Monday, December 22, 2014

Savant's Words in Late December 2014

Cornel West was arrested as a suspected dope dealer while wearing a suit. LOL! Cops thought he couldn't have afforded the suit unless he was a drug dealer. A state senator was detained by police because a HOMELESS white woman said he stole her purse. (I wonder if she ever HAD purse). Everybody except some naïve persons of European descent knows that the cops would have laughed, or maybe ARRESTED the woman, if she were Black and the state senator white. Unfortunately, we have ONLY the stories of Zimmerman (a thug known for domestic abuse and violence against the police! Interesting how whites defend him), and Darren Wilson. But we do know that Zimmerman accosted Trayvon Martin, who probably attacked Zimbo with a deadly bag of Scittles. We know that Brown had his hands up when shot. We also know that NEITHER Trayvon nor Brown were ARMED, and their assailants were. Now imagine an vigilante snuffing out the life of a white kid even if the vigilante was white. He'd have been at least detained by the police. And given what we know about patterns of policing (well established and researched), if Zimbo had been BLACK and the kid white, nothing in heaven and earth could have saved him from arrest....that is, if the cops didn't decide on the spot themselves (and old Southern tradition) to exercise the powers of judge, jury and executioner on the spot! And people like Crazy (as well as a few white racist Negroes) would not be calling the white kid a thug. His shooter would have been the thug. With regard to hip hop, not all of which is "gangsta " stuff anyway, it is interesting that MORE of this is purchased by WHITES than by Blacks. At any rate, in its origins that music expressed the social consciousness of inner city youth, and was mainly NOT gangsta stuff. But once it was coopted by the corporate media and entertainment industry, than it suffered the degrading of quality as does everything else in corporate hands. The REAL THUGS are the 1%. Only they control the media and it's harder to expose them 

-Savant

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The latest data I've seen on Black male/female ratios in college are 40% male/ 60%. Interesting enough, a Black female sociologist (I forget her name) wrote a book in the 1950s called The College Educated Negro Woman. (I will check, but I think that's the correct title). In that book, she estimates that 75% of all Blacks in colleges and universities were Black women. If she's correct, then the gap seems to have narrowed, though it' s still majority female. Some social scientists argue that in those days the majority of the few Black families that could send a kid to college would opt to send the daughter if they couldn't send all their children. I'm not sure, but that's possible. Now in those days, the norm among the white majority was that more white males than females attended college. What's interesting is that within the last 15 years, the reverse has become the norm in white America. I'm not sure of the reasons, but today more white women than men go to college. However, as to the OVERALL picture for Blacks as a whole a college education is the exception, not the norm, for Blacks of BOTH genders. I believe (will check, however) that about 15% of ALL Blacks get a college education. A college education is a MINORITY phenomenon among whites as well. But the per centage is higher (as it has always been): something like 25%--30% Unfortunately, the AVERAGE Black man and woman have NOT moved up, and have become poorer while remaining uneducated. (So has the AVERAGE white person, though not as severely). When people say that the AVERAGE Black woman has risen more than the average Black man, they are really speaking as if the educated minority were the average. Even here, it's complicated. For patriarchy as well as race has a hand in things..Though Black women (again speaking of only of a minority of overall Black population) have collectively gotten further in education than Black men (60/40), the economic well being of Black women is not better. I read that Black women still ON AVERAGE earn less than Black men of similar educational achievement. Again, this sounds more like PATRIARCHY or sexism. For, indeed, while WHITE WOMEN achieve more now in education than white men, white men ON AVERAGE make more than white women despite educationally falling behind them. So matters are a bit more complicated than some folk imagine. However, even EDUCATED Black men and women are not secure from police abuse; like one of my black female students, daughter of a judge, who was arrested without cause and without being Mirandized right here in Baltimore. But unlike most poor Blacks her family can afford to sue. I hope they ROAST that cop in court. Even Cornel West, and Ivy League professor recalls being arrested by NYC police who refused to believe that his car and fine suits were purchased by means of his own income, but insisted that he must be a dope dealer! Hey, he's Black so he must be a criminal. Ah, the flawless logic of the police! Hey, I've had the same experience BOTH when I was a kid in one of the projects in East Baltimore, and SINCE I've become an academician. A poet and playwright friend of mine had the same experience as Garner but lived to tell about it. Police injustice is antithetical to American justice .

