Hounds On The Trail: Legacy of Jim Crow

'Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an 'unwritten law' that justifies them in putting human beings to death' (Ida B. Wells) There was a reason lynch mobs enjoyed the tarring and feathering of black men in Deep South America: for they knew the emasculation of the black man was the apogee in dehumanization. The soul-scars of his humiliation would remain an eternal reminder to his own people whilst the psychological flogging of his manfulness would garrotte him slowly, surely, mentally, physically. There was a reason lynch mobs engineered circus-try, torturing their victims publicly before the noose became their final relief and reprieve; To defile his spirit and castrate him before Kodak cameras was psychological warfare at it's most grotesquely effective; to tell the watching world, both black and white, that the Black Man could, after all, be conquered. They grinned at the camera lens, smiling and pointing at their prey to demonstrate that to snatch a black mans life without the foreplay of first raping him of his dignity would lessen the pleasure. Mighty black leviathans disempowered by yellow bellied invertebrates. Traumatised black carcasses, triumphant white egos. The penalty of minor infractions judged but never proven. When the LAPD pummelled Rodney King on a roadside captured by a shaky video camera (the very reason we know Kings name) officers issued some 33 blows and at least six fully-charged kicks. They swarmed like hyenas in the night, drunk with power, wielding phallic weapons. And just as the victims of lynch mobs were often hung from a noose after they're deaths (having already died of the injuries sustained from whips and kicks and boots and blows) as a brutal rubber-stamp of their prowess; King (despite being unable to move) was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and cordcuffs. Rodney King devoted the subsequent 21 years to leading a war on police brutality, he was a husband and father, he was awarded $3.8 million in court for his troubles. He was admitted to rehab to conquer the demons that ravaged his mind. He was found in 2012, aged just 47, drowned and pumped full of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and PCP. I say, the police killed him that March evening as they laid blows into his emasculated body. It simply took two decades for those 33 thrashes to reach his cerebral cortex where self-mutilating hatred finally took an addictive hold and whispered to him in suicudal symphonies. For the anguish of his hard-hearted flogging to shackle itself around his heart and plunge into the condition lying dormant in his arteries and stop it's beat. I've no doubt in my mind that Slager enjoyed the spectacle of watching a respected, loved, mature father of four run like a deer in his metaphorical hunters crosshairs. Many a lyncher has enjoyed revving their chainsaw, releasing bloodhounds, or firing shotguns into the weeping skies and watching their prey scurry into the woods. And as Walter Scott ran into the woods, my sinews wailed as he ran; a deer amidst trees that had once perhaps borne strange fruit. I balked at every bullet; bent down to hear his final sigh. I wept as they crouched down to cuff him. And left him there alone. It is not simply the murder of black men than wreaks of the lynching of old, it is the grimace, the grinning, the execution of an age old tactic in humiliation. It is the one moment in which Slager paused to eagle-eye Walter Scott scamper and scuttle before taking aim and shooting him five times that must surely Remind Us that lynching, in all it's cool-blooded, delivery and demeanour; in all it's bestial liturgies and rites; in all of it's seasoned venatics and big-game hunting ... Lives On. The memory of the United States of Amnesia might be conveniently sawed off and niggardly, but our memories must be long. 'My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps.' Maya Angelou)

A Note on Bleaching out Brownness

Subject: Modern celebrities are white-washing standards of beauty by bleaching out brownness. When a visibly paler-skinned Kim Kardashian sashayed her way through crowds in Paris this week, the paparazzi went wild for her platinum mane debut; my heart sunk. Not because I have a personal vendetta against blonde as a hair choice but because it is yet another feather in the cap for Aryan-ised trends. All the while, the features of black and brown women are becoming seemingly out of season. Just weeks ago, Zandaya was the subject of a fracas for brandishing a natural african hairstyle; the fallout of which included a so-called Fashion Police surmising that Zandaya smells of patchouli and weed. Yet as Kim Kardashian parades lighter skin and blanched tresses she is hailed as fashions unlikeliest yet most recent trailblazer. This once exotic, tanned, black-haired Armenian reality star has now banded a growing trail of paling celebrities. Beyoncé, Rita Ora, Amber Rose, and a myriad of others whom are endorsing a niche that is steadily diminishing brown features (Unless, of course, it is the sexualised Venus Hottentot inspired Africanesque derrière) from the modern teenage girls conceptions of comeliness. It is hard not to view this as a backwards step in the centuries -old battle for black and brown women to be recognised as natural beauties in arenas where blonde and blue-eyed standards have long been considered elite.

