First Black President: From Hope to History

Honoring King on the Eve of Obama’s Inauguration

by Ewuare X. Osayande

Speech delivered at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Trenton, NJ, January 19, 2009.

We are living in history. We are bearing witness to an experience that so many of our forebears only dreamed of, hoped for, wished for, worked for, struggled for, died for. The election of Barack Obama as the United States of America’s first Black president is a watershed moment in American history. This moment will be remembered in history as significant as the eradication of slavery, as the Civil Rights Movement itself. So it is most fitting that on this day of days, this day when we come to honor and remember the life and legacy of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, that we should consider this historic moment and understand its meaning for our times.

It was just 200 years ago that African people in this nation were enslaved. Indeed the very White House that the Obama’s will call home as this nation’s first family was built with the labor of enslaved Africans. Laws were instituted throughout this nation’s history to insure our perpetual servitude and inequality. And now, tomorrow, a man bearing a name that is rooted in the red soil of Africa will take the oath of office as this nation’s 44th president.

Were it not for the brave agitation and activism of African Americans such as Harriet Tubman, David Walker, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Dr. WEB Dubois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Queen Mother Moore, Booker T. Washington, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Septima Clark, Bayard Rustin, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, and the millions of others who sacrificed their very lives to bring a greater measure of justice and freedom to the African American community, this day would not have come. They now exist as the great cloud of witnesses that look down upon us this day with smiles as wide and bright as the sun itself.

It has been forty years since King was assassinated and the demise of the Civil Rights Movement. It is remarkable that within one generation African Americans have gone from achieving the right to vote to voting an African American into the highest office in the land.

Throughout this nation, there are many that now believe that racism is no longer an issue for Black people given the election. They believe that we have overcome. Certainly, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States is a major step forward in American social progress. But we would miss the meaning of this moment and dishonor the legacy of all those who sacrificed to now proclaim that we have somehow reached a racial nirvana. For one, we should never define progress by the exception. Rather, it should be defined by the rule. And the rule for many Black people and other people of color is dictated by the ever-present reality of racism and the threat of violation to our rights and very personhood that even Obama himself cannot escape.

Dr. King responded to a similar reaction after the passage of the Voting Rights bill when he said, “I am appalled that some people feel the civil rights struggle is over because we have a 1964 civil rights bill with ten titles and a voting rights bill. Over and over again people ask, ‘What else do you want?’ They feel that everything is all right. Well, let them look around at our big cities.”

Today, some forty years after King spoke those words, in one of our big cities, the barbarity of racism has reared its ugly head once again.

Oscar Grant, a 22 year-old African American father, in Oakland, CA this past New Year’s Day was killed by Johannes Mehserle, a white cop for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. It is a story that we have heard too many times. A young Black man is shot in the course of being accosted by the police. In this case, Grant was already being detained by two officers: one officer with his knees on his shoulders, another straddling his legs as he lay face down on the subway platform. It was at that point that Mehserle stood up, pulled his gun and shot a bullet directly into Grant’s back. The officers then finished hand-cuffing Grant as he lay there bleeding to death.

The video-taped footage of eye-witnesses of the killing clearly shows that there was no gun on the young man, that there was no apparent threat to any of the officers at the scene. In fact, it is one of the most heinous acts of police murder ever caught on tape. Oakland would rise in insurrectionary flames the following day. Currently, Mehserle has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Interestingly enough, soon after King made those aforementioned remarks, Watts would also go up in flames after a 22 year old Black man would be assaulted by the LAPD. With the smoke still rising from the city, King would proclaim that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

How is it that, on the eve of a new era in American politics, racism in its most barbaric form can still exist? This is the kind of bitter duality that has characterized the African American experience in this country. Despite our hope for change and longing for “justice for all,” America’s reality has delivered less than its promise.

It is appalling that 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement, an African American man can still be shot in cold-blood by those sworn to “protect and serve.” It is appalling that Megan Williams, a young African American woman, can be kidnapped and tortured for over a week in a country that can elect a Black man president.

