Marian's Blog

Summer reading? Britain, the Slaves & U.S. Revolution - "Rough Crossings"

We'd like to recommend a book for those interested: Simon Schama's Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution. Here's a video - Schama discussing this huge, terribly obscured chapter of Black American & U.S. history, with staff of Google. This history is growing serious legs. 

BBC snubs Cynthia McKinney: U.S. third-party candidates

The election may be over yet BBC has forever altered my perception of it as a relatively balanced source of international news. I was watching BBC TV News last Monday evening, Nov 3, as the announcer chirpily announced there actually were other candidates in the U.S. election. Surprise! He proceeded to name and show photos, first Ralph Nader (independent), ex-Republican, now Libertarian Bob Barr (a U.S. Afrodescendant who seems to self-identify as "white"), and the third candidate? I was pretty well waiting for the newsreader to note Cynthia McKinney, the U.S. Green Party candidate. Was I wrong. Instead the Beeb names... Gene Amondson. Gene Amondson?? Have you heard of Gene Amondson? Has he, like Cynthia McKinney, been a six-term (or even a one-term) member of the U.S. Congress? I don't recall BBC bothering to mention Mr. Amondson's party affiliation (perhaps more obscure than his name, if that's possible). And so Tuesday, election day, I looked it up on the Net. Apparently he belongs to the "Prohibition Party." Prohibition? I thought that failed in the 1930s. Thanks to BBC News, Cynthia McKinney out, Gene Amondson in. Here's a deeper, bitter irony: Cynthia McKinney bears a British surname; like almost all Black Americans, probably linked to slavery. She carries a family name of British origin and yet, so uncharacteristically, the BBC had not even the slightest desire to acknowledge her, let alone brag about her, on the basis of UK ties to this U.S. presidential candidate and her almost certain British slave-trade family history. How sad; how racist.

One reason I won't vote Democrat in 2008 (voting Green instead)

Politics may make "strange bedfellows," as the saying goes, but there have to be limits, and every now and then I reach one of mine. In this case, for me, it's around the 2008 U.S. presidential election. As Peter Finch's character shouted in the film Network, this is one year when I am not going to "take it" anymore.

Less than two years ago, in late November 2006, I received an email from a reader describing himself as a White American, telling me that (in his opinion - the only one that really counts, of course) he's "never committed even one act of "racism"..." [his quotes] in his life. Bravo for you, dude.

In fact, he started his email telling me that he's voted Democrat all his life. As I read, I wondered, "What Democratic Party member-profile does this guy fit?" How many Democrats think like him? I wondered, Are Democrats like him just ignored, or even accepted? That was then and this is now, and I leave it to others more interested than I to answer such questions. (Don't hold your breath...)

In 2008 the Democratic Party took things a step farther and found themselves the "kind" of "black" (as so many white Americans seem to like to say) they could feel "comfortable" to back for president; one whom even Joe Biden could bring himself to admire.

So this is the year when some Black people with the privilege to vote in the U.S. - i.e., people from different ethnic and national backgrounds (continental African, Caribbean, Black American, Afro-Latino) have convinced themselves that voting Democratic will somehow be "pan-African." Not only are most White voters left clueless about pan-Africanism and what it's supposed to be, some of those who will vote Nov. 4th for the Democrats selected black guy are the descendants of the same people who enslaved my family: in Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, South Carolina - and elsewhere. I call them "slaveholder descendants for Obama." These slaveholder descendants will feel good about themselves and their motives as they cast their votes for the Democratic candidate, even while they avoid and still steadfastly refuse any contact with or acknowledgement of me, my family and the history, places and country (also names and bloodlines) we share. Then there is the guy who sent the email below. Are these people really all on the same page? Good question, and yet relatively few Americans seem to have the stomach to attempt any acceptable answer.

In 2007 I finally shared the message below with Democrats Abroad email list. As I wrote to Dems Abroad, there is no etiquette for how to bring up such subjects, and yet I also know that they need to be raised and addressed, and not just by persons who look like me.