 -Savant

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I admit that Brinsley came from my home town, right here in Baltimore. We've had mass demonstrations here over police brutality; and there's a long history of this brutality which has touched some members of my family, and which nearly resulted in my own death at age 17 by cops in Johnson Square. But I doubt Brinsley would have been involved in any demonstrations here in Bmore. From what little I know of him he was a very troubled person; maybe someone who needed psychological counseling. The likelihood that his actions in NYC had anything to do with self-defense is slim to none. But if Eric Garner had somehow been able to get a gun to shoot officers who attacked him to avoid getting killed, I'd support him all the way. One has a right to self-defense against thugs--including against thugs with badges. If Trayvon Martin or MIchael Brown could have gotten weapons to prevent being killed by armed attackers, they would have been within their rights If the mother or father of little Tamir Rice could have gotten a gun and slain the police before their child was slain, again I'd say that would have been ok. You do have a right to self-defense, even against the police or other agents of the corporate state. Perhaps, we ought to return to some of the Black Panther style patrols of the late 1960s, but with a new twist: We patrol with video cameras. I mean there's no telling what lies the LA police would have told about the Rodney King bludgeoning if someone hadn't got it on videotape. By the way, the police patrols (like the old Panther patrols) might also have a chilling effect on inner city dope dealers (as well as cops) who would then know that they too may be caught on "candid camera."

 -Savant

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 Imperialistic exploitation by the West is going on in their native lands, only it takes the form of neocolonialism rather than classical colonialism. And we should never forget that the great wealth of the Europe and America was built largely on African slavery. But regarding racism... If an African like Amadou Diallo is murdered by racist dog cops (who knew he was Black but didn't know he was African), and those pigs are let off by a white jury (how often have we heard this?), he is subject to racism. His mother is no less grieved. If I'd been killed by members of Jean-Marie le Pen's National Front thugs while visiting France in late 80s or 90s, my family would have no less distressed because I was killed by European racists rather than American. The UN has a Commission on Racism because it is an international phenomenon. Racism should be opposed everywhere. By the way, there have been a number of cases less well known than Diallo's of racist police brutality and murder of Africans in the USA. While at Vanderbilt in the 1980s I (and other AA students) did have friends who were African, and one of my friends from Ghana had a very close call with Nashville police when stopped for questioning. One woman from North Carolina married a brother from Ivory Coast, and one AA male grad student wed a sister from Ghana. One thing they both said is that they had to school their significant other about the way racism works in the USA. Rosa, wife of the brother from the Ivory Coast, had to warn her husband about the dangers of encounters with the police. She had no desire to become a widow. The brother with the Ghanaian wife had to inform her of why security "seem" to follow her around in department stores. ("Baby, it don't just 'seem that way" he told her, and then had to explain why). I've myself given some pointers to the Rosa's hubby, and some of my African friends. How to react when confronted by police. How to conduct yourself without obsequiousness and with pride, but without gestures which can get you killed. (South African brothers and sisters caught on more quickly in those days. Their racist police in apartheid South Africa was much worse than ours!) But aside from all this, and aside from who marries who, it is at least the common struggle against racism and imperialism than Blacks have in common even if those evils wear a different mask in different countries

 -Savant

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 The Black population is about 13%--14% of the total American population. Like every other community were are constituted of men and women. There was no law requiring American to exploit Black labor for over 400 year, building up the great (albeit unequal) wealth of white America compared to the relative poverty of Black America. Of course, there were laws PERMITTING the exploitation of Black labor, and protecting the right of exploiters by force of arms. If Black Americans leave then we ought to receive at least a third of all the wealth that is America's. We created a disproportionate part of it -Savant

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