[Mb-hair] F--k What You Heard About Black Males from the NYTimes

[Mike Blaxill]

Found this in my Inbox...wanted to share
PEACE
-m

F--k What You Heard About Black Males from the
NYTimes             
By Omowale Adewale (formerly L. James)
 

I heard yall bombarding my email with the New
York Times's article on the plight of
the black male and your own analysis and your
friend's analysis, and frankly, it
bothered me. I'm good though. I'm straight. I
just wanted to enter into the
discussion. 

They said "he was a case history, as well as an
extraordinary and twisted man,
turning many true gifts to evil purpose
his
ruthless and fanatical belief in
violence
marked him for fame, and for a violent
end
he did not seek to fit into
society or into the life of his own people
The
world he saw through those
horn-rimmed glasses of his was distorted and
dark. But he made it darker still with
his exaltation of fanaticism. Yesterday someone
came out of that darkness that he
spawned and killed him." 
 
The New York Times, "the best daily paper in the
country, in the world
urbane,
sophisticated, liberal on certain civil liberties
and civil rights questions," their
mask slipped on February 22, 1964. This is how
they described our Honorable Brother
Malcolm X, our beloved Black Prince on day after
he was shot. The leader of black
males, the very working class and poor black
males described by the Times on March
20, 2006. The leader in which SNCC (Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and
the Black Panther Party both revere for providing
them with their initial political
science and courage to organize black people to
defend against white American
lynchings, fire hoses, dogs, discrimination, and
America's systemic attacks. The
Times pumped more lead in El Hajj Malik El
Shabazz through each line they wrote the
very next day after his first assassination. And,
I am supposed to take their
information packaged and sold to us under the
guise of scholarly studies from
Columbia,!
 Princeton and Harvard for gold? 

Already, some black intellectual is doing white
power's work and dissecting my words
and concluding, "Their information is still
true." Nah, homey. It's not. Statistics
might be, though. Author of "the Debt" Randall
Robsinson explained so eloquently
that "a little learning is, as they say, a
dangerous thing, and particularly when it
is presented, like a severely cropped photograph,
as an independent truth. And I do
not believe as a general matter, such truncated
analyses are innocently delivered by
white establishment academics." Interestingly
enough, but hardly coincidental he his
commenting on another New York Times article
about blacks falling behind in 1998. I
believe we see a pattern here, John! 

The best tactic the government and media ever
used (and I mean they did spend
billions of dollars on hundreds of agencies and
organizations to complete its
strategy) is the strategy of making young
brothers feel like they are responsible
for their current conditions. 50CENT hasn't been
out more than five years in the
media and we think he created the black villain
in New York. We fault 50CENT more
than we turn our waving fingers at the music
groups that own the labels that own
him. Meanwhile, folks are convinced that a
nation, which stole land and murdered
millions and enslaved millions for 300 years
can't possibly be this diabolical. 

Yes, black males are heading to prisons at
astronomical rates and unemployment among
black men is above the roof. However, I don't buy
the ivy-league's solutions or
conclusions or the New York Times story because
they inexplicably and cautiously
relate the reason for black male's crisis to the
fault of black men themselves. "In
response to the worsening situation for young
black men, a growing number of
programs are placing as much importance on
teaching life skills — like parenting,
conflict resolution and character building — as
they are on teaching job skills."
This quote in the Times article clearly suggests
Blacks are messed up because we are
bad parents, are irrational people, can't get
jobs because we don't know anything,
and we are just plainly bad people. 

The poor statistics of black men in the US has
always been a picture worth strong
solutions. The difference was that Malcolm X,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and even Huey
P. Newton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. never summed
up black male oppression as
something that we spawned. Not even remotely!
Whether they preached non-violence or
the right to defend yourself they always gave you
clarity on the black current
situation in America. They never blamed us for
being apart of the poorest and most
discombobulated communities. Harriet Tubman saw
probably the most backwards of black
men in their desire to stay enslaved instead of
risking being free. She understood
that that backwardness was always connected to
white power's attempt to justify
black slave's position in society and if it
failed, white power frightened you
beyond belief. The problem was always summed up
as white power is the enemy and that
it maintains power at the expense of the African.
Whether it's wrestling Hip-Hop
away a!
nd using it's human and financial resources
against us and for themselves, taking
advantage of slavery and prison labor, or
crushing the urge and the ability for
uprising, black people have been the pedestal. 