It is this kind of bitter duplicity that will cause otherwise well-meaning people to now turn to Black children locked in the impossibility of poverty and say to them, “See, even you can now grow up to be President of the United States,” and yet will do nothing to provide the necessary support and resources to insure that possibility can be truly realized. Empty hope has the same effect as an empty stomach. In order to be satisfied, this hope must be filled with the substance of true possibility.

This bitter duality is born of a brutal denial. Only a nation in such denial can give 700 billion dollars to the wealthiest of its people while the rest of the nation staggers under the weight of an economic recession. Only an America in denial can watch its families scammed out of their homes, then turn around and bail out the very corporations that did the scamming.

King’s words work to break this nation out of its denial. In his last presidential speech given to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on August 16, 1967, King moved his concern from helping the poor to challenging the economic structure itself. “There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that the edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised ... Who owns the oil? ... Who owns the iron ore? ...Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are the questions that must be asked.”

Are we courageous enough to ask the same questions of our nation today? Certainly these are the central questions of our time given the bailout and the state of the economy. Who is benefiting from the government’s hand-outs? Who is suffering from the corporate corruption? What does all of this have to do with our government’s investment in war?

My heart cries for the Palestinian people caught between the Mediterranean Sea and a hostile regime. Yet despite the atrocious acts being committed against them, despite the bombs, missiles and bulldozers that destroy their homes, national and international condemnation and blame is laid at their feet for actions that have been deemed terrorist. Yet, there is nothing that the Palestinian people will ever be able to do that would cause the nation of Israel to cease to exist. The same cannot be said about the actions of the state of Israel against a people that exist without the right to exist, without the right to choose their own leaders (we call that a democracy), without the human right of self-determination and the right to raise a flag and call yourself a nation. The actions of the Palestinians are the actions of an impoverished people against the massive artillery of the 5th largest military state in the world. The actions of the Palestinians seek nothing more than to send a message to their adversary and to the world. Just like the people of Oakland. No, we may not agree with their methodology - riots and suicide bombings - but we must understand that their methods are born of survival and a caustic sense of desperation.

King would speak to America today as he did yesterday. He would condemn this nation’s actions of “pre-emptive strikes” in its decision to invade Iraq. Such actions on this nation’s part have now set in motion the pre-emptive military actions of other nations like Russia and Israel.

In his speech, “Time to Break Silence,” King reminds us that our overriding loyalties ought to be with the oppressed. “This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voice-less, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.”

King’s analysis strikes deep into the heart of American imperialism. “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation.” Where are we today? “We will be marching ... and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons [and daughters] of the living God.”

The thirst for justice can never be obliterated by bombs. The desire for freedom can never be shot down. In fact, such actions only work to strengthen a people’s resolve for self-determination.

So as we look to the presidency of Barack Obama and this new era of American politics, it is easy to believe that King would be pleased and satisfied. But a closer reading of King’s conviction would give us pause to that impulse. An America that does not insure the dignity of work for its entire people is not a just America. An America that continues to defend the mistreatment and brutality of its citizens of color is not a just America. An America that initiates international conflict and justifies war is an unjust America. Is an America that must be challenged to change. We must work to insure that this new era of American politics is also a new era of American policy!

And to those of us who are African American caught up in the magnitude of this historic moment, who seek a sense of final satisfaction and acceptance as Americans, King cautions us when he says, “However deeply American Negroes are caught in the struggle to be at last at home in our homeland of the United States, we cannot ignore the larger world house in which we are also dwellers. Equality with whites will not solve the problem of either whites or Negroes if it means equality in a world society stricken by poverty and in a universe doomed to extinction by war.”

What King presents for us is a principled personhood. In his very person, we can bear witness to the lived expression of moral conviction in all its full humanity. This is why he is important and valuable to us now and forever more. Not as an icon, or symbol, or an apparition frozen in time, but as a living, breathing expression of love in pursuit of justice and the promise of peace.

What Barack Obama achieved, he achieved because of the actions of millions of Americans from all walks of life who were ready for change. What that change will look like is yet to be defined. But let us be clear, the hope placed in Obama and his incoming administration echoes back to the work that was started in the Civil Rights Movement. What they accomplished has made the miracle of this moment possible. But just as the Sixties taught us, it took a King and a movement to move the hand of the president to sign those bills into law. It took a King and a movement to move the conscious of this country closer to social equality. So, we too, must remain vigilant. As we hold up Barack Obama and support him in what we know will be a most challenging first term, we must always be on the ready when the times call for us to move our president and our nation even more toward justice.