As Black Boys Slay Eachother

There was once a time and place in which we did not gauge masculinity by the acquisition of land and the construction of buildings, the claiming of earth with guns and territory and lines drawn with blood; these were learned from the colonialist blueprint. We once built foundations on the inheritance of a given name, a sacred ancestry; an identity exhumed by illustrious history, purpose manifested by nurturing historic soil, sowing and reaping; the responsibility handed from father to son, from mother to daughter. The whyfor and whatfor held in the honour of hoisting tradition onto our shoulders. Our boys now claim corners on streets that have and never will be their own; they boast postcodes that were written up long before our diasporic arrival, defend corners that were never the bosom. Corners they are scoffed at for treading only footprints into by true blues and bluecoats whom need no warrant to stop search and remove them from the street sign they lay claim to. As though reading from scrolls penned by colonials themselves; they bulwark lanes with odonyms for Romans not Africans, champion territories that belonged to Mobs before Mandem. They lay claim to the machete heirloom that skinhead Brick Lane Massive's wielded to look-see black men. Retired now, they recline and relax as our sons lynch on their behalf, plunging blades into mirror images of themselves but never seeing the suicidal irony. Belowing 'this is MY endz', as black boy blood saturates cold concrete lands. They obey the colonialist command and never question the abject absurdity of it all, for they no longer see themselves in the selfsame whose soul lies lifeless within chalk lines and yellow tape. Taking selfies by corpses reminiscent of happy Deep South lynchers who captured black souls hung from ropes in their luminous glare. Their victims preserved as visual souvenirs; modern L.D Nelson's strung up before deerstalkers who are no longer white hicks. Conscripted soldiers in a cold war, Manchurian candidates launched into unrighteous battle. There is no bequest or birthright in a land that was never ours; no endowments in estates; merely a divide and conquer master plan rendered effective and achieved. As black boys erase themselves before our eyes.

Rodney King Baby Yeah Beat Her Like A Cop...

