Ishmael Reed - Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media - The Return of the Nigger Breakers

Not unlike his infamous Father’s Day speech of last year, Obama was signaling, and signifying, elsewhere. In this case to the very centers of capital that were founded and solidified by colonialism in Africa! These remain to this very day, no matter what anybody would like to say, the paymasters for the various military, paramilitary, terrorist and so called counter terrorist groups throughout the continent.

The United States government, vis. the Pentagon, the State Department, etc. are fully intent on fighting a proxy war with China over the resources in Africa. The very resources that without which the economy of the West would come to screeching halt. Coltan, the essential ingredient in the manufacture of IT, Sony Play Stations, laptops, cell phones of all varieties etc. is known to be the source of the conflict in Northeastern Congo’s Inure Forest. Can you imagine what would happen if the expedition of this precious mineral were slowed down or halted? Stocks, as you know, are traded on projected earnings. The height of the “dot com boom” was the period when, according to the UN and countless NGOs, that close to seven million people died there. We didn’t hear any outcry about that. Bob Herbert, whose column last week on Michael Jackson was unforgivable, seems to think it’s all about rape. I guess that’ll put him in solid with Eve Ensler and her crowd. Which brings us back to AFRICOM. Bush was laying down the groundwork for Obama to make that speech. He’s following up on errands. Obama, however, can do this as propagandist foil in a way they could not. That aside, Bush had laid out a plan for war in Africa just prior to the formation of AFRICOM before its creation in 2007. As larger and larger oil discoveries were being made there in 2003, 2004, and 2005, organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations and Hoover Institute began publishing policy papers and research identifying the continent as the emerging front in the “war on terror.” This is the true context for Obama’s speech and the guide for its content as well. Obama’s speech was even covered in the Times with the headline that it was “Tough Love”!

This kind of “personal responsibility” line is perfectly in tune with the recent attempts, sometimes successful, to shame and humiliate African leaders by dragging them in front of the ICC, such as Charles Taylor, or in lieu of that, falsely suggesting that they should be, as in Bashir of Sudan.

About Obama’s NAACP speech Kofi Natambu wrote:

To constantly single out one general national community for what is frankly a rather theatrical and self-serving series of public performances and admonitions that too often treats us as a bunch of errant, mischievous children in dire need of Daddy’s spankings is not only deeply insulting but an affront to what the president’s relationship to us — and all other American citizens! — should actually be. That relationship is or should be that of a committed politician and public servant engaging and paying attention to its citizenry. After all, Obama is not a preacher/minister/pastor/rabbi and we are not his flock! And thank God/Allah/Buddha for that! The last thing the black community needs at this point in our history is yet still another arrogant preacher and/or fundamentalist and overly self-righteous church telling us what to do!

Obama chided black folks in his “Rev. Wright speech”; Obama chided black folks in his NAACP speech; Obama chided blacks in his Africa speech; he even chided Arabs/Muslims in his Cairo speech. When is Obama going to chide white people about anything? How about white people going out and getting a legitimate job, instead of turning to dangerous and even potentially explosive meth labs for income? How about working-class white people not blaming all their problems on Latino immigrants? How about white people raising their teenage sons not to go out and shoot up random innocent victims (often targeting girls) at the school for whatever reasons their sons do? How about white males being man enough to not go back and shoot up innocent victims at the workplace just because they lost their job and/or their marriage, but going out to look for another job (they tell us black people that any job is better than no job, right? Even flipping burgers at McDonalds, or sweeping floors, or doing menial yard work — no matter your age)?

So, it’s Obama who regularly chides/chastises only black or brown people for all their stereotypical faults, before — and for — the white world’s television cameras. It’s Obama who told black Americans that, “We must respect the verdict,” when the trial judge [a potentially risky jury trial, if I recall offhand, was opted out of by the cops] exonerated the New York City cops in the Sean Bell case, cop’s hail of fifty bullets, legalized murder case. And it’s Obama who publicly turned 180 degrees on his old friend Skip Gates, just as he turned his back on his old friend Jeremiah Wright (for something Wright said in church when Obama wasn’t even in church and wasn’t even going to that church at the time — or when Obama was a kid?) So, if these are “teachable moments,” as Obama said, then what are they supposed to teach us about Obama or any, “finally, honest national discussion” about race — like the Clintons turned both their backs on their “old family friend” Lani Guinier (even in the face of right-right-wing racist and sexist slurs!) when she wanted to have an honest national discussion about race (instead Bill turned to his phony racism commission), especially in the nation’s universities. So — once again — we know we will never get an “honest national discussion” about anything in the mainstream American media and especially not on television (not even on PBS or NPR), and certainly not from even the nation’s first officially or ostensibly black/African/biracial (whatever he actually calls himself) American president. My total wrap on Gates’ and Obama’s initial comments about the Gates arrest incident: they both said (at least from what I caught on the news) all the right things for all the wrong reasons.

No publishers are rushing to publish manuscripts by the young writers Justin Desmangles and Kofi Natambu. They are engaged in noble guerilla warfare against a propaganda machine that has billions of dollars at its disposal. NBC is worth thirty-eight billion alone. News Corp which sponsors Fox News includes right-wing individuals on its board with ties to multinational corporations, according to San Francisco’s Bay Guardian newspaper:

Occupying other seats at News Corp’s board table is an assortment of professors, attorneys, public-relations experts, and businessmen with their fingers in a variety of banks and multinational corporations. Among the more familiar names are Phillip Morris, Ford Motor Co., Hewlett Packard, Goldman Sachs, HSBC North America, and JP Morgan Chase. Lesser known are the investment banking firms that have stakes in the petroleum industry, utilities, mining companies, and real estate.

While the connections between corporate interests and the country’s leading conservative propagandist are extensive and obvious, there’s a stark contrast between the message delivered by Fox News and the interests of its parent company.

Pierre-Damien, also a radio host, Justin Desmangles and Kofi Natambu are waging an uphill battle by using limited equipment against the corporate Behemoth that smothers dissenting opinion, but this is an improvement over the situation in the past when blacks, Latinos and others were subjected to an electronic mugging with no means with which to fight back. Others have chosen the stage to combat the media’s smearing of unpopular groups. In the fall of 2009, I was also able to witness the collaboration between other young people of different ethnic backgrounds, in their effort to challenge the way unpopular and misunderstood groups are portrayed by the media.