In one of his many great speeches fortunately recorded for posterity, Malcolm X talked about the house Negro and the field Negro. Malcolm said, “When the slave master got sick, the house Negro said, ‘Wat’sa madda massa, we sick?’”
It was house Negroes who got wind of planned slave revolts and snitched to their white “benefactors,” i.e., slave masters. In 1800, Gabriel Prosser had some 40,000 slaves involved in his Virginia revolt before it was betrayed. Denmark Vesey suffered the same fate during his 1822 Charleston, South Carolina revolt involving 9,000 slaves with stolen munitions and manufactured weapons. So did Nat Turner in 1831.
The renowned Dr. Herbert Aptheker writes in his book, American Negro Slave Revolts, that there were 250 slave revolts and conspiracies during slavery in the United States of America alone. There were also all manner of slave revolts in the Caribbean Islands and throughout South America during the Trans-Atlantic African Slave Trade, reports Dr. John Henrik Clarke in his book, Africans at the Crossroads.
Today that demarcation line that once separated house Negro and field Negro is now a philosophical and psychological chasm that so many black people tend to traverse, back and forth, at different points, grabbing at this, that and the other: Integrationists trying to assimilate, black Christians avoiding involvement, the “talented tenth” fleeing inner cities, the poor and near-poor resigned to “fate,” and the pimps, prostitutes and dealers of every stripe steady at the ready to fleece.
If you are black and somehow confused, understandably, it is hardly unavoidable. We are African people separated from our various homelands on the continent, our historical families, cultures, religions, languages and thought, so far for 500 years. A growing affinity taking place all over America – indeed, the Western world – is the desire of whites to become browner and blacks to become lighter, in color and attitude/culture. A few years ago, Time magazine coined it “The Browning of America.”
If the integrationists have their way, we’ll go slow and make modest gains, and in time there won’t be any problem because we’ll all be brown! If the neo-conservatives have their way, they’ll fight to the death for the “purity” of the white race and its dominance of America and the world.
But with all the natural resources in Africa needed by every nation, for people of African descent not to see themselves as potentially wealthy, and adopt a neo-Pan-African economic and political philosophy and action plan to unite Africa for people of African descent, is foolhardy. In this yet young century, it is imperative for blacks to unite around one thing: How to get control of Africa and all its resources.
Even after being raped and pillaged for five centuries, Africa has enough sunlight and hydroelectric power – the use of waterpower to produce electricity – for its people and for manufacturing anything and everything. While confusion can come about through lack of correct information, insanity is the inability to perceive reality. The immediate future is awaiting determination of what the collective mindset is, and will be, of African people throughout the Diaspora.
Anyone familiar with my musing is aware that instead of dealing with the pseudo issue of so-called “racism,” I instead focus on the undeniable, philosophical, religious, economic, political and cultural history of white nationalism, specifically as it relates to people of African descent. Dick Cheney is a white nationalist and so are Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. They are the leading neo-conservatives. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum are also white nationalists, don’t be confused.
Dr. Ron Daniels says it best in a recent article in which he wrote, “America’s penchant for historical amnesia notwithstanding . . . a significant portion of the wealth of America is directly or indirectly attributable to the enormous super-profits derived from the trans-Atlantic slave trade and generations of free labor extracted from enslaved Africans who toiled from Wall Street, the plantations in the South to the nation’s capital. Given the ‘acceleration principle’ and ‘multiplier effect’ as factors in economic growth/development, all Euro-ethnics benefited, though unevenly, from profits reaped from the ‘peculiar institution’ [slavery].”
Al_Calloway@Verizon.net
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