My third book To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin will be released Monday, February 19th, 2024 at Penn State University in University Park, PA. I will be interviewed by Penn State University Department of African American Studies Professor Michael West about my book. You can register to attend this book talk via Zoom here.
This book is scheduled for a February 2024 release.
A Review of The Case For Cancel Culture by Ernest Owens
I read this entire book looking for a single cogent argument for cancel culture but I could not find one. I think the truest statement Owens makes in this book is that
He writes that “discussing cancel culture without the additional lens of power becomes futile.” The problem of this book is that Owens does not interrogate what “the additional lens of power” actually is. He does not probe enough the power dynamics between the employer and the employed, between labor and capital. He does not provide a deeper context as to who gets cancelled and who doesn’t. His analysis is missing the power dynamic. His whole book assumes U.S. liberal power is good power, and trustworthy power.
Most of the arguments in this book are muddled in corporate liberal talking points that get in the way of a clear description of cancel culture. I find most of his arguments corporate, disingenuous, and inauthentic. He says that “right wing cancel culture is obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” however I’ve found that left wing cancel culture is “more obsessed with reinforcing traditional power structures,” especially when you consider the ways that so called Left groups like Facebook cooperated with local police and federal agencies to murder Baltimore resident Korryn Gaines, persecuted Palestinian journalists for defending their homeland, and for carrying out James Comey’s attacks on so-called “Black identity extremists.”
In his Introduction, he mentions how the concept of cancelling came from the “Love and Hip Hop” Reality TV show which he says he likes to watch, but he does not probe how the storylines its actors play out follow the dictates of its producer Mona Scott-Young, nor how she follows the dictates of her superior Brad Abramson who expects some amount of “drama” to draw Nielsen ratings. Owens’s analysis is shallow and ignores the ways that white ownership of television and internet media make money by continuing to parade and incentivize the dysfunctional behavior of Black people. From the Introduction it goes downhill.
He claims in the next section that “in the hands of conservatives,” cancel culture has “reinforced entrenched power structures.” I couldn’t help but think of Russiagate, and how every Left media outlet, from MSNBC to DemocracyNow.org cancelled so many people in the Left if you did not agree that Russia stole the 2016 presidential election, instead of Hillary’s poor choice not to campaign in several swing states including Michigan. That was the Left reinforcing power structures, not the “conservatives.”
Owens’s discussion of Jesse Williams celebrates his nicely worded 2016 speech at the BET Awards that cancelled the reply by Justin Timberlake. However, I was expecting so much more of Owens’ analysis, like how Wililams’s entire 2016 speech celebrating Black identity was completely negated by his choice to leave his then wife, Aryn Drake-Lee to date Jessica Alba.
Owens claims “the election of Trump emboldened a culture of toxic hostility toward minorities.” Nothing has been more toxic to the culture of Black people than Democratic presidential administrations. During Obama’s eight years, the public sector shrank more than during any other president, and Joseph Biden locked up more Black and brown people with his 1994 crime bill than any Republican president since the 70s.
Owens writes: “Cancel culture is what has given me, a Black Queer millennial the freedom that so many others take for granted.”
As a Black Queer Generation X-er, I’ve seen “cancel culture” do nothing but create online mobs and monsters to ultimately destroy an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves. It destroys an individual’s ability to critically think for themselves because its in the hands of those who use their capital, liberal or conservative, to push their corporate agenda. Cancel culture is nothing but detrimental. As Kenny Babyface Edmonds told Jason Lee this month, “cancel culture destroys artists.”
Both liberal and conservative media used their capital to cancel Jeffrey Epstein, but to this day they have protected most of Epstein’s clients. In most cases, when corporations cancel someone they are “saving their face” or “covering their ass” to keep advertiser revenue. They are not upholding some noble cause as Owens argues. It is not a form of democratic expression, but a tool to punish someone and put up a facade to support whatever cause they want to claim.
Owens’s analysis is most shallow in his section called “Cancel Culture Been Here,” where he writes that “MLK cancelled racial segregation in America.” As the liberal Pew Research Center showed, since the 1970s the racial wealth gap has widened in America, and cancel culture could only play a constructive role in that widening because it celebrates only token progress.
Malcolm X made clear in his 1964 “Ballot or the Bullet” speech the difference between a Black revolution and a Negro revolution. A Negro revolution is not a real revolution and is composed of only token progress. Owens’s whole book celebrates token success of Black people and not actual success. Its clear that Cancel Culture promotes tokens.
He claims that the “March 4 Our Lives” event after the shooting at the Marjorie Stoneman High School “cancelled gun culture,” but delivering speeches did not cancel the lobbying power of the National Rifle Administration. They’re now stronger than they were before that march. Owens distinguishes Black Lives Matter from Antifa, and again fails to discuss the corporate controls over BLM by the Open Society Foundation. I found his defenses laughable. He defends Disney by saying they provide disclaimers that their films promote one culture over the other.
What is more fascinating to me is how Disney’s conglomerate with the Lifetime network has raked millions creating what Ishmael Reed has called a “Black Boogeyman” industry by creating monsters in Kevin Hunter in the documentary about Wendy Williams, and by creating a monster in Lifetime’s documentary about R. Kelly. Owens mentions the latter film and the “disgraced” Dr. Bill Cosby as proof that cancel culture works, however this way of looking at cancel culture completely eliminates any discussion of how consent figures into the behavior of those who accused R. Kelly and Dr. Cosby.
Those who ask about whether consent figures into these accusations are instantly accused of victimizing the victimizers and are immediately censored. This is why cancel culture is destructive.
Later, Owens writes very wisely that if you make a mistake you should be offered grace, however “we’re selective about who gets grace.” This is why cancel culture is detrimental and should not be celebrated. Owens mentions Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson being “cancelled” by the U.S. government for criticizing Jim Crow, but he misses the class dynamic and how discriminating racially maintained a certain profit motive for the elite.
