It has been my experience that Americans of all ethnicities suffer from a particular ailment called 'middle class morality'. It is the conceit of this mindset that their marches and their votes and their PTA meetings and their essays and their calls to talk radio hosts are great engines of change in the affairs of mankind. In fact, all of these efforts do little more than energize and antagonize other middle class Americans depending upon which 'side' of a particular 'issue' they happen to select.
Only every once in a while do significant numbers of the American middle class happen upon some fundamental truth or insight into what's really going on in the world. Most of the time, they are ill-equipped to do anything about it. Examples abound, and I won't belabor the point. Pick a headline, any headline.
There are few things more annoying than the pretensions to power of this bourgeois naivete. But there is one thing that consistantly is and that is the bleating and complaining of those middle class moralists who are convinced that too few Americans are exercising this so-called power. In order to amplify the noise, add a bit of self-righteous socialism with allusions to the great strength of the long-suffering masses. Pour in a dallop of racial exceptionalism and you have the recipe for a perfect storm of insufferable bloviation.
Today's flatulence comes in the form of this whingy harmattan from none other than The Field Negro:
These atrocities against our people take place in other parts of the world, while African Americans choose to do nothing. We go to Durham North Carolina and speak out against the Duke lacrosse team for allegedly raping one of our sisters, or to Mexico to confront their President for making derogatory remarks about us, but there is silence while thousands of black Africans are being slaughtered on a daily basis. Where is Jessie, where is Al, where is the CBC? To his credit Colin Powell did speak out about Darfur and has taken the issue to the UN on behalf of the United States. But it was frat boy who said nothing like this would happen on his watch, and yet, it's happening. But I am not going to get on frat boy about this issue, this is about black folks here at home, not about the President. This is about black folks not having a clue about what's going on in the world and not realizing that we are part of a larger world community.
I have seen more white people involved in this struggle, and trying to bring this issue to the forefront than blacks. And for that, we as black folks should all be ashamed. The UN called this the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and still black folks in this country remain silent. No outcry, no marches in Washington organized by black leaders, no ink from the black press, nothing; just silence.
There is finally a march being sponsered by the American Jewish World Service and other religious groups. And the Jewish community has raised over two million dollars towards the effort in Darfur. Also, I would like to give some props to New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof who is the only journalist in the world who seems to be trying to keep this story alive. -The last time I checked he was a white man- I understand that the Jews have a unique sensitivity to this issue, but so should we. Unfortunately, we are too busy being entertained by UPN and BET, and too busy washing and waxing our cars to care.
What The Field Negro and other professors of outrage need to understand about the long suffering masses of .. well, field negroes.. is that they are spending all of their energies and talents just trying to get in where they fit in. That is to say, daily suffering the indignities of The Struggle, their generations long quest for inclusion and permanent membership into the American Middle Class. They all want to turn their Nix Check Cashing ID cards into American Express Gold. These are not the people who are evaluating the transcript of the latest meeting of the OAU, rather they are people who put on 'X' hats from Spike Lee's joint and pretend to understand Malcolm's philosophy. Geopolitics is not their strong suit.
But let us imagine a perfect world in which the masses of blackfolks have access, by dint of the magic of the internet and the precience of various blogspot brainiacs, to the most up-to-date and prefect information about the tragedy that is Darfur. Let us further presume that they want to do right. What can they going to do about it? They aren't going to do anything because they aren't organized for doing, nor do they have the funding, skills nor motivation to be organized for doing.
So we have a fundamental problem here. The people who watch BET and UPN are not a fundamental engine of geopolitical change, and as well meaning as the Field Negro is, speaking as one whose heart has bled on occasion, I would boldly suggest that he pick a better audience for his fulminations. Furthermore I would suggest that anyone so inclined to motivate the stricken masses of African Americans to acts of great charity and moment disabuse themselves of such fantasy. It ain't gonna happen.
Americans are foolish, and none are perhaps so brazenly so as us Neocons. We continue to get our way in the world because the dearly lamented Karl Rove was able to cobble together a ragtag coalition into a majority, twice. The resounding answer to our prayers was a pliant George W. Bush who, overcome by events and neoconservative nudging, was converted 180 degrees from his provicial attitude on nation-building. Hooray for our team! With the assistance of the grit, determination and backbone of two great men, Mssrs Cheney and Rumsfeld, he has taken our American middle class morality to the Middle East and delivered the mother of all smackdowns to a messianic tyrant called Saddam Heussein. That's what I'm talking about.
Any attempt to create an alternate channel of geopolitical power in the United States is absolutely doomed to ignominious failure and shame. Those who would disagree would do well to recall the fate of the Free Azania Movement's subservience to Ronald Reagan's Constructive Engagement (that I just wrote a little about). No American cares as much about the poor blighters in Sudan as we did for the brothers and sisters of Sarafina in South Africa. And no amount of weeping and wailing is going to do an end-around the US Department of State, not even by seditious armchair generals. So if you think (yet another) march of the peasantry is going to materially change what's going on in Africa... get over yourself. Please.
I'd go on and on about this, but I have to go wax my car.
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