Am I supposed to believe after 300 years of
slavery and 46 years of Jim Crow that
now I am responsible for black males being 1
million locked up? Am I supposed to
think that the reason young black males are mad
ass hell and selling drugs because
we don't mentor enough black children? Am I
supposed to believe that the CRIPS
(Community Revolutionary Interdisciplinary
Program Service) and the Bloods created
the conditions that force me to live from check
to check? The fact is that black
people were awarded Civil Rights 42 years ago by
the same government that launched a
war on us. 

In the 1920's, remnants of COINTELPRO began
forming from the young J. Edgar Hoover.
His first task was to crush the Black Star Line
and send one of the most powerful
black men in America and his African
internationalist ideas back to which they came.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, leader of millions in the
UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement
Association) was deported to Jamaica under a form
of counterinsurgency used by the
United States government. The UNIA had 700
branches in 38 branches. 

That same counterinsurgency finally took on the
name called COINTELPRO in 1956 and
was responsible for the deaths of 27 known Black
Panther Party members and several
others are still locked up as political
prisoners, which are mostly men. The Black
Panther Party had taken self-determination into
their own hands and into black
communities. Lead by mostly black males, but
transcribed to me by my mother Cleo
Shivers a teenage Black Panther organizer from
1969-1971. She explained to me the
daily food being given out to the black community
at the Sutter office in Brooklyn
and the free clinic that treated the black
community. The songs and poems she
recited and the rallies described so detailed and
vividly made me imagine the
greatest zeal and love black people ever had for
us in this nation. We were proud,
although we were going to jail for our
rebelliousness. The difference is we were
politically clear on why and how we got there! 

The conditions are still the same but black
people's political clarity changed with
COINTELPRO's successful execution, a US
counterinsurgency program that murdered,
imprisoned, misdirected, discredited, and
disrupted the revolutionary, its spirit
and potential revolutionaries to come. In 1969
the FBI special agent in San
Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of
the Black Panther Party revealed
that in his city, at least, the Black
nationalists were primarily feeding breakfast
to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying
the career ambitions of the agent
were directly related to his supplying evidence
to support Hoover's view that the
BPP was "a violence prone organization seeking to
overthrow the Government by
revolutionary means". J. Edgar Hoover said if you
are going to be a revolutionary,
you are going to be a dead revolutionary. The
very people who admitted to killing
our leaders and brandishing them as violent and
hateful in our mourn for them now
find themsel!
ves articulating the depths of our despondency.
Find their half attest to these
claims in the Freedom of Information Act. 

Black men are not in the poor conditions in
America because of natural conditions,
bad habits, because of fatherlessness, because
some are stuck on a sixth grade
reading level, or because they are helpless
recidivists or even because the US
government doesn't intervene effectively. We are
facing these very issues because
America's imperialism requires young black male's
incarceration; it requires the
petty bourgeoisie black males to offer up
solutions that point to the government as
the problem-solvers and the black working class
and poor peasantry as the
problem-makers. There is a very real and material
obstacle preventing black men from
becoming Marcus Garvey's, Malcolm's, and Huey's.
The reason why black men suffer is
because the US government DOES intervene in our
community. Everyday, the police
squad car patrols the black community waiting for
the slightest reason to throw us
in jail and extract labor and inject despair.
Elected officials in our community get
their posi!
tions at our expense because they are complicit. 

At the juncture in which the black working class
and poor begin to show insurgency
due to their conditions such as the 1992
rebellion in Los Angeles, CA after the
LAPD's beating of Rodney King, the 1996 rebellion
in St. Petersburg, FL after the
police shooting death of Tyrone Lewis, the 2003
rebellion in Cincinnati, OH for the
deaths of five unarmed black men by police in a
five month period, and the Benton
Harbor, MI rebellion in 2003 after a black
motorist was killed when a police car
pursued him the government increases
counterinsurgency methods. Although, these are
sporadic uprisings, it is a strong cause for
concern for the government. It is also
an explanation for counterinsurgency's
maintenance. Yet, they flood our neighborhood
because of possible rebellions, they say it's
because they're fighting gangs, drugs,
or poverty for our own good or for our quality of
life. Counterinsurgency carries
out in the form of eliminating black youth from
the streets at disastrous lev!
els. Right now in the South Bronx you have the
poorest congressional district in the
nation, in addition to it being one of the
neighborhoods in the country with the
highest levels of youth incarceration. There is
no coincidence between incarcerated
youth and its connection to poverty no more than
there is a coincidence for
rebelliousness found in black youth that live
under the harshest conditions in the
US. In reality, we've been living under the same
climate for 400 years, non-stop. 

