Category: Imperialism

Political Illiteracy: How Audiobooks Saved Me

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Maybe not audiobooks.

Maybe it was my American French teacher at UCLA Extension who carried copies of a communist newspaper in her knapsack and had a knack for pulling her hair back like Simone de Beauvoir.

Maybe it was Mexico City in the 1980’s and the pamphlets on Central American revolution.

Or maybe it was 12th-grade me reading Canto General I by Neruda -– prior to his rape confession.

Audiobooks A-H

Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman

Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notes by Lorenzo Fusaro and Jason Xidias

Autobiography of Malcom X by Malcom X, Alex Haley

Back to Black by Kehinde Andrews

Black Against Empire by Joshua Brown and Waldo E. Martin Jr.

The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James

Black Marxism by Cedric J. Robinson

Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois

Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey

China’s Second Continent by Howard French

The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels

A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution by Jeremy D. Popkin

Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin

The Cultural Revolution by Frank Dikotter

The Declarations of Havana by Fidel Castro

Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney

***

Possibly it was my grandmother’s stories about 1920’s Tennessee.

***

I began living with my grandmother when I was five years old.  And she might have been that same age in Memphis when she started playing with the White girl across the way. It was coincidental that I heard my grandmother’s story at my age since the story was probably directed at my nine-year-old sister more so than me.

I’m not sure what Grandmom and the girl played with. A ball. Maybe rocks.

In Tennessee, my grandmother was the youngest of twelve kids. I don’t know if she ever got to see her sibling who passed away as a baby. I’m also not sure if she ever met her brother who disappeared. That was Wiley who went for a walk one day and never returned. Not ever. And the entire family was left wondering what happened to him in the woods of Memphis.

***

When I lived with Grandmom in Los Angeles, I played in the backyard of the Castilian duplex with my friend Linda who was not only my age but also the daughter of the Black man and woman who owned the beige duplex on the westside — between La Brea and Fairfax.

When I played in the backyard with Linda, one of us would sit on the small, flatbed, trash can cart and clinch the metal handle with all our might while the other spun the cart around on the concrete so we could pretend it was a carnival ride. On other occasions, we wound our waists until exhaustion inside the hot pink and fluorescent lime green Hula Hoops, challenged each other in jump rope, and in the hot summer months, we splashed along the plastic Slip ‘n Slide that lay on the grass. I even remember pulling a mere string around as I pretended it was a leash and imagined I was walking a dog.

But what happened in Memphis with Grandmom during her childhood was she got too old. That was when the mom of the White girl told her daughter she was too old to be playing with Black kids.

Maybe that’s why Grandmom always kept the pictures of Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. on the wall in her L.A. bedroom.

So, perhaps it was her stories that first taught me about politics.

Audiobooks I-W

Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin

Liberation Theology by Michael Lee

Malcom X by Manning Marable

Malcom X: The Last Speeches by Malcom X

Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World by Rebecca E. Karl

Marcus Garvey: A Biography by Stephen Johnson

Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Reason by David Harvey

The New Age of Empire by Kehinde Andrews

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Philosophy and Opinion of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey

The Radical King by Cornel West

The Red Flag by David Priestland

Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Che Guevara

The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left by Landon R. Y. Storrs

State and Revolution by Lenin

Terrorism and Communism by Leon Trotsky and Slavoj Zizek

Vladmir Lenin, Joseph Stalin & Leon Trotsky by Charles River Editors

Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton

***

But if it was audiobooks, it’s because they allowed me to see beyond the confines of a two-party system that offers more of the same – colonialism, capitalism, imperialism.

I’ve voted within the two-party system every election since adulthood, but with the knowledge that my choice wasn’t radical change. It was an effort to maintain civil rights within empire. The blindness of US politics is our avoiding how the U.S. operates as both nation and empire and thus, failing to acknowledge how the imperatives of empire are inhumane and bad for everyone around the globe.

But if it was audiobooks, it’s because as I listened, I scribbled notes on Post-Its. Often, I typed my notes into Google Docs that became pages of documentation.

And the audiobooks allowed me to see the nuances between fascism, conservatism, the various types of liberal laissez faire capitalism, and the many variations in leftist and radical politics. (US liberals would not be considered leftists in more politically literate nations in the world.)

***

But if it was audiobooks, it’s because over the years, they’ve helped me reflect on how I’ve vacillated between social democrat, democratic socialism, socialism, and anarchism. And always with an awareness of how the writings of Marx are crucial for an analysis of capitalism.

***

What if US liberals and radicals were as adamant about distinguishing nuance in politics as they are about gender? Especially on social media, it’s rare a person comes out of the political closet and says: “I’m a communist.” “I’m a democratic socialist.” “I’m an anarchist.” Instead, they leave it up to the listener to figure out their philosophical and political leanings. And if the listener is politically illiterate, the confusion begins. We’ve managed to un-closet gender, but we don’t apply these same standards to politics. (And we can’t expect this from those on the right who are in denial about their own fascism.). In a politically mature society, people would un-closet their politics.

