Tag Archives: Race

POLITICS, RACE

Mansfield, Ohio: The Home of the Sambo Preacher

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My reading of history indicates that in the period following American chattel slavery that it was common to find that the only literate person in the community was the local preacher. It was his ability to read that made him the liaison between whites and downtrodden blacks. This tradition of the preacher being the representative for Black America lasted for a full century as evidenced by the centrality of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to the modern civil rights movement.

It is difficult to argue against the fact that “Passa” has served as the spokesperson for Black America for far too long. If I did not know any better, I would be convinced that mastery of subjects from legal battles to history was an accompaniment to the “call” to preach.

There may have been a period when it was sensible for “Passa” to represent an illiterate and largely uneducated population surrounded by white terrorists such as the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camelia. The black preacher was called on to be a good shepherd by standing strong for the seemingly helpless sheep that relied on them for wise counsel and courageous leadership.

As I reviewed recent reports of a select group of Negro clergy members in Mansfield, Ohio, I could not find an ounce of courage or a mustard seed of faith. I am alluding to the Negro preacher’s public resistance to the recently proposed resolution to study the impact of institutionalized racism on the health of local blacks. As I pondered what I read, the voice of The Notorious B.I.G. whispered the following lyric into my ear. “Damn, things done changed.”

Although I was not totally surprised by the absence of wisdom and the unadulterated display of cowardice by Mansfield’s black “Passa’s” in the face of white power, I was still taken aback to see Reverend El Akuchie, a Negro preacher at Godsfield House of Prayer and the Executive Director of the Richland Community Prayer Network, scratch his head and buck his eyes as he reassured powerful whites by telling them to

Hush yo’ mouth regarding that doggone Black Lives Matter mess. No suh’, not here. Rest assured that I am on the case.

This good Negro Reverend did his best to assure local white powerbrokers that Black Lives Matter is a worthless political movement and anyone advancing black interests are scum.

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I am sure that you agree that the only thing worse than a single Sambo preacher who dances to entertain whites the moment that they appear, is two such Negroes. You know the type of Negroes that I am speaking of. The type who is so afraid of whites that they will blame any and everything under the sun for black suffering other than discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and institutionalized racism. According to this Negro, black suffering “…is spiritual and deals with the heart, period.” From all appearances, it appears that Mansfield has become a haven for Sambo preachers passing themselves off as “Passa’s”. As if the buck-dancing of El Akuchie was insufficient to quell the rapidly rising anger of local whites, here comes Elder Moe Hill to double-down on the initial Minstrel performers chicanery.

Minstrel Moe Hill of Grace Evangelical Free Church shudders to think what will become of the city, the nation, heck the world if any of the monies used to employ officers who have failed to serve as a significant deterrent to local crime is shifted into social services to aid Mansfield’s socioeconomically marginalized citizens; a move that would aid whites as well as blacks. According to the Negro Moe, “I do not want any part of this resolution if it leads to defunding the police. I adamantly oppose that.” The problem with “Elder” Moe’s position is that nowhere in the resolution is there a single call for the defunding of the police. Apparently, Negro Moe thought that he could curry more favor than El Akuchie by defending whites’ from invisible threats. In many ways, it is humorous that Sambo Moe is in such a rush to fight against anything that his infantile understanding of racial matters can conceive.

Equally puzzling is Negro Moe’s insistence that racism is not Black America’s problem. According to this preacher, the problem holding black folk back is sin. Apparently, the good Negro Elder believes that Black America’s salvation is found in them humbling themselves and returning to the Lord. Although I realize that he does not know any better, this Negro actually stated the following. “The root cause of racism is sin not skin. Society will continue having these issues until we finally seek Bible-based solutions.” I would love to ask this Negro how much more church and praying is needed for Black America to rise? His juvenile point is not only laughable but one of the most reliable signs of a Sambo preacher who is more afraid of white folk than he is of the God he proclaims to represent.

It is time that these Negro preachers take their own advice and return to God and ask for some semblance of courage when in the company of powerful whites. Passa, trust me when I say that the perspective of the vast majority of local whites will not become more favorable because you bow your head, shuffle your feet, and tell them “don’t worry boss, I’m on it. Ain’t gon’ be no darn racial mess here. We’s happy with da way things are.” You could even scratch your head as you display your patented cowardice and selective use of scripture; your oppressor’s view of you will never change.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.