Greens' Rosa Clemente on WAMU.org Radio, 26 Aug

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney's running mate Rosa Clemente did a very informative interview earlier today with Kojo Nnamdi of WAMU-fm (part of American University). Great interview, Rosa. You can hear it online here. It seemed a bit strange when Clemente referenced history of the Young Lords political party and compared them to the Black Panthers. Nnamdi said most people were more familiar with the Panthers. I'm thinking this would depend on whom you talk with. Was Kojo being disingenuous? Also about the radio call-in from a Black American man who pointed out, accurately, the gulf of historical difference between Barack Obama's identity in and toward the U.S. (and the U.S. toward him) and that of the entire indigenous U.S. Black population, i.e. Black Americans.) Meanwhile, not only is Kojo Nnamdi himself "Black," he's a native of Guyana, and I'm happy for him. Guyana's a fascinating case. It's a South American country yet historically, culturally and demographically, identifies greatly with the societies and countries of the Black, English-speaking Caribbean. As a child of Guyana's Afrodescendant, Caribbean-identified people, is it that Kojo isn't really that familiar with the history of the Young Lords? Maybe or maybe not. In the end of all this, there's as much historical, cultural, geographic and blood heritage difference between Barack Obama and Black Americans as there is between Mr. Obama and the Afro-Guyanese. Ain't nothing really 'easy' or 'user-friendly' about the histories, peoples and realities of the Americas, especially we Black folks. In a more honest, transparent world Kojo could reflect a bit on this, think of his family, country and sub-region of his origin and its peoples, as distinct as the Black Americans, and then go and do a truly informative radio show on all the above.

Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress

In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the European Social Forum (Malmo, Sweden Sept. 2008). I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of African Descent in Europe. Now, veteran Florida Member of Congress Alcee Hastings, who is Black American (and certainly likely, as most Black Americans are, a Euro descendant himself), has announced a hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or CSCE, a commission of the U.S. Congress. Mr. Hastings is CSCE chair. "The State of (In)visible Black Europe: Race, Rights, and Politics" will be held Tuesday, 29 April, at 10AM in Rayburn House Office Building. "The hearing will focus on the challenges and opportunities faced by the more than 5 million members of Europe's Black population amidst reported increases in hate crimes and discrimination, anti-immigration and national identity debates, and growing security concerns. The impact of recently introduced anti-discrimination laws and diversity initiatives aimed at ensuring and protecting equal rights for a population many do not know exists will also be discussed. ..." Invited participants are Dr. Philomena Essed of Antioch University, author of the book, Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990), and member of Netherlands' Equal Treatment Commission; (UK) Guardian newspaper columnist Gary Younge; Joe Frans, vice chair of the UN Working Group on People of African Descent and former member of Swedish Parliament; Dr. Allison Blakely, Afro-European author and historian at Boston University; Dr. Clarence Lusane, international race politics author and faculty member at American University; and Afro-German actor Boris Kodjoe. Logically, Marian's Blog is very interested in this hearing and its outcomes. One hard look at the disenfranchised, excluded political condition of the people of the city of majority-Black Washington, DC, with NO VOTE in the very same U.S. Senate and House of Representatives where this hearing's being held, reveals a painful irony. Europe isn't the only place where Black people are ignored, disempowered, and treated as invisible.

Africa "Outside" History? President Sarkozy's infamous speech in Dakar, July 2007

Since his accession to the French presidency, I seem to have lost track of the times when to hear Nicolas Sarkozy speak is to re-affirm that truth indeed is stranger than fiction. It's likely that for most of his listeners who were present on 26 July 2007, in an auditorium of Senegal's Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, this was another one of those days.

Nicolas Sarkozy's original discours in Dakar was in French, but as this event is so important, it was also important to share it as well in English. I'm sure there must be other language translations out there. We will look for them in order to post them. Now, a group of mostly African intellectuals has recently published a French-language response to Mr. Sarkozy. The edited volume is L'Afrique Repond a Sarkozy: Contre le discours de Dakar (Editions Philippe Rey, Paris, 2008) - "Africa Responds to [Nicolas] Sarkozy: Against the Dakar Discourse." Luckily for we Afrodescendants of the Americas (or "Negroes of the diaspora," as book editor Makhily Gassama quite oddly refers to us), the book includes a contribution by our Haitian writer-sister Kettly Mars. The following is an unofficial translation of Sarkozy's speech which is posted at the blog Dionysius Stoned. A thank you to DS, and certainly to the party or parties who made this original translation.

ADDRESS BY MR NICOLAS SARKOZY, PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP, DAKAR, SENEGAL, ON 26 JULY 2007

Ladies and gentlemen

Allow me first of all, to thank the Senegalese Government and people for their warm welcome. Allow me to thank the University of Dakar that allows me for the first time to address myself to the elite of the youth of Africa in the capacity of President of the French Republic.