Yes, we have every right to believe that change can come to America. Indeed, we have helped to bring change through our vote. Now let our hope for change be rooted in a resolve to work for fundamental and lasting change. In that final speech to the SCLC, “Where Do We Go From Here?” King spoke of having a “divine dissatisfaction.”

And so today I say, let us be dissatisfied until the threat of police brutality and racial terrorism no longer haunts the daily lives of people of color in this nation. Let us be dissatisfied until every child is receiving a first class education without regard to their zip code. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until the families of those very children can live in homes they own full of comfort and peace, without fear of eviction. Let us be dissatisfied until every American has the right to universal health care. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until our gay brothers and lesbian sisters can experience the full equality of love sanctioned by the state. Let us be dissatisfied until all war has been vanquished by the global desire for peace. Let us be dissatisfied! Let us be dissatisfied until the bitter duality of racism and social progress has collapsed into the ever-present reality of justice for all. Let us be dissatisfied like King was dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied like Fannie Lou Hamer was dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied like the prophet Amos was dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until justice rolls down like running waters and righteousness as a mighty flowing stream.

Ewuare X. Osayande (www.osayande.org) is a political activist and author of several books including Black Anti-Ballistic Missives: Resisting War/Resisting Racism. He is co-founder and director of POWER (People Organized Working to Eradicate Racism) an initiative that educates and empowers persons and organizations interested and involved in movements for social justice. He can be reached at OsayandeSpeaks@hotmail.com.

Obama and Black America: The Promise of Change or the Politics of the Same?

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States of America is a watershed moment in American history. Just 40 years after the assassination of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., America has elected its first Black president. This has the potential to change a number of social and political dynamics throughout this nation. But one thing it will not change is the reality of racism. One of the stories that must be told now that Obama is elected is the way in which race and racism was manifested throughout the campaign process. The fact that Obama had to run what, for all intents and purposes, was a "race-less" campaign, speaks volumes to just how real racism remains. We all know that he would not have made it this far if he ran his campaign any other way. That is a sad fact. In truth, for those of us who are Black and poor and have suffered for America's benign neglect of our concerns, there is no guarantee in an Obama presidency that that fundamental fact of American domestic policy will change.

So much talk was made about the "middle class," yet most Black people are not middle class according to the classic definition. Most Black people are lucky to have a job, let alone one that pays the bills. Yet, the irony here is that had it not been for the Black electorate that turned out in record numbers and voted him in, Obama may not have won. Just consider what may have happened in Pennsylvania, Virginia or North Carolina if the Black vote went to McCain or stayed home. So when I think about the prospect of the United States electing its first African American to the presidency, I see these two discordant realities converge: this moment of drastic change in American history and the politics of the same for the "least of these."

I am concerned that we have entered a "neo-colonial" phase in American politics as it relates to the Black community. By "neo-colonial phase" I mean the placement of Black elites in positions of power to implement the oppressive policies of the empire. My only hope is that Obama has enough integrity to fight against this "surge." But I also know that it will take more than integrity to hold back America's racist domestic and foreign agenda. This is why it will be paramount that the Black community is as organized as we have ever been. We have to develop a class consciousness within the Black community that enables our people to notice when Black leaders are putting their class interests over the interests of the majority of Black people who are still struggling on a number of levels.

We have to insure that in this new era of American politics that our issues are not overlooked any longer. These issues include, but are not limited to, the resegregation of public schools, the injustice of the criminal justice system, the divestment of the corporate sector from the cities, gross unemployment and lack of healthcare. So now that Obama has won, I say we celebrate and recall the memories of all our ancestors that fought and struggled to see this day come. But on January 20, 2009 when Obama is inaugurated, the celebrations cease and the real work begins.

