Seeing beyond the limits of our existence as so-called black men in America has served as this spindle of my messaging to my coevals and our posterities through the years of my writings. It was college professor and Ph.D journalist Stacey Patton's book 'Spare the Kids' and her lecture on 'How Killing Black Kids is An American Tradition' that tilled this revelatory insight to my advocacy for young black men and boys. Dr Patton divulged THE OTHER SIDE to the report pertaining to the recovery of Emmett Till's remains from the Tallahatchie River in August 1955.
When Clarence Strider, the corpulent sheriff of Mississippi's Tallahatchie County retrieved Till's body it wasn't the first discovery. In fact, during the manhunt for Emmett's body by authorities, the bodies of several young black men, some under the age of 12, were revealed and fished out of the river. It's evident that the Tallahatchie River served as this ossuary for black male corpses at the hands of white terrorists. Lynching was a delicacy and in many ways functioned as a rite of passage for preteen white males. The bane of settler colonialist existence and the bloodletting object of derision has always been out-group men, which in America are black males.
One has to ask, what are the longitudinal effects of this anti-black, misandric triaging of such an abject degree of terrorism on the bodies of the black males of America? Well, my preeminent goal in this quartet of writings is to string together the beads of plight that black males face by highlighting patterns of intentional neglect by the federal government. An institution that eschewed for decades the barbaric, cannibalistic behavior towards black males; choosing even to ignore medicinal cannibalism at times. When examining what was performed on the corpse of Nat Turner after he was executed, Cassandra Newby-Alexander noted Turner's "body was torn apart. It was stripped of skin and boiled. The bones were distributed and body fat was used to make soap. Lamp shades and pocketbooks were made from his skin." Also see William D. Pierson's 'White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression, and Religious Faith as Causes of Suicide Among New Slaves' and sift through reams of material that revealed the ritualistic drinking of blood of young black boys, preferably under the age of 14, after they were tortured and executed from drownings or hangings; all for the vitality, exuberance, and life force energy that black teens of that age range were said to possess.
Additionally, the filmmaker, writer, journalist Daniel P. Mannix and his works 'The History of Torture' and 'Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade' provide even more lurid details of the medicinal cannibalism practices whites carried out on black males. These are just a few examples of how black males were continuously left in the lurch, which eventually led to the same neglect shown through meted out social aide and federal subsidies. Black males' needs are at best adumbrated, and are never addressed holistically or full-throatedly. Affairs that have become shorelines receding into this all-inclusive sea of politics as a response by racist, left-wing whites and their cadre of out-group accomplis.
Settler colonialism through class collaboration produced an iteration of attitudes that are disdaining and exposes a deposition of ideas of systemic collusion towards black males. One unremitting choice of strategy by what's colloquially termed as 'leftist groups' is to drown out any ideas of assisting black males through a cacophony of intersectional squawking used as a smoke bomb by feminist rainmakers who engage in this game of political recognition. Such political maneuver blunt any efforts of remedying these racial, as well as gendered shunted plagues of black males in America.
An example of these collaborative collusion efforts happened in February of 2014 when President Barack Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum to launch an initiative called 'My Brothers Keeper' (MBK). The purpose of MBK was to
"address persistent opportunity gaps faced by black boys and young black men and ensure that they could reach their full potential."
Many African-American men across the country roistered when this was initially announced. Addressing the more at risk out-group in America with so many previously usurped attempts was surely a promethean idea. While we as black men were sanguine about the possibilities of this initiative, and before the ticker-tape could land, there stood THE OTHER SIDE of the same party fraught with bile. The concept of solely helping black boys set off such conflagration in the hearts and souls of feminist across the nation.
Exhibit A: Senior political reporter for CNN and intersectional lesbian feminist, Nia-Malika Henderson was a chief responder. A few months after the initiative was announced she wrote an article for the Washington Post called '1000 Women of Color Want Women and Girls included in 'My Brothers Keeper'.
It's axiomatic from it's title that the mere thought of an agenda set for black males creates this undermining urge that is baked into the cake of feminism, intent on short-circuiting what the initiative was laboring towards. Even though MBK was niggardly funded, this also reiterates the emphasis of my previous article 'Ain't No Such Thing As Superman' in that the focus is not repairing the malnutrition of black males. To the contrary, it is a constant vying and clamoring for resources by undercutting attempts to aide black males, and for a certain cabal of feminist to get these "goodies" and "grab 'ems" or just stall the notions so the agenda will simply die on the vine. Anti-black male misandric black feminists and racist, white feminist engage in these acts without demure.