His mention of Anita Hill avoided how she was wrongly coached by a California judge Susan Hoerchner who, as Charles Ogletree writes in his book “All Deliberate Speed,” told Anita Hill she was harassed by Clarence Thomas. Ogletree wrote her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This told me, the reader of Ogletree’s book, that I should not have believed Hill’s claims. Nobody should have to tell you when you’re harassed. Anyone who did not experience your harassment, nor witness to your harassment, should not be writing your public testimony about it. But Hill seized her chance to try to use the media in a salacious disingenous attempt to cancel Clarence Thomas. Owens claims that Anita Hill was ignored but Catherine Blasey Ford was listened to. The claims of both women were dismissed. Its clear that Anita Hill was in fact listened to more than Blasey Ford. Professor Anita Hill listened to the wrong advice in their attempt to tank the nomination of Clarence Thomas who Joseph Biden as Senator voted for. Sexual harassment allegations are good for bored senate judiciary committee members, TV ratings, news headlines, but not for logical arguments about judicial qualifications. Owens fumbles Anita Hill.
Owens claims that since cancel culture, “we understand harassment and assault so much better.” This is not true. We understand how those with the capital and the ownership and exaggerate harassment and assault, and create monsters out of thin air. People argue that because so many women “came out” claiming they were assaulted by Dr. Cosby, then that means Dr. Cosby must be guilty. We also have many accusers including Janice Dickerson recanting their testimony and admitting that they were paid to make accusations. So we do not understand harassment and assault so much better.
We understand that anyone could be paid to claim assault and harassment, and get away with it.
As Owens writes in his last section, “imperfect people are determining imperfect scales of value.” I could not agree more. Those people made imperfect by their capital are sharpening their axes for their next victim that they believe their corporate agenda needs to cancel. In the last section of this book, Owens writes that “cancel culture has always been about power.” However Owens’s analyses needed to interrogate that power further.
Before reading this book, I despised cancel culture and after reading this book, I am more convinced that it should be ignored at all costs.
While I was not able to relate to the incomplete context provided by Ernest Owens book, I was able to completely, experientially, and theoretically relate to the complete context provided by Sam P.K. Collins in his book Babylon Be Still: How a Journalist-Educator Adopted an African-Centered Worldview.
This is a book that describes how Collins came to be an African centered journalist. At the time I am reading this book, I am infinitely more clear about my theoretical interests and my theoretical grounding which is, like Collins, thoroughly Pan-African. I highly recommend this book for those seeking context, identity and theoretical grounding outside of the conventional two-party Western political paradigm. The paradigm in this book is African centered, clearly grounded in the knowledge of Marcus Garvey, who is the subject of my forthcoming edited collection.
It consists of six parts, and each part has at least two chapters. The first part titled “Laying It Out, Plain and Simple” describes Collins’s beginnings as a journalist and his theoretical grounding as a Pan-African. Collins said “the universe blessed me with a circle of new people who shared my perspective and passion for institution building” (31). This is what makes the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Panther Party so interesting to me because those who founded had this “passion for institution building.”
Collins also describes the function of white supremacy when he writes that “the system of white supremacy was designed to siphon African greatness for the benefit of the white elite” (33).
The second section called “Navigating the Academic Waters” discussed the progressive disillusionment with the NETROOTS conference which was a gathering of progressive activists started by Howard Dean. The third section called “Young Lion Awakens” includes articles from Collins’s independent media outlet AllEyesOnDC.com discusses Collins’s growth as a Rastafarian: “the further I drifted away from Christianity, the more aspects of the somewhat similar Rastafari livity resonated with me, especially as I carried along on my journey to a higher African consciousness” (62). In Collins’s article called “I’m Tired of Protesting,” Collins writes about the slogan
“Black Lives Matter,” Sandra Bland, and Ethiopians in DC, “unbeknownst to many, Ethiopians and African Americans share a history of rebellion against imperialistic European forces” (79).
His 2016 article called “It’s Not Over: Practicing Kwanzaa in the New Year includes a powerful manifesto: “nothing else can extinguish the economic power of violent police forces and genocidal figureheads better than a mass consolidation of Black finances” (100).
This is the opposite argument of Jared Ball’s book The Myth of Black Buying Power. Like Collins and unlike Ball, I’ve never believed this buying power is a myth. With crypto currency, it becomes more elusive and more potentially influential. I appreciate at the end of this section how Collins sees his work as a journalist and writer, in being able to shape the minds of his readers: “I’m planting seeds of revolution in their mind” (108). He continues: “viewers should have some media literacy and understand how and why their news sources present certain news and viewpoints” (108). This was an article about Kwanzaa and the new year and he said we should “become a more conscious people, breaking out of our mental slavery, one chain at a time” (109). This was a reference to Marcus Garvey’s 1927 speech warning his audience about the danger of “mental slavery” since the abolition of chattel slavery in the U.S. Civil War. This “mental slavery” is carried out by the mainstream media.
His fourth section called “The Politics of Nation Building” Collins describes his growth during the Obama administration: “during the age of Obama, I’ve taken a Black Nationalist political consciousness” (121). Of Obama’s policy, Collins writes that “after cutting Pell Grant funds often used for matriculation to historically Black colleges and universities, Obama chastised school administrators for mismanagement of funds and low graduation rates” (129). This is why Collins says that he will no longer vote Democrat.
Like Collins, I’ve abandoned the Democratic Party, especially after studying the tremendous impact that third parties have had on this country, from the Liberty Party in the nineteenth century to the Black Panther Party in the twentieth century. Collins defines his departure towards Black Nationalism when he writes: “Its a fear of mine that we’ll accept piecemeal change and not truly grasp the opportunity to write and create sustainable institutions that work in the interest of Black people” (141). He has an awesome article in this section called “Black liberals, their use of ‘Hotep,’ and ‘Ankh-Right’ and a Denial of a Nation Building’s Merits” where he writes that “it is my hope the Black liberals get to embrace their African heritage” (165). This is exactly what I thought while reading books by authors like Owens who just sound like they’re repeating Westernized corporate talking points that dismiss the importance of Pan African heritage.