Copyright 2008 by Ewuare X. Osayande

A New Day Has Come

yesterday

i rose with the sun

and bathed myself in memories
born of blood

i reached back
and dressed myself in the whip-cracked flesh
of Fredrick Douglass

his words echoing like thunder in my head

then i put on Harriet Tubman’s eyes
as glasses and viewed
this day through the far-sighted lens of herstory

when i put on my shoes
I laced up Fannie Lou Hamer’s feet
tired of being sick and tired
and marched to the polls
singing her gospel symphony

when i arrived
i pulled the curtain behind me
and broke out into a breakdance
as if i were on the corner of 125th and Lenox
in Harlem
reciting Malcolm X’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech
under my breath

then I coughed up the shard
that shot through King
and squeezed it in my hand
til it turned to dust
and tattooed the words
NEVER FORGET
on my soul

then i took my mother’s hand
~ bless her heart
and together we pulled the lever
and with millions of others
made history

and then her spirit whispered to me:

“a new day has come, son”

then i walked out of the booth
knowing that the struggle isn’t over.

it has only just begun.

copyright 2008 by Ewuare X. Osayande

god gotta shotgun

Copyright 2008 by Ewuare X. Osayande

god gotta shotgun
mowing down wolves & the caribou
riding high in his holycopter
paid for by
earmarks that’ve been blessed by the 700 club

all praises due
to the ones who brought you
abstinence-only education
on their way to a shotgun wedding
endorsed by the nra

vp in the image of aphrodite
spawned from the mind of mccain
the new face of patriarchy
hoodwinking at hockey-moms and joe six-packs
as she takes the ax to roe v.wade
reading last rites to women’s rights

who has the power?
he-man and she-ra
masters of the universe
multi-millionaire coldwarmongers
singing paul revere the remix
“the russians are coming”
“the russians are coming”

mccain as “rambo pt. 6:
the original maverick”
crying “country first”
white nationalism reprise
re-birth of a nation
here comes the calvary
riding in robes of white skin
sacrificing their sons & daughters
on the altar of a lie
brandishing the red, white & blue
as gang colors
initiating immigrants with
“pledge allegiance to the flag
or die!”

Students of Color and the Struggle for Cultural and Educational Justice

In recent years there has been an increase in efforts the thwart, dismiss and otherwise repress multiculturalism and diversity on campuses across the nation. The attack on multiculturalism goes beyond curriculum to the very presence of students of color on campus. Although most colleges state their commitment to diversity right on the front page of their website, many students of color feel anything but welcomed once they are on the campus. Despite all talk to the contrary, there is an organized element at the university from the stratums of administration to the student body itself that seeks to turn back the clock on racial progress and return this country to the days when most of this nation’s sites of higher education were lily white. They have created organizations, journals and websites dedicated to fundamentally racist ideas of Western hegemony and white academic dominance.

Their attacks run the gamut. They have ranged from challenging the celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, the funding of student of color organizations, to promoting intolerance and bigotry via hostile flyers featuring images of people of color with the caption “They Hate Us.” These actions work to reinforce the racist idea of America as a white nation and the university as whites-only. All of this has occurred alongside the disturbing act of white students mocking and deriding people of color by coloring their faces and costuming themselves as racial stereotypes. These videotaped acts of minstrelsy clearly showcase the increased acceptance of racial hostility and intolerance. What better example of white privilege can there be than white people literally “fleshing out” their racist fantasies via their actual white skin?

These attacks are not new, but are part and parcel of a systemic attack on the lives and aspirations of people of color throughout this country. In that sense, what is happening to students of color on the campus must be placed in the context of what people of color are experiencing generally.

Ever since the acts of 9/11 just about every non-white ethnic or racial group in this nation has experienced being perceived as a threat of some sort. For most of us that hostile gaze has been a fundamental part of our people’s American experience. All the same, the fear of people of color in general and those peoples that do not subscribe either culturally or politically to the mores and values of Europe and the so-called West has increased in lock-step with the national security color-coded index. Whether we are Black or Arab or Asian or Latino/a or Native American, we have all experienced the disturbing looks of anonymous whites at airports or on subways. But this cloud of suspicion is not confined to sites of interstate and intercontinental transport. It has crept into every sphere of American life, most especially the realm of academia.