Exhibit B: An open letter of rebuttal to MBK was published to the African-American Policy Forum signed by notable feminists such as Professor of 'American Social Thought,' Mary Francis Berry, lawyer Anita Hill, intersectional feminist actress Rosario Dawson along with Alice Walker, famed author of the black misandric novel 'The Color Purple' as the linchpin signatory.
The article preserved the decades long prosody of petering out any effort concentrated on helping black men - who suffer the highest morbidity/mortality rate, highest homelessness rate, highest incarceration rate, are the leaders in being over sentenced, the least invested in educationally, the highest and most often overlooked rape victims, most killed at the hands of police, last adopted - so on ad nauseam, so on ad infinitum.
Feminist made a chintzy juxtaposition using situations like black girls being suspended at higher rates than other girls and sometimes much higher than boys. Huh? Misleading statements like this and inept comparisons to conditions of degradation of the bottom-casted become unsettling over time. The use of sophistry with an eye on intercepting carve-outs for black males is purely meretricious. It is especially tacky to attack a black male centered initiative when factoring in policies that were enacted during the first 100 days of Obama's first term like the 2009 'Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act' that made it easier for women to challenge unequal pay in court by effectively extending the statute of limitations on filing a claim along with countless other subsidies for black women and women in general. As long as settler colonialism thrives then this schematic of class collaboration that spawns the gaggle of different groups hankering for a buffer class position, will persist.
I want to be unequivocally clear in the conveyances of my work. There is a dearth of allies in this country for black males without any vistas of political support. The inward springs reveal our collective suppression at the hands of systematic, white imperialism by this settler colonial regime and their hatchlings. Which, undoubtedly are handmaidens termed feminist, a motley of immigrants , and swaths of black women who are receiving inclusive trinkets of symbolism as emoluments in lieu of reparative justice for their divestment from a collective fight. The cause du jour of our interminable oppression, whose biddings bear the motives.
Many ask, why point out the problem without providing a solution? Why play the blame game? Well, my rejoinder would be what hasn't been attempted and hampered by white supremacist and their co-conspirators?
To get to THE OTHER SIDE we must reveal and call out the cumulative, combatant attacks against the uplifting of black males. A recapitulation is necessary.
When author and Professor of Teacher Education Errol Miller suggested in his work 'Marginalisation of the Black Males' that a refocusing and redistributing public aide, educational opportunities, and placing a keen eye of investment on black males should be the aim, his idea was met with a salvo of criticism by white and black feminist which scuttled the plan.
Assistant Secretary of Labor and sociologist, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Harvard University Professor and sociologist, William Julius Wilson both submitted proposals to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton in different eras of time. Each presented plans to help the black family by first prioritizing black men as a conduit to helping the black family and community. They were both met with a blitzkrieg of protest by racist white feminist and their misandric bedfellow black feminist.
As recently as 2010, United States Studies Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars welcomed James T. Patterson, Ford Foundation Professor of History Emeritus, of Brown University to Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. for a fireside chat to discuss his book 'Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle Over Black Family Life -- from LBJ to Obama' with the Washington press. the first question, asked by Political Scientist and staunch feminist Jo Freeman, honed in on Patterson's take on Daniel Patrick Moynihan's idea of suggesting that the Johnson administration should take jobs increasingly being given to black women and redistribute them to black men. However, it must be noted Moynihan wasn't suggesting that you physically take jobs from black women, but instead place more of an effort and emphasis on getting black men gainfully employed. Helping black women by giving them jobs didn't help the black family. He was a prophet in that right.
The apparent syncretic correlations of these centrifugal forces with aims to burke any comprehensive initiative set forth by the federal government or suggested to the federal government for black males is lucid. White feminism, the obvious variant of white supremacy, as well as black feminist who've internalized racism towards their black male counterparts, all cohesively share this monomaniacal focus of keeping black men at a permanent underclass status. Black feminist, who are also a bottom caste, are like red-eyed vultures picking at a dead carcass. It's a torrid land for the advocacy of black males in this country, and the redemption is nil and could never lie in the hands of the public sector because of the anti-black male misandrous culture that's baked into the fabric of America. The salvation of black males will have to be an internal, private sector effort led by and comprised of other black men.
Great Article!