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Editor’s
Note: This is Part 2 of AllHipHop.com’s month-long series , “Rap, Race
and Riots: Hip-Hop 20 Years after the L.A. Rebellion.”
“White America/ assassinate my character” – “Gotta Have It” – Kanye West and Jay-Z
After being caught on You Tube with a white sheet, a box of
matches, and a gasoline can braggin’ about burning down the home of
African American activist, Emmett Evers, Byron De la Bryant was finally
being charged with a hate crime. The prosecution used hundreds of
historical documents of cross burnings, brutal beatings, and lynchings
to prove that Bryant’s actions were part of a long legacy of racist
crimes against African Americans. However, after the defense showed the
jury a video of the 1992 beating of Reginald Denny, they found Bryant
not guilty….
April 29, 1992, millions of Africans Americans sat by their
televisions outraged that the acquittal of the four white officers
accused of beating Rodney King was evidence of white America’s racism.
Later that same day, millions of White Americans sat by their
televisions convinced that the beating of white truck driver Reginald
Denny by Black men was proof of Black racism.
These two events have sparked hundreds of conversations about race
over the 20 years since the L.A. Rebellions, with most of them ending
in the compromise that there are Black racists as well as White racists.
This conclusion is patently false. There ain’t no such thing as a “Black racist.”
African Americans can be many things: thugs, gangstas, Republicans,
etc. But the one thing that we cannot be is racist. Although most
people define racism as hatred for people of a different race, a more
functional definition would be having the power to enforce that hatred
socially, politically, and economically. And last time I checked, Black
people did not posses that kind of juice.
In his work, “The United Independent Compensatory Code,” Neely
Fuller argued that “the only form of functional racism that exists
among the people of the known universe is white supremacy.” But that
minor detail has not stopped folks from engaging in the never ending
hunt for the nonexistent Black supremacist.
In his book, The Ice Man Inheritance, Michael Bradley
traced the foundation of the myth of Black racism back centuries ago
when the Bantu-speaking people “enslaved” the “Hottentots” (Khoikhoi)
and the “Bushmen” (San). Because anthropologist CS Coon divided the
Africans into two separate races, some have used this as evidence of
“Black supremacy.”
Just as many people used the beating of Denny as the quintessential
example of Black racism , even today, any time Black folks start
marching and yellin’ “No Justice No Peace”, you can bet that Fox News
and others won’t rest until they finally capture a Black supremacist.
This is how it has always been.
In 1915, during the height of outrage over the lynching of African Americans, the movie Birth of a Nation was used to justify the activities of the Ku Klux Klan by portraying Black men as rapists.
During the mid-’50s when Black people were being attacked by police
dogs for fighting for their rights, journalist Mike Wallace produced an
expose on the Nation of Islam called, “The Hate that Hate Produced.”
More recently, in November 2006 after Michael Richards a.k.a.
“Kramer” from “Seinfield”, dropped multiple N-bombs, the argument
quickly became, “Well, Black comedians use the word all the time.”
Who can forget when, in April 2007, after Don Imus called the
Rutgers University Women’s B-Ball Team “nappy headed hoes,” Civil
Rights leaders and right wing talking heads found a slick way to blame
it all on Hip-Hop.
Recently, after the Trayvon Martin murder, Fox News commentator
Geraldo Rivera blamed the incident on kids wearing hoodies. And Bill
O’Reilly sent his top notch producer to gang-infested Chicago to
promote the idea that we should be focused on Black-on-Black violence
instead of the Martin murder. Now, with the shooting in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, of five African Americans, allegedly by two White men, look
for Fox to do a series of stories on the history of drivebys in the
‘hood.
The purpose here is not to suggest that all White people are
racists. However, without a doubt , the small group of ultra-rich
people who control the resources of the planet don’t live in Compton.
The ones behind the curtains pulling the strings are wealthy White men.
In Dr. W.E.B. DuBois’s classic work, Black Reconstruction,
it is reported that, during slavery, only seven percent of the southern
population owned slaves. According to DuBois, “The masses of poor
whites were economic outcasts.” All they had going for them was a false
sense of racial superiority. In reality, Blacks and poor Whites were
being manipulated by greedy Northern industrialists and the Southern
planter class.
Not much has changed. Perhaps there is some truth in the line from Goodie Mob’s Cell Therapy that warned that one day trained assassins would be coming for ” n*ggas like me/poor white trash like they…”
Ironically, conversations have taken place between those who advocated Black Pride and proponents of White Power.
According to Dr. Tony Martin in his book, Race First, in 1922, Marcus Garvey had an Atlanta meeting with “Edward Young Clarke, acting imperial wizard of the Klan.” In A Life of Reinvention Malcolm X,
Manning Marable said that Malcolm X was involved in a 1961 meeting with
the KKK also in the ATL. Also, the man credited with popularizing the
term “Black Power” – Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael) – once had a
cordial debate with George Lincoln Rockwell, a major advocate of White
Power.
Like EPMD would say, racism is “Business Never Personal.”
Hip-Hop has attempted to address racism over the years from
relatively lighthearted songs like Kool G Rap’s “Erase Racism” to the
more militant works of the West Coast’s Paris and early Ice Cube
(before he became a movie star.) However, I think that The Lox summed
it up best: it’s all about “Money, Power, Respect.”
The major crime of White supremacy is the hoarding of the planet’s wealth, leaving the masses to fight over crumbs.
The solution to this country’s “race problem” may have been best
articulated by the late Black Panther, Fred Hampton, when he said
“Power to the People.” That means Black Power to Black people, White
Power to White People, Brown Power to Brown people, etc.
When this is achieved maybe we can finally answer the question that Rodney King asked the world 20 years ago:
“Can’t we all just get along?”
Not yet Rodney, not yet.
TRUTH Minista Paul Scott’s weekly column is “This Ain’t Hip
Hop,” a column for intelligent Hip Hop headz. He can be reached at
info@nowarningshotsfired.com, on his website, NoWarningShotsfired.com, or on Twitter (@truthminista).Source allhiphop.com
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