Dr. King's Failure, and Blacks Getting Played — Again!

 A WARNING: If you didn't like what I've had to say in the past, you’re certainly not going to appreciate this essay. So, if there is the slightest chance you could be offended by my opinions, then STOP READING NOW!

As we mark the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which came about mainly as a result of the efforts by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lynden B. Johnson, let it be known that I'm not the first person in history to call it a complete disaster, for Negroes. Of course, I am well aware at this point in history that speaking about the plight of Black people in America is like talking about the smog in China—nobody cares. Which is why I’m not going to talk about the plight of Black people, as it pertains to America’s failings, no, my message is directed toward the failures of Dr. King, the abject loss of power, and a people who continue to allow themselves to get played, as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A year before, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his celebrated I Have a Dream speech, in which he revealed many of his heartfelt longings/fantasies that, in reality, never had a chance of being realized. I believe that the Reverend's dreams were immediately squashed, and with extreme prejudice, I might add, by the very people he intended to benefit the most—Blacks. The best example I can offer is this:

 

"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. I have a dream today!” Dr. King. I Have A Dream, speech 1963

 

The Black Power/Black Culture, Black People Movement put an end to that dream real fast by doing precisely the opposite, embracing an ideology based on physical appearances, not the content of character. What did it lead to? I think the entirety of so-called Black Culture in America can be summed up in the events that took place on the Fourth of July in Chicago, with 82 people shot and 16 dead. Add these to the millions of Blacks shot—yes, millions shot and murdered by Blacks over the last fifty years, which then led to the deterioration of Black neighborhoods, the destruction of the Black family, and alarming illiteracy rates among Black teenagers and young adults.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the survival of two or three generations of so-called Black People is at stake, right here, right now! Especially when you consider the current state of Blacks being played by their elected messiah, in the form of America’s love affair with the new and improved worker class from south of the border.

While the 1963 March on Washington was the feel-good event of the decade for just about everyone who attended, in reality, it was at best a farce, worse, a plot to derail the one chance Negroes had at achieving equality in America. It is well known that Malcolm X forbade Nation of Islam members from attending what he referred to as the "farce on Washington."

I was eleven years old, living in a predominantly Negro neighborhood, being bused to a predominantly white school at the time, and very aware of what was happening in the diaspora. What Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, then head of S.N.C.C., who was also against the Civil Rights Act knew at the time was that in America, money talks.

Understand, the Civil Rights Act took the idea of filing a class-action lawsuit against the state of Texas and the rest of the southern states, right off the table. Clearly, the Constitutional rights of a certain class of American citizens had been violated merely by enacting Jim Crow Laws in the first place. A class-action lawsuit would have provided the much-needed capital for achieving equality. Here it is, plain as the noses on our faces;

 

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Amendment XIV-U.S. Constitution

 

Please don't take my word for it. Here's what Thurgood Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, had to say;

 

"The rights of minorities have to be protected by our Constitution. As to whether I, as an individual, am being deprived of my rights, is not legislative, but judicial.” Thurgood Marshall, from Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Carl T. Rowan Paragraph 2 - page 201

 

Being deprived of your rights, "Not legislative (Civil Rights Act of 1964), but judicial," which means courts of law! Think I'm pitching a pipe dream? Then name a single state, city, or local jurisdiction that was sued for a monetary settlement on behalf of all Negroes, because of a Jim Crow Law? Come on... think about the thousands of court cases alone that were conducted against Negroes without a jury of their peers, or being denied a trial at all, and instead lynched in the middle of the night? And that's just the beginning. Also consider the mountain of damning evidence in the form of actual laws and amendments to State Constitutions. There was absolutely no defense whatsoever!

Do you understand the gravity of the situation for those who saw the possibility of Negroes suing? We’re talking about a lawsuit that would have literally bankrupted the South, still reeling from losing the war. My point is that, just the mere threat of a class-action lawsuit, if nothing else, would have led to groundbreaking concessions for Negroes—something more than a treaty—and then to Johnson's Great Society that followed. But no such threat was ever made.

