The Long Beach State professor who sent us the thousand-word screed below is the type of insecure, television-clowning race hustler who lives to genuinely celebrate rare moments such as the Trayvon Martin murder. So seldom do these crimes occur that the professor unleashes his whole lexicon of memorized naughty words when a camera trains on him.
The liberal black commentator (surely that is superfluous) Juan Williams noted this week in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/ that 93 percent of black homicide victims were killed by fellow blacks. Darn. There goes that tinpot theory. Right, professor?
Mr. Williams says that We Are Victims blacks, such as the professor, wring their hands over phoniness instead of focusing on the serious matters that should and do concern normal black and white people.
As for the professor, pettily envious of whites, throbbingly jealous of people who are happy with their fulfilled lives, he seeks to seed the grounds about him with the imaginary victimhood he has chosen for himself. He loves to share his self-imposed misery.
Like an alcoholic who has overdosed, the professor runs up and down the streets, screaming “I am a victim” until a foolishly empathetic person pats him on the head and coaxes him to calm down.
Such an obscene expenditure of precious energy. Clumsily, he uses radical terminology in about every sentence.
Initially, I was pleased to receive the essay, hoping the professor would shine fresh, provocative insights on the overwrought case. By the second sentence, the vulgar fury of the radical academic had turned my stomach. As racists do, he played despicable games with the truth because he had to bolster his sagging side.
Young Mr. Martin, we learn, had a thuggish side. Many 17 year olds slip off the rails, but the buffoonish racists can’t concede that. Desperate to plug the social side of his accusations, the profesor ludicrously called the killer a “white Hispanic.” Is that like a pink black man. Or a green President? You see, the killer is as Hispanic as President Obama is black. Right, professor? How disrespectfully the professor treated President Bush in his essay. He has stored enough self-hatred in his mental tank to blow himself to the moon.
It occurred to me that race hustlers such as the professor dully mark time in their disjointedly angry, lonely lives until they can perform their rites of racist hooliganism on those unusual occasions when a black person is killed by a non-black. Does anyone around the campus know how many years the professor has been waiting to step onto a racist stage and execute his dishonest act in such a juicy setting as the Martin death? His silly psychological games throughout the thousand words remind me of stopping to observe a car collision.
Finally, in paragraph seven we point out how the mad, mad professor, again unsure of his footing, uses a rhetorical gimmick – repeatedly resorting to double terms to bolster claims he feels slipping from his grasp – in an attempt to turn up the volume and distract the reader.
For your assessment:
Our Struggle Is Righteous, Good and Historic
From Dr. Maulana Karenga
[img]1376|left|Dr. Maulana Karenga||no_popup[/img]The savage and senseless murder of Trayvon Martin drives another nail in the coffin of “post-racial” confusion and double-talk about the devastating racial and racist reality of life and lived experience in U.S. society.
We pause and pay homage to Trayvon's shortened youthful life, to mourn his unnatural, undeserved death, and to share the immeasurable loss and incalculable grief continually suffered by his mother, Sybrina Fulton, his father, Tracy Martin, other family members and friends.
We commit ourselves to stand and act in solidarity with them to bring Trayvon's killer to justice, hold the police accountable for coddling and covering up for the killer, and to put an overdue end to the racist practices that have led to targeting, assaulting, arresting, false convictions, wrongful imprisonment and killing of so many other black boys and men in Sanford, Fl, and throughout the country.
The local and national African American communities rightfully have risen in revolt against the brutal injustice, vulgar irrationality and violently racist character of it all. Through struggle, they have raised up a hidden horror of racial injustice, forced the resignation of the police chief and state attorney general, prompted federal and state intervention and called into action people of goodwill around the world. Others in this country and around the world who value children, cherish life and love justice have joined in this compelling struggle to demand justice for Trayvon and to raise the larger issue of justice for all who have suffered and are continually threatened by similar racist targeting, brutal and degrading treatment, and deadly violence from both vigilantes and police.
