talk amongst yourselves
The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger
By John Ridley
For eleven days in 2001, two blacks ran our country. It's their
example and their achievement--and not the culture of failure
fomented by the leftovers of the Movement--that must set a new agenda
for black Americans.
Let me tell you something about niggers, the oppressed minority
within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining
that they can't catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing for
themselves. Constantly in need of a leader but unable to follow in
any direction that's navigated by hard work, self-reliance. And
though they spliff and drink and procreate their way onto welfare
doles and WIC lines, niggers will tell you their state of being is
no fault of their own. They are not responsible for their nearly 5
percent incarceration rate and their 9.2 percent unemployment rate.
Not responsible for the 11.8 percent rate at which they drop out of
high school. For the 69.3 percent of births they create out of
wedlock.
Now, let me tell you something about my generation of black
Americans. We are the inheritors of "the Deal" forced upon the
entrenched white social, political, and legal establishment when my
parents' generation won the struggle for civil rights. The Deal: We
(blacks) take what is rightfully ours and you (the afore-described
establishment) get citizens who will invest the same energy and
dedication into raising families and working hard and being all
around good people as was invested in snapping the neck of Jim Crow.
In the forty years since the Deal was brokered, since the Voting
Rights Act was signed, there have been successes for blacks. But
there are still too many blacks in prison, too many kids
aggrandizing the thug life, and way too many African-Americans doing
far too little with the opportunities others earned for them.
If we as a race could win the centuries-long war against
institutionalized racism, why is it that so many of us cannot secure
the advantage after decades of freedom?
That which retards us is the worst of "us," those who disdain actual
ascendancy gained by way of intellectual expansion and physical toil
who instead value the posture of an "urban," a "street," a "real"
existence, no matter that such a culture threatens to render them
extinct.
"Them" being niggers.
I have no qualm about using the word nigger. It is a word. It is in
the English lexicon, and no amount of political correctness, no
amputation into "the n-word"as if by the castration of a few
letters we should then be able to conceptualize its meaning without
feeling its stingwill remove it from reality. [emphasis mine]
So I say this: It's time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good
luck. Just as whites may be concerned with the good of all citizens
but don't travel their days worrying specifically about the well-
being of hill billies from Appalachia, we need to send niggers on
their way. We need to start extolling the most virtuous of
ourselves. It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans--those who
have sealed the Deal, who aren't beholden to liberal indulgence any
more than they are to the disdain of the hard Right. It is time to
praise blacks who are merely undeniable in their individuality and
exemplary in their levels of achievement.
This, then, is how the praise begins. We need to burn into our
collective memory the event that marked the beginning of our new
timeline: an event from early in this millennium that seemed, for
its moment in time, auspicious but that is now all but forgotten. It
was lost in the ash of fires in Over-the-Rhine. Buried in the rubble
of 9/11. But I for one will not let it go, won't let it get dumped
into a potter's field of U. S. politics. It was too important. Far
too significant. It was eleven days when two blacks ran America.
If the situation were just slightly altered, Condoleezza Rice might
have been, and would have made, a better Mrs. George W. Bush than
the current Mrs. George W. Bush. Same as George, Condi's politics
are right. Her worldview is faith based, courtesy of her reverend
pops. A protege of Brent Scowcroft's, she served as a special
assistant for national-security affairs to George H. W. Bush, so she
was preapproved by Dad. And should anyone posit that a woman of
color would not be welcome to Thanksgiving dinner in Kennebunkport,
well, Bush brother Jeb had married himself a minority, so even that
trail was previously blazed.
But for G. B. the second, much to his credit, his interest in Condi
was less about her being a woman, let alone a black woman, and more
about her being an accomplished individual.
And Dr. Condi is accomplished as hell: a Ph.D. in poli-sci from the
University of Denver. Former provost of Stanford. At thirty-five,
barely a kid in Washington years, she was a staffer at the National
Security Council. She came onto the foreign-policy train wreck that
was the early days of G. W. Bush's 2000 campaign. Helped mold his
malapropism-afflicted worldview into a demicoherent one. After the
By John Ridley
For eleven days in 2001, two blacks ran our country. It's their
example and their achievement--and not the culture of failure
fomented by the leftovers of the Movement--that must set a new agenda
for black Americans.
Let me tell you something about niggers, the oppressed minority
within our minority. Always down. Always out. Always complaining
that they can't catch a break. Notoriously poor about doing for
themselves. Constantly in need of a leader but unable to follow in
any direction that's navigated by hard work, self-reliance. And
though they spliff and drink and procreate their way onto welfare
doles and WIC lines, niggers will tell you their state of being is
no fault of their own. They are not responsible for their nearly 5
percent incarceration rate and their 9.2 percent unemployment rate.
Not responsible for the 11.8 percent rate at which they drop out of
high school. For the 69.3 percent of births they create out of
wedlock.
Now, let me tell you something about my generation of black
Americans. We are the inheritors of "the Deal" forced upon the
entrenched white social, political, and legal establishment when my
parents' generation won the struggle for civil rights. The Deal: We
(blacks) take what is rightfully ours and you (the afore-described
establishment) get citizens who will invest the same energy and
dedication into raising families and working hard and being all
around good people as was invested in snapping the neck of Jim Crow.
In the forty years since the Deal was brokered, since the Voting
Rights Act was signed, there have been successes for blacks. But
there are still too many blacks in prison, too many kids
aggrandizing the thug life, and way too many African-Americans doing
far too little with the opportunities others earned for them.
If we as a race could win the centuries-long war against
institutionalized racism, why is it that so many of us cannot secure
the advantage after decades of freedom?
That which retards us is the worst of "us," those who disdain actual
ascendancy gained by way of intellectual expansion and physical toil
who instead value the posture of an "urban," a "street," a "real"
existence, no matter that such a culture threatens to render them
extinct.
"Them" being niggers.