…..RODNEY KING BABY… YEAH… BEAT HER LIKE A COP….. Over the years I have focused on the most blatant forms of destruction through Gangsta Rap as means of demonstrating how italicised and underlined the writing appears on our community walls. The sad reality is that the signs are all too often written in code, the detection of our demise mocked openly by Gangsta Rap not as opaque as we might like. This bloodcurdling thought came to me some weeks ago as the belligerent sound of Lil Wayne (the ‘lil’ perhaps the source of his palpable insecurities) poured from the mouth of a teenage boy on the bus. Lil Wayne sneered at me vicariously (laughing as he did so) ‘Rodney King baby yeah beat her like a cop’ his, now fairly old release, ‘Mrs Officer’ a song which, on a surface level, addresses his fantasy of seducing a female police officer. It would seem that the devoted, fervent mood that spiralled after Rodney Kings violent thrashing was caught on an eighty-one second video tape and sparked the controversy regarding police brutality and led to eventual indictments of the officers has packed up and gone to a leisurely luncheon. Let us not forget the unforgettable riots that followed, resulted in the bloody deaths of 9 people injuries to over 138. Before and after this bloody episode, ‘excessive force’, ‘police brutality’ were terms that sent shivers down the spine of the collective. We were once Rodney King. We once squirmed at the mention of Rodney Kings mauling, writhed at the memories of Rodney’s hands raised protectively over his head as he cowered beneath the thrashing batons and brutal shoe soles of the local authorities. We held our heads in our hands as we saw ourselves, our fathers, our sons lying powerlessly on the pavement, shamed, degraded, disgraced, brutalised like a scene from 1940’s Harlem. The very image of a group of white Here To Serve men beating a single unarmed black man too much of a painful reminder within our genetic memory, an emblematic twinge, the symbolism of which thumped us, changed us, moved us. Twenty four years on, however, it would appear that Lil Wayne might openly use Rodney’s experience as part of his perverse sexual daytime chart topping music. He is authorized to explicitly and unreservedly declare Rodney’s name as he fantasizes. He is allowed to and we let him. We let him because we do not hear him as we buy his CD’s and absorb his messaging. I’m sure there is a suited blissfully ignorant Daily Mail reader whom would keenly assure us that we are no longer moved by any disrespectful reference to Rodney King because we have simply ‘moved on’, police brutality is a rarity, we have the benefit of being able to laugh casually because we are part of a modernised, innovative, peaceable society. In 2006, Eunice Barber competed for Sierra Leone and then for France and won the heptathlon at the World Championships in Athletics in 1999, the long jump in 2003 and finished second in heptathlon in 2003 and 2005. Barber, who like many black female athletes symbolised physical female endurance, and success the likes of which we so rarely witness, ‘participated’ in what the news flagrantly termed a ‘Police scuffle’ (notably a term which Wikipedia is reluctant to change). Eunice, a local and national treasure, had on the day of her alleged ‘scuffle’ taken a wrong turn down a road, the consequences of which were devastating. When the police approached her car, Eunice wound down her window, at which point the male officer slapped her around the face. Others arrived, and a full-blown attack ensued. Eunice, who sat at a Parisian Press conference wearing a neck brace and relayed an account which included her hands being stamped on, being kneeled on by five officers, the loss of use of her arm, hair pulling, racist taunts (‘Do you believe you could behave like this in Africa?’) sat in bewilderment relaying her sordid experience, “Mentally, I’m bewildered. I feel as affected psychologically as physically.” A hero abused by the country she championed. And as the police bent over into her ears and sneered ‘You are lucky that there are people looking; otherwise, we would have done much worse. When you get out of here you’ll need crutches ’ somewhere in the distance Lil Wayne drools ‘Rodney King Baby yeah beat her like a cop’ and no one flinches. In his world, Eunice's experience is simply a modern male fantasy. His need to embody the white cop and become the victimiser himself more important than his need to defend his sister.

Avowal of The African Woman

Avowal of The African I am BLACK Woman/Queen/GODDESS I am BETA and GAMMA, ALPHA, GENESIS AND OMEGA I am The beginning and The end, the First and the Last I am the MAKEDA that is ETHIOPIC My luminosity is the atramentous membrane that adorns my essence . I am the Original beauty that is clouded charcoal, ebon hued and melanoid. I am the ink in the obsidian gemstone and the onyx, I am the carbon shade in the starless sky... Waxaan Ahay Hooyo iyo qof wax Abuura... I am the EVE that is MITOCHONDRIAL I am the MARY that is MARTYR.... Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani I have hurled my body from ships into the sobbing oceans I have created with saline tears. AND STILL From these stygian waters I emerged TANGANKIYA: The eternal lake.... I am both the source and the destination. I am YEMOJA: The mother of water and childbirth, slow moving over seas. I have told my legend to my children In chants and cantatas... Ni dyar'izuba, Rizagaruga, Hejuru yadju... In poems and in blues songs On soap boxes and picket lines. Providence is forged within my womb. He made me in His Image and sighed... EESHA. KISMET throbs in the yellow palm of my calloused hand. I have crawled to freedom on my knees Fought battles with bare knuckles Wailed at pitiless skies when ropes have bound me to trees As strange fruit... Ndiri Mukradzi... Ndiri Musiki... AND STILL I am the NEFERTITI that is possessed of charm I have worn my barbed crown as RAIN QUEEN... BELOBEDU Against water hoses and rainlessness Against bulldogs and bullets Against tear gas and tanks Needles and nooses. Bombings and birth control. Lynch mobs and looted villages. I have pitted rock against revolver. I have been massacred in RWANDA, buried embryonic in HAITI... De blocaille je me leverai I have burned in MISSISSIPI.... burning. AND STILL I am the BILQIS that is SHEBA My soul has risen up from uprisings So I may live on in TUAREG and MODJADJI With HE GODS at my side I have been ATAI: Goddess of argument and death With machete hacking my limbs I have recoiled And been reborn as ANDRIAMAHILALA: Moon Goddess, I am the Moon. I have been a sojourner I have been warrior as ASSATA and HATSHEPSUT I have been Harriet, The Moses of my Own people. I am Queen of ZAZZUA... Yar Bakwa Ta san Rana I am the CANDACE that is Empress of Darker than Blue people. Shamed and smeared, mauled and misapplied, I have died Laura Nelson swinging to protect my boy child AND STILL I have am MWANAMKE... WOMAN Mwari Mambokadzi.... Copyright@Daniella Maison 2010 Trans: Ni dyar'izuba, Rizagaruga, Hejuru yadju: when will the sun rise again? (Rwandan dialect) Yar Bakwa Ta san Ran: As capable as any man (Amina’s line - Ethiopian) Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani..... (father why have you forsaken me - Hebrew) Ndiri Mukadzi - I am Woman Ndiri Musiki - I am creator Mwari Mambokadzi - Goddess Queen (Zimbabwean dialect) Waxaan Ahay Hooyo iyo qof wax Abuura – I am mother and creator (Somalian dialect) De blocaille je me leverai – From this rubble I shall rise (French) Eesha – Woman (Hebrew)