His part five is called “Instilling Knowledge of Self in African Youth (2016 to 2019)” and resembles my experience teaching in a public charter school. Collins writes about resisting the identity of being a colonial educator when he writes:
“I wouldn’t make that total plunge [away from being a conventional, traditional educator to pursuing writing full time] until my termination from Paul Public Charter International High School on May 24, 2018. That event culminated a turbulent year during which I faced forces, in students and adult colleagues alike, that disregarded consistency, discipline, accountability, collaboration, honesty, and knowledge of self. Up until my last day, I espoused those principles, as taught to me by my family and in the readings of Marcus Garvey and others. Earlier in the school year, I applied for, and accepted, the opportunity to explain to a group of white educators in Pittsburgh the need for an African centered education for African youth.”
I appreciated Collins’s candor and his relating his own growth as a Pan-Africanist to trying to be a mentally stable public school educator. In his article “Leading the Charge: Equipping Our Black Youth with Knowledge of Self,” he describes the personalities that our youth are encouraged to adopt: “a false Black identity currently parroted in popular culture is rooted in criminality, sexual promiscuity, dysfunction, lack of industry, perpetual victimhood, economic immobility and a persistent source of otherness” (221). These are stereotypes promoted in the so called reality TV that’s only a reality for the producers promoting Black dysfunction.
I especially Collins’s literary analysis of Alice Walker’s 1973 short story “Everyday Use” which centers on a conflict between two sisters over a quilt: one college educated sister who wants to put the quilt in a museum and the other sister who didn’t go to college who wants her child to use the quilt to sleep with. Collins compared the personality types in that story to today’s personality types: “the young [college educated] African woman reintroduced as Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo…does not exemplify how the newly Africanized must treat well meaning family members struggling to reconcile their kin’s evolution in Afrikan consciousness” (227).
Collins insists that Wangero, known to the family as Dee, “squanders an opportunity to include her family in her Africanization” (231). Also, her sister Maggie who did not earn a college degree “ends up on top.” Collins concludes about Dee that her desire for the family quilt in the story was perhaps more about “a need to monopolize access to her lineage” (237). Collins compares Walker’s Dee to “a cohort of contemporary Afrikan-centered social media pundits and figures who abhor serious scholarship and lack nuance in their assessment of complicated Afrikan freedom fighters.” Collins writes that “they embrace their ancestry not out of respect, but out of a desire to appear the purest among the collective” (239-40).
I couldn’t help but remember Stephanie Mills telling Vlad TV that Black journalists like Gayle King should not be exploiting Black artists like R. Kelly and how it behooves Black journalists in their coverage not to promote racist stereotypes and try to appear “the purest among the collective,” but to genuinely respect their ancestry through their coverage.
In his sixth section titled “The Covid-19 Files,” Collins has three very important articles. In his first article in this section titled “An Open Letter to My Fellow Pan-African Nationalists,” he writes that “throughout the 20th century, too many organizations fell to the wayside because the surveillance state manipulated internal squabbles” (241).
Like Collins, I am excited about being able to apply the principles taught by those conscious who came before us in order to avoid being manipulated.
Collins himself in this article writes that: “I doubled down on my commitment to rectify schisms within myself and my African family” (245). Collins describes a criteria that eliminates those forces which are using their token position to advance white supremacy: “the quintessential Pan African revolution will revolve, and only revolve, around those devoid of ego who’ve expressed a commitment to their healing and that of their family and community” (247). That includes de-programming from the colonial order and deconnecting from those subconscious thoughts that keep us tied to the colonial order.
Collins provides more details at the end of this article when he writes that “we must strive to raise above our differences and commit to direct action that produces more results of merit for several generations to come” (257). His last article in this section titled “The Creator: A Conduit Between Africans and the Ancestors specifies” the direct action he mentioned: “by mentioning the Most High through prayer and a pious lifestyle, the Africans of yesteryear kept their environments clean and gained internal foresight and knowledge needed to imagine and create—their heaven on Earth, before and during European colonization and terror” (275).
His last article argues “the masses we want to cajole into a liberation mindset don’t exist…because a segment of our population has espoused individualism to the point where they’re ready to defect from their group and create another entity within minutes of a verbal disagreement” (294). I found his most conclusive statement to be “those of us with the heart of lions must close ranks and learn all that we can in separating away from this society” (297). His last points remind all of us of how Africans came to the West: “chattel slavery and subsequent forms of European exploitation thrived on the cooperation of Africans who lacked courage and fidelity to Pan African nationhood” (299).
Collins’s book leaves me motivated to not allow the surveillance state to manipulate squabbles with me or Africans I know to continue the centuries long exploitation. Collins’s book underscores the importance of theory which is, how you look at or study an event, person or phenomena. His book encourages me to understand the ease with which nation is maintained. -RF.
Suzan-Lori Parks’s stage adaptation of Perry Henzell’s 1972 film “The Harder They Come” opens within the week at the Public Theater.
In the original 1972 film, Jimmy Cliff plays the character of Ivan, who comes from the Jamaican countryside to live in urban Kingston and make his name as a recording artist. The audience likes him and cares about him because he stands up for the exploited and the oppressed in the major institutions in Jamaica that wield influence in this country: the church, the music industry, and the ganja trade.
This stage adaptation by Suzan-Lori Parks must be seen for three reasons.
One, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the popular influence that the music like artists like Ivan had on their urban environment. This aspect should remind the audience that the role of an artist is that of a public servant, and not a corporate manufactured Western celebrity.