I have no qualm about using the word nigger. It is a word. It is in
the English lexicon, and no amount of political correctness, no
amputation into "the n-word"as if by the castration of a few
letters we should then be able to conceptualize its meaning without
feeling its stingwill remove it from reality. [emphasis mine]
So I say this: It's time for ascended blacks to wish niggers good
luck. Just as whites may be concerned with the good of all citizens
but don't travel their days worrying specifically about the well-
being of hill billies from Appalachia, we need to send niggers on
their way. We need to start extolling the most virtuous of
ourselves. It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans--those who
have sealed the Deal, who aren't beholden to liberal indulgence any
more than they are to the disdain of the hard Right. It is time to
praise blacks who are merely undeniable in their individuality and
exemplary in their levels of achievement.
This, then, is how the praise begins. We need to burn into our
collective memory the event that marked the beginning of our new
timeline: an event from early in this millennium that seemed, for
its moment in time, auspicious but that is now all but forgotten. It
was lost in the ash of fires in Over-the-Rhine. Buried in the rubble
of 9/11. But I for one will not let it go, won't let it get dumped
into a potter's field of U. S. politics. It was too important. Far
too significant. It was eleven days when two blacks ran America.
If the situation were just slightly altered, Condoleezza Rice might
have been, and would have made, a better Mrs. George W. Bush than
the current Mrs. George W. Bush. Same as George, Condi's politics
are right. Her worldview is faith based, courtesy of her reverend
pops. A protege of Brent Scowcroft's, she served as a special
assistant for national-security affairs to George H. W. Bush, so she
was preapproved by Dad. And should anyone posit that a woman of
color would not be welcome to Thanksgiving dinner in Kennebunkport,
well, Bush brother Jeb had married himself a minority, so even that
trail was previously blazed.
But for G. B. the second, much to his credit, his interest in Condi
was less about her being a woman, let alone a black woman, and more
about her being an accomplished individual.
And Dr. Condi is accomplished as hell: a Ph.D. in poli-sci from the
University of Denver. Former provost of Stanford. At thirty-five,
barely a kid in Washington years, she was a staffer at the National
Security Council. She came onto the foreign-policy train wreck that
was the early days of G. W. Bush's 2000 campaign. Helped mold his
malapropism-afflicted worldview into a demicoherent one. After the
certification of Bush's election, Dr. Condi got herself easily
appointed as national security advisor.
Firsts all the way around.
Black America should have been singing hosannas.
But Condi was Republican. So never mind. Never mind she'd spent a
lifetime facing down racism. Born in Birmingham at the peak of race
hate, Condi was a schoolmate of Denise McNair, one of the "four
little girls" bombed to death in September of '63 at the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church. Niggers and old-school shines couldn't abide
her. Same as with Clarence Thomas, they let her politics obfuscate
her accomplishments. They stamped her: Not Officially Black. Loggers
tagged her a "Sally Hemming for the Twenty-first Century." Left-
leaning pundits smeared her with the slurs "Aunt Jemima" and "brown
sugar." Julian Bond, reaching deep into the old-school bag of
tricks, turned to rhyme to asperse Dr. Rice's authenticity: "Just
because they are your skin folks, doesn't mean they're your
kinfolks."
Cute.
Then they went back to entertaining themselves with another Wayans-
brothers movie.
Anyway.
As NSA and confidante, Dr. Condi was with Bush and the real Mrs.
Bush as they took some time with an old Yale buddy at Camp David on
the last weekend in March of 2001.
Nine-fifteen P.M. on the thirty-first. They got the call. A U. S. EP-
3E signals recon plane had literally gotten into a tangle with a
People's Liberation Army (read that: Chinese) J-8 interceptor jet
off the coast of China. The Chinese jet got shredded by the EP-3E's
prop. The American plane, with a crew of twenty-four, was badly
damaged. The Chinese jet went down, the pilot most likely killed.
The U. S. pilot did better. Managed to land the FUBAR American
plane. But he landed the plane on the island of Hanna. Chinese
territory. And the Chinese claimed that the Americans had been
spying over what were sovereign waters. And the Chinese claimed the
plane had landed without permission.
And its taillights were out.
From the get, this was stacking up to be a slightly dicey situation
China being in possession of twenty-four American servicemen and
women and one of our top-tier surveillance planes (and the
appropriate U.S. spokespeople went out of their way to note that it
was a surveillance plane, not a spy plane). The People's Republic
wasn't exactly our enemy, but it was hardly our close bud, either.
Coming into the White House, following the domestic Chinese-spy-
scandal scare of the late nineties, Bush had shifted the rhetoric
re: China. Had dropped the Clinton-era designation of China as
a "strategic partner" for the tough-talk appellation of "strategic
competitor." The actual meaning of "strategic competitor" no one in
the administration has ever tried to explain, but it struck the
appropriately tough-talk chord in the new president's
neoconservative base. Though such tough talk ignored the fact that
China was a major trading partner that was doing $116 billion in
annual business with the U. S., in millennium bucks.
So, then, here was the crux of Bochco's first international
incident: Having swung his meat at China, Bush now very much had to
be diplomatically shrewd while looking domestically strong in
dealing with our strategic competitor.
This clearly required high-mindedness.
Bush turned the situation over to the highest mind on his team: Dr.
Condi.
Made sense.
Condi was a Russia expert. Wasn't this--this "Hanna Incident"--just
some modern-day old-school commie-era nonsense?
But that decision, right and plain as it seemed, set up the real
conflict of the event. That conflict would not turn out to be the
obvious oneU. S. versus China. It would be "us," elevated blacks,
versus "them," those who not only hold little regard for people of
color but who wish to make niggers of us all.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rusted were, are, old-school relics.
Political leftovers of the Nixon-Ford years, they are the Retro
Guard, sporting metaphorical wide ties emblematic of the '72
landslide. To appease the base, Bush had given such men seats at his
otherwise progressive table. Wedging them in created multiple
fractures across the administration. From the jump, it would be the
old against the new. War hawks against moderates. Those who thought
the republic was best governed in secrecy and shadow against those
who recalled that the preamble to the Constitution is "We the
People," not "Us the Government." The administration was a case
study in "unified independence," a group working toward separate
objectives rather than individuals working as a team.