Think about it; we live in the most litigious country on the face of this earth, and a gift-wrapped lawsuit that could have changed the lives of Negroes for the better was never even presented before a court of law? The groundwork had already been laid by the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Thurgood Marshall understood what was at stake. Here he is speaking about the significance of Brown v. Board of Education:

 

“Do you know what we’re up against?” Marshall asked rhetorically. “The weight of bad court decisions over the century. Hell, we’re fighting Chief Justice Taney.” From: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall, by Carle T. Rowan, 1993, p. 205 1^st paragraph

 

If you are unfamiliar with Chief Justice Taney’s reference, for more than one hundred years, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's Dred Scott majority decision (1857) was the ghost in the room, so to speak, undermining the integrity of the XIV Amendment in the South. The South had completely rejected the notion that Negroes were citizens of the United States and equal to any White man, as evidenced by the continuation of the Jim Crow Laws.

Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 was crucial for the South—they had to win to continue living in a dream world they created for themselves—a world where Negroes lived under the boot of white men. The ruling for Brown left them in a state of panic, knowing the possible consequences.

 

From Chief Justice Taney's majority decision:

 

"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."

 

When you live in a country where the ruling authority believes and acts against you according to the belief system above, for god’s sake, you don't go making treaties with people like this or playing the fool begging for favors and handouts—you sue the hell out of them and walk away with the cash! But when you consider that the president in 1964 was Lyndon B. Johnson, from perhaps thee most racist state in the union with thee most to lose, then what I have to say, might not seem so far-fetched. Texas was so racist that when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in September of 1863, they didn't inform slaves they were free until June of 1865, two years later!

Ironically, today, it's a Holiday celebrated by Blacks called Juneteenth, which is actually celebrated on June 19th, go figure. But the real tragedy here is that Blacks are celebrating when they should have sued the crap out of the state of Texas a long time ago, for not only ignoring Federal Law, but for the violations of their Constitutional rights. The 14^th Amendment was passed in 1864.

Folks, I’m a college dropout, not a lawyer—this is basic math—it doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. President Johnson had a reputation for being a pretty crafty southern Democrat, capable of getting his way. What he needed was a capitulating Negro he could use for an agenda that would solve America's "Negro problem" for years to come, a way to get them back on the plantation picking government checks, instead of cotton. Those government checks would make billionaires out of drug dealers, liquor store owners, fast food joints selling death by the bite, sneaker companies, the music business, and prison systems filled with Y.B.M.s, (young, black males), as a result. And let us not forget the hospitals and undertakers. Welcome to Johnson's Great Society—class-action lawsuit neutralized.

To make Johnson's dream come true would require the services of a dreamer—a Negro who could capture the hearts and minds of Whites, Negroes, Jews, and the world. A man he could mold and shape. Preferably, a religious leader, because just as the Negro's former masr' understood, Negroes could be controlled through the religion they were taught on the plantation—the religion of death, sinners, suffering, and salvation after you die—Christianity! It sold the ideology that plantation life, with all its misery and hard work, was all a slave deserved from cradle to grave. Spirituals helped them work faster, in harmony, and without complaining. The commandments and religious hierarchy, like Saint Paul and the fear of the Lord, kept them in a state of submission to power. It is my opinion that the Equal Rights Movement was hijacked by the Civil Rights Movement and religion.

 

"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." Dr. King’s, “I Have a Dream Speech.”

 

He might as well have just said, 'Gobble-de-goop, goobbally-gop," for all that was worth. It's just more religious platitudes that haven't yet proved effective in building the dreams of a people. Yet the pure resonance of Dr. King's voice and his poetic, Southern preacher style made everything he said sound like it made sense.

 

"I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racist-with. its governor, having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification…” Dr. King

 

If everyone on planet earth knew just how bad Alabama was, as well as its racist Governor George Wallace, then why weren't these people getting sued?

See what I'm getting at? Choice 1: A Civil Rights Act and no money out-right to start a new life, while you're getting the boot into the heart of Capitalism?

 

Or…

 

Choice 2: A Class Action Lawsuit that would have put a lump sum of actual cash in hand, to build a new life? Don't believe for a second that people weren't discussing the latter. But like all political intrigues, where great sums of money are involved, the solution is always in finding the perfect patsy to convince the people of the rightness of the masr's actions. Preferably, this person is afflicted with substantial flaws that could be exploited and used against him in the court of public opinion.

So, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the F.B.I. went to work. Most men in positions of power are easy targets for sexual discrepancies. It didn't take long to find out that Dr. King liked to indulge in extramarital affairs—it was his way of relaxing. People have been talking about it and not talking about it for years. Most of us learned about it in David Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. At the time, J. Edgar was good enough to send audiotapes of hotel trysts to Dr. King’s wife, Coretta.

The point is, Dr. King was terrified the public would find out. I mean, he was a minister, and even though everyone knows ministers often dip into the parishioners’ pool, the White folk and the American press would have had a field day, especially since a few of his affairs were reported to have involved white women. There was also talk of plagiarism and his dissertation for the doctorate he received from Boston University. Sadly, years later, a Boston U. panel did in fact find such evidence.

Again, the point is that information is king to those who do dirty deeds. How much did Dr. King really know about the efforts to steer him in the direction of a Civil Rights Act that would thwart a class-action lawsuit? No one really knows. All we have are the results—no class-action lawsuit, followed by a stifling, murderous, racist ideology called Blackness.

There's a certain irony when comparing Dr. King's dreams to the shattered reality that exists within the Black community today. In fact, the speech doesn't say anything about Negroes gaining in economic strength or striving to become a valuable force for all that is good and strong in America. Nor did he dream that one day Negro children would stand side by side with all the little children of the world, achieving excellence in education and skills they can take into the future. No, instead his dreams consisted of platitude after platitude, delivered eloquently, but sorely lacking in substance.

The one thing he said that actually came true was the cashing of the checks part, but in the case of Blacks, it was for having babies and kicking the fathers out of the house throughout the 1970s and 1980s to get the checks. With Johnson's Great Society, the Black family began to disintegrate and Y.B.M.s reverted to a slave mentality that said; 'your children don't belong to you; they belong to masr', which in this case, was the Federal government.'

Listening to Dr. King's speech again, after all these years, I gotta tell you it's packed with a lot of completely false beliefs about the position of Negroes in America, and what it would take to actually rise up from the so-called corners of American society.

 

"In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

 

To begin with, Chief Justice Roger B. was correct in asserting the framers of the original Constitution did not have the Negro in mind when they were talking about all men being equal, seeing that they all owned slaves. Abraham Lincoln admitted to never envisioning a moment in time when the Negro and White men would be equal upon this soil. Again, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney:

 

"These laws show, too plainly to be misunderstood, the degraded condition of this unhappy race. They were still in force when the Revolution began and are a faithful index to the state of feeling towards the class of persons of whom they speak, and of the position they occupied throughout the thirteen colonies, in the eyes and thoughts of the men who framed the Declaration of Independence and established the State Constitutions and Governments.

They show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery, and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power, and which they then looked upon as so far below them in the scale of created beings, that intermarriages between white persons and negroes or mulattoes were regarded as unnatural and immoral, and punished as crimes, not only in the parties, but in the person who joined them in marriage.

And no distinction in this respect was made between the free Negro or mulatto and the slave, but this stigma, of the deepest degradation, was fixed upon the whole race."

 

“And no distinction in this respect was made between the free Negro or mulatto and the slave.” The idea that Chief Justice Taney's America would be cashing any checks presented to it by Negroes, was just that, a dream. History has proved that the only way you succeed in America is with a really excellent cadre of lawyers. The N.A.A.C.P. had some of the best in the world, but Dr. King had a better plan—President Johnson’s solution.

The whole sordid mess has always reeked of capitulation, back-room deals, and outright betrayal to screw a people out of their right to seek legal redress, for thousands of civil rights violations over a one-hundred-year period. And one must completely disregard the notion of reparations for slavery, especially since the United States wasn’t actually breaking any laws—slavery was legal in most of the world and still is. But the creation of laws designed to impede the Constitutional rights of a particular class of American citizens is another matter indeed. Remember, the 14^th Amendment specifically defined a citizen as “a person born,” which, unlike the original document, included Negroes. And all citizens have the right to seek legal and monetary redress, as Thurgood Marshall referenced when he mentioned Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

Today, we actually call Dr. King a hero for undermining one of the greatest victories the Negro had on this soil, since the Emancipation Proclamation. A few years later, the angry, racist ideology of Blackness sprang from a collective frustration that turned into burning anger over seeing one dream after another fade away, like smoke in the rain.