Tribute To Gil

Tribute to Gil Scot Heron When I awoke to the news that OurGreat Gil had died (news brought to us in the early hours by my 19-year old brother - in itself a gargantuan testimony to the illimitable, amaranthine dynamism of Gils legacy that while ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ was released when Gil was just 18-years old, some 40 years ago, intelligent teens Dig It today as though he is their own peer) we were desolate to have lost OurGreatest creative influence. Like the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy, Gil’s death was not announced on British terrestrial news, the death of a revolutionary Was Not Televised. A luminous summers afternoon was rendered decalescent. Our creative juices washed out. Our souls sent into A Blue Funk. Gil sheepishly described himself as a "bluesologist",which he defined as ‘a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues’. Yet he was very much more. The God-father of rap, he was A One Man Last Poet. He was maestro, apostle, revolutionary, versifier, activist, raptivist, maker, mover and shaker. Gil’s skill was that despite his indisputable effulgence he was never preacher, sermonizer, or cavalier. He never claimed to be our prophet or visionary. He was all the while otherworldly but never seraphic. He was The People’s Poet. He was a flawed being, he was OneOfUs. A drug addict, an HIV sufferer, Gil inhabited a small apartment in Harlem, and had spent many recidivous years in the malevolent grip of diamorphine. Gil could never be confused with the polished hero defined by the predictably impeccable terms we have come to so mundanely demand of our idols. He was Our AntiHero, our leading poetic protagonist so conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero but whom remained an inimitable champion. I am an appreciator of brutal candour and raw realism in artists and their artistry. When borne from a genuine intention for righteousness and revolution it speaks to us like nothing else. Gil, whom channelled so uniquely the spirits of Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Nina Simone and has birthed numerous protégés and genres in his wake, reminded us that incorrigible agenda’s have not yet eliminated elevated expression from our collective vantage point. There existed in him the audacity, backbone, bravery, bravura, daring, and dauntlessness that speaks across generations, pulling no punches. There existed in him the challenger whom dared to stand, fist clenched, unapologetically pitching the truths in the spirit of the Panthers, Garveyites, Stono Rebels and Pan Africanists. He reminded us that with intention firmly in place, rectitude needn't always be whispered in airy tones, it can, and must, be screamed lewdly, proudly, ouchly. Gil was the modern pathfinder for speaking in tumultuously colourful tones in places that are dully grey with agenda, hypocrisy and colonial minds. Yet, his wizardry came with an elephantine cost. The heroin dependence that had ravaged his beanstalk body for so long had become his master, his mistress, his nemesis and his swami and he had frequently mused, explicitly and opaquely, of the devilish self-willed monkey on his back "Early this mornin', when you knocked upon my door, And I said, "Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go." It was as though, on May 27th, his job here done, he had simply stood up, alpine in both height and spirit, and strolled with a steady slow gait, out of the world and from our peripheral vision. ‘A junkie walking through the twilight I'm on my way home I left three days ago, but no one seems to know I’m gone Home is where the hatred is Home is filled with pain and it, might not be such a bad idea if I never, never went home again home is where i live inside my white powder dreams home was once an empty vacuum that's filled now with my silent screams home is where the needle marks try to heal my broken heart and it might not be such a bad idea if I never, if I never went home again’ There exists Medieval tales which describe a person who, who when faced with an enigma blocking his road, goes into the forest, to wrestle dark demons, to do battle with darkness. He pursues a new journey. Sometimes he returns and brings with him fragments of an old, forgotten religion. Sometimes he brings with him a vision. Sometimes he simply vanishes, changed irreconcilably in the woodland. I imagine he has dwelled perhaps a moment, resting beneath a Cedar tree. Glassy skies, resplendent lakes revealing his souls reflection. Then, across broad moors he follows a resonating silence, embracing its buoyant vastness. Beyond the sun he sees he's home as he approaches the road not taken. He descends from the hills in dewy mystery. The world he left is not the same, and so he travels to new worlds. Nomadic in his stride. There Exists Tales... Extinguished now… Unconquered still… Gil Scott Heron