Two, her stage adaptation shows more than the film the potential for all record label owners, like the character Mr. Hilton, to become a convert and promote the conscious music of artists like the film’s Ivan, the real life Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh, and Bob Marley who stood up for the oppressed. In the original, Hilton never becomes a convert and never promotes Ivan’s music throughout the film, like the real-life treatment of Bob Marley’s music in 1970s Jamaica. Parks’s adaptation shows how record label owners can squander billions by ignoring the demands of the masses for music with a political message.
Three, this adaptation must be seen for the UNFORGETTABLE performance of Ivan by Natey Jones. Jones sounds so much like the original Jimmy Cliff. His performance makes you root for him; Jones’s performance makes you want him to get the record deal; his performance makes the audience want to have his music played across the city in order to raise the consciousness of his listeners.
In these aspects, Parks’s adaptation captured the essence of the original film.
Although this adaptation must be seen, it also suffers from serious flaws that detract from the meaning of the film.
First is the undeveloped or childish way the relationship between Ivan and his love interest Elsa is shown. In the stage adaptation, Ivan covers his selling ganja from Elsa and his mother and refers to it as a “fishing business.” This makes the stage version of Elsa look foolish and gullible. In the original film, it is obvious that Elsa is aware of and condones Ivan’s selling ganja, as she cares for Pedro’s son. This part of Parks’s script panders to U.S. respectability politics and undermines the power of the relationship between Ivan and Elsa.
It also forms the shaky foundation for their relationship, as it furthers the gap between Ivan’s growth in Parks’s stage version. Elsa is unable to grow WITH Ivan instead of against him, and by the second act, as Ivan is growing in his consciousness and militance, Elsa begs for Ivan to turn himself to the Jamaican police, a serious betrayal of the original script.
That is not the only relationship that Parks’s adaptation leaves undeveloped.
After a series of rewrites, its clear that Parks’s adaptation cannot handle the social relationship between Jamaica and Cuba. Her adaptation can’t appreciate how in the original film Jamaican Pedro forcefully sought to heal Ivan’s shoulder wound after his gun fight with police. In the original film, Pedro encourages Ivan to board a boat to Cuba where he can get free medical treatment for his wounded shoulder.
The film shows Ivan, his wounded shoulder, the consequent difficulty from swimming with such a shoulder, the boat, the Caribbean sea, as glaring metaphors for the barriers the average Jamaican faces living in a neocolonial island nation. These are absent in the adaptation.
The version I saw on March 11th completely erased Pedro’s lines to Ivan about going to Cuba, and simply shows Pedro changing the bandage on Ivan’s shoulder. This betrays the message of the original film about the reality of Jamaican life.
Despite these betrayals, this stage adaptation should be seen for many reasons.
Her adaptation fleshed out the characters of Ivan’s love interest Elsa and his mother Daisy who sing original songs that speak to their own development. It allows for Daisy’s awesome song in the second act “Many Rivers to Cross” to show the singing talent of Jeannette Bayardelle.
The song “Aim and Ambition” that Parks originates for Ivan is powerful.
There were scenes that the audience LOVED, which was the scene in the church where they members transformed themselves from church dancers to dancehall dancers. This scene is AMAZING and highlights the sacred nature of dancehall music.
Clint Ramos’s set design is absolutely remarkable awesome, it transforms from the stage to a church, to a recording studio, to a street in downtown Kingston, to a bedroom, and deftly handled Parks’s variety of scenes.
Japhy Weideman’s lighting was equally flawless and made the scene with Ivan and Elsa on the bicycle come alive, along with the scene of Ivan’s swim for the boat.
Emilio Sosa’s costume design is flawless for each character.
The intimacy between Ivan and his love interest Elsa was hard to believe and needed more work. The live band needed all the elements of the original film specifically the organ that was played in the original film. The live stage band’s sound was more like U.S. gospel instead of the tambourined Jamaican Shouter Baptist church that Ska sound came from.
With the exception of those playing Ivan, Lyle, Hilton, and J. Bernard, the entire cast needed more work on their Jamaican dialect to sound more convincing.
Chelsea-Ann Jones’s performance in the ensemble as shopkeeper, to whom Ivan pleads, was powerful and unforgettable.
Housso Semon’s performance as a Radio DJ named Lemon Soul and Newscaster was strong and convincing.
Garfield Hammonds’s performance as Hilton was stern and strong.
J. Bernard Callloway’s performance as the Preacher, and Ivan’s nemesis was strong and, like Natey Jones’s performance, deserves critical acclaim.
Special thanks to Jana Zschoche of the Public Theater for her gracious hospitality that enabled me to see this performance; special thanks to the House Manager at the March 12th performance for accommodating my guests Carlene Taylor and her son Caleb. Thanks to Saundra Gilliard for her support in my writing this. Special thanks to playwright David Heron for his phone call and conversation that inspired my review. -RF.
From Saturday November 5th to Saturday December 10th, Dr. Jared Ball and I read and discussed two chapters a week of Neal Gabler’s book “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. On Saturday November 5th, we discussed the introduction and the first chapter; on Saturday November 12th, we discussed the second, third, and fourth chapters; on Saturday November 19th we discussed the fifth and sixth chapters; on Saturday December 3rd, the seventh and eighth chapters, and on Saturday, December 10th we discussed the ninth and tenth chapters. -RF.
Dr. James Turner who passed this August, was one of the pioneers of Black Studies in the U.S. university who wrote a 1984 article called “Africana Studies and Epistemology.” In this article, Turner writes that many faculty “have succumbed to the orthodox norms of academic traditionalism in their pursuit of careerist aspirations for legitimacy and acceptability for the purposes of job stability and security” (181).
