8/03/2004

Oooh! A Battle.

"Boy come on get with this cuz you can't dis this I'm burnin' yo ass like syphllis" - Kool G. Rap I got called out! Memer has some issues with Black conservatives regarding our disaffiliation with the Democratic party. To really get the full scope of his thoughts, you need to head up the block and check it out. This paragraph pretty much sums it up, though:
[...]I don't see why it's at all necessary to be a Republican Black, when it is clear, to me at least, that you can still hold the same values within the Democratic fold. Even if you think liberal Whites, in their rush to compensate for past wrongs, have gotten so overzealous that they're pushing policies that do too much (and are actually a hindrance to progression as a people), does that justify betrayal? The intent was still honorable, and the policies have indeed helped thousands upon thousands...
My response was this: As I've said up the block, I don't do politics. That's an argument over who's right instead of what's right. It's too late in the game for that. When I was teaching, or when I'm tutoring now, my party affiliation (or the lack thereof) don't change a thing. 12 X 12 (I know I use that one all the time, but if you've seen what I've seen it would stick in your head too) is 144 whether I come as a Democrat, Republican, or registered Independent. At the end of the day, that's what it all boils down to. But on the real, I don't feel that I owe the Democratic party anything. The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights acts got passed with bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition. I mean, we can talk about David Duke's Republican-ness or whatever, but Sen. Byrd was in the KKK too, and he actually got voted in and re-elected. Neither party has the market cornered on actions detrimental to the Black community. Wolf vs. Fox. Malcom pointed that out a lonnnng time ago *sets out sammiches and kool-aid* Now. My biggest problem with this whole type of discussion is that it presumes that there's some type of political "Blackness" that is legitimate while everything else is counterfiet. What happened to kujichagulia? How's any judgment assessment of Blackness gonna be legitimate if you don't allow me to name and define myself? I fell out with the Black Left a few years ago when the cover of Emerge Magazine featured a caricature of Clarence Thomas as a lawn jockey. *makes face pictured in sidebar* A lawn jockey, though? It would have been better to paint him as ho on the stroll. But I'm sure that both the artist and the cover editor knew exactly what they were doing. That's why I couldn't deal with it. Emerge was supposed to be our intellectual magazine. If there was any periodical where divergent political opinion should have been tolerated, if not celebrated, it was Emerge. Or that's what I thought. Once they went that route, as far as I was concerned, it was game over. If somebody can't think differently without being an Uncle Tom or a sellout, then there's nothing left to talk about. The thing is, at the time, Clarence Thomas could've said "water is wet" and I would've tried to argue the point. All that name-calling is just tired and boring to me. (As I'm writing, it's just occurring to me, we can wonder all we want about why some young folks call behaviors different than their norm "acting white." It's because adults, respectable, educated, moneyed adults have modeled it for them.) See me, I've never been a Democrat or a Republican. I was with Chuck D talking about, "Neither party is mine, not the jackass or the elephant." If anything, I should belong to the Republican party, since I picked Reagan and Bush in the three elections they won. I was even Reagan's campaign manager for my class in 5th grade. By the time I had gotten old enough to actually vote, however, I had read The Autobiography of Malcom X and I knew that the wolf-fox conundrum was true. Like I said the other day, I vote for my grandparents and my other (s)kinfolks, not because some politician or ideology moves me. Therefore, for as swelling and theatrical as Al Sharpton can be, and for all the ill rhymes Jesse Jackson can flip, I owe neither them nor their political backers my allegiance. And if I don't owe them anything, I definitely don't owe anything to a Republican. Besides, like sports, politics is "what have you done for me lately. Most liberal ideology seems to be based in on the concept that if you were ever down, you must still be down. Whatever. I like J.C. Watts' football analogy here: when the Buccaneers were perpetually the worst team in football, they perpetually got a handout, the first pick in the draft. Once Tony Dungy gave them some respectability and kept them playing into January, they didn't need that assistance from the league. Brothers like Al and Jesse and organizations like the NAACP play it like it's worse than it's ever been, when anybody with two eyes knows better than that. I don't think it was a good 6 weeks ago when Thomas Todd said that Black folks aren't free. If we ain't free today, then what was going on 40 years ago? I bet all those folks who sacrificed their lives and livelihoods for us to be where we are today wouldn't say that we aren't free. I bet my possible forebear, Nat Turner (yeahh...I was geeked up when my pop mentioned that possibility) would be delirious with the non-freedom that I have. Not to say that it's all grits and gravy, but it ain't pig snouts and apple cores no more, either. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a piece about the wrestling team paradigm. As far as I'm concerned, we all Black; we're all on the same team. Political affiliation, ideology, idiolect, diction, choice of romantic partners, dancing skills, soul food cooking technique, and all the rest of that is immaterial. The only thing that matters is whether that individual is for the improvement of the team. Now there are some earnest disagreements over certain issues, like affirmative action, which both La Shawn and Cobb articulate, but even at that, I doubt that anybody's opposition to affirmative action stems from their desire to keep them other black folks down. Everybody on the team don't have the same technique, even though they may have the same ultimate objective. That don't mean they wana join the another squad. Besides, why shouldn't Black folks who are so inclined go Republican? How we gon' sit up there and talk about how the Black community is not monolithic and all that, but castigate and try to excommunicate anybody who actually proves it? If we go from blue gums to pink toes physically, we should be at least that diverse politically. Now sit down and eat this sammich and drink some Kool-Aid. You bout to make me miss this Funkadelic record. *cues up I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing* I got a thing You got a thing Everybody's got a thing When we get together, doin' our thing In order to help each other In order to help your brother (c) Funkadelic