***

After one hundred years of Red Scare anti-communism in the U.S., the closeting of leftist politics and the spread of political illiteracy from the highest levels of academia to the most remote corners of trade union politics have become the norm.

***

So, if it was audiobooks, I’m glad they challenged me. Because at some point, in this nation that publishes more books than any other, we must ask ourselves: What is the function of writing, publishing, and reading, if those activities don’t ensure the maintenance of democracy, healthcare, and education?

 

(Note: The beginning of this essay was inspired by the manner in which writer/poets Viteszlav Nezval –Czechoslovakia, 1900-1958 — and Teresa Wilms Montt — Chile, 1893-1921 — use repetition. I have been reading their poetry in recent weeks. In making that poetic rhetorical move, I was able to access the list of memories and then choose the one focusing on my grandmother.

I considered submitting this piece to a magazine, but I think the ending plods along and weighs the writing down. I also don’t think a magazine would go for the lists. But I think the lists are like poetry.)

African Americans’ Move to Nicaragua

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Given persistent economic inequality and disproportionate mass incarceration, in the twenty-first century African Americans require territory for a national homeland.  Malcolm X is the most prominent of recent embodiments of this desire conceived of by Black Americans.  He is a tireless spokesperson and advocate for a national territory, as is Martin Delany who promotes this idea developed by the Black generations of his era.  Living from 1812-1885, Delany was physician, abolitionist, writer, husband, father, and a Civil War soldier who like Malcolm X was preoccupied with Black liberation and what it would look like in his time period as one of 600,000 freedmen amongst 3.5 million enslaved African-Americans.  He expresses the popular point of view of that time that “we (Black Americans) are a nation within a nation.” [i]  His preoccupation led him to conclude that real liberation and access to progress, for the freedmen at least, would require leaving the United States where whites owned everything as a result of their dependence on black labor.  Although whites would historically make it appear that Blacks were sequestered and forced to engage in hard labor because of their inferiority, the opposite was actually true; they were seized due to their superior abilities in activities like mining and agriculture.

Another idea circulating during Delany’s lifetime was the notion of repatriation of the African-American enslaved to Africa.  Delany was critical of this project which he regarded as conceived of by white slaveholders.  Namely, the American Colonization Society proposed to send Blacks to Liberia, an African nation created by the United States.  Depending on the political climate in the U.S., Delany considered this notion to be plausible, and at other times not.  He set sail for Africa, became familiar with the terrain and environs of Liberia, and finally concluded that he had an “unqualified objection to Liberia.”[ii]  But that conclusion would not stop him from later contemplating East Africa as a potential homeland for Black Americans as well as Lagos in present-day Nigeria.

Ultimately, Delany reasoned that the optimum location for an African-American homeland would be Central America.  Given its location and terrain, Delany saw Nicaragua specifically as an excellent location for agriculture and commerce.  His perception was that there was no racism in Nicaraguan society and that colored people wielded power.  He stated, “Central and South America are evidently the ultimate destination and future home of the colored race of this continent.”[iii]  His focus on Nicaragua was in no way unusual during his time period given that there was an obsession with Nicaragua amongst the white American ruling class.  During the 1850’s, members of the U.S. government had considered annexation of Nicaragua in an attempt to distribute land and eventually enslaved Black persons to white non-slave holders.  In other words, then, as today, the notion of Jeffersonian, white-male equality depended on both the exploitation of non-whites and the acquisition of territory outside the United States.  But was this land free of racism as Delany had perceived it to be?  Not quite so.  Nicaragua was a site of “ethnic cleansing”[iv] as practiced by the Spanish on the indigenous populations.

A closer look at race in Nicaragua reveals it not to be the idyllic environment as envisioned by African-American freedom fighter and liberationist Delany.  As contemporary researcher Lancaster points out, “Nicaragua does indeed have a race problem, or perhaps more to the point, a color problem, that manifests itself in insidious ways.”[v]  The minority populations of African and Miskito (Amerindian) origin are both concentrated and isolated on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast which was colonized by the British and which shares no direct highway link to the rest of the country.  Historically, the majority mestizos (persons of mixed blood), who themselves comprise 90% of the population, have considered Afro-Nicaraguans and Miskitos as backward and inferior.  Perhaps Delany perceived of Nicaragua as being free from racism due to the more subtle manifestations of racism in Latin America where this social malady is a series of practices as distinct from racism in the U.S which is structural.[vi]  Despite racism’s subtleties in Nicaragua, the leadership positions of the country have historically been held by the white elite who are noted as being the only demographic in the country not engaged in the internal and psychological warfare resulting from performing Spanish culture in indigenous or African skin.  This colonial warfare is noted by researcher Lancaster as being reversed only once per year, during carnival, when indigenous and African cultures are celebrated.  At other times, through both language and practice, the majority of the population exhibits a pervasive desire to be white.

