This is basically a response to some of the questions to the first part of the series.
As Brotha Troy asked: what is the answer? I sincerely feel that a part to the solution will come when we take control of our image. It is important that we regain our platform to control the images of us that is presented to the world. As Brotha Troy mentioned we are losing these platforms at an alarming rate and since we do not control our image, it is easy for the white media to paint us in a negative light. If you will recall when BET was sold, the first casualty was Ed Gordon and BET news. Once the news segment was destroyed, nothing remained other than the entertainment portion where rappers and video vixens enticed the youth into believing into an urban fairy-tale that only existed in the mind of the people who controlled the entertainment industry.
Back in the days, black neighborhoods survived because they were centered around :the teachings" from what I call "The 'Hood Trinity" which was the home, the church, and the school. From the combined teachings of the trinity, info was passed down from offspring to offspring for the sole purpose of self-preservation. But a terrible thing happened, especially in the south: Urban Renewal!
Okay, let me go back a little further just to show you the "Set-up!" But first,let me address a remark from Cynique about individualism. Across the whole range of history, individualism has never contributed to a people's collective ability to survive. As such, it merely transforms the individual,not the community. Strangely enough, individualism has the tendency to re-enforce the "crabs-in-a-bucket mentality", and thanks to this rugged individualist approach, we became conditioned as a people to compete with one another for what resources were available to us. Accordingly, the material prosperity of the whole was thwarted. But this was also a part of the plan, the set-up.
Why do you think we never got our forty acres and a mules? The white man was no fool. He was a personal witness to what the black man could do. He had seen for himself how we had come to this country and had compelled the bitter earth that had never before borne crops to produce crops without limit. We had somehow transformed the south, a barren wildness, into a lush garden of Eden. Can you imagine the awe of the white man as he became a daily witness to what we could do as a collective, albeit as slaves. He watched us perform a sort of black magic, an agricultural sleight-of-hand that would have been an impossible feat for anyone except us. What we did in the south rivaled what the Egyptians had done with the pyramids. It there was ever such a thing as the ninth wonder of the world, it would have been the American south. What we accomplished there was a miracle and this fact was not lost on the white man. Therefore, he knew that,once we were free, that we could not be allowed to act as a single unit. He knew that what we had did for him as slaves would be nothing compared to what we would do for ourselves as free men. Thus the set-up. In addition to not giving us the land and mules, he had to devise a way to get us out of our element. We understood the land, knew most of nature's secrets so he had to get us into a alien environment where we would be at his mercy. Since we didn't know a damn thing about city living, this is where the white man wanted us!
What came next was the Great Migration. The urban change was disorienting since we had a tradition of living in close proximity with the soil. The congestion of the city was indeed a novel experience. The truth of the black exodus is that it was a forced march into the welcomed embrace of white capitalism. The south had benefited from us, Now, it was the north's turn. In the south we had been slaves. In the north, we were to be consumers, a new type of slave.
Here's what went down. The United States Committee For Economic Development After WWII developed a plan that stated "that in order to keep the cost of labor low, it is necessary to entice or force country people to move into the cities." The Committee decided this was the method by which there would always be a pool of people who would be nothing but consumers. The Committee also declared that since these people would be poor and landless, they would also be susceptible to hire for paltry wages. You think the white man didn't see us coming. Well, he didn't have to see us coming since he was the one who sent for us!
In the north, we took to the idea of consumerism like a fish takes to water. We accepted consumerism like it was a new gospel, and hedged in by our first contact with the almighty dollar, we practiced spending with an almost spiritual zeal. We still do. Money, and the belief that to spend was divine, fostered on us, our self-perpetuating identity as consumers.
Let's take a look at what happened to the brothas who remained in the south. Was there not a set-up for him? Of course, there was. Ever heard of the Pig Law?. It was the crack law back in 1876. Now sooner had the slaves been emancipated than the white man was set to work to contain him. The idea of a free--to-roam black man was unappealing to the white masses so it was only natural that a new physical world be established for him: Prison! Once the white south lost the power to hold black men hostage on the plantation, they now had to rely on another method. Right after Emancipation, the law made stealing a pig or any other farm animal an offense punishable by five years in prison. Just the week before , stealing a pig would have, at best, gotten the brotha a whipping by the slavemaster. Now, it was five years in the slammer!
With no place to go and no food to eat, the newly-freed black man's arrest rate began to rise. And it ain't stopped rising yet.
Then started the quest to portray the black man as the biggest threat to national security and as a consequence, the assault on our image began in earnest. And guess what one of the very first attacks was? That he black man was lazy and shiftless. How could the white man get away with that? The black man had just finished building the south from nothing and now all of a sudden, the same black man was lazy. What audacity. Anyway, this was the first negative image of the post-slavery black man. After this lie went over so well,other racial epithets followed. Add to these, the fact that the black man would steal the stink out of sh** and had a thing for white women, he became Public Enemy # ! overnight.
We must take control of our image. That is a starting point. That is why I am so adamant about our images in books and in song. They are no less of a detriment than the ones on the evening news.
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