The books written by Keisha Blain clearly show that she is academic traditionalist because she writes about influential figures–specifically Amy Ashwood Garvey and Fannie Lou Hamer– in a context that makes these women look like lackeys for the Democratic Party.
A close personal study of each of these women, shows they are not simply lackeys for the Democratic Party but were radicals who challenged the machinations of the Wall Street-backed Democratic Party, a party whose popularity has dropped 33 percent this year.
In the September 9th issue of The New Republic, Keisha Blain penned an article called “Black Historians Know There’s No Such Thing as Objective History,” where she claims that “in a white dominated world and academy,” Black historians “are always fighting to assert our voices and histories into spaces designed to exclude us.” However in the process of asserting “voices and histories” Blain downplays the seminal work of these women in resisting the harmful policies of the two party mainstream.
In her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, Blain writes more of Amy Ashwood Garvey’s public statements endorsing integrationism than Black Nationalism. For example, in quoting Ashwood’s words at the April 1944 conference hosted by the Council on African Affairs, Blain writes: “maintaining the belief that interracial political unity was a necessary step toward ending political rule, Ashwood added ‘I see no ill in finding white allies’” (Blain 149). In Blain’s words, Amy Ashwood Garvey becomes an integrationist. Blain’s writings about Amy Ashwood Garvey turn her into an integrationist who sought cooperation with the N.A.A.C.P. when in fact Tony Martin writes about her nationalist identity, seeking advertising space in the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Speaks newspaper for sponsors of her concrete enterprise in Liberia.
Tony Martin put Amy Ashwood Garvey in her proper nationalist context, rather than a figure seeking approval and integration into Western white organizations.
In Blain’s latest book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America, she situates Hamer as an inspiration for Democratic politicians like Kamala Harris. Although Blain puts Hamer’s work in the context of the popular causes of the Black Lives Matter movement, she does not apply the most enduring and important principles of Ms. Hamer’s speeches. For example, Blain quotes Hamer saying “time out for white people…hand picking the leader that [is] going to lead me ’cause we ain’t going to follow” (65-7). However she does not show how Hamer practiced this principle in her own life. In the conclusion of this book, Blain references Kamala Harris’s 2020 Democratic National Convention speech that mentioned “structural racism” as evidence that Hamer “helped to frame” Harris’s political vision.
This is a vision by Harris that allows the city of Jackson in Hamer’s state of Mississippi, to not have running water, while the federal government stands by, failing to respond. Yet this government finds the money and the weapons to deliver to the Ukraine, which has clean running water. A close read of Hamer’s autobiography, available on SNCC Digital, reveals that Hamer did not believe the policies of the Democratic Party should go unchecked by Wall Street.
Blain’s frame of Fannie Lou Hamer as one who inspired Kamala Harris downplays the failure of the federal government in addressing the very real systemic racism in Mississippi that the Democratic Party has demonstrated it is unable to address.
My forthcoming book details exactly how Blain mischaracterizes Amy Ashwood Garvey and is scheduled for release in June 2023 by Arawak Publications. It is entitled To A More Positive Purpose: Critical Responses to the Scholarship of Tony Martin and features articles by Joshua Myers, Ian Smart, Rupert Lewis, Geoffrey Philp, Latif Tarik, Wendy McBurnie, Ophera Davis and April Shemak.
Blain writes that “the work we do has the potential to shape national debates and inform policies that have broad implications for all Americans.” It behooves her and the academic establishment that supports her to ensure she writes about these influential women in a deeper context from which they emerge so as not to distort them into corporate lackeys for personal career advancement. -RF.
In the first ten days of our trip, we stayed at a pastoral or “bucolic” retreat named Volmoed. We attended a service like the Anglican church service I grew up in. This service was attended by young Cape Townians, one of them who reminded me so much of my sister named Amahle. On the first day, we attended a service of a church in Zwelihle and later that evening. We later had an important conversation on poverty of the material versus poverty of the spirit. Those we passed in Zwelihle definitely were rich in spirit.
The next day, which was Day 4, we attempted to get a whale watching tour, however the weather conditions were too windy, so the tour (photo below) was cancelled. We did however visit one of the highest peaks of Hermanus, the suburb of Cape Town, which was Hoy’s Koppie (photo above with Dr. Navita Cummings James of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida).
That Sunday the 21st, so many things happened. First, I was invited to preach at the same church in Hermanus that the Archbishop Desmond Tutu attended; second, I attended an amazing service at the All Saints Church in Zwelihle that reminded me of my mom’s Baptist church in Mitchell Town, Clarendon, Jamaica. The All Saints Church in Zwelihle was spoken in Xhosa, a language first exposed to me by my father when he took me and my younger sister to see the Broadway musical Sarafina! in 1988.
Above is a photo of the All Saints Church in Zwelihle and with his hands raised is Father Jerry Gelant who introduced me when I gave my sermon at the All Saints.
When I finished my sermon, I thought I heard an owl hooting loudly outside the church building. When I asked Father Jerry whether that was in fact an owl hooting he said yes. For me the owl is a reminder of my grandfather, who came to me on May 13th, when I lived thousands of miles away from him the year he passed in 2019. And again on November 13, 2019 when I saw the same white owl outside my window. The first day I returned from South Africa, my mother told me that my Godmother, Aunt Laurel, passed on Sunday the 21st which was the day I heard the owl after my homily, or my small sermon.
On the fifth day we visited the headquarters of Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation which exhibited his work that included his notes and archival video including his early speeches. Below are notes on the Craddock Four who were murdered by South African security police.
Below is a photo of one of the most inspiring quotes I believe Archbishop Tutu said, which was that “the Holy book [or the Bible] says when a ruler gives you unjust laws, disobey.” This is what John Brown and Harriet Tubman did in the United States, they used the Bible to justify their intentional disobedience of the laws that upheld chattel slavery.