And while we’re speaking of dreams fading like smoke in the rain, welcome to Obama’s great new America, and getting played once again!

 

Written by,

 

Herman Williams 3rd

 

Blackness, the Stockholm Syndrome & Uncle Tom

In the spirit of not repeating information previously covered in my July 2013 essay titled, The Disease Called Blackness, I’ll assume you’ve read it. With that said, I present to you exhibit A: Alabama state representative Alvin Holmes, whom I believe not only suffers from the disease called Blackness, but he, like many individuals who call themselves Black are clearly manifesting symptoms associated with the Stockholm Syndrome.

But first, the facts that led to this discussion. On February 11^th according to a reporter with the Times Daily dot com, as well as various other sources, representative Alvin Holmes addressed the state House assembly proclaiming his dislike for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas because, “he’s married to a white woman and he’s an Uncle Tom.” What got Holmes all riled up? Earlier in the day, Clarence Thomas said the following during a program at Duquesne University,

“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university.

“Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out. That’s a part of the deal,” he added.

http://news.yahoo.com/clarence-thomas-on-race-194104252.html

            How can anyone disagree with that? Or should I say, how can you disagree with someone’s individual experiences? But it is undeniable we have been talking about race in this country ad nauseam for the last 46 years and in my opinion it is Black people who can’t seem to let it go. You see, the one thing that people who call themselves Black refuse to understand is that calling yourself Black is in fact, racist. What else is it? The act of identifying and judging individuals according to their physical appearance or race, instead of the alternative proposed by the Reverend King, i.e., the content of an individual's character, is racist.

I remember the 1960s very well growing up in Glen Burnie, Maryland – a place not a single person alive back then would deny was about as Redneck as it gets. Hell, there was a Ku Klux Klan chapter 10 miles south on Ritchie Hwy, in Severna Park. Like Clarence Thomas, I also attended predominately white schools and to be honest he’s right; once things settled down and the parents of the white students got out of the way race wasn’t an issue anymore. We didn’t talk about it everyday. We weren’t calling each other blacks, niggers, or dogs either. Sorta makes one long for the days when a person was just your friend. I’m not saying it was a La, La Land of brotherhood and racial harmony, but there were many friendships between the races, as well as a lot of extracurricular activities together.

It’s obvious representative Holmes had a different experience. After his comments were leaked to the press people were so outraged over his crack about Thomas’s marriage he wound up taking it back, but reiterated he didn’t like Justice Thomas, because he was an Uncle Tom. Isn’t it ironic that Alvin would choose to single out a man who has risen to a position of power within the so-called White Elite structure that made it possible for our multiracial president to be sitting in the White House today? The United States Supreme Court made it possible for Negroes to attend legitimate law schools, colleges, universities, high schools and elementary schools — not merely low class, unfunded, jacked-up Negro schools. All of this was accomplished using the very laws this country was founded upon, as a result of Thurgood Marshall’s unyielding opposition to racial segregation and Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. 
          I get it; so-called Black people don’t like Justice Clarence Thomas, because in their opinion he’s not Black (racist) enough. The fact that he worked for the Reagan administration and was appointed by president George H.W. Bush to replace Thurgood Marshall in 1991 didn’t help. And he is also not a fan of Affirmative Action:

“In a fiery concurring opinion Monday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said the University of Texas at Austin's admissions policy amounted to discrimination and compared the school's affirmative action program to slavery and segregation.

""Slaveholders argued that slavery was a 'positive good' that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life,"" Thomas wrote in his separate opinion on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. ""A century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students.""

