The Meta Jen'ic Conspiracy

What is of particular interest to me now is the shape of efforts of the class of black political partisans to use events such as Katrina and stories like that of the Jena 6 to constrain or otherwise redirect black attention from their own best interests. I am particularly noting the following passage from EC Hopkins:

With NYOIL’s metaphors and allusions in “Free The Jena 6″ in mind, almost all the Afrocentric Blacks and most of the honest quasi-Afrocentric and quasi-Eurocentric Blacks might agree that most U.S. Blacks are still enslaved, figuratively. The poorest Blacks are most enslaved. Once they’re born into poverty, they must endure oppressive social forces that are enslaving psychologically, socially, educationally, economically, and politically. Indeed, I could argue that as a direct result of their psychological, social, and educational enslavement, they are often also spiritually enslaved. Their very consciousnesses are encaged. And many of them remain enslaved involuntarily because so many middle-class and upper-class Blacks, the Blacks who could return to our broken Black communities in order to help rebuild them and heal them, are also enslaved psychologically, socially, educationally, economically, and politically.

Many middle-class and upper-class Blacks are so shackled by Eurocentric culture in academia, politics, and industry that they too are little more than slaves. Only their enslavement is often worse, because their enslavement is often voluntary. They volunteer to be slaves in exchange for the promise of opulence. So many middle-class and upper-class Blacks are so afraid to be iconoclastically Afrocentric in their scholarship, in their politics, or in their careers that they’d sooner give up on the cultures of their ancestors and they’d sooner ignore or explain away the social injustices their poorest fellow descendants suffer than risk losing their opportunities to easily accumulate ample wealth, power, and prestige in a social system that is dominated by Eurocentrists.

A figurative enslavement indeed. Were any man to accept this sort of blackness, that by denying the ultimate import of such a matter as a figurative lynching, they might be bound by such pronouncements, then it would be slavery. Slavery to an identity still absolutely terrified of the symbols of the KKK. The problem here is that there are not men but black men. If The only kind of black men there can be are those who must deny all of Europe and embrace all of Africa then what is the point of morality in them? Europe bad, Africa good?

Is this what we are to be reminded over every highschool brawl? Is this outrage which is supposed to bring Americans to some deep understanding of who we truly are? No. It is a special circus orchestrated for the 'black' man and 'black' mind, rapped to us to the rhythm of the boogedy beat. I cannot determine which gives me the greater offense, that some would condescend to this level of entreaty or that some would stoop to heed it. A black pot trying to make sure that it can keep the kettle just as black. A codependent dance of miserable self-pity. I have called myself black all my life, but I am not so black as that.

I care little for the Jena Six. I don't even know their names. However, if I were to study up on them and find their exact plight, I imagine that I might be drawn to sympathy. But I do know that none of them are dead, and I do know that none of them were engaged in any battle on my behalf. One of them might perhaps read this blog and come to know my name. Until then there is a gap of care between us. This is a gap any dozen commentators are trying to bridge. But it is a thin bridge that doesn't carry much weight, much less that which might handle the traffic of such matters as 'the cultures of our ancestors'.

What indeed is the culture of our ancestors? That really depends upon what we claim of it. You see since we are, most of us, fee and educated, we have some ambit of choice. Given that I do have a free mind and will, I would choose a culture of virtue, and so I do. So I ask what is the virtue of the Six? And I leave that question hanging. I understand the virtue of sacrifice and I understand the great virtue of sacrifice in arms with commitment to death. So I., like most Americans do not need to go back very far in history to recognize the culture of our ancestors which made such sacrifices. In particular I could look towards the military service of members of my own family. Let me pick that of James Alexander Curtis who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. Two of my children are named after him. It doesn't take much imagination to see that that old African Curtis was imbued with aspects of family and American honor. In fact he was a decorated soldier.  I cannot imagine that he didn't engage the enemy until death. And so for me and mine he stands as, quite frankly, the earliest ancestor I can actually trace in that part of the family which were at some point in their history held as slaves in America.

Today, we are witnessing the confusion of those people most confused by the culture of white supremacy and Eurocentrism desperately trying to assert control over the political process as they try to re-racinate every aspect of political discussion. About Jena, political partisans are trying to establish a nationally racialized response to what is essentially a relatively petty set of injustices. Over the matter of the upcoming debate at Morgan State (ironically Charles Drew's alma Mater) political partisans are trying to establish a separate racialized agenda as a litmus test for the Republican Party.

This racialization will fail, but if anything it indicates the extent to which a large amount of effort and energy is spent fighting inside an arena which is strictly defined by fundamentally flawed racial premises. I hope to show, over time and contrary to positions laid out here that this arena is not global, but in fact quite provincial.

In other words, if you believe that white supremacy should be capitalized and that it controls the world, you are actually only living in a small cage which is only the world in microcosm. The very idea that this arena of necessity should be the primary political orientation of the so-called black man is in itself an insult to his humanity, which is no more than could be expected from one in thrall to white supremacy.