Barack, JFK and the construct of race

Watching "The View" this morning with Sen. Obama, the question came up about Rev. Wright and JFK. Whoopi brought up the subject and made the statement that JFK said, "I am my own man. I will be making the decisions based upon what the country needs." Babs Walters disagreed. Somehow spiritual leader, mentor, pastor, head of the church is not the same thing. Why the differentiation? Especially, when it seems so obvious?

To understand it, we must understand that this construct, or the product of ideology based on race and class, if you would, is not merely about white restrooms and lynching, but an ideology the encompasses a system that uses these tactics and others whether economic, social, or political that determines the place of individuals on the map of human geography.* What has to be noted about this construct is that success and achievement are possible, but not to be used as tools of empowerment, but rather as propaganda to maintain the construct. If fact, Obama's achievements have been used to say that blacks have overcome racism by having attended Harvard. WEB Dubois was the first black to graduate from Harvard with a Ph.D. in 1896, but we didn't get a black going into the fall primary as a major presidential candidate until 2008.

The construct uses ignorance, fear and complacency channeled through the free market system and media to maintain its dominance and this construct is passed down from generation to generation. Since discrimination can be defined in multiple ways, it is then conceivable that one can not have participated in lynching or any of the Jim Crow era, and still subscribe to this construct because it is not about violence of or overt segregation, but a belief of another's place in society.
Here is a shining example. Pat Buchanan recent statements on why blacks should love America.

"This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream."

This is the old "you Negroes should be grateful" speech. I wonder if this will the mainstream media put this in heavy rotation. Again, Jim Crow, lynching and other forms of racial terrorism were tools used at a particular time to maintain the construct for that era. In this hour, the covert action has a far more sinister and far reaching effect. The architects of this construct have managed to make the system more efficient so that it runs on automation. We are co-participants in the keeping of the construct, we reinforce it , and maintain it which is the reason for this blog. Pharaoh doesn't have us, we have pharaoh, and we won't let go.

Back to Barack. The reason that Babs sees a difference between Barack and JFK is that JFK being a white male has the mental capacity to differentiate between the needs of the country and the wants of the Church. Barack can't. According to the construct, black men do not have the mental capacity for such work because the black man must me guided and controlled by some higher earthly authority. When it is not massa' then it falls to the role of the priest, pastor of the black church, and that scares the keepers of the construct because all churches can not be controlled and Rev. Wright has been become Nat Turner incarnate. The construct's worse nightmare.

*-2007 Digital Equity Summit, NECC Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, Sylvia Rousseau
Professor of Clinical Education; Rossier School of Education
Ed.D., Pepperdine University, California

Where was Jeremiah Wright Coming From?

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

This past week, we have seen a barrage of video clips and audio clips from Sen. Obama's pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In commentary, the press referred to his message as black separatism or some form of hate speech coming from "an angry black man". Fox news and most of the press did a very good job of scaring white folks, but to understand his message, you must understand the foundation of the message. Black Liberation Theology, as it is called, is not new to Amercia, especially the black church. James Cone the progenitor of this theology explains it and why it such a unpopular message to mainstream America and some Black churches. Rev. Wright was not some cook on a racist rage, but rather delivering a message based on a theology that is very poignant for the times. Check out this clip from PBS and Cone's speech at Harvard Divinity on "The Cross and The Lynching Tree." It's a shame that with all of this access to knowledge, we are as ignorant as we are.

Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ

"We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community."

What bothers me most about this is that sermon you keep hearing on tv has been preached all over the US at other churches some black, some white. There is nothing wrong with having an Afrocentric message in the Gospel. The good Christian folks preached freedom from sin while the beat and mamed us, raped our women and decimated our sense of community, and we have the audacity to preach an Afrocentric gospel? Maybe ya'll forgot, but those pages were left out of the slave Sunday School Manual. Blacks were the original victims of identity theft. Stolen and replaced with a form of Godliness denying the power thereof, so why exactly is it wrong to teach a Afrocentric gospel, again?

Oh, yeah, for all you "knee grows" that believe the same thing, but won't stand up. This won't stop with Rev. Wright.

Put this in you spirit...

W.E.B Dubois co-wrote “The Negro In The South” along with Booker T. Washington which was published in 1907 . In the chapter entitled, “Religion In The South” he states,

” If my own city of Atlanta had offered it to-day the choice between 500 Negro college graduates–forceful, busy, ambitious men of property and self-respect, and 500 black cringing vagrants and criminals, the popular vote in favor of the criminals would be simply overwhelming. Why? because they want Negro crime? No, not that they fear Negro crime less, but that they fear Negro ambition and success more. They can deal with crime by chain-gang and lynch law, or at least they think they can, but the South can conceive neither machinery nor place for the educated, self-reliant, self-assertive black man.”