Plight of African American Men Today

Friday August 9, 2013. Democracy Convention

I came in a bit late. A full room. A Mexican American man, Richard Monje, was posing questions to a panel of four African American men.

Shamako Nobel, who works with the Hip Hop Congress, was saying “in this country black life does not matter. The ‘founding fathers’ gave us 3/5ths of an identity. We have to get over 500 years of indoctrination. Whites go into foreign countries and treat people in the way that they’re used to treating black men.”

Poet Head Roc continued “ They emasculate strong black men. We’re just defending our families. But they cut off the things vital to our creativity. Now its done psychologically.” He added, “I am an opinionated black man. I don’t defang myself…”

Shamako: “we cannot be honest about our situation and just go to work. We’re dying. We’re going to jail.”

Asked a question about white supremacy, Galen Tyler (executive director of the KWRU) said “White supremacy is about power and dominance. Its what allows guns and dope to come into my community. It keeps the poor white class deaf and dumb. It keeps us from being united.” Under our failing economy, he added, “the white privilege that whites have…they ain’t going to have it anymore.”

With ten minutes left to the session, a white man raised his hand and asked a question. This was considered an interruption and sparked a heated response from the four men about how nobody had interrupted keynote speaker Gar Alperovitz, or even Medea Benjamin. Several minutes later, the same man made reference to the Urban League. The four men responded all at once. “ The Urban League promotes capitalism and black debt. It unites rich black folks against poor blacks. We’d never go there! ” Even the NAACP ‘doesn’t do anything”.

I jumped in. “…but Rev Barber (head of the NAACP in North Carolina) is doing an incredible job uniting blacks and whites against Republican racism in the state legislature!”

It was agreed that if there was a misunderstanding in the format of the presentation, it was that the ground rules had not been laid out in advance. “When you give up the privilege to interrupt then we can work together,” was the comment that summarized the exchange.

This discussion was organized by Cheri Honkala of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and recent candidate for vice president of the Green Party. She said (at the end) “There is something so magical about listening to people who are never heard.” Jill Stein added “We have to keep the dialogue going.”

This was a fascinating lecture, but I left wondering how there can be a dialogue if one group can only listen.

A WILPF member said that what she took away from the lecture was that educating children is very important, and WILPF can be proud that we promote progressive and anti-racist children’s books by celebrating them through the Jane Addams Peace Association book awards.

Robin Lloyd