The racist targeting and savage taking of Trayvon's life evolves as he, a 17-year-old black youth, is walking back to the residence he and his father are visiting. He had gone to the store for a bag of candy and a can of tea. He is seen and targeted by George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, a self-appointed overseer of an imaginary white plantation, self-medicated and drunk on racial myths and pathetic dreams of undeserved relevance, and a trigger-happy guardian of racialized space.
Zimmerman calls 9-1-1 to share his racist slurs and illusions, describing Trayvon as “suspicious”, “walking and looking around”, “up to no good”, and “on drugs or something.” He is explicitly told not to follow Trayvon, but high on racial hatred, he continues to pursue him. Thus, we hear in horror how Trayvon is hunted down as prey, how he tries to elude this prehistoric hunter of boys and men, and how he is intercepted and killed in cold blood as he cried for help.
It is said that Florida's “Stand Your Ground and Shoot First” law contributed to this vicious killing of Trayvon.
[Paragraph 7]Certainly, it gives some support and sanctuary to Zimmerman and kind, but it is only part of the social picture. The larger source of support and sanctuary for this callous and cave behavior is society itself, and the deep-rooted remains of racist thought and practice. It is this racism that provides the ready-made and repeatedly used store of racial stereotypes and irrationalities, which already are part of the racist counter discourse to demonize and indict Trayvon, the child, and the unarmed and pursued victim and to defend and exonerate Zimmerman, the adult and armed and out-of-control aggressor.
The killing of Trayvon is not an isolated incident in either number, kind or location, but a pervasive and persistent problem in the country, rooted in racism and the centuries-old practice of racializing crime and criminalizing a particular “race” or people.
To racialize crime is to consider it a racial characteristic instead of a social reality and as a racial problem of a particular people rather than a social problem of society as a whole. This leads to criminalization of a race, especially, peoples of color, tagging and targeting them as a menace to society.
In such a racialized and ultimately racist context, black boys and men are seen as especially dangerous, always under suspicion and as a result, are routinely denied the right of presence, security of person, equal protection under the law and ultimately the right to life. Black boys and men are constantly apprehensive about being out of racial and social bounds, trapped behind enemy lines, and classified as “enemy combatants,” long before Bush coined the term to deny POWs legal and human rights.
And their parents and other loved ones share this persistent apprehension, for they know that no matter how much survival instruction and advice they give them about racially appropriate speech, behavior, dress and attitude, the racist character of society still leaves them vulnerable and potential victims.
President Obama indirectly reaffirmed this shared black male vulnerability in his customarily cautious and indirect way, saying, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
It is said in some quarters that it's not an issue of black and white, but one of justice; however, the victim is black and the justice is for him, his family and his people. If a Jew was targeted as a Jew and sought justice, we would not say, it's not about Jew and anti-Jew, it's just about justice. Thus, if racial injustice is imposed on us, recognition of it and racial justice are required to remove it. Are we to outlaw racism discourse because it makes our oppressors and the peace-without-justice crowd uncomfortable? Or are we to follow the ancient African moral mandate “to bear witness to truth and set the scales of justice in their proper place among those who have no voice”, i.e., the vulnerable, violated and murdered?
It is a righteous, good and historic struggle we wage here, not only for justice for Trayvon and family, but for all the others who have suffered and continue to suffer in this social context of racism, racial vulnerability and systemic violence-structural and personal. This and other particular struggles must be linked to our larger struggle for radical racial and social justice around issues of wealth, power and status. And we must remain steadfast and not be diverted or dispirited by inevitable calls for calm, healing, reconciliation, official hearings, deference to formal processes, and a passive peace without justice. Our struggle has always been against oppression and exploitation in various forms and this continues to require the relentless, rightful and radical transformation of society, marking out the fields and laying the foundation for maximum human freedom, justice and flourishing and the Maatian well-being of the world.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, -Long Beach State; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of “Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies,” 4th Edition, may be contacted at www.MaulanaKarenga.org.
