over Negroes. Six years after writing the decision what followed was the Emancipation Proclamation 1863, the end of the Civil War in 1865, and the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments adopted in 1868, which everyone simply assumed would nullify the Dred Scot decision. They were wrong! Do you really believe the former slave owners of the south and those of Chief Justice Taney’s mindset – the so-called dominant race – actually gave a damn about the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments? To demonstrate their total disregard for the Law, they enacted what…?

Jim Crow Laws, (1870s.)

Now the interesting thing about Jim Crow laws – they were in fact laws written to deprive certain citizens of their Constitutional rights. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Ok? Hold that thought, and let’s jump ahead about a hundred years to Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. The plaintiffs in the case before the Supreme Court alleged that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment – the Supreme Court agreed. But everyone forgets the most important fact of the decision. Who was this man called Brown? He was a Negro! A Negro who came before the Supreme Court with a lawsuit, one hundred years after Chief Justice Taney’s majority decision that stopped Dred Scot in his tracks. But while everyone else was applauding the victory, folks in the South were freaking the-fuck-out, because Dred Scot was now officially overturned, from their perspective, with Negroes being considered as citizens who could sue and win on Constitutional grounds.

Forget equal access to public bathrooms and diners – we’re talking about Negroes being dragged from jail cells before trials and either lynched or burned to death in what the southern Crackers referred to as “nigger barbecues.” So take a hundred years of lynchings, beating and the violations of voting, business, and civil rights directed against Negroes across this country (especially in Texas, where President Johnson was from) and consider the size of the class action lawsuit that should have been filed that never was?

How can it be that in the most litigious country on the face of this Earth, not one State was sued for a hundred years of willfully violating of the rights of Negros? Really? It is the right of citizens to sue for redress from such actions. Literally a mountain of hard evidence still exists till this day to support a suit. I have my suspicions that once the powers that be picked themselves up from the floor, a plan was hatched to find some capitulating, racist Negroes to step in and begin the process of marginalizing Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP in an effort to abate the continuation of further legal processes, like the one that lead to the Brown v. Board of Education victory.

In fact, once again according to Bearing the Cross, Roy Wilkins had on several occasions made attempts to persuade the reverend King to use the courts as a means of gaining Civil Rights victories, instead all the marchin’. Dr. King felt the process would take too long. Besides, he had a deal going with President Johnson – a Civil Rights Bill that would not compensate the Negro directly. But make no mistake, the south would have lost in court – the evidence against them would have been the actual laws passed in direct violation of the United States Constitution.

Whenever I discuss this among Black people my age, lawyers included, the first thing out of their mouthes is, “The white man would have never let it happen!” I remind them that whites never imagined the day would come when their children would be sitting in classrooms next to Niggers. I find it interesting that the Black people who usually capitulate to the white man’s mental power over him, are usually Christians, or some other incarnation of their former master’s god. That's what happens when you're trained to get down on your knees to bow and grovel. What they don’t realize is their actions and words begin to fall in line with H. B. Stowe’s fictional characters in Uncle Uncle Tom's Cabin, and they become loyal and obedient servants, looking out for their master's interests.

My point is, someone had to make a deal with the powers that be, to take the class action lawsuit off the table – the actual proof – no one got sued! Consider how one man can rise to power within a movement, take on the role as leader of all Negroes, and then enter into an agreement with the United States Government on everyone’s behalf? Really... who voted the Reverend King, as the de facto el’ presidente of the Nigritos? Ballots were not sent to every Negroe’s home, asking them to vote for the Reverend King as their leader. Stokely Carmichael sure wasn’t involved in the discussions with Johnson, and neither was Jessie Jackson, nor Malcolm X. Malcolm X, who actually referred to the 1963 March on Washington, as the “farce on Washington,” forbidding Nation of Islam members from attending.

I also find it interesting that even within Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the section titled:

EFFECT ON STATE LAWS

SEC. 2000e-7. [Section 708]

“Nothing in this subchapter shall be deemed to exempt or relieve any person from any liability, duty, penalty, or punishment provided by any present or future law of any State or political subdivision of a State, other than any such law which purports to require or permit the doing of any act which would be an unlawful employment practice under this subchapter.

Present or future laws – not past laws – the Jim Crow laws?

            So if we are to really take Dick Gregory’s definition of racism, on it’s face value; “Racism means the ability to control someone else's faith and destiny," then no other race has come close to controlling black people's faith and destiny, keeping them on the bottom rung of society than Blacks, during the last fifty-eight years. 

It is often said that a picture can say a thousand words. Look at the picture below and ask yourself; if the Civil Rights Act was such a good thing for Negroes, why aren’t there more Negro/Black leaders in the picture? Another observation: Do you really believe all those white guys are smiling because Negroes got some rights, or because they just saved a shit load of money?

            

Written by, Herman Williams III
http://www.hermanswhorl.com/site/

Copyright October 2, 2012