Black Girls, Black Popular Culture, Black Women, Hip-Hop Culture, Rap Music

Why The Scuttlebutt About Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion is Nothing New aka What is the Most Reliable Path for Black Women to be Noticed

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One of the many benefits of teaching at an HBCU is that it forces you to remain abreast of popular culture trends. There is rarely a week that passes that some new “trend” reminds me that I am now a middle-aged man who has almost, I do emphasize almost, seen it all. Although I would love to say that the cultural factors that shaped my childhood are long gone. The truth of the matter is that they remain present. When I see today’s youth culture, I am reminded of rapper Q-Tip of a Tribe Called Quest who offered the following brilliance in the song Excursions.

Back in the days when I was a teenager

Before I had status and before I had a pager

You could find the Abstract listening to hip hop

My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop

I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles

The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin’ like Michael

Prior to the global pandemic’s arrival, there was rarely a day that I was not reminded that my generation, the creators of Hip-Hop Culture, have been pushed from the center stage by younger African-Americans.

Let me be honest about this situation, there is regret and bitterness that afflicts every generation when their time under the spotlight ends. This moment breeds regret regarding things that you wish could have been said, attempted, or accomplished. If one is not careful, you will find yourself steeped in a self-promoting generational warfare battle that you are bound to lose.  I have done my absolute best to not participate in intra-racial cultural wars that ultimately paint me as some miser whose present is marred by an envious view of these anonymous historically and culturally illiterate kids who lead Hip-Hop Culture today.

Trust me when I say that the urge to denounce black youth culture is omnipresent, in fact, it often appears that young African-Americans are begging us to do such.

The latest invitation to criticize today’s hip-hop generation arrived via the imagery and video of rappers Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. If it can be stated that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” the referenced photo communicates a host of things that generations of black folk have fought against with all their might. We must never forget that although black men have been socialized within a white patriarchal society that there are many who possess enough wisdom and courage to take definitive action to protect black women who Malcolm X characterized as “the most disrespected person on the planet.”

Considering that I am one of the black men who have dedicated much of their lives to protecting and uplifting black women, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion could present a dilemma that revolves around a question of should that type of black woman be protected by black men. Keep in mind that I said COULD present quite a dilemma. In actuality the dilemma is non-existent.

The historically literate in our midst realize that the imagery and message being promoted by some record company for profit is not much different than previous rap songs and videos such as Luther Campbell’s Scarred, Too Short’s Blowjob Betty, Ying Yang Twins Wait, Ludacris What’s Your Fantasy, Missy and Ludacris One Minute Man, Khia My Neck My Back, 2 Live Crew We Want Some Pussy & Pop that Pussy, and the list goes on and on.

We all should understand that imagery matters. So, regardless of how you consider the marketing campaign surrounding Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, it is impossible to argue against the assertion that this presentation matters. Some blacks are cringing at the imagery because they believe that it verifies bigoted whites’ stereotypes of Black America. I will tell you the truth, I am unconcerned with outsiders’ view and belief systems that never fail to amplify occurrences of ignorance while ignoring more plentiful moments of black excellence.

My concern is focused on the impact that negative hip-hop images and messages have on emerging generations of black boys and girls devoid of effective parental supervision and guidance. Let’s keep in mind that they are both digesting these images. The haunting words of James Baldwin remind us that

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Equally important is the unfortunate reality that it is Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion who stand at the forefront of debates surrounding black women. They are certainly black women, however, they are far from a fair representation of black womanhood.

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Nevertheless, the centerstage status of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion has once again muted the genius and incalculable ingenuity of black girls and women that I know. At a moment where it appears that Presidential hopeful Joe Biden is poised to select a black woman as his running mate, Black America is engrossed in criticism regarding a cultural expression that is far from new.

Such developments leave me with no other reasonable conclusion than the following one. If black women really want to be heard, intelligence is not the most reliable path. A more productive path appears to pattern themselves after black cultural icons such as Lil Kim, Khia, and Foxy Brown; put simply, they should use their physical attributes to get what they want. After all, that is the message that men, regardless of race/ethnicity, have given to black women throughout the annals of time.

So, in the words of UGK,

Let me see it, let me see it

Let me see it, let me see it

Let me see it, let me see it

Let me see it, bend over and let me see it

Let me see it, let me see it

Let me see it, let me see it

Let me see it, let me see it

Bend over and let me see it

If you do that, I guarantee you that you will be ushered to center stage and the world will notice you.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.

POLITICS, RACE

Why I Am So Ashamed of My Hometown of Mansfield, Ohio: What Plantation Politics look like in the New Millennium.

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It would be a half-truth if I said that anything that occurs in my hometown (Mansfield Ohio) shocked me. In a word, the town is antiquated. Its physical appearance was antiquated enough to serve as the backdrop for The Shawshank Redemption with minimal if any, alteration. Modernity by-passed Mansfield, Ohio, in a host of ways.

The recent decision by the Mansfield City Council to vote against a resolution proposed by the group Voices of Change, Activism, and Leadership (VOCAL) is a fair representation of local political leaders. Consider for a moment that the embattled resolution sought to classify “racism as a public health crisis.”

Nothing more and nothing less.

According to local reporters, the eight-member Mansfield City Council was evenly divided on the resolution (4-4), an occurrence that allows Council President Cliff Mears to cast the deciding vote. Shockingly, Jason Lawrence, one of only two city council members cast a vote against the resolution.

In all fairness, Mansfield is a fairly typical representation of small towns throughout the nation. Such places are ruled by a white power structure that has worked for decades, if not centuries, making connections that guarantee that its power quotient is not only everlasting but also strong enough to resist the actions of insurgents regardless of their race/ethnicity.

Make no mistake about it, in places such as Mansfield, Ohio, the only way to get ahead is to curry favor with long-standing powerbrokers by displaying your willingness to extend their politico-economic monopolies; those who resist the local power structure will suffer dire consequences. Such is the only logical explanation behind Jason Lawrence’s crucial vote that prevents an official study of the impact of racial bias on the lives of Black people.

It appears that Lawrence has read the writing on the wall regarding available paths to success in small-town America and chosen to display his utility to local white powerbrokers by fighting against the best interests of local Blacks. It appears that the myopic view of Council President Cliff Mears has mesmerized Councilman Lawrence. According to Mears,

What I see is our residents going out of their way to embrace our diversity of races and cultures, and getting along just fine. Are there prejudices? Disparities? Yes. Is it at crisis proportions? Not in my view.

I can accept Mears’s observations as such perspective is typical of white powerbrokers’ view of the voluminous suffering that occurs behind closed doors within Black America. Make no mistake about it, the socioeconomic suffering occurring within not only Black America but also to the vast majority of poor and working-class non-blacks is hidden from white elites. However, the relative invisibility of the impact of economic inequality does not lessen its impact on impoverished Americans. According to Mears,

We should all be proud to live here in Mansfield. I see its residents getting along, helping each other, communicating openly, and welcoming each other into their homes regardless of race or culture. That’s the Mansfield I see, that I live in.

I am convinced that from Council President Mears’s perspective, “the Mansfield I see, that I live in” is greeting card worthy. Unfortunately for the vast majority of residents, this view is a flawed portrait filled with cavernous blind spots that hide the misery and suffering of non-elites, regardless of their racial or ethnic identity.

Make no mistake about it, this is a missed opportunity for Mansfield, Ohio, as it held the potential to uplift a significant segment of its population. One of the most pernicious evils associated with racial bigotry is White America’s failure to recognize that an educated and economically strong Black America is good for America. This inability to recognize the indispensability of Black America in efforts to “Make America Great Again” sits at the core of white powerbrokers’ resistance to measures such as the one mentioned above. In the world that such people live, Blacks and poor whites are a nuisance that is best unseen and unheard.

In the end, I do comprehend what led white council members to fight against the proposed resolution, they have existed in a world where the misery pain, frustrations, and suffering of blacks never reached their ears; now in regards to Jason Lawrence, I have not a clue as to what he was thinking as he was born and raised within the black community. Sadly, I doubt that he has a clue as to why he voted against the resolution either.

Only in America, I tell you. Only in America.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.

African-American History

Where Did This Thing Called “Race” Come From?: Please join us tonight for the latest MRCi Session

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Despite the disclaimers of a multi-racial coalition of deniers, America has been and may always be marred by an unspecified “racism” tag. It is difficult to effectively argue against assertions that this nation was infected by racial bias when Thomas Jefferson announced the colonists’ intention “to not be the slaves of Britain” and that All Men Are Created Equal in the Declaration of Independence or when W.E.B. DuBois prophetically asserted that “the problem of the twentieth-century will be the color-line.” It is important that Americans realize that its foremost social cancer is DuBois’ color-line, “racism.”

Yet, I have always found it difficult to explain the reality that although Americans have been brined in a putrid brew of economic inequality, racial bias, and institutionalized racism that they know very little about the origins of “racism” in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Not only is the average American wholly ignorant of how “racism” functions, but they also have little desire to address their intellectual feebleness regarding this matter.

Please join us tonight (August 6, 2020) at 7:30 EST /6:30 CST for a stimulating intellectual discussion regarding the roots of Race in America. We will discuss the following issues in the interactive Zoom meeting tonight.

  • Were the initial Africans who arrived in the Jamestown colony under European control “slaves” or “half-free.”
  • Who is John Punch and why does he matter in discussions of American racial matters?
  • When did racial identity become so important in colonial life and why?
  • Did the colonial system encourage the rape of Black women?
  • Did enslaved Africans fight against the developing society that rested on their exploitation?