Cheney and Rusted fronted the hard line of the Hanna Incidentthe
cadre who saw little to no value in talk and diplomacy and wanted to
get with the figurative nuclear option quick as possible. It was
against such a mind-set as much as the Chinese government that Condi
would have to navigate.
But she would not have to wield her intellect solo.
Colin Powell was the undisputed superstar of American politics.
His bio was bulletproof.
His bona fides undeniable: service in 'Nam. Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs. Part of the team that cruised to victory in Gulf War I.
Author of the Powell Doctrine, which states that overwhelming force
makes an enemy your bee-botch.
When he quit the military, real quick Powell became "the Get." Both
parties wanted to snag him, wag him from their standard.
Powell went right.
Predictably, niggers immediately abandoned him. How could any self-
respecting black man want to run from the Liberal Plantation? Never
mind that he was a self-made modern American hero who openly
espoused the value of affirmative action. Old-scholars tagged Powell
with the usual left-wing racist jabber.
Powell was a sellout.
A Tom.
In a particularly ugly rant, Harry Belafonte infamously alluded to
Powell as being a house nigger.
At every opportunity, Powell was hit up with the invectives reserved
for black men who succeed by way of intelligence and hard work. (How
ironic that while the Left attempted to subjugate Powell with the
bullwhip of liberal racism, Bush, who later would be accused by Kane
West of hating blacks, somehow managed to see in Powell a sovereign
black man.)
As secretary of state in G. W. Ebb's first term, Powell would
spearhead communications with China during the Hanna Incident while
Rice would be the conduit through which all information would flow
to the president.
Dr. Condi and Colin.
The administration went into the Hanna situation thinking the China
incident would go down like this: We make denials; they make
demands. There's a shadow deal that gets us back our boys and toys
in exchange for some tractors and a few bushels of wheat.
But this wasn't 1957. The Chinese weren't a superpower dying on the
vine. They were more concerned about getting their international
prospers than they were about quid pro quo. And respect had been a
long time coming from the U. S. Most Chinese citizens recalled G. H.
W. Bush being an apologist for the Deng regime after the Tiananmen
Square crackdown. And then there was us dropping a bomb right down
the Chinese embassy's smokestack in Belgrade during the air war over
Kosovo.
And, you know, there was that strategic partner/strategic competitor
thing.
But Dr. Condi and Colin strategize, surmised that all China was
looking for was some contrition. A little humility. Secure in the
knowledge that offering regret is different from taking blame, they
figured they could show some remorse for the Chinese pilot without
turning all of America into a weak sister weeping like she'd just
messed her best Sunday dress. Just give a "My bad" and get the crew
home.
Dr. Condi and Colin would not immediately get the chance to test
their strategy Forty-eight hours after the American plane went down,
after just two days of silence from China, the far-right hard-liners
lost whatever patience they owned. What little confidence they had
that Rice and Powell could end the situation quickly dissipated like
a brief, bad smell. Diplomacy was boring and time-consuming and
rarely came with the requisite display of machismo. Though
delicatessen was the smarter play over sanctions, all the Retro
Guard cared about was keeping Bush, just twelve weeks in Washington,
from looking like Jimmy Carter on, say, day 239 of 444 of the
Iranian-hostage thing.
Sabers got rattled. Tact got kicked to the curb. Cheney stomped
around Washington doing a public nix on expressing any regret.
Insisted being American meant never having to say you're sorry.
Illinois representative Henry Hyde--who is chairman of the House
International Relations Committee--referred to the U. S. crew
as "hostages," which put an ugly public spin on the benign truth.
Was consciously counter to Powell's assessment that the crew was
merely being detained.
Bush, feeling the pressure to back up all his reelection rhetoric,
flinched. Or "blinked," in the pop-culture sense of making a quick
decision based on suspect intelligence.
In a Rose Garden appearance, a hardened Bush excoriated the Chinese
for not doing "the right thing." Insisted that "now it is time for
our servicemen and women to return home."
These were, politically, cold assertions. The holdback was equally
frosty.
A day later, Chinese president Kiang Zelman finally responded.
Zelman wanted nothing less than total kowtowing. Wanted the U. S.
to "bear all responsibilities" for the collision. Wanted an apology.
Wanted concessions. Wanted the U. S. to quit its spy flights along
the China coast. Forever.
And it got real clear the circumstances might not now resolve
themselves in a timely manner.
Just a few words. A few words choreographed to create some tough-guy
theatrics from Bush and the situation had devolved from "incident"
to "standoff."
And the loud-voiced whispers as to whether Bush had what it took to
be a world leader began.
Diplomacy was needed. Smarts. Intellect and canny.
Bush made another decision. No "blink" involved. As The Washington
Post reported, the way forward was made emphatic to all concerned:
No more useless posturing. No more Independent Unity. Cheney was
sent out to stump for the tax cuts Bush was shilling. And while
Rusted claimed to support the shift toward diplomacy, truthfully he
was flatly told to butt out.
Dr. Condi and Colin would be given free rein. We, collectively--not
just black America but all of America that truly bought into the
bromides of liberty and justice for all--we had risen.
The accomplishment was unmistakable. For seven days running, in the
written press and the international media, and doing the rounds in
the 24/7 cable-news meat grinder, it was Condi and Colin. They
pulled the administration out of a Retro Guarddug hole. Projected
calm and rationality, where just prior there was only ego. Sticking
with their game plan to double-team with poise and savoir faire,
they expressed "regret" over the loss of the Chinese pilot. Powell
followed up his public statements with an international "sympathy
card" sent to the Chinese: a regret letter of his own.
Simultaneously, Condi counseled the president to display some
humanity. Bush made a public statement that he was sending his
prayers to the dead Chinese pilot and his family.
Little gestures.
Big results.
By Thursday, April 5, the Chinese foreign ministry, if not quite
ready to sing kumbayas, acknowledged the U. Esq.'s new moves were
a "step in the right direction."
At the same time, Powell came with another, stronger statement of
lament re: the Chinese pilot's death. And contrary to the hawks'
beliefs, the heavens didn't open and the stock market didn't drop
and the commies weren't turning our wives and daughters into
pleasure girls. But twenty-four servicemen and women were that much
closer to coming home.