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/clarence-thomas-affirmative-action_n_3491433.html

But you see, there’s an underlying assumption on the part of so-called Blacks that a time existed in America when the people, who were previously referred to as a Colored people/Negroes, actually agreed on anything. Nothing could be further from the truth, because we are a race of Negroes (for commercial purposes; originally brought to America from the islands), Blacks (also a term used in commerce referring to slaves from the continent of Africa), Colored (mixed race Americans), Mulattoes (mixed race, educated House Negroes on the plantation), Black-Ghetto (angry/ struggling/ stuck in past); the Black-bourgeoisie (educated, middle/upper class – feelings of superiority over other Blacks), Yellow Negroes (passing for anything but black/negro), Negro-Native American Indians (the coolest), Ebonnites (Uneducated/angry/violent), African Americans (really confused), and the real Africans, who don’t actually call themselves Black. They prefer to identify themselves by the counties of their birth, like Ugandans – from Uganda. And by the way, they don’t like being compared to American Blacks, because many believe that American Blacks are lazy and complain too much.

Just look at all these categories and sub-categories of what are supposed to be one people… really? When the Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Portuguese, and the British discovered a literal gold mine of resources on the continent of Africa, individual countries of origin mattered not. All they saw was chattel – things to be sold, not human beings, but savages and sub-human creatures that would make excellent slaves in the New World – America.

In the 1960s, looking at all the diversity that existed within a people, racists such as the Nation of Islam and Black Nationalists, who were the segregationist wing of the Negro community, decided to do exactly what the slave traders did by lumping all people of color into a single identity – Black. Yet, a mixed-race individual is exactly that, a human being who carries the DNA of several races. So why do they have to choose one race as an identity? To imagine for a nanosecond that some sort of Black agenda would arise from the racist notion that a “Drop of Negro blood, makes you all Negro” was pure nonsense. 
          Sorry to be the one to break the news, but there is not now, nor has there ever been such a thing as a Black Party line, other than promoting the belief of their own inferiority to Whites and the separation of the races.

The deep-seated problems between the Alvin Holmes’ of America and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas actually goes back to pre-emancipation days and the hidden psychological toll that slavery had upon a people. It was neither defined nor understood in the 1800s, but today we know it as the Stockholm Syndrome.

Definition:

Stockholm syndrome refers to a group of psychological symptoms that occur in some persons in a captive or hostage situation. It has received considerable media publicity in recent years because it has been used to explain the behavior of such well-known kidnapping victims as Patty Hearst (1974) and Elizabeth Smart (2002). The term takes its name from a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1973. The robbers took four employees of the bank (three women and one man) into the vault with and kept them hostage for 131 hours. After the employees were finally released, they appeared to have formed a paradoxical emotional bond with their captors; telling reporters that they saw the police as their enemy rather than the bank robbers, and that they had positive feelings toward the criminals.

The syndrome was first named by, Nils Bejerot (1921–1988), a medical professor who specialized in addiction research and served as a psychiatric consultant to the Swedish police during the standoff at the bank. Stockholm syndrome is also known as Survival Identification Syndrome.

http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Stockholm+syndrome

Causes & symptoms:

Stockholm syndrome does not affect all hostages (or persons in comparable situations); in fact, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) study of over 1200 hostage-taking incidents found that 92% of the hostages did not develop Stockholm syndrome. FBI researchers then interviewed flight attendants who had been taken hostage during airplane hijackings, and concluded that three factors are necessary for the syndrome to develop:

(1)  The crisis situation lasts for several days or longer.

(2)  The hostage takers remain in contact with the hostages; that is, the hostages are not placed in a separate room.

(3) The hostage takers show some kindness toward the hostages or at least refrain from harming them. Hostages abused by captors typically feel anger toward them and do not usually develop the syndrome.

(4) In addition, people who often feel helpless in other stressful life situations or are willing to do anything in order to survive seem to be more susceptible to developing Stockholm syndrome if they are taken hostage.

People with Stockholm syndrome report the same symptoms as those diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) : insomnia, nightmares, general irritability, difficulty concentrating, being easily startled, feelings of unreality or confusion, inability to enjoy previously pleasurable experiences, increased distrust of others, and flashbacks.

