Sunday, March 16, 2008

Goddamn

What is most interesting about the attention that Pastor Wright is getting is that off the bat, unless someone like Donna Brazile is at the round table with the rest of the pundits everyone is framing the question this way: those comments are nothing short of appalling and how can Obama claim to be the post-race candidate when that’s what his pastor preaches?

Added to this comes the media’s juxtaposition of the Pastor Wright sermons with Geraldine Ferraro’s blatant racist comments. The idea being to express this sense of false outrage by we good people that this level of discourse exists at all. Let us all reject and repudiate these “crazy people” in our midst, who say “crazy racist shit” none of us have any clue about…

It is hypocritical to suggest that a critical strand of American intellectual and and political thought, the notion of black resistance, sustained for a long time by the fiery rhetoric of the black church, is the same as some racist white woman’s assertion that a very competent man running for president is just “lucky to be” black.

It is also hypocritical to pretend that nobody knows what either Ferraro or Wright is doing, that theirs are peripheral ideas when really they are both very different off shoots of American racism that thrive in fact, in every day American dialogue. On the one hand, the idea that black people are victimized in this country. On the other, the idea that au contraire, black people are given free passes in this country.

The defiance of Pastor Wright has very much defined liberation theology everywhere in the world; church and spiritual life have been the nourishment of oppressed people everywhere in the world. Specifically in black American life the statements of most courage and most militancy have come from the spiritual leaders and with good reason because theirs is the work of, as Donna Brazile put it so eloquently, nourishing souls of people who live to be broken down.

She also pointed out that there is a great generation gap here: whereas Obama imagines and in fact, embodies a possible reconciliation, his pastor comes from a generation that relied on vehement recrimination. Recrimination because they had seen the rise and fall of the idea of reconciliation. Context matters.

When one in four black men between (I think) the age of 18 and 24 is or will be incarcerated, Pastor Wright has no cause to stop preaching what he preaches. He falls in line with an American tradition that has produced everything from local leaders like the mayor of Newark, to historical giants like MLK; his are the same roots for almost every aspect of (black) American arts and culture. I offer at the end of this posting, Nina Simone, and ask that we keep her in her proper context, one that includes at least slave narratives, Public Enemy, Spike Lee and the origins of rock n’roll. I mean, what the fuck is everyone shocked about? Didn’t we just have Malcolm’s birthday? Is anger really that inappropriate or unacceptable?

We all know that many people agree with what Geraldine Ferraro said. Suddenly we want to pretend that what that woman said out loud has not been there all along while the first viable black candidate to the American presidency hits the world stage? Most of the Obama criticism has hurt so deeply not for its explicit content--there it most often lacks substance--but for its implicit racism, where it gets traction because it connects with a visceral dark place in the national conscience where the sentiments of Ferraro, pretty much, hold sway. We have been hurt deeply by it and, not incidentally, have been unable to counter it without being muzzled by accusations of playing the race card.

Isn’t that so ironic? Whereas black people have always known to keep their critical race insights in either the privacy of church and home or seasoned with the sugar of comedy or satire or art, precisely because we understand that people like Geraldine Ferraro are more common than we like to pretend, people like Ferraro have never had a problem saying exactly how they felt, also because they understand what they believe is the held belief of many. So we're all basically on the same page folks.

(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it for now! see ya' later