Dissident Veteran For Peace: The Race Hammer

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Thursday, May 28, 2015

The Race Hammer

https://creativemarket.com/DearthCo/26223-When-you-are-a-hammer...

It's been suggested that when the only tool you have is a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. A similar phenomenon seems to occur when the only tool in your critical tool box is racial analysis—everything starts to look like racism.

Thus, "With the killing of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore Uprising we are 'back to the future': Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy is a poltergeist that continues to haunt the American body politic in the 21st century." This claim is meant to be taken seriously despite the fact that the events in question took place in a city where both the mayor and police chief are Black. And despite the fact that three of the four police officers charged, by the Black prosecutor, with felonies in the death of Freddie Gray are also Black. And despite the fact that all of this occured in a country that for the last six-and-a-half years has been governed by a Black president and a Black attorney general.

White supremacism sure is some powerful stuff. Undoubtedly, it is also to blame for the latest outrageous shooting deaths in Baltimore—Jennifer Jeffrey-Browne and her 7-year-old son, Kester "Tony" Browne —which have, apparently, elicited no massive public protests. Seemingly, Black lives matter much more when a police officer is involved in their end.

So, what explains such idiocy? It's easy, really. You take all the Black people in positions of power and reduce them to tokens. It goes kind of like this: "The symbolic progress along the color line is substantial. The American people elected a black man as president." See? The election of a Black man as the POTUS is not substantive but "symbolic".

Never for one minute lend any credence to the idea that Black leaders may be people who have internalized the values of the Domination System, a system which in fact has purged itself of White supremacism. Never for one minute seriously consider that in their roles they are every bit as powerful/powerless as their White predecessors/counterparts. This is what you do when the race hammer is the only tool in your critical thinking box.

Labels: Black America, crime, critical thinking, Obama, politics, race, United States