You might be able to tell I'm a bit peeved
I've decided to make an example of Mr. Taylor, both in the comments to his little rant and in the following, which also appears on Open Source Politics. I should post this shit on Blogcritics, too.
Why am I proud of being Black?
I'm proud of the history of Black people. The myth of African acquiescence to slavery is exactly that-a myth. I'm proud of the way emancipated Black folks never abandoned their enslaved brethren. They worked the legal and literary channels…never mind that they were ignored. To this day Black people give more of their income to charity than anyone else. Even though we're brokest. That's noble.
I'm proud of the creativity we've mustered; we were forced into it by exclusion from mainstream but our response has still been robust. All that is unique in the USofA came about through a kind of feedback loop: American Indian and African influences were absorbed into the mainstream until America's culture is as African as it is European. Watch the loa come down on a couple dozen old ladies at Billy Graham's Crusade if you doubt me.
I'm proud because my people survived. Because even with the obstacles we face we still compete in numbers that are pretty amazing when you consider we're only three generations from chattel. We produced W.E.B. DuBois. Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Lou Hamer, Carter Godwin Woodson, Booker T. Washington, David Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, just to name a few.
And yes, Malcolm X.
"I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who doesn’t want brotherhood with me. I believe in treating people right, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to treat somebody right who doesn’t know how to return the treatment." Speech, Dec. 12 1964, New York City
"When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire . . . or preserve his freedom."
"You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being."
"Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom."
"I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King." ...in a conversation with Mrs. Coretta Scott King.
"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."
Try exchanging every instance of "Black" and "white" in that shit.
It's true we had no more choice in having the dire concept of race inflicted on us. But we did not have to respond as well as we have. Given the conscious decision to shape us into mere tools and the forces still arrayed against us we should have been destroyed. We weren't. I'm proud of how we responded and declare myself the inheritor of that history and tradition.
Why am I a Black partisan?
Because the alternative is absurd.
Definitely read that last link. It's an essay I wrote in 1997 and posted at Prometheus 6 in February 2004 that explicitly spells out what I mean by "Black partisan." If there's any confusion.