Nicaragua as a nation continues to be a point of contention as current President Ortega struggles to retain power.  Ortega, who participated during the 1980’s in the leftist Sandinista revolution to overthrow U.S.-friendly dictator Somoza, has shifted his beliefs from Marxist-Leninism to democratic socialism.  Ortega’s terms as President include 1985-1990 and subsequent terms following elections in 2006, 2011, and 2016.  While some U.S. democratic socialists support Ortega and many U.S. Marxists and anarchists criticize him, the disparate groups tend to agree that the U.S. government, through its financing of NGO’s and human rights organizations, is trying to destabilize the present government viewed by the U.S. as being too friendly with both China and Russia.

Which way freedom?  Like African-Americans, the peoples of Nicaragua have had to struggle, engage in warfare, and face death and the death of loved ones in the quest for freedom during the eras of exploration and exploitation of the American continent, an exploitation that continues today.  Regarding economic issues in the formation of a nation, Delany often emphasizes business; yet, history shows that as businesses grow, they conglomerate and monopolize which results in a constraining of freedoms as their leaders cease to operate in the interests of working people.  Decisions about how businesses operate must be democratically shared with working people.  Regarding the freedoms of women, Delany correctly states that “no people are ever elevated above the condition of their females.”[vii]  Nicaragua today ranks twelve (after Germany) in gender equality.  Homosexuality is legal, discrimination against the LGBTQ community is illegal, but same-sex marriage is not recognized.  Unlike many other countries in the Southern hemisphere which focus on the growing of a few crops for international distribution, the country produces 80-90% of its own food.[viii]

Martin Delany, who, like Malcolm X, expresses a deep love for Black people, consistently has our freedom on his mind.  The physician Delany was one of the first three Blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1850, but they did not attend because protesting white students blocked their attendance.  Martin Delany states that if we Black Folk cannot leave the U.S. and found our own nation, we should at the least establish our own schools and colleges.  Delany proposes that African Americans leave a homeland for our children.  This same Martin Delany who was so preoccupied about a homeland died in 1885 with no tombstone marking the land holding his humble grave in Ohio until the year 2006.  Martin Delany resonates through time and beyond his grave.  His advocacy is persistent and pertinent.

[i] Howard Brotz, African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850-1920 (New York: Routledge Press, 2017), 97

[ii] Brotz, African-American Social and Political Thought, 77

[iii] Brotz, African-American Social and Political Thought, 82

[iv] Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “Native Land and African Bodies, the Source of U.S. Capitalism,” Monthly Review 1 February 2015

[v] Roger N. Lancaster, “Skin Color, Race, and Racism in Nicaragua,” Ethnology Vol. 30, No. 4 (October 1991): 339-353

[vi] Lancaster, “Skin Color, Race, and Racism in Nicaragua”

[vii] Brotz, African-American Social and Political Thought, 92

[viii] Kevin Zeese and Nils McCune, “Correcting the Record: What is Really Happening in Nicaragua,” Monthly Review 23 July 2018

Cool Black Friend

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“Cool Black Friend”

By Audrey Shipp

 

“Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’

You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna be with me”

 (“Nothing from Nothing,” Billy Preston)

 

“You ain’t got to be rich to talk to Gucci, but you got to be part of something

 Ain’t nobody play no pro ball or nothing? Ain’t nobody got nothing?”

(“At Least a M,” Gucci Mane, Mike Will Made It, Zaytoven)

 

At nine-percent of the city’s population and falling, living in multifarious communities throughout the City and County, Blacks in L.A. have numerous opportunities to be the “Cool Black Friend.”  Opportunities abound on city streets, on school and college campuses, in the workplace, on Hollywood screens, in the music industry, and at the club.  Possibilities are plentiful amongst a myriad of ethnic groups but especially amongst the power majority – White/Euro-Americans, whom as Michael Eric Dyson correctly notes, Blacks have been “reading” for centuries for our own survival–and amongst Latino communities of Mexican and Central American heritage who are the majority culture in once overwhelmingly-African-American South L.A.  Having created the philosophy of cool on U.S. terrain, and having created that framework despite the nothingness of their former condition as chattel property, there is little wonder that Blacks are selected as the Cool Black Friend.  An anomaly, perhaps, given that the deculturalization process for the enslaved involved the “uprooting from land” and targeted the elimination of language, cultural practices, and family ties.  Yet Black history in America is a history of resistance and the creating of something out of nothing.  Railroads invisible to the eye.  Churches in a land that denied them literacy and the bible.  Schools and universities before their freedom was even granted.  Resistance to empire — an acumen for the precise where and when in political movements — that white Liberals cling to today.