I want to thank Professor Michael Battle (pictured below) for planning an incredible experience in the #TutuTravelSeminar2022 and for writing an extensive 300 page biography of Archbishop Desmond Tutu that I reviewed in my previous post.
I want to thank Father Edwin Arrison for his outstanding guidance of this travel seminar and knowledge he shared about Archbishop Tutu.
On our second to last day we visited the Robben Island Museum where we saw the cell that Mandela was confined to. I couldnt help but think about how Mandela was originally sentenced to five years but after giving this speech entitled “I Am Prepared to Die,” he was sentenced to life on Robben Island. Knowing this inspires me to continue to fight for what I believe. It makes me continue to fight for the compassionate release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, whose only crime was trying to release U.S. citizens from the grip of drug addiction.
Below is the page signed by Michael and Edwin of the book about Tutu’s life.
Thank you to Father Ed Henley for inviting me to be part of this seminar and for funding my travel to and from it. I thank Father Ed for his support of me and my family, for believing in me, for suggesting I preach the homily, for reading my book about Toni Morrison’s last novel and being THE FIRST reader of my book to describe my book’s significance to me. Thanks to Sherre Henley for her tireless support of me and my work, and thanks to my Travel Seminar members who made this experience unforgettable.
“We cannot say that we believe in God if we hate each other–much less say we love God and do the same.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2021.
This quote by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of the Anglican church summarizes his message to the world profoundly captured by Michael Battle in his biography of him. This quote is in the afterword of Battle’s biography.
I grew up assuming the presence of an Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that spoke out against one’s own government while at the time encouraging the revolutionary elements to negotiate with the South African government supported by Neo-Nazi elements.
Since his passing in December 2021, I’ve wondered if my country’s government will in fact succeed in ignoring voices like Tutu’s. Michael Battle’s biography necessarily documents the significance of Tutu’s voice for a new generation.
The study of Desmond Tutu’s life is so important because in his lifetime, he criticizes not only the Afrikaner colonial leaders from the 1980s, but also he criticizes native South African neocolonial leaders.
The books is divided into three units: purgation, illumination, and union, each a phase of what Battle calls Christian mysticism. Purgation being Tutu’s formation as a church leader, an illumination which is acceptance of the light which is his leading role as chair of the South African government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The third stage is “union” which Battle writes his Tutu being designated as a global Elder and sage. The single MOST important quote of this entire biography was in the twelfth chapter:
“Tutu helps us see how Western imperialism can no longer shape how Christians engage the world” (284).
The first five chapters make up the first unit, “purgation,” where we learn how Tutu grew up. An important group for Tutu was the Anglican Community of the Resurrection, as well as Trevor Huddleston: Battle wrote that Tutu learned from both that “there should be no effort to ease the tension between his religion and his political activity” (28). Battle would write in this chapter that “getting the oppressor to see God in common with the oppressed was Tutu’s greatest contribution and what Tutu will be known for throughout human history” (34). In the third chapter, Battle writes that for Tutu it seems as if there is a conspiracy “among certain Western countries and big businesses to keep Blacks in South Africa forever in bondage” (65).
Battle details Tutu’s thorough class and color analysis when he writes that “Tutu believed that the South African government provided substantial privileges and concessions to certain blacks in urban areas thereby co-opting them to form a buffer between the white capitalist haves and the Black have nots.” Battle reminds us that Tutu shows us that society is a result of hard work of the Afrikaner (Dutch-descended South African) making the African-descended South African feel inferior. In this formative stage of Tutu’s development, Battle writes that Tutu was thankful that Beyers Nande emerged because he was a leading Afrikaner cleric who challenged the status quo. Battle would write that Nande lost his Anglican parish for “refusing to retract his signature from the 1960 Cottesloe Consultation. The most profound point Battle makes ending this unit is that “the more vilification he got from the government, the higher his stock rose in the Black community and overseas” (98).
Battle begins his fifth chapter equating the election of Nelson Mandela to the “end of apartheid” (127). However the writings of John Pilger and Ali Mazrui tell us that apartheid did not die after the election of Nelson Mandela, it simply changed forms. This is the only part of the book, where Battle did not thoroughly enough describe the consequences of Tutu’s choices. In this fifth chapter, he writes that Tutu “looked forward to international financial investments and he hoped, aid, which would help “our infant democracy to succeed, because South Africa will be the locomotive to drive Africa’s economic train” (127).
However these foreign investments came at a cost. According to John Pilger,
“with Mandela’s reassurances, foreign capital, led by American companies, surged back into Southern Africa, tripling its stake to $11.7 billion. The unspoken deal was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule: the ‘crown of political power’ for the ‘jewel of the South African economy’ as Professor Ali Mazrui put it” (Freedom Next Time p.221)
Tutu’s choice to go to the West asking them to fund the South African government contravened what Malcolm X warned in his 1964 speech to the United Nations warning leaders of African nations not to take foreign aid. As I finished reading this book, I wondered if I would be reading it if Tutu had not chose to appeal to Europe for their funding the South African government.
In his second section called “illumination,” Battle describes Tutu’s role as a mediator and how he was seen by some South Africans as a traitor: “he is viewed by Black South African scholars such as Itumeleng Mosala as betraying the struggle of the oppressed with too close a tie with European theology” (154). Battle describes Tutu’s theology as one of Ubuntu, a concept of Bantu cosmology that means “human beings need each other in order to be human” (46). Battle writes that “for Tutu, God takes the side of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien” (197). Tutu played a supportive role in the South African Council of Churches that helped the Anglican church. Although he played a helpful role, he made it clear that “Tutu remained reluctant to be a member of any political organization” (197).
His ninth chapter entitled “Leaving Church” that ends the second unit of “illumination,” Battle describes how Tutu’s work went beyond the Anglican church and that “the Christian must be more aware of how the church cooperated with colonialism and how historically white churches had a lot to gain by separating human beings on the basis of race” (214). This recalls Fidel Castro’s interview with Frei Betto in the book “Fidel and Religion” where he says that “imperialism doesn’t allow social changes to take place; it doesn’t accept them and tries to prevent them by force” (186).
