AMERICAN ILLUSIONS SUCCUMB TO AMERIKKKAN REALITIES
by Rashard Zanders, MN
"The arrests have raised questions about a
double standard for free speech here, with
one set of rules for the cartoonists who
freely skewered religions of all kinds,
even when Muslims, Catholics and others
objected, and yet were defended for their
right to do so, and another set for the
statements by Muslim supporters of the
gunmen, which have led to their
prosecution."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/world/europe/french-rein-in-speech-backing-acts-of-terror.html?_r=0
So where did all those concerns about
American torture go? Or the entrenched
culture of violence and brutality against
Persons of Color in the United States? At
Blacklogic.blogspot.com it would appear as
though America is flying without a moral
compass. Wouldn't it be nice if one of our
go-to Black, Brown, Red, Yellow or Arab
boogey-men would kick the year off with a
nice, well-timed terrorist attack? Sure
would go a long way in making people forget
about the aforementioned transgressions.
In homage to the elders, scholars, teachers
activists and thinkers who warned us via
Pan African, Afro-feminist,
eco/environmental and Human Rights
perspectives, we revive
Blacklogic.Blogspot.com in the tradition of
the most intellectually sound thinkers, now
unimpeachably prophetic, those Philosophers
born from Struggle.
And this brings us to a much needed
reevaluation of the Civil Rights Movement,
whose historical import, Selma and
Hollywood romances not withstanding, has
been co-opted by the very culprits who were
it's target. One of the accidental
blessings of social media --because making
your own dossier for the whole world to see
IS so Big Brother -- has been it's ability
to broadcast to us the Bay Transit Cop
shooting of Oscar Grant, the Ferguson and
Eric Garner deaths, and it's ability to
demystify the true function of the armed and
dangerous thin blue line we call police.
The another element which must force Black
Church leaders in particular, given the
role of the Black pastor as THE community
patriarch, are the American torture
revelations, too many, vast and detailed to
list all here. Do we go on pretending that
this enemy is going to allow some mythic
equality when his very existence depends on
the slow and impoverished negations of our
own? If 2014 ended with any lesson,
besides that we are ruled by war criminals,
is that "You can't shame the Devil": The
Devil feels no shame.
The American illusion has given way to the
Amerikkkan reality. Despite the shootings
at the paper in France, the cutthroat
Western values that even the
disenfranchised love so much have been
invalidated by the violence, deception and
fear that lies beneath.
And Dr. King himself, on this day the Nation mocks his memory and his values, had evolved his philosophy to engage America for it's global sins, and tie the Civil Rights struggle to the global Human Rights Struggle and the rest of the Pan African Diaspora; To profile Amerikkaa, as we are profiled by everyone daily, for it's toxic blankets given to Natives on the Trail of Tears, for the Tortures and family dissolution that nurtured American slavery, for the rape and pillaging of this land from Red People, there is much that Amerikka has to answer for which she and her European allies are unwilling to do. The west has no moral compass. This we know to be true.The apparent fear is we wake up to this before every their self-made boogeyman have been spent.
Rashard Zanders is a freelance writer and
grantmaker and coffee addict from Chicago,
IL, now living in Minneapolis, with his Cat
Thrilla. He can be reached at
872-228-4179.
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