Prisoners of war, as well abused spouses and children over long periods of time often show the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome. It should be noted that 131 hours is equivalent to 5.4 days. So it took less than a week for the hostages in the original Swedish bank robbery to become “grateful to the hostage takers.” At the age of 11, Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped from her home by a convicted sex offender and held captive for 18 years. Patty Hearst was held hostage for almost 2 years and at times was very grateful to members of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Elizabeth Smart was held hostage for 9 months not far from where she lived. In each of these high-profile cases, the Stockholm Syndrome was brought up as the underlying reason these women refused to either escape, or seek help when in public.

Folks, Negroes were held captive for nearly 248 years, plus 100 years following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, with all the Jim Crow Laws and lynchings that took place over that same period of time. Think about what Negroes were taught to believe about themselves over the 348 years leading up to Brown v. Board of Education. This list merely represents the basics:

1. Separation from the rest of society is good for the Negro, because they would never be considered equal to, or fit to live among White people. This, according to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1857 Dred Scott), Abraham Lincoln, and most of America.

2. Negroes are less than human – savages, who’s only hope is slavery and the Bible, which equaled death and going to Heaven to be with the Savior, because a Negro will never be happy in America.

3. Negroes could be jailed for any reason, including the need for free labor.

4. Negroes could be beaten, lynched or “nigger barbecued” for being too smart, looking at a white woman, sassing a white person, being a successful businessman/woman, for fun/sport, or because a “dog is worth more than a nigger,” was the saying in Texas.

5. Negroes are evil/Stupid

6.Violent

7. Lazy and shiftless

8. Dirty

9. Sinners (because of all the above and below)

10. Cannot take care of themselves

11. Negroes require the government be their daddies.

12. Negroes know their place.

13. Negroes are inferior to Whites

14. Negroes are soulless, without Jesus

15. Negroes are worthless — have no purpose other

than being enslaved by fast foods, the lottery, drugs, alcohol, and the ignorance of Gangster rap.

The idea that Negroes were suffering from severe to mild symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome from the 1700s on, is a no-brainer. Which brings me back to Alabama state representative Alvin Holmes and his use of the term Uncle Tom. Given that Alvin isn’t praising Justice Thomas for having achieved a position that only a few men and women in history have been called upon to occupy, we’ll assume he meant it as an insult. So let’s get this straight: Clarence Thomas said something that Alvin Holmes disagreed with, and his response was to insult him using a racial slur! A racial slur, mind you, in response to: “My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s.”

 Now it just so happens that I am an expert on this topic, having been called an Uncle Tom throughout my early childhood days, on up through today. For those not familiar with the insult; a Black person will call another Black person an Uncle Tom if that person, in their eyes, is perceived as either trying to act white, is doing the bidding of a white person against the interests of other Blacks, or moves in the world without considering him/her self as a Black person first, before all other identities. As a child growing up in the 1950s in Cherry Hill – a predominantly Negro community, located on the south side of the harbor from Baltimore City, being accused of trying to act white was a bit confusing, considering the only white people I had met where the nuns and priest at our local Catholic Church. Not too many white people lived in Cherry Hill during the 1950s, and certainly not after the 1960s – it turned into a war zone, like so many other predominately Black neighborhoods of America.

The irony is that most Negroes/Blacks who call someone else an Uncle Tom, have actually never read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 hit, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life Among the Lowly.

Having read it myself; from a literary standpoint the titles’ character, Uncle Tom is one of the most heroic and brilliant characters ever created. He was brilliant, because he was able to accept his fate as a slave, and practiced being the best possible servant he could be to survive a terrible situation. Tom was of course, the absolute perfect Negro in the eyes of devout abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe, because he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. In a Christ-like twist, Uncle Tom gave up his life to save runaway slaves, Cassy and Emmerline. From the book Uncle Tom's Cabin;

“Legree drew in a long breath; and, suppressing his rage, took Tom by the arm, and, approaching his face almost to his, said, in a terrible voice, "Hark 'e, Tom! - ye think 'cause I've let you off before, I don't mean what I say; but, this time, I've made up my mind, and counted the cost. You've always stood it out again' me: now, I'll conquer ye, or kill ye! - one or t' other. I'll count every drop of blood there is in you, and take 'em, one by one, till ye give up!

Tom looked up to his master, and answered, "Mas'r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd give ye my heart's blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I'd give 'em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas'r! don't bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than it will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles'll be over soon; but, if ye don't repent, yours won't never end!"