In his last unit called “Union,” Battle describes Tutu’s influence on the world. Battle cites Tutu saying that Blacks would welcome the Russians as their saviors from the evil of apartheid. Battle writes that he was sought over the world to lend his help, from: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, the Congo, Gambia, Honduras, Mauritius, Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the Solomon Islands. Although Battle says that Tutu “never supported the invasion of Iraq on grounds of just war theory,” Battle does not question enough the role the West plays in its setting up “democratic governments” across the world (238). Although Western media calls these “democratic,” the intrepid work of journalists like Marcus Garvey and Julian Assange reveal to us that these governments are “military dictatorships” that absolutely contravene those principles Tutu espouses. Battle comes closest to questioning the role of these dictatorships when he writes what Tutu says about Nicaragua: “The USA supports quite vigorously those called Contras in Nicaragua” (238). Battle comes even closer to the U.S. support for military dictatorships when he asks the question to Christians: “when Christians go to war, what are we defending?” A hierarchy that was set up by Western interests that does the same this former colonial masters did? This should NOT be what we set up.
In his 1986 speech at the National Press Club, James Baldwin said that the European vision of the world is obsolete. This vision relies on supporting military dictatorships. Battle makes clear that Tutu does defend the work of revolutionaries who defend freedom from colonial oppression when he writes that for Tutu “violence may in certain situations be necessary” (243). Battle underscores this point when he writes that “what is most required by spiritual leaders is a prophetic stance against the ready assumption of Western capitalist triumphalism” (251). Battle writes that the Western church “needs unity” so it can address the “sin of an international economic system that depends on an indebted developing world” (252). This speaks to why Tutu appealing to the European banks to fund the South African government is a contradiction.
Because of the Anglican church’s conservatism, Tutu was not able to lead the Church to unity over same sex blessings. And Battle describes South Africans’ resistance to Western feminism which is seen as “just another form of Western imperialism” (259). Battle describes one’s Christian walk as a battle in which one is fighting on every front: ” Those who followed Jesus sought union with God by defeating those forces endemic in the breakdown of human relationships…Jesus discipled those around him to move toward the demonic forces in order to cast them out from the world” (275).
In the twelfth chapter, Tutu writes that “every praying Christian must have a passionate concern for who is neighbor because to treat anyone as if they were less than children of God is to deny them in the validity of one’s own experience” (278). Although Tutu understands where violence can be used, Battle writes the holds up Tutu as a model of a Christian spirituality of liberation, because Tutu shows us how to refuse violence as the normative means by which to rescue the oppressed.
In the last chapter Battle describes differences between the “Western perspectives” and the “African perspectives” but does not describe what he means by “African perspectives.” What he described recalls the work of the Black psychologist Kobi Kambon in differentiating between African and European worldviews.
In his conclusion, Battle writes that “we learn from Tutu that we must oppose injustice and oppression as religious people, even at the cost of personal freedom, or life itself.” By writing this, Tutu recalls from the radical Christian tradition, abolitionists David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Pauline Hopkins and many others, all of whom opposed “injustice and oppression as religious people.” Battle is absolutely accurate in his assessment that “those who live in the Global North are far more socially isolated today than in any other time in history.” Therefore it is incumbent to be intentional about working with others to “oppose injustice and oppression” after a global pandemic. Tutu’s Afterword in Battle’s biography are his last published words: “I pray that I would have made a contribution in forming both a mature consciousness and conscience for those who say they believe in God.” Tutu did just that. Thank you to Michael Battle for documenting this. THIS REVIEW IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A FELLOW CHRISTIAN AND MY FORMER COLLEGE CLASSMATE CALVIN LIONEL NICHOLSON (1978-2022).
-RF.
In this first YouTube LIVE, I discuss May 19th and the meaning of Lorraine Hansberry and Malcolm X, and the 2022 production of Alice Childress’s 1966 play Wedding Band.
You can listen to my first YouTube here.
The book The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History is a collection of essays and interviews edited by David North and Thomas Mackaman, published by Mehring Books. This book should be read because it exposes a popular twenty first century false narrative that oversimplifies U.S. history into a simple race conflict between conquering whites and helpless blacks. This is akin to a history promoted by what Marcus Garvey called the “Negro intellectuals” of his time who, he writes, were paid to promote a false narrative and false interpretation of history. This book should be read because it exposes the reality that U.S. history was less a conflict between races than it was a conflict between classes. However the shortcoming of this book is that it has an incomplete or confused understanding of Black Nationalism and confuses it for integrationism, clearly defined by Marcus Garvey as the political behavior that reflects a desire to be white or colored. The book confuses Black Nationalism for integrationism at two different parts.
Perhaps the part of the book that contains its central thesis rests in Part III: Polemics, of its five parts (I: Historical Critique, II: Interviews, III: Polemics, IV: Historical Commentary and V: The Crisis of the New York Times’s 1619 Project). In this Part three was “An Analysis of the New York Times’s Reply to Five Historians” written by Eric London and David North, where they write that
“The Democrats obsessive focus on race and identity is aimed at undermining the development of class consciousness” (195)
Every point made in this book supports this overarching argument, which puts Nikole Hannah-Jones at odds with those like Marcus Garvey, Maurice Bishop, Claudia Jones, and C.L.R. James, who see history from a much more nuanced perspective.