The New York Times article was an attack. It was
a rap sheet on the black male in
America executed in public cold-blooded fashion.
It spoke nothing of the
arrest-quota-driven police targeting black
neighborhoods, which has been
corroborated by PBA President Pat Lynch. The
article spoke nothing of Bill Clinton's
dismantling of welfare (less than 2% of the
government budget), which systematically
separates the black male their families. Not to
mention Clinton's heinous
sponsorship of the most punitive crime bill in
history, support for more
paramilitary police, and his administration's
investment in prisons that reported an
economic boom for whites and a decline for blacks
in 2001. Countless black and
Latino women have visited my office confiding
that their social worker suggested
they'd get public assistance if they managed to
divorce their husband. 

Last year, I went to the Old Navy in Harlem to
handle an issue and witnessed almost
20 young black men within an hour, most likely
unfamiliar to each other's pursuit,
walk in and out looking for employment positions.
What they didn't know that some
employees are clear on is that you better act
white and change your tone when you
speak. Have you ever observed black men in Old
Navy or other big department stores?
It's like seeing the results of American black
male emasculation. Either that or
find yourself being discriminated against, but
given some bulls_it reason on why
you're not qualified to sell clothing. Those with
criminal records rarely bother in
that sector. 

As a person who has been to family court
countless times for my daughter I witnessed
what many will never believe because they
continue to retrieve all their information
from a racist media. I personally had to fight
three years for the system to
recognize a costly glitch in the system while
hearing other men suffer worse
accounts. There are honest brothers overpaying
child support by the thousands, as
there are definitely some brothers under paying
by gross amounts. I was shocked and
embarrassed by my own shock that several black
men were OVER paying child support
that sometimes never reached the mother. In most
cases like mine, the Child Support
Enforcement agency are never on the same page as
Family Court so you are regarded as
a deadbeat and end up further in arrears. Luckily
for me I had the flexibility and
the resources of a government entity to go to
court three years to put them on the
same page. One non-custodial brother was fired
because of this mishap, threatened !
with jail time with only weeks away from
homelessness and forced to pay a
five-figure amount to Child Support Enforcement.
I can't tell you how many times I
was hung up on seconds into discussion because I
was labeled as a deadbeat. I am
reminded of a lawyer that explained that the
reason courts started using metal
detectors wasn't because of serial killers,
gangsters, rapists, but because some
fathers who had no visitation rights had a
earnest and most brazen-red desire to see
their children. 

Luckily, for me there is no problem in seeing my
child. But, I'll make sure to
inform her that you cannot leave it to this
current media to explain your husband,
father, uncles or brothers. Otherwise, you'll get
the most diabolically concocted
analysis and racist psychological babble that
leaves the black petty bourgeoisie
stuck vilifying themselves and other Africans.
The problem is not black youth's
rebelliousness; the problem I see is that
Africans own less than 1% of the entire
media and no percentage in the US government,
only the appearance. We must learn
even as we are under attack daily to stop
continuing to sum up our conditions, as
not only our own fault but also something new and
fresh. Everything, black people
and all others peoples are tied to a dialectical
and historical process in which
eras and events are interconnected even as things
die and come anew. Hopefully. A
revolution. 


Omowale Adewale (27) is the co-founder and
executive director of G.A.ME. He is a
senior staff member for an elected official in
the Bronx, member of the Uhuru
Movement and FAR Fund Fellow. He drew national
acclaim in his first visit to Nigeria
in 2005 speaking on issues ranging from Hip-Hop
to healthcare to self-determination
for all Africans. 

-- 
Freedom/Uhuru/Ominira
Omowale Adewale
Executive Director
G.A.ME, Inc.
www.Kickgame.com 
718-991-0671
917-239-8992