Therefore students of color must come to appreciate and understand the history of their people’s collective struggle for justice in America. This will enable them to have a clearer appreciation of the fight that was won to gain their admittance onto the campus and what they must do to maintain that right.

Any cursory reading of the history of education in America will show that this country has not joyously embraced the idea of integrated schooling. It is only in the last fifty years that this nation has struggled to accept the idea of education as a right for more than just whites. That history is vital for students of color to understand the circumstances that surround their education today. Otherwise, they leave themselves wide open to the twisted notions and ideas that are often promulgated by the very institutions they attend. What might be in the best interests of the college may not be in the student of color’s best interest. The university will state on the front-page of its website that it “embraces diversity” and is “an equal opportunity institution.” But it will not tell you how former students of color had to wage collective struggle to get the university to begin to come to terms with their presence and needs. It is this history that is as vital to know as any history you will learn in class.

In the last few years, the forgotten story of that struggle is slowing coming to light. Black Studies or Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Latino Studies or the ubiquitous “Ethnic Studies” were not always options of study for college students. Students had to actually fight to see these departments established and funded. It all began with the struggle of students at San Francisco State in the late Sixties. This history is now being chronicled in books such as White Money/Black Power by Noliwe M. Rooks and From Black Power to Black Studies by Fabio Rojas.

What I want to emphasize is the fact that these students were not interested in just establishing academic departments. Initially, the development of Black Studies was just a part of a broader struggle for justice on behalf of Black students and other students of color. The initial list of demands presented to the administration included calls for educational justice, the recruitment and retention of faculty of color, the equal funding of student of color organizations, and the establishment of community education programs. These students were very deliberate in their efforts to keep their struggle connected to the greater struggle that was occurring throughout the country for their people’s rights to citizenship and basic human dignity. They understood their success was tied to what was happening back at home. This is a lesson students of color would be wise to learn even now.

Additionally, included in their demands was the necessity of maintaining control over the establishment of these new programs. Unlike today, where so-called “ethnic studies” departments operate under the auspices of college administration, the initial thrust was for the final authority to rest in the hands of the students in coalition with the community. As the years passed, the university was able to manipulate the students’ demands until ethnic studies programs fell under the full control of administration.

The establishment of multicultural affairs has a history that is not that dissimilar from the establishment of “ethnic studies” departments. These academic departments would not be enough to redress the problems faced by students of color on college campuses. Students continued to see their concerns belittled and undermined by college administrators that saw their campus activism as nothing more than a nuisance. Sometimes, it would be issues off-campus that would spark a student movement. This was the case for myself and many of my fellow students attending Fairleigh Dickinson University in the early Nineties. In the Spring of 1991, Phillip Pannell, Jr., an unarmed 14 year-old Black boy who lived in the neighborhood that surrounded the Teaneck, NJ campus, was shot and killed by a white police officer. This single act of racism sent shock waves through the Black student community and ignited a student movement that would culminate in the establishment of the university’s Office of Multicultural Affairs. This struggle occurred at the height of the Afrocentric movement when Black students across the country were gaining consciousness of their African heritage and cultural legacy. Armed with a greater appreciation of their people’s contribution to humanity, students of color organized with a new-found sense of themselves and their capacity to make change. During this period, hundreds of multicultural affairs departments would rise up on campuses across the country.

There is a legacy of struggle that students of color would benefit from tapping into and taking up. The ensuing fight for what is being called “campus diversity” is the modern manifestation of the historic fight for justice and dignity for the student of color. This is a struggle for academic democracy, cultural parity and racial justice. As such, ideology and political viewpoints are at play. The knowledge of this history of student of color activism enables current students of color to build on the ideologies of resistance and self-determination that have emerged out of these struggles. What are we struggling for? What are the means we will use to achieve our goals? What mechanism is in place to pass this legacy down to incoming classes? When will we know that we have succeeded? The answers to these questions will help guide our activism.