Repose

In Response to the assertion that white coporations are solely responsible for the state of modern gangsta rap and that successful rappers are unwitting pawns. DearEsteemedBrother... I understand your lukewarm footnote about 'killers' and 'vultures' but this vague distinction still screams Arriere-Pensee. I will say this note reads a little like An Apologist Script, a lot like A Cop Out and mostly like Abject Nonsense. To say 'corporate rap is not hip hop' is merely a matter of priveleged semantics. For, unfortunately, for the generation whom are actually being buried alive by this inexorable industry, corporate rap IS hip hop. You abstractly deciding to draw a half baked fine line between the two based on your rosey memories of a bygone musical era that existed before Hip-hop's victims were even born does not alter the reality we are faced with. I agree. The corporation is at the heart of ths issue, that is elementary, it is abecedarian. 'Modern' 'Commercial' 'Gangsta' Hip Hop music is a product produced by giant corporations for mass distribution to a carefully targeted and cultivated demographic market. I fully acknowledge the corporate Dr. Frankensteins that created Snoop &co. However, the modern reality is they have become as liable and as consciously responsible as the euroamerican corporations who pioneered this crafty bamboozlement. 50Cent and Snoop were knocking about and in full swing when it was a conscious domain. 50cent (who penned the song 'Make Money By Any Means') soon realised that to amass the $180 million he has done that rapping with an elevated consciouness simply wouldn't cut it. With a nudge, a wink and an inspired thought from his fat bellied corporate boss he made His Own Decision as a business man while Compos Mentis. Why do you so proudly neglect to acknowledge his business acumen, his 'laudible' savvy, his astute perspicacity for renumeration? These are sagacious, discerning, men whom made the decision to lead our people like sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. You afford them far too little credit. I do also understand that as colonized and racially oppressed peoples we internalize, take ownership of and re-birth the social pathologies fostered by the coloniser. But let me ask you, where do you draw the line with your apologetic theorum? Let's for a moment assert that the thousands of women being raped in the congo are the victims of men imitating King Leopold II . A nation of mass xerox and carbon copy echoes. If I were in the country faced by one of these heinous hideous rapists, I'd accept, I'd acknowledge. Perhaps he would at some point hold his head in acknowledgement too. But I assure you that given half the chance i'd gleefully remove his Family Jewels without apology. 50Cent wrote P.I.M.P at a time when the sex trafficking industry is bigger than ever. This is big business; globally, it is an over 30 billion dollar industry, all money made from selling children and young girls to be raped. As he walked on set with pulling black women by dog leads around their leads are you sincerly asking me to believe that he missed the memo? Yes, Public Enemy's 'Fear Of A Black Planet' was a revelatory paean to empowerment and white psychoanalysis. But here's the new message of rap and hip-hop, courtesy of the top-selling artist and convicted rapist Mystikal: Stop ya cryin' heifer I don't need all that Got a job for you The braided-up pimp is back Break them handcuffs Forget your man Move somethin' Also, whom is blaming hip-hop for 'all' our troubles? The art reflects the culture and in turn the culture reflects the art. The advancement of our community depends on the abandonment of this pitifully compunctuous codependancy. Liberally bleeding hearts for Us Poor Victims while waving irreproachable fingers at the rich white man is not how we teach our young men to be accountable young men. This Is Not How We Teach Them To Man Up.