So close the scavengers could pick up the stink of imminent triumph.
Around they came, real late in the game, looking to gain some
stature by glomming on to the accomplishments of others.
Jesse Jackson came knocking.
Jesse Jackson, who is president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He
put in a call to Powell offering help. Offering to add
an "ecumenical religious component" to Powell's efforts.
It was really just Jesse looking to shine up his image. It'd been
just months since he'd been outed as having fathered a kid with the
former head of the Rainbow Coalition's Washington, D. C., office,
then given the girl tens of thousands of dollars from the Rainbow
PUSH coffers as "shut up/go away" money.
Not sure if that's the ecumenical religious component Jesse had
wanted to add to the standoff.
Powell smartly gave Jesse the go-by. Jesse and his old-school ways,
even if they hadn't been offered belatedly and with self-service,
were of no use to the New Black American.
Victory was at hand. The U. S. crewmen were just days and an
official letter of regret to the Chinese government away from
returning home. And you know that homecoming would have been filled
with hoopla and pageantry. The Retro Guard would have to kneel
before the superior intellect of the ascended black. Likewise, the
Old-School Negroes and their liberal massas would be forced to
acknowledge the evolutionary brother and sister. When the images of
the homecoming were played and played and played from the morning
empty-chat shows through the nightly news to Larry King and his
first exclusive primetime interview (with call-ins!) of the crew,
all of America would see freedom was won by a black man, a black
woman.
They would have seen all that.
Except.
Niggers fucked it up.
The last thing recorded by the dash-mounted camera in the police
cruiser was officer Stephen Roach running across an intersection off
Republic Street in Cincinnati. Then he enters an alley.
Then you can hear a shot being fired.
Beyond that, all you can do is speculate. And/or take Roach's
statements as to what led to Timothy Thomas's shooting death.
What we know:
White cop.
Black kid. Nineteen years old. Troubles with the law. Fourteen
outstanding warrants. All misdemeanors.
In the early-morning hours of April 7, 2001, Thomas was confronted
by some cops looking to pop him for those warrants. Thomas ran. Same
as he'd run twice before when cops were trying to pop him. Backup
got called in. Roach was among them. Thomas wasn't armed. Roach had
no way of knowing. All the cop knew was that he was doing a foot
pursuit in what's plainly one of the most dangerous sections of
Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine.
Thomas headed down that dark alley. Ordered to stop, he complied.
Made a sudden move for his waistband. Roach fired. Thomas took a
single slug to the chest. Died.
"Fifteen since '95" was the cry. Timothy Thomas being the fifteenth
Cincinnati black man to die during an arrest or shortly after being
apprehended by the cops. "Fifteen since '95" was heard from local
Blacktivists hot for justice, for whom vengeance by way of legal
recourse would not do: the New Black Panthers. Some outfit called
the Special Forces. Only things special about them were the white-
hatin', Jew-hatin' rants they could call up at a moment's notice.
And did so at a city-council meeting they crashed the day after
Thomas got shot. Crashed it along with Thomas's moms. And a couple
hundred more whipped-up locals of color. They showed up to "talk"
with city officials.
There was some white-hatin'. Some Jew-hatin'. Precious little
talking.
After three hours of contained ranting, the hatin' spilled out into
the streets. Another thousand or so protesters got whipped up and
swept along as the Blacktivists made their way to the Cinci police
HQ. More screaming! More hatin'! Through the evening and into the
night.
"Fifteen since '95!"
Rocks thrown. Bottles thrown. Broken glass was hurled at cops.
"Fifteen since '95!"
By 1:00 A.M. on Monday, April 9, while Powell and Rice were working
to free detained Americans, the Blacktivists had achieved what they
were pushing for, the typical post-civil-rights-era expression of
urban rage when it unilaterally deems itself wronged: burning of
businesses. Looting of businesses. Indiscriminate violence against
whites and nonblacks; yanked from cars. Beaten near to death.
Simply, rioting.
If a gang of whites had done the same, the screams from the
Blacktivists would've been of a roving racist pack. They, the
whites, would've been called a lynch mob.
But the rioters were of color.
What was begging to be heard by the rampaging mob was some tacit
approval from the self-appointed HNICs that burning and beating and
stealing were the way to go.
Approval was given.
Kweisi Mfume (real name Frizzell Gray), who was the president and
CEO of the NAACP, ranted that Cinci was the "belly of the whale."
Al Sharpton--he who is the high self-appointed HNIC of a constituency
that no longer exists--demanded the feds take control of Cinci's
police. Of all America's cops!
The Big House of the Liberal Plantation, The New York Times, opined
that economic discrimination was at the heart of the riot (though it
failed to explain why poor whites rarely did the same).
The Blacktivists of Cinci got what they wanted: some old-school R-
Card shysters doing some fire fueling with platitudes and the war
cry:
"Fifteen since '95."
On the surface the numbers held up; at the hands of the police,
fifteen black men had died since '95. But the stats didn't reflect
fact. Have you had a chance to meet some of the fifteen poster kids
of cop abuse in Cincinnati?
Say hey to Harvey Price, who hacked up his girlfriend's daughter
with an ax. She was fifteen. Harvey got shot when he refused to
surrender peaceably. Went at tactical cops with a knife.
Give a yo to Mr. Jeffrey Irons. Confronted for stealing a few bucks
in toiletries, Irons responded by grabbing a cop's gun. Shooting the
officer in the hand. Another officer, options up, looking to avoid
worse, shot and killed Irons.
Can I get a what-up for Daniel Williams? In February of '98 Danny
flagged down officer Kathleen Conway's cop car. Then he punched her
in the face. Then shot her. Four times, .357 Magnum. After all that,
Conway managed to fire back--I would safely say in self-defense--
killing Williams.
The final count of those "fifteen since '95"? Twelve had threatened
arresting officers' lives with some type of weapon before they were
killed. Seven of those twelve threatened cops with guns. Four cops
were killed or wounded in making those arrests (in a period when
three Cinci cops had been killed in three years).
But facts don't serve the cause. And "a couple since '95" doesn't
make for much of a war cry.
