Minneapolis Goddam
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
Nina Simone
When Nina Simone wrote Mississippi Goddam in 1964 the uproar for civil rights was reaching a crescendo that could no longer be ignored or dismissed. Culminating in the Civil Rights Act, the movement codified equality but the gap between theory and practice has continued to engulf the lives of the no longer separate yet still not equal. The struggle began long before Martin Luther King climbed to the mountaintop and the struggle will continue long before the promised land is procured.
More than a hundred years before MLK became the voice of change, seeds were being planted in the minds of those who would ultimately bear the brunt of defending slavery and the economical interest of the Masters. Pastors, mayors, sheriffs, deputies, laborers, and eventually in 1861, the infantry all in the employ of the army of genetic fanatics. The most shallow, base, superficial characteristic about humans or to borrow a phrase, “only skin deep” used to uphold slavery.
In Louis Menand’s insightful book The Metaphysical Club, he traces ideas in America through the nineteenth century. One of those ideas is polygenism, the theory that humans have different origins depending on race. One of the most notable proponents of polygenism, Samuel George Morton, published Crania Aegyptiaca, a study of cranial capacity by race citing African skulls as inferior to other races. Although his study was deeply flawed, it provided the “evidence” others needed to bolster their worldview, specifically that Blacks and Whites were not equal. Eventually the argument from polygenism was used to rationalize slavery. Menand writes, “polygenism was cited in support of the view that slavery did not violate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, on grounds that Jefferson’s term ‘all men’ did not, scientifically, mean Blacks.”
Despite the lack of ambivalence by the original confederate states in their articles of secession such as: Georgia’s, “The prohibition of slavery in the territories is the cardinal principle of this organization”, or Mississippi’s, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest in the world”, or Texas’s, “She[Texas] was received [into the confederacy] as a commonwealth holding, maintaining, and protecting the institution known as negro slavery”; effective revisionist history is circulated on Facebook obfuscating the cause of the war. The mental gymnastics balance on disinformation disseminated from groups like PragerU, ONAN, and the grandfather of spin, Foxnews. The network of trumpets repeat fallacies like Democrats are the party of racism since they were the party of slavery, in attempts to court minority voters although I suspect this does less for minority recruitment and more to pander to the cognitive dissonants that already populate the party formerly known for Lincoln.
As demonstrations across the country struggle for justice for the aggrieved in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the narrative becomes bloated and parts of the script from The Civil Rights movement have not been rewritten as, former Secretry of State under Obama, Susan Rice suggests on Wolf Blitzer’s show that the more extreme elements coinciding with the protest could be a russia/communist plot. Or even scarier, as if said by J Edgar Hoover himself, Rice states, “and you know, to designate Antifa, a terrorist organization, fine” when Attorney General Barr has claimed, despite journalists unable to collaborate, that Antifa is behind the violent aspects of the protest. And people act like Democrats and Republicans do not agree on anything. Meanwhile, Fox News once again exhibits their lack of integrity and commitment to instilling fear in their audience. The flow of disinformation persists, muddying the waters to camouflage the creatures of the swamp.
Instead it should be a time celebrating the long legacy of activism, strikes, boycotts, and general protests that have progressed from some plucky pilgrims, while not ignoring the many dark episodes, to a diverse population capable of the extraordinary despite the many failures of the American governing experiment. Failure to recognize that protest is the evolution of freedom of speech, and freedom in general. So anyone that says kneeling during the national anthem is disrespectful is either ignorant of what it means to be American or devious. And every projectile of pepper and tear gas canister, every spray of mase directed towards someone simply exercising their first amendment rights is unconstitutional. And every demonization of a Kaepernick, every dismissal of institutionalized injustice, everytime someone is told to shut up and dribble, the situation grows more volatile and this includes every instance of portraying every white cis male as slave masters or every Conservative as disingenuous or sleep walking, voting against their interest. While speaking to the AFL-CIO Martin Luther King articulates, “This unity of purpose is not an historical coincidence. Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.” We must not alienate those that share the common condition and push them to segregated narratives or bubbles built by algorithms.
The consensus on issues continues to grow whether evidenced in polls or by original marchers in 1963, that are again out in the streets, reporting the noticeable increase of support from whites but the momentum must carry past justice in individual cases and past policing reforms. It must continue through electoral reform, specifically campaign financing and voter disenfranchisement, through social reforms that take the war on drugs out of the prison-industrial complex’s playbook, and economic reforms that at minimum does not allow falling tides to only lift mega yachts. Sometimes change rushes onto the field from a dilapidated dam but more often change is incremental, and lately feels regressive, but combating the hate and disinformation, electing decent people and instituting policies that ultimately promote governing for the commonwealth is the only real thing to do cuz what’s the alternative? Letting it burn down hoping a phoenix will rise out of the ashes?
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game
Bob Dylan