You are being cordially invited to attend and participate in tonight’s Zoom session. I will be the lead presenter for this latest session of MRCi (Manhood, Race, and Culture Interactive).

I hope to see you tonight. Trust me when I say that we have a grand time interacting and learning from each other.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.  

African-American History

Was John Lewis Correct? Were Sixties Black Power Slogans “Empty Rhetoric?”

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My initial exposure to John Lewis occurred while researching Black Panther Party for Self-Defense co-founder Huey P. Newton’s calamitous attempt to surrender control of his organization to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By the late-sixties, Huey P. Newton believed that his cadre had been infiltrated and driven into unprecedented chaos by internal and external factors. In the wake of the killing of Lil’ Bobby Hutton and the lack of uniformity from Panther chapters throughout the nation, it became obvious that the Black Panther Party’s teenagers and twenty-something lumpen proletariats did not possess the bourgeoisie skills needed to effectively guide the organization. Hence, Huey P. Newton’s decision to give control of the organization to SNCC’s collegians.

Newton’s decision, a decision that every Panther that I interviewed disagreed with, forced me to study the history of SNCC. It is this research that exposed me to Marion Berry, Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, H. Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). If you need your faith in the future restored, engagement with the story of SNCC members following an Ella Baker-centric decentralized leadership model will accomplish that lofty goal. John Lewis is a central figure in this narrative.

SNCC, officially formed at Shaw College, Ella Baker’s alma mater, exceeded the expectations of old-guard Civil Rights leaders by becoming much-grander than an auxiliary group to adult Civil Rights groups like Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Make no mistake about it, SNCC activists, unlike the adults of SCLC, were on the frontline of hand-to-hand combat with white bigots.

Whether it was the Sit-In Movement or the continuation of CORE’s Freedom Rides, John Lewis was central to this on-going battle of good vs. evil. As expected, SNCC activists grew increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of integration as governed by white bigots. The alluded to frustrations facilitated a segment of SNCC activists to begin publicly questioning “Who wants to integrate into a burning house.” Increasing doubt regarding the wisdom of integrating with a hostile white community were most publicly articulated via angry not fully defined Black Power slogans.

It was the ascension of Black Power slogans within SNCC that facilitated John Lewis’ exit from SNCC. According to the SNCC leader, Black Power slogans were little more than “empty rhetoric” that threatened to dismantle hard-fought gains in the struggle for racial equality.

Since John Lewis’ death was announced, I have been thinking about what I could say about this man that has not already been stated in the voluminous coverage that he has received. I finally settled on an examination of Lewis’ criticism of Black Power slogans as being nothing more than “empty rhetoric.”

Of all the riveting moments in the struggle for African-American liberation, there may be no more exhilarating one for Black America than the Black Power Era. At the center of the adoration for this historical period is the polarizing slogan of “Black Power” whose debut most attribute to the courage of SNCC worker Willie “Mukasa” Ricks in Greenwood, Mississippi.

As with most slogans, its power is found in its flexibility to address a host of situations; a pliability that flows from its lack of specificity. To the present moment, the meaning of undefined “Black Power” slogans are determined on a person-by-person basis. It is this lack of definition that led Congressman John Lewis to render it as little more than empty rhetoric. Lewis was not alone in his summation.

In response to SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael’s insistence that “Power is the only thing respected in this world, and we must get it any cost” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., responded

We must use every constructive means to amass economic and political power. This is the kind of legitimated power we need. We must work to build racial pride and refute the notion black is evil and ugly. But this must come through a program, not merely through a slogan…The words ‘black’ and ‘power’ together give the impression that we are talking about black domination rather than black equality.

MLK’s rebuttal to Carmichael buttresses John Lewis’ assertion that the mid-sixties call for “Black Power” was empty rhetoric that threatened hard-fought gains. I am certain that the future Congressman feared that the undefined slogan threatened to destroy the tenuous relationship between black and non-black activists.

When one considers that the man who earned the moniker of “the conscience of Congress” stood against insurgent Black Powerites for their use of undefined language during the mid-sixties and never moved off of his square of doing what he considered correct in the pursuit of racial equality, there is little negativity that one can attach to Lewis’ legacy. The historical record has been kind to Lewis’ belief that Black Power slogans were little more than “empty rhetoric” that was an unwise choice of words that threatened to do more damage than most could imagine. In many ways, Lewis’ warnings regarding the use of empty rhetoric should be heeded in this present moment filled with the proliferation of phrase-mongering and undefined slogans that are wielded by individuals to advance personal interests. Unfortunately for us all, few paid attention to Lewis’ warnings during the sixties and even fewer will heed them as we travel into an uncertain future.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.