Three days of chaos. Nearly $4 million in damage to the city, most
of it in predominantly black areas that could ill afford economic
downturn. Record levels of homicides, particularly among blacks, as
the police, hamstrung by new rules of engagement, could no longer
effectively protect the very people who had demonized them.
It was a mess.
The Blacktivists, they would call it victory.
The night of 4/11/01 was the worst of the rioting in Over-the-Rhine.
Lowlights included a cop shot, a state of emergency declared.
The next day, 4/12/01, while Cinci was still calming down, the
detained U. S. crew got loaded onto a commandeered Continental
Airlines jet. Were flown from Hanna to Guam, Guam to Hawaii. The
patience, the intelligence, of two blacks had set them free. But for
Powell and Rice there was no reaction from the greateror lesser
black community. None from lefty America. Energy drained by the orgy
of appeasement it had been forced to offer up over Cincinnati, the
best the black establishment and the national media could or would
toss Dr. Condi and Colin was a collective shrug. A dismissive act,
the effect of which was to minify the significance of their
accomplishment.
And maybe in early 2001 it didn't matter so much. After averting
crisis, there were sure to be other achievements. But, you know,
things change. Nine-eleven. The towers came down. The Pentagon got
opened up. A hole was made in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq.
And Hanna was officially forgotten.
NO MORE.
No more can we allow the crowning moment in our history to live in
shadow, just as we cannot allow the deeds of our most accomplished
to be overshadowed by the antics of our least ambitious. Near the
end of his mortal existence, Dr. Martin Luther King famously
queried, "Where do we go from here: chaos or community?"
Over-the-Rhine was chaos. Is this what we choose for ourselves? To
continue as the ungodly construct of victim and aggressor?
I say there is only one direction for us to travel, the path already
set. Dr. Condi and Colin are exceptional but not unique.
Empirically, Hanna wasn't a one-off. With the pair as way points by
which to plot a course, our collective ascension will be assured.
Undoubtedly, knees will jerk over this contention. The Reverends Al
and Jesse and all those who judge actions by the single criterion of
how they affect the remnants of the Movement will ask: These? These
two are your ne plus ultra blacks? These two who caved to the will
of the Right? Powell, whose dog-and-pony show at the UN revealed his
true bent? Rice, whose "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying" for The New York
Times showed her lack of spine? These two who sent America off to
folly in Iraq?
I say yes.
Black America must look to that lost moment and realize that, short
of a brother or sister actually being elected president, Hanna was
the high-water mark of black political power. And whether Operation
Iraqi Freedom is ultimately good and right and just, or if it is
lousily named and uniformly disastrous, what is essential is that
Dr. Condi and Colin earned for themselves positions from which to
sway public debate.
That is, power.
Dr. Condi and Colin personify what niggers have forgotten: All that
matters is accomplishment. The very pinnacle of ascendancy is the
ability to live and work without regard for the sentiments of others
and with, as Sister Rand would tell us, a selfish virtue.
We came up from slavery to freedom without regard for the
Constitution, which gave us nothing, and the plantation masters, who
gave us the whip. We came up from oppression to civil rights without
regard for hurled bricks and sicced police dogs. Water hoses. The
word nigger.
This, then, is my directive: Let us achieve with equal disregard for
the limitations of racism and the weight of those of us who threaten
to drag all of us down with the clinging nature of their eternal
victimization. Our preservation is too essential to be stunted by
those unwilling to advance. And in my heart I don't believe all
blacks cannot achieve in the absence of aid any more than I believe
the best way to teach a child to run is by forcing him to spend a
lifetime on his knees.
As long as we remain committed to holding high our individuals of
supreme finish, others will be inspired to loose themselves of the
gravity of the waywards and downtroddens.
Once free, they will rise. They will drift high toward the
attainments of which we are invariably capable; being better fathers
and husbands and lovers. Better mothers and daughters, sisters and
best friends. We will rise to the simple obligation of taking care
of our own with the same dedication we will give to improving our
community and country and our world. Yes, our influence will extend
so.
Where do we go from here?
The only direction we can.
The New Black America will ascend.
appointed as national security advisor.
Firsts all the way around.
Black America should have been singing hosannas.
But Condi was Republican. So never mind. Never mind she'd spent a
lifetime facing down racism. Born in Birmingham at the peak of race
hate, Condi was a schoolmate of Denise McNair, one of the "four
little girls" bombed to death in September of '63 at the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church. Niggers and old-school shines couldn't abide
her. Same as with Clarence Thomas, they let her politics obfuscate
her accomplishments. They stamped her: Not Officially Black. Loggers
tagged her a "Sally Hemming for the Twenty-first Century." Left-
leaning pundits smeared her with the slurs "Aunt Jemima" and "brown
sugar." Julian Bond, reaching deep into the old-school bag of
tricks, turned to rhyme to asperse Dr. Rice's authenticity: "Just
because they are your skin folks, doesn't mean they're your
kinfolks."
Cute.
Then they went back to entertaining themselves with another Wayans-
brothers movie.
Anyway.
As NSA and confidante, Dr. Condi was with Bush and the real Mrs.
Bush as they took some time with an old Yale buddy at Camp David on
the last weekend in March of 2001.
Nine-fifteen P.M. on the thirty-first. They got the call. A U. S. EP-
3E signals recon plane had literally gotten into a tangle with a
People's Liberation Army (read that: Chinese) J-8 interceptor jet
off the coast of China. The Chinese jet got shredded by the EP-3E's
prop. The American plane, with a crew of twenty-four, was badly
damaged. The Chinese jet went down, the pilot most likely killed.
The U. S. pilot did better. Managed to land the FUBAR American
plane. But he landed the plane on the island of Hanna. Chinese
territory. And the Chinese claimed that the Americans had been
spying over what were sovereign waters. And the Chinese claimed the
plane had landed without permission.
And its taillights were out.
From the get, this was stacking up to be a slightly dicey situation
China being in possession of twenty-four American servicemen and
women and one of our top-tier surveillance planes (and the
appropriate U.S. spokespeople went out of their way to note that it
was a surveillance plane, not a spy plane). The People's Republic
wasn't exactly our enemy, but it was hardly our close bud, either.