In the nation at large, and following the era in which African Americans were forced to take up European musical instruments and play for their enslavers, the Cool Black Friend has existed in music since the era when Whites visited segregated black clubs in locations such as Harlem or Chicago’s South Side.  For the visitor, these excursions were undoubtedly a positive if one had a black connection who could facilitate entrance to a musical venue.  And today, if a non-black musician or singer performs a type of music with African rhythm or African-American intonations, it is advantageous to be chums with a black performer who can give you credence.

Sports abound with Cool Black Friends.  We see this especially on university campuses with huge endowments and top tier sports programs where the student body may be comprised of few African Americans, but the sports team has a large number of Cool Black Friends leading the university to NCAA victory and its resultant monetary gains for coaches, administrators, and the like while excluding the players themselves.  High five to the Cool Black Friend when he or she scores.  Professional athletics are more of a mixed bag, depending on the sport.  Cool Black Friends generate billions of dollars in stadium expansions, advertising, broadcasting, and ticket sales, especially during finals when corporations and the wealthy might buy out front row seats at market price for five thousand dollars (or resale $50K) to watch Black athletes take the spectators’ team to a win.  High five on that.  Yet some sports, such as football with its 70% black players, 25% black quarterbacks, or tennis which has consistently and sporadically (to use an oxymoron) had a lump in its throat regarding the assertive, pro-black, female athleticism of Venus and Serena Williams, or golf which tried to play the token card with Tiger Woods but had to do so only half-heartedly given that athlete’s ambivalence about his own political power, show no interest in white liberal chumminess.

In some cases, having sex with a Cool Black Friend can result in the creation of the longest-running reality show to date in the U.S.  And even though the relationship that spurred that sex tape may sputter and fizzle, the Cool Black Friendship may be seen as a winning formula if the celebrity and her insecure entourage have no marketable talents of their own.  Thus, the formula must be repeated and replicated because, of course, Black Americans have a history of creating something out of nothing.  Aren’t these the people who following Nixon’s questioning their ability to survive another 500 years in the U.S., who after that same President’s statement in the 1970’s that they would only survive if the best ones were inbred, and amidst allegations in the 1980’s of CIA support for Central American counter-revolutionaries that led to dumping cocaine into the hood to fund the Contras and further destroy the black family while fueling the street-to-prison pipeline, turned the dregs of that historical experience into a musical genre?  Trap Music aside, some black friends are simply an insinuation.  By getting butt implants or pumping up one’s lips, it’s possible to allude to a Cool Black Friend 24/7, even when he/she may not be in one’s presence.

In the United States, which has raced with Russia in building approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons, the detonation of 100 of which would block the earth’s sunlight.  The U.S. with the world’s largest number of incarcerated people, 40% of whom are Black, although Blacks are only 13% of the population.  The U.S. which is 5% of the world’s population, yet uses 24% of its energy and is ranked the second largest carbon dioxide producer. A country comfortable with the notion that white wealth is 13 times that of Blacks and Latinos. Yet, living in the Empire, and aware of the disproportionate distortions of day to day life, when Blacks shout, “Black Lives Matter,” “All Lives Matter” is, at times, the rejoinder of Euro-Americans.  With the latter, in this instance, showing scant knowledge of how call and response functions, the question to be pondered is where in the makeup of the Empire is the message “All Lives Matter” being communicated.  Whites live in the Nation.  Blacks, overwhelmingly, live in the Empire.  Even though news networks, public relations firms, and advertisers have recently put their own spin on the word “matter,” so that mileage, insurance, and happiness “matter,” the original proclamation endures.

In these circumstances and during his two terms in office, perhaps President Obama was the ultimate Cool Black Friend.  His presence allowed the United States to look progressive, as if it had overcome its racial differences, as if tolerance were the norm.  He brought Black cool to the nation and the imperial Oval Office. In a geographical world region founded on settler colonialism, Obama inherited the continental — North, Central, and South American — desire of political leaders to have it both ways – to pillage while appearing benign.  In the U.S., the liberal establishment clung to its belief in a palatable nation in which we could maintain our wasteful, consumerist lifestyle, hopefully come together as one, bridge the inherent conflict in maintaining a huge military budget, while supposedly being a beacon to the world of harmonious progress.  In his role as President, Obama had to set the course for both the nation and the empire, but like many imperial leaders, he overlooked the plight of some of his colonial subjects – amongst others, Blacks themselves, who, as inhabitants of the Empire, were seeking a liberator and have scant need for Cool Black Friends because we are our own Cool Black Friends.