I have come to talk to you with the frankness and sincerity that one owes to friends that one appreciates and respects. I appreciate and respect Africa and the Africans.

Between Senegal and France history has woven ties of a friendship that no one can undo. This friendship is strong and sincere. It is for this reason that I wanted to address, from Dakar, the fraternal greeting of France to all of Africa...

Washington's Slavery Emancipation, April 1862

Spring in Washington means more than cherry blossoms. Throughout April, Washington, DC -- or at least some of us -- will recognise the 146th anniversary of the abolition of Black enslavement in the District of Columbia which took place Wednesday, 16 April 1862. Here's the rub: annual ceremonies marking DC emancipation were held from 1866 till 1901, but then nothing all the way up to 2002. What happened after 1901? This date of the end of enslavement, though incredibly significant, wasn't even an official local holiday until 2005. So much for marking major passages in U.S. history. So to honour the beginning of real freedom for so many people right there in the U.S. capital, Marian's Blog has a new spin-off featuring the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862. The office of the mayor of Washington has an online calendar listing most of this year's events remembering the mid-19th century emancipation of a people who lived then, and still do, in the shadow of the Capitol, the Congress, the White House and Supreme Court of the United States, in Washington, DC.

Leon Higginbotham and South Carolina, on Martin Luther King Day

Perhaps you already know the name A. Leon Higginbotham, or maybe you don't. Until his death he served as a U.S. federal judge. Earlier he was a friend and college classmate of my father and his siblings. Not only did Judge Higginbotham go on to be an attorney and federal judge, he became the twentieth century's chief scholar of the foundations of the position of Black Americans in U.S. law. My family had previously shared with me their story about Purdue. Years later I discovered that Judge Higginbotham had recounted it elsewhere again. My father was sixteen when he began studying engineering at Purdue. While she did her studies at Purdue, my aunt lived in the town with a local Black family. My uncle and my father, native sons of Indiana, were among eleven Black male students whose Purdue ordeal Higginbotham described. I found it on the Web and want to share it here. Tuesday night is the televised Congressional Black Caucus Foundation/CNN Democratic candidates' debate from Charleston, SC. Found a link to a Black South Carolina timeline that begins with the 1525 arrival of at least one African along with a group of Spanish settlers.

So where's my white folks??? Cheney and Barack Obama related

To be honest the only real news about Dick Cheney and Barack Obama being related is that yet again we see a person from a different background is treated quite differently from we
Black Americans.

Just like the central yet undiscussed fact that he bears his own family's African name (which by definition of our experience, Black Americans do not) Barack Obama's blood tie with Dick Cheney is not through enslavement. Instead it's through white families up to and including his mother, who conceived him with a continental African, from Kenya, to be precise.

What of we millions of Black Americans? Up to the present no white American (nor European) politico has yet bragged of or publicly mentioned their family relations with us. And yet that area is such fruitful turf! Through my own arduous and emotionally tortuous family research I've connected with maybe two or three white relatives from my mother's family. Luckily, they've been good people. Mind you, a bit like Mr. Obama, these folks were not slaveholders. They are not related to my family through slavery, but through my white female ancestors in Tennessee and North Carolina. In another part of my family, my maternal grandfather confided to me forty years ago how his white cousins came to eat and play at his mother's home in Leavenworth, Kansas. But when they turned twelve, with no warning, they just stopped coming. My grandfather added that some of the white kinfolk moved from Leavenworth to New London, Connecticut where they took jobs at a federal naval base. This was 60 years ago, at least.

What George asked the Queen (in 1991)...

Mara sent me a piece in NYTimes this week, The Queen Visits the White House, in which the  author reflects upon Bush the younger's curious behaviour sixteen years ago in the very same White House. On that occasion George found himself in the presence of both QE and his mom Barbara - "... when the first President and Mrs. Bush played host to their own state dinner for the queen. By several different accounts, including Mr. Bush's own, Barbara Bush told the queen that she had seated her son far away from Her Majesty, for fear he might make a wisecrack. Then, to his mother's horror, he did, telling the queen that he was his family's black sheep and asking, "Who's yours?"  The queen, apparently not amused, replied tartly, "None of your business." Ahhh... a refreshingly direct answer to a startlingly stupid question!