Coming into the White House, following the domestic Chinese-spy-
scandal scare of the late nineties, Bush had shifted the rhetoric
re: China. Had dropped the Clinton-era designation of China as
a "strategic partner" for the tough-talk appellation of "strategic
competitor." The actual meaning of "strategic competitor" no one in
the administration has ever tried to explain, but it struck the
appropriately tough-talk chord in the new president's
neoconservative base. Though such tough talk ignored the fact that
China was a major trading partner that was doing $116 billion in
annual business with the U. S., in millennium bucks.
So, then, here was the crux of Bochco's first international
incident: Having swung his meat at China, Bush now very much had to
be diplomatically shrewd while looking domestically strong in
dealing with our strategic competitor.
This clearly required high-mindedness.
Bush turned the situation over to the highest mind on his team: Dr.
Condi.
Made sense.
Condi was a Russia expert. Wasn't this--this "Hanna Incident"--just
some modern-day old-school commie-era nonsense?
But that decision, right and plain as it seemed, set up the real
conflict of the event. That conflict would not turn out to be the
obvious oneU. S. versus China. It would be "us," elevated blacks,
versus "them," those who not only hold little regard for people of
color but who wish to make niggers of us all.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rusted were, are, old-school relics.
Political leftovers of the Nixon-Ford years, they are the Retro
Guard, sporting metaphorical wide ties emblematic of the '72
landslide. To appease the base, Bush had given such men seats at his
otherwise progressive table. Wedging them in created multiple
fractures across the administration. From the jump, it would be the
old against the new. War hawks against moderates. Those who thought
the republic was best governed in secrecy and shadow against those
who recalled that the preamble to the Constitution is "We the
People," not "Us the Government." The administration was a case
study in "unified independence,
objectives rather than individuals working as a team.
Cheney and Rusted fronted the hard line of the Hanna Incidentthe
cadre who saw little to no value in talk and diplomacy and wanted to
get with the figurative nuclear option quick as possible. It was
against such a mind-set as much as the Chinese government that Condi
would have to navigate.
But she would not have to wield her intellect solo.
Colin Powell was the undisputed superstar of American politics.
His bio was bulletproof.
His bona fides undeniable: service in 'Nam. Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs. Part of the team that cruised to victory in Gulf War I.
Author of the Powell Doctrine, which states that overwhelming force
makes an enemy your bee-botch.
When he quit the military, real quick Powell became "the Get." Both
parties wanted to snag him, wag him from their standard.
Powell went right.
Predictably, niggers immediately abandoned him. How could any self-
respecting black man want to run from the Liberal Plantation? Never
mind that he was a self-made modern American hero who openly
espoused the value of affirmative action. Old-scholars tagged Powell
with the usual left-wing racist jabber.
Powell was a sellout.
A Tom.
In a particularly ugly rant, Harry Belafonte infamously alluded to
Powell as being a house nigger.
At every opportunity, Powell was hit up with the invectives reserved
for black men who succeed by way of intelligence and hard work. (How
ironic that while the Left attempted to subjugate Powell with the
bullwhip of liberal racism, Bush, who later would be accused by Kane
West of hating blacks, somehow managed to see in Powell a sovereign
black man.)
As secretary of state in G. W. Ebb's first term, Powell would
spearhead communications with China during the Hanna Incident while
Rice would be the conduit through which all information would flow
to the president.
Dr. Condi and Colin.
The administration went into the Hanna situation thinking the China
incident would go down like this: We make denials; they make
demands. There's a shadow deal that gets us back our boys and toys
in exchange for some tractors and a few bushels of wheat.
But this wasn't 1957. The Chinese weren't a superpower dying on the
vine. They were more concerned about getting their international
prospers than they were about quid pro quo. And respect had been a
long time coming from the U. S. Most Chinese citizens recalled G. H.
W. Bush being an apologist for the Deng regime after the Tiananmen
Square crackdown. And then there was us dropping a bomb right down
the Chinese embassy's smokestack in Belgrade during the air war over
Kosovo.
And, you know, there was that strategic partner/strategic competitor
thing.
But Dr. Condi and Colin strategize, surmised that all China was
looking for was some contrition. A little humility. Secure in the
knowledge that offering regret is different from taking blame, they
figured they could show some remorse for the Chinese pilot without
turning all of America into a weak sister weeping like she'd just
messed her best Sunday dress. Just give a "My bad" and get the crew
home.
Dr. Condi and Colin would not immediately get the chance to test
their strategy Forty-eight hours after the American plane went down,
after just two days of silence from China, the far-right hard-liners
lost whatever patience they owned. What little confidence they had
that Rice and Powell could end the situation quickly dissipated like
a brief, bad smell. Diplomacy was boring and time-consuming and
rarely came with the requisite display of machismo. Though
delicatessen was the smarter play over sanctions, all the Retro
Guard cared about was keeping Bush, just twelve weeks in Washington,
from looking like Jimmy Carter on, say, day 239 of 444 of the
Iranian-hostage thing.
Sabers got rattled. Tact got kicked to the curb. Cheney stomped
around Washington doing a public nix on expressing any regret.
Insisted being American meant never having to say you're sorry.
Illinois representative Henry Hyde--who is chairman of the House
International Relations Committee--referred to the U. S. crew
as "hostages," which put an ugly public spin on the benign truth.
Was consciously counter to Powell's assessment that the crew was
merely being detained.
Bush, feeling the pressure to back up all his reelection rhetoric,
flinched. Or "blinked," in the pop-culture sense of making a quick
decision based on suspect intelligence.
In a Rose Garden appearance, a hardened Bush excoriated the Chinese
for not doing "the right thing." Insisted that "now it is time for
our servicemen and women to return home."
These were, politically, cold assertions. The holdback was equally
frosty.
A day later, Chinese president Kiang Zelman finally responded.
Zelman wanted nothing less than total kowtowing. Wanted the U. S.
to "bear all responsibilities" for the collision. Wanted an apology.
