The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

In today’s edition of the LA Times, John McWhorter wrote an article on the whole African-American Vs. Black debate. I will include a couple of paragraphs, but you must go to latimes.com for the rest of it.

“Modern America is home now to millions of immigrants who were born in Africa. Their cultures and identities are split between Africa and the United States. They have last names like Onwughalu and Senkofa. They speak languages like Wolof, Twi, Yoruba and Hausa, and speak English with an accent. They were raised on African cuisine, music, dance and dress styles, customs and family dynamics. Their children often speak or at least understand their parents’ native language.”

“With the number of African immigrants in the U.S. nearly tripling since 1990, the use of “African American” is becoming increasingly strained. For example, Alan Keyes, the Republican Senate candidate in Illinois, has claimed that as a descendant of slaves, he is the “real” African American, compared with his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, who has an African father and white mother. And the reason Keyes and others are making arguments such as this is rather small, the idea being that “African American” should refer only to people with a history of subordination in this country — as if African immigrants such as Amadou Diallo, who was killed by police while reaching for his wallet, or Caribbean ones such as torture victim Abner Louima have found the U.S. to be the Land of Oz.” (full article – login required)

I doubt very seriously that if most of us dropped the term African-American, we would go into some state of confusion. I commented about this whole thing not to long ago. There are many people in the black community that do not want to consider 1st generation Africans as being “authentic African-Americans”. I believe that this is largely in part that the fact that Africans can come over to this country with nothing, and through hard work and sacrifice, become successful WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION flies in the face of all those who believe that Blacks cannot make it in America.

Years ago, we were pumping ourselves up about going back to Africa to help rebuild. Now Africans are coming over here and taking the jobs that we don’t want.

revolution – a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving…

Some years back, Gil Scott-Heron, a black poet who wrote the poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” during the turbulent 60′s was very close to getting it right for this era as well. His poem that was a diatribe against the mass media’s trivialization of social upheaval should now say “The Revolution is Also Being Televised” for the era that we are now in.

Weather you want to admit it or not, we are at the beginnings of a major revolution. I believe that the events of 9/11 forced the US to face the fact that we are not only at war with terrorism, but in many ways with ourselves. 9/11 was that cold shower that woke us up to the fact that the very fabric of our nation that had been woven by the rich and deep values of our forefathers has now become a very worn garment. I can still remember how much our country united together after that awful day. There was no partisan bickering, 527 attack ads, etc. And who can forget the picture of the congressmen and women in DC uniting together on the steps of the Capital building singing “God Bless America”? Yet in the midst of all of this “love”, Rep. Cynthia McKinney does the unthinkable at that time and blames Bush for the attacks. People all over the country was ready to see her hang from the gallows for making such a divisive statement. If the truth be told, her remarks only reflected the division that had been brewing in this country for some time (even before the 2000 elections).

Since McKinney’s remarks, the war between those that hold dear the values of this nation (as defined by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence) and those that seek to merge with the socialist ideologies of the rest of the world has been very evident to say the least. Newspapers, magazines, movies, books, cartoons, sporting events, etc. have now increased their role as being a part of the great battleground in which this revolution is being waged.

Some time ago, I commented on a recent The National Endowment for the Arts report entitled Reading at Risk. Here were my comments:

Apparently, they did a study entitled “Reading at Risk”. The biggest surprise in this study is that they found a -28% decline in literary reading between 1982 and 2002 in the 18-24 year age group. That is very scary. Only 37.1% of African-Americans were found to have read some type of literature in a 12-month period ending August 2002.

If less people are reading, then what are people basing their political views on besides what they hear from the media?

It is very true that while reading has gone down, the amount of time that we spend watching television, playing video games, and on-line has gone up. I must say that as a former “gamer”, I have become quite concerned of the trend in which bright and intelligent grown men that have the ability to impact society as we know it make the unwise choice to spend hours upon hours playing with their Xbox, or PlayStation (Now before you get “ticked”, I am not saying that gaming is bad. Instead, what I am suggesting is that a lot of our ingenuity is being wasted when we WITHOUT DISCIPLINE engage in fruitless activities that does nothing to better us as a person).

Ivan Pavlov, a famous physiologist who did a great deal of study on the science of conditioned reflexes believed that the following, from his research was true about mankind:

“…a man, like an animal, conditioned to respond to certain impulses,

can be conditioned to respond to words, phrases and symbols. Therefore you pour in

the words, phrases and symbols to which he will respond without thinking . And then you withhold other certain words which will cause him to respond

in a way which you may not desire. It is the scientific control of human beings by

means of control [of] information.”

From a speech given by Herbert Philbrick. I found this excerpt in the book entitled “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” written by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt.

As I said in a previous posting, in the end, it really is not going to matter who wins this election. The increase of clear media bias/propaganda is here to stay. I believe that the days of taking news reports at face value are now just about gone. It is not an uncommon thing these days to see once successful magazines, newspapers either just go out of business, or get bought out. The more these vehicles of unique thought shut down, the more the whole concept of individual thought becomes lost.

So as you can see, a revolution of ideologies is happening right now. If you want to see it, it is as close as your nearest television set. Either way, you are part of this revolution. You just have to choose your side.

Yes, Mr. Heron, this revolution is also being televised.

There is a new 527 on the block. MoveOnforAmerica.org is joining the ranks of what I call “gurilla campaign assassination”. If you go to their website, they have a couple of the commercials that they will be pushing until the day of the elections. One of the commercials features Kerry’s association with Al Sharpton. I think they make a long stretch in tying Kerry with Sharpton’s crooked past. In any event, we are going to see mud slinging at a whole new depth. The following is an excerpt from their website:

MoveOnForAmerica.org was created due to the Bush campaign’s largely timid ads against Mr. Kerry, and will air this first ad starting Tuesday Sept. 7th in the Washington D.C. market and in key swing states beginning Monday September 13th. Since the organization is a “non-connected” committee, the ads will run non-stop until Election Day, and are not subject to the McCain-Feingold ban during the campaign’s final 60 days.

I just came across this article today. Walter Williams does an excellent job in presenting the dark side of socialism. Here is a piece of his article:

What is socialism? We miss the boat if we say it’s the agenda of left-wingers and Democrats. According to Marxist doctrine, socialism is a stage of society between capitalism and communism where private ownership and control over property are eliminated. The essence of socialism is the attenuation and ultimate abolition of private property rights. Attacks on private property include, but are not limited to, confiscating the rightful property of one person and giving it to another to whom it doesn’t belong. When this is done privately, we call it theft. When it’s done collectively, we use euphemisms: income transfers or redistribution. It’s not just left-wingers and Democrats who call for and admire socialism but right-wingers and Republicans as well .(full article)

Mr. Williams is correct in saying that socialism is something that is just adopted by many Democrats, but those of the Republican persuasion as well.

Next week, I will explain how many in the African-American community have adopted this same ideology. I will probably start somewhere in the early 1900′s and trace it through today.

What this series will show is that although many people would not identify themselves as socialist, they do in fact agree with much of the doctrine–which in the end does not make a difference.