In their first article in Part I entitled “The New York Times‘ 1619 Project: A Racialist Falsification of American and World History,” Niles Niemuth, Thomas Mackaman and David North argue that “racism was the consequence of slavery” without giving Eric Williams credit for arguing this in 1944 book Capitalism and Slavery (7). They later mischaracterized the project, arguing that the 1619 project promotes “a Black Nationalist narrative” when in reality it promotes an “integrationist” narrative. A Black Nationalist narrative would not be a narrative, as Trevon Austin, Bill Van Auken, and David North write in Part V, that would promote a foreign oil company’s exploitation of Black owned land and natural resources, for material profit. If anything, by taking Shell Oil money to promote the message of the 1619 Project, Hannah Jones is promoting an “integrationist” narrative, because she and its proponents use Shell Oil money to integrate into the mainstream popular culture, despite its revisionist history.
In his book Black Awakening in Capitalist America, sociologist Robert L. Allen writes about the power of Western capital in transforming colonialism into neocolonialism, where the “nationalist native elites…cooperate with their former enemies in subduing and controlling the rebellious colony” (65). Shell Oil has done this across the world, especially among the Ogoni people in Nigeria, as the authors have written. By taking Shell Oil money, which has created this class of “nationalist native elites,” she is a committed integrationist and not, as North and Mackaman claim in their book, “a Black Nationalist.”
By encouraging history to be read simply as a conflict between blacks and whites, which destroys class consciousness and the opportunity to organize constructively against foreign exploitation.
This book should be read because it introduces a variety of narratives of history that question the framing of the 1619 project. Namely, part II: Interviews. In one of their interviews with Victoria Bynum, she tells stories of Southern landowners who chose during the Civil War to fight for the Union Army: Jasper Collins (74). Bynum later cites historians like Margaret Storey and David Williams describing yeoman communities that organized themselves into bands that included poor whites, slaves, and free people of color in common cause against the Confederacy (76).
In the second chapter of his book A History of Pan-African Revolt, C.L.R. James writes that “we have clear evidence that the poor whites of the districts had definitely allied themselves with the Negroes.” This book shows how the 1619 Project completely ignores this aspect of history. Also in this section is their interview with Richard Carwardine who makes the false claim that “taken as a whole, the abolitionist movement of the 1820s and 1830s was largely white,” which ignores the history of Maria W. Stewart, David Walker, and the highly influential preacher Nat Turner (145).
Their interview with Dolores Janiewski quotes Hannah-Jones saying “white southerners of all economic classes…experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people into a quasi-slavery” (164). Albion Tourgee, who this book mentions definitely did not do this, nor did Jasper Collins whom Bynum mentioned. White southerners of all economic classes did not force black people into a quasi-slavery. Some of them worked to destroy what George Jackson called wage slavery.
Part III: Polemics It includes the article “An Analysis of the NYT Reply to Five Historians.” Five historians wrote a letter questioning the claims of the 1619 Project: Victoria Bynum, James McPherson, James Oakes, and Gordon Wood. The New York Times replied and according to the analysis written by David North and Eric London, this reply was insufficient. The authors of the 1619 project “must still provide an accurate account of the historical context and poiltical constraints which led to the decisions of the Founders. No such analysis is provided by the authors of the 1619 Project. Everything is explained in terms of the alleged racial hatreds of “white” people (186). The article goes on to write that “an economic mode of production based on slavery, which had existed for thousands of years, was abolished through social mass struggle” (187). This part begged mention of the Haitian revolution and how it led to the Louisiana Purchase.
This article contains a very incomplete understanding of Lerone Bennett’s book Forced Into Glory. This is the second time this book mischaracterizes Lerone Bennett’s work as “race-based” without engaging his argument about how Lincoln in fact catered to Southern slaveowners. Lincoln did in fact want to deport all free Blacks to Liberia in order to curb their increasing influence on runaways up to the Civil War. The authors of this article are unable to truthfully engage this. This section of the book makes a powerful point that echoes the aforementioned thesis.
“The justification of the domestic and global interests of American capitalism, the relentless quest for corporate profitability, the effort to suppress the class struggle, and the justification of staggering levels of social inequality are not compatible with the pursuit of historical truth” (197).
This point necessarily questions the standard by which Hannah-Jones was awarded a Pulitzer prize for Journalism, especially if it was a journalism that foments racial division and is rewarded with capital from Shell Oil.
This book includes David North’s article “July 4, 1776 in World History” which accurately describes the American Revolution as an “American bourgeois-democratic revolution” that was determined by the existing objective conditions. In this section III is Victoria Bynum’s article “A Historian’s Critique of the 1619 Project” where she writes that Matthew Desmond in his essay on capitalism and slavery “ignores nonslaveowning propertied farmers, the largest class of whites in the antebellum South” (204).
The final section V entitled “The Crisis of the New York Times’s 1619 Project,” includes an article by Eric London and David North where they analyze a speech by Hannah-Jones at NYU, where they write that she argued that “once the Nazis killed the Jews, anti-Semitism disappeared in Germany,” but in the United States “racism has persisted because whites still have to look at and interact with Blacks.” London and North make clear that “it is a well established fact that the vast majority of Nazi officials were never held to account for their crimes.” London and North write:
“Many leading Nazis, including individuals who played a major role in the extermination of the Jews, led successful political, corporate and academic careers after 1945″ (270).
One can argue that the 1619 Project, based on its funding is still in line with a Nazi agenda, especially when one reads the race hatred it is fomenting, especially when one studies how the U.S. government funded neo-Nazis in Ukraine in toppling their democratically elected leader in Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, as Robert Parry wrote in 2014.
The narrative of the 1619 would lead you to believe that history boils down to a racial conflict when in fact, as C.L.R. James has argued it is more a series of class conflicts. As I tweeted on Maurice Bishop’s birthday, using the words of him and Marcus Garvey, I welcome a debate on the historical accuracy of the 1619 Project.
Despite its incomplete understanding of Black Nationalism and Lerone Bennett’s detail of Lincoln’s actual emigration plan for free Blacks before the Civil War, this book is A MUST READ.