That’s Uncle Tom – a real badass! A couple of days later, as he lay dying, Mas’r George Shelby came to see him. Again, from Harriet Beecher Stowe's, Uncle Tom's Cabin; 

“You shan’t die! You mustn’t die, nor think of it! I’ve come to buy you, and take you home,” said George, with impetuous vehemence.

“O, Mas’r George, ye’re too late. The Lord’s brought me, and is going to take me home, - and I long to go. Heaven is better than Kintuck,” (Uncle Tom said)

“O, don’t die! I’ll kill me! – it’ll break my heart to think what you’ve suffered, - and lying in this old shed, here! Poor, poor fellow!”

“Don’t call me poor fellow!” said Tom, solemnly, “I have been poor fellow; but that’s all past and gone, now. I’m right in the door, going into glory! O, Mas’r George! Heaven has come! I’ve got the victory! – the Lord Jesus has given iot to me! Glory be to His name!”

He was willing to die for others and forgive his masr’ for killing him. Why? Because the only thing a slave had to live for was dying! So how did the term Uncle Tom become an insult? Negroes never read the book and never bothered to understand the complexities of the character H. B. Stowe invented. They just accepted the words of their former mas’rs, like Black, nigger, and Uncle Tom without question, embracing them like the air we breathe – unwittingly manifesting within the full power of the negative intent these words were meant to portray. 
        After reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it is difficult to put it down and not see a prince among ordinary men in ol’ Uncle Tom. I would almost consider it a compliment to be called an Uncle Tom, if wasn’t for the fact that I refused to see myself as the perfect Nigger, who puts all his hopes and dreams on calling myself a sinner, and having to die to be in “Glory.” I’d rather live to be free and happy in the here and now! Jesus and Heaven can wait!

Listening to representative Alvin Holmes and others like him, no doubt they embrace the disease that has afflicted a people of color in America with their segregationist views, which have been the real enemy of progress for decades. Don’t take my word – hear the words of another man of the law that representative Alvin Holmes would have definitely referred to as an Uncle Tom. Charlie Houston was the very first Negro appointed as a federal judge, named to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1949, by President Harry Truman. Like Thurgood Marshall, he was an unyielding foe of racial segregation. Lamenting about the Alvin Holmes’ of his time, he said:

“For fifty years predjudiced white men and abject, boot lickin, gut lacking, favor seeking Negroes have been insulting our intelligence with a tale that goes like this; segregation is not evil. Negroes are better off by themselves. They can get equal treatment and be happier if they live and move and have their being off by themselves. But any Negro who uses this theoretical possibility as a justification for segregation is either dumb, or mentally dishonest, or else he has like Esau, chosen a mess of pottage.”

The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall By Carl T. Rowan 1993 pg. 63

Believe me, I am just as sick of this discussion about race as anyone else, but it is impossible for me to keep my mouth shut, when I hear so-called Black people trying to speak for all people of color, as if there is some sort of brotherly agenda that we’re all supposed to honor and support. I lived through the Civil Rights era with my eyes wide open, and I rejected the notion of calling myself Black from the very first moment it was proposed, because even as a child I understood the limitations and negative vibrations associated with the ideology of Blackness. The destruction of a Black people – their families, and their communities over the last 40-plus years, speaks volumes.

The blood running through my veins is a mix of European, Native American, and who knows what else thrown in. I don’t have to choose one identity just because society wants to put us in a box. We are what we believe we are – period the end. Our brothers and sisters are people of many races, colors and creeds, who support the idea that we are in truth, one race of human beings living on a planet called Earth. Locally, I am an American. What more is there other then what I do, say, or accomplish during the span of my existence?

And as for the “Uncle Tom” calling racists like representative Alvin Holmes – please take the time to receive a psychological evaluation to help you understand the roots causes of your hatred towards your fellow man. I leave you with a quote from a man who is blind, which hopefully will help you see the light:

“When you believe in things, that you don’t understand, then you’ll suffer.” 
Stevie Wonder, from Superstition

Album, Talking Book 1972

By, Herman Williams III, a.k.a. Homam P. Stanly