Wanted concessions. Wanted the U. S. to quit its spy flights along
the China coast. Forever.
And it got real clear the circumstances might not now resolve
themselves in a timely manner.
Just a few words. A few words choreographed to create some tough-guy
theatrics from Bush and the situation had devolved from "incident"
to "standoff."
And the loud-voiced whispers as to whether Bush had what it took to
be a world leader began.
Diplomacy was needed. Smarts. Intellect and canny.
Bush made another decision. No "blink" involved. As The Washington
Post reported, the way forward was made emphatic to all concerned:
No more useless posturing. No more Independent Unity. Cheney was
sent out to stump for the tax cuts Bush was shilling. And while
Rusted claimed to support the shift toward diplomacy, truthfully he
was flatly told to butt out.
Dr. Condi and Colin would be given free rein. We, collectively--
just black America but all of America that truly bought into the
bromides of liberty and justice for all--we had risen.
The accomplishment was unmistakable. For seven days running, in the
written press and the international media, and doing the rounds in
the 24/7 cable-news meat grinder, it was Condi and Colin. They
pulled the administration out of a Retro Guarddug hole. Projected
calm and rationality, where just prior there was only ego. Sticking
with their game plan to double-team with poise and savoir faire,
they expressed "regret" over the loss of the Chinese pilot. Powell
followed up his public statements with an international "sympathy
card" sent to the Chinese: a regret letter of his own.
Simultaneously, Condi counseled the president to display some
humanity. Bush made a public statement that he was sending his
prayers to the dead Chinese pilot and his family.
Little gestures.
Big results.
By Thursday, April 5, the Chinese foreign ministry, if not quite
ready to sing kumbayas, acknowledged the U. Esq.'s new moves were
a "step in the right direction."
At the same time, Powell came with another, stronger statement of
lament re: the Chinese pilot's death. And contrary to the hawks'
beliefs, the heavens didn't open and the stock market didn't drop
and the commies weren't turning our wives and daughters into
pleasure girls. But twenty-four servicemen and women were that much
closer to coming home.
So close the scavengers could pick up the stink of imminent triumph.
Around they came, real late in the game, looking to gain some
stature by glomming on to the accomplishments of others.
Jesse Jackson came knocking.
Jesse Jackson, who is president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He
put in a call to Powell offering help. Offering to add
an "ecumenical religious component" to Powell's efforts.
It was really just Jesse looking to shine up his image. It'd been
just months since he'd been outed as having fathered a kid with the
former head of the Rainbow Coalition's Washington, D. C., office,
then given the girl tens of thousands of dollars from the Rainbow
PUSH coffers as "shut up/go away" money.
Not sure if that's the ecumenical religious component Jesse had
wanted to add to the standoff.
Powell smartly gave Jesse the go-by. Jesse and his old-school ways,
even if they hadn't been offered belatedly and with self-service,
were of no use to the New Black American.
Victory was at hand. The U. S. crewmen were just days and an
official letter of regret to the Chinese government away from
returning home. And you know that homecoming would have been filled
with hoopla and pageantry. The Retro Guard would have to kneel
before the superior intellect of the ascended black. Likewise, the
Old-School Negroes and their liberal massas would be forced to
acknowledge the evolutionary brother and sister. When the images of
the homecoming were played and played and played from the morning
empty-chat shows through the nightly news to Larry King and his
first exclusive primetime interview (with call-ins!) of the crew,
all of America would see freedom was won by a black man, a black
woman.
They would have seen all that.
Except.
Niggers fucked it up.
The last thing recorded by the dash-mounted camera in the police
cruiser was officer Stephen Roach running across an intersection off
Republic Street in Cincinnati. Then he enters an alley.
Then you can hear a shot being fired.
Beyond that, all you can do is speculate. And/or take Roach's
statements as to what led to Timothy Thomas's shooting death.
What we know:
White cop.
Black kid. Nineteen years old. Troubles with the law. Fourteen
outstanding warrants. All misdemeanors.
In the early-morning hours of April 7, 2001, Thomas was confronted
by some cops looking to pop him for those warrants. Thomas ran. Same
as he'd run twice before when cops were trying to pop him. Backup
got called in. Roach was among them. Thomas wasn't armed. Roach had
no way of knowing. All the cop knew was that he was doing a foot
pursuit in what's plainly one of the most dangerous sections of
Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine.
Thomas headed down that dark alley. Ordered to stop, he complied.
Made a sudden move for his waistband. Roach fired. Thomas took a
single slug to the chest. Died.
"Fifteen since '95" was the cry. Timothy Thomas being the fifteenth
Cincinnati black man to die during an arrest or shortly after being
apprehended by the cops. "Fifteen since '95" was heard from local
Blacktivists hot for justice, for whom vengeance by way of legal
recourse would not do: the New Black Panthers. Some outfit called
the Special Forces. Only things special about them were the white-
hatin', Jew-hatin' rants they could call up at a moment's notice.
And did so at a city-council meeting they crashed the day after
Thomas got shot. Crashed it along with Thomas's moms. And a couple
hundred more whipped-up locals of color. They showed up to "talk"
with city officials.
There was some white-hatin'
talking.
After three hours of contained ranting, the hatin' spilled out into
the streets. Another thousand or so protesters got whipped up and
swept along as the Blacktivists made their way to the Cinci police
HQ. More screaming! More hatin'! Through the evening and into the
night.
"Fifteen since '95!"
Rocks thrown. Bottles thrown. Broken glass was hurled at cops.
"Fifteen since '95!"
By 1:00 A.M. on Monday, April 9, while Powell and Rice were working
to free detained Americans, the Blacktivists had achieved what they
were pushing for, the typical post-civil-rights-
urban rage when it unilaterally deems itself wronged: burning of
businesses. Looting of businesses. Indiscriminate violence against
whites and nonblacks; yanked from cars. Beaten near to death.
Simply, rioting.
If a gang of whites had done the same, the screams from the
Blacktivists would've been of a roving racist pack. They, the
whites, would've been called a lynch mob.
But the rioters were of color.
What was begging to be heard by the rampaging mob was some tacit
approval from the self-appointed HNICs that burning and beating and
stealing were the way to go.
Approval was given.
Kweisi Mfume (real name Frizzell Gray), who was the president and
CEO of the NAACP, ranted that Cinci was the "belly of the whale."
Al Sharpton--he who is the high self-appointed HNIC of a constituency
that no longer exists--demanded the feds take control of Cinci's
police. Of all America's cops!
The Big House of the Liberal Plantation, The New York Times, opined
that economic discrimination was at the heart of the riot (though it
failed to explain why poor whites rarely did the same).
The Blacktivists of Cinci got what they wanted: some old-school R-
Card shysters doing some fire fueling with platitudes and the war
cry:
"Fifteen since '95."
On the surface the numbers held up; at the hands of the police,
fifteen black men had died since '95. But the stats didn't reflect
fact. Have you had a chance to meet some of the fifteen poster kids
of cop abuse in Cincinnati?
Say hey to Harvey Price, who hacked up his girlfriend's daughter
with an ax. She was fifteen. Harvey got shot when he refused to
surrender peaceably. Went at tactical cops with a knife.
Give a yo to Mr. Jeffrey Irons. Confronted for stealing a few bucks
in toiletries, Irons responded by grabbing a cop's gun. Shooting the
officer in the hand. Another officer, options up, looking to avoid
worse, shot and killed Irons.
Can I get a what-up for Daniel Williams? In February of '98 Danny
flagged down officer Kathleen Conway's cop car. Then he punched her
in the face. Then shot her. Four times, .357 Magnum. After all that,
Conway managed to fire back--I would safely say in self-defense--
killing Williams.
The final count of those "fifteen since '95"? Twelve had threatened
arresting officers' lives with some type of weapon before they were
killed. Seven of those twelve threatened cops with guns. Four cops
were killed or wounded in making those arrests (in a period when
three Cinci cops had been killed in three years).
But facts don't serve the cause. And "a couple since '95" doesn't
make for much of a war cry.
Three days of chaos. Nearly $4 million in damage to the city, most
of it in predominantly black areas that could ill afford economic
downturn. Record levels of homicides, particularly among blacks, as
the police, hamstrung by new rules of engagement, could no longer
effectively protect the very people who had demonized them.
It was a mess.
The Blacktivists, they would call it victory.
The night of 4/11/01 was the worst of the rioting in Over-the-Rhine.
Lowlights included a cop shot, a state of emergency declared.
The next day, 4/12/01, while Cinci was still calming down, the
detained U. S. crew got loaded onto a commandeered Continental
Airlines jet. Were flown from Hanna to Guam, Guam to Hawaii. The
patience, the intelligence, of two blacks had set them free. But for
Powell and Rice there was no reaction from the greateror lesser
black community. None from lefty America. Energy drained by the orgy
of appeasement it had been forced to offer up over Cincinnati, the
best the black establishment and the national media could or would
toss Dr. Condi and Colin was a collective shrug. A dismissive act,
the effect of which was to minify the significance of their
accomplishment.
And maybe in early 2001 it didn't matter so much. After averting
crisis, there were sure to be other achievements. But, you know,
things change. Nine-eleven. The towers came down. The Pentagon got
opened up. A hole was made in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The war in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq.
And Hanna was officially forgotten.
NO MORE.
No more can we allow the crowning moment in our history to live in
shadow, just as we cannot allow the deeds of our most accomplished
to be overshadowed by the antics of our least ambitious. Near the
end of his mortal existence, Dr. Martin Luther King famously
queried, "Where do we go from here: chaos or community?"
Over-the-Rhine was chaos. Is this what we choose for ourselves? To
continue as the ungodly construct of victim and aggressor?
I say there is only one direction for us to travel, the path already
set. Dr. Condi and Colin are exceptional but not unique.
Empirically, Hanna wasn't a one-off. With the pair as way points by
which to plot a course, our collective ascension will be assured.
Undoubtedly, knees will jerk over this contention. The Reverends Al
and Jesse and all those who judge actions by the single criterion of
how they affect the remnants of the Movement will ask: These? These
two are your ne plus ultra blacks? These two who caved to the will
of the Right? Powell, whose dog-and-pony show at the UN revealed his
true bent? Rice, whose "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying" for The New York
Times showed her lack of spine? These two who sent America off to
folly in Iraq?
I say yes.
Black America must look to that lost moment and realize that, short
of a brother or sister actually being elected president, Hanna was
the high-water mark of black political power. And whether Operation
Iraqi Freedom is ultimately good and right and just, or if it is
lousily named and uniformly disastrous, what is essential is that
Dr. Condi and Colin earned for themselves positions from which to
sway public debate.
That is, power.
Dr. Condi and Colin personify what niggers have forgotten: All that
matters is accomplishment. The very pinnacle of ascendancy is the
ability to live and work without regard for the sentiments of others
and with, as Sister Rand would tell us, a selfish virtue.
We came up from slavery to freedom without regard for the
Constitution, which gave us nothing, and the plantation masters, who
gave us the whip. We came up from oppression to civil rights without
regard for hurled bricks and sicced police dogs. Water hoses. The
word nigger.
This, then, is my directive: Let us achieve with equal disregard for
the limitations of racism and the weight of those of us who threaten
to drag all of us down with the clinging nature of their eternal
victimization. Our preservation is too essential to be stunted by
those unwilling to advance. And in my heart I don't believe all
blacks cannot achieve in the absence of aid any more than I believe
the best way to teach a child to run is by forcing him to spend a
lifetime on his knees.
As long as we remain committed to holding high our individuals of
supreme finish, others will be inspired to loose themselves of the
gravity of the waywards and downtroddens.
Once free, they will rise. They will drift high toward the
attainments of which we are invariably capable; being better fathers
and husbands and lovers. Better mothers and daughters, sisters and
best friends. We will rise to the simple obligation of taking care
of our own with the same dedication we will give to improving our
community and country and our world. Yes, our influence will extend
so.
Where do we go from here?
The only direction we can.
The New Black America will ascend.
posted by Carla at 11:16 AM
3 comments
"Key victories across the country include Patricia Todd (