In the spirit of our aims, students should be ever-vigilant to exhibit the same spirit of justice and democracy these seek from the university itself. The movement must be as democratic and inclusive as our demands to administration. Thus, students must challenge the sexism, homophobia and class bias that has stifled true progress within our respective communities. Furthermore, it means that we must make coalition building across racial and cultural lines a priority. Too often when we think of cross-racial coalition it is always with white students. I am simply encouraging us to reconsider “cross-racial” to include other students of color that fall outside our particular racial group, whatever it might be. Organize around common goals. All of our communities of color have had an experience with white supremacy. Rather than fight about which group has suffered the most, we must challenge ourselves to respect each other’s experiences and commit to working together to end an oppression that is common to us all.

The tactical error of historical amnesia has caused the movement for educational justice to fall behind the times. The tragedy is that students of color are still struggling against some of the same injustices that those first students that broke the color barrier in higher education faced. Yes, tremendous progress has been made. The establishment of ethnic studies programs that highlight the achievements and contributions of our people as well as the creation of multicultural affairs departments, that enable the interests of students of color to be acknowledged and addressed, are serious developments that cannot be underscored enough. But even in this era of progress, the threat of racism still exists in a variety of guises. Student of color organizations and initiatives remain grossly under-funded. The curriculum is still culturally biased. Acts of racial intolerance and bigotry remain commonplace occurrences for students of color. And most importantly, students of color today enter the halls of higher education as a well-funded attack on their very presence is under way. In this historic moment, students of color must be vigilant in their developing consciousness and activism. There is a legacy that students of color can tap into that has the power to, not only strengthen their resolve, but give them guidance in this work of seeking justice and defending the humanity of our peoples.

What students do on the campus can also affect the lived reality of our peoples throughout this nation and even throughout the world. Just as students of color activists in the Sixties were able to recognize the intrinsic relationship between their fight on the campus and their people’s fight throughout the country, students today can organize with a similar consciousness. If they do, they will not only make a significant contribution in the fight against institutional racism and cultural intolerance, they will also have answered the call of destiny. And the work they will have accomplished will serve as the blueprint for generations of student activists to come.

This essay was recently published in the inaugural issue of Brown and Black, a student journal published at Lehigh University.

Burning Still

on the 20th Year Commemoration of the Move Bombing (May 13, 1985)

Copyright 2005 by Ewuare Osayande


a goode for nothing negro
first black mayor of the city
would not become an ambassador
but an embarrassment to his people

playing tough in Rizzo’s shadow
plotting death
with feds and city hall gangstas
who call him nigger
under their breath

and to show their barbarity
it was on the day to celebrate mothers
to celebrate life
that the bomb was dropped
on a family that named themselves after the Mother of Civilization
and an entire block was plunged into hell

and Osage Avenue
became Hanoi in Vietnam

an inferno of heat and lies

the fire dept
became skilled arsonists that day
as they sat on the sidewalk
and watched the block burn
and 11 people inside one home
burn

and we are still burning
and we are still burning
the flames remain
like they do in Tulsa and Rosewood

the fire still rages
in us
the more we learn
the more we burn
with a desire for justice
for righteous retribution

to forgive and forget is not an option
when 9 innocent people still sit in cells
serving the time that should be the punishment
of those that did the crime
of premeditated murder
of a family that loves nature
and blesses the earth
a family that sees the presence of God
in birds, butterflies and human beings
and who are quick to indict devils
who profess humanity
but fail to be humane

keep a record of the names of those
who have put us in these flames

and we do not walk the limp of victims
we stride through the fire as survivors
stronger still
we do not walk alone
but have turned the fire into two torches
one named Ramona
the other Pam

the phoenix of our thirst rises out of the ashes
of the dead
we are moving still
on a Move!
moving still

they cannot make bombs big enough
to blow away our will to live
to be free
to be

so we are rising
rising
still on fire

for this city is still a hell
and good negroes still plot death
under the shadow of white gangstas
who call themselves officials
and pray to Hoover’s ghost

in Philadelphia
the city that loves you back
unless you’re Black

we know
we know

why the Liberty Bell is cracked

Spittin' Acid at the Sistahs: Rap(e) and the Assault of Black Women

Copyright 2005 by Ewuare Osayande

Hardly anyone in the Black community would advocate, support or sanction the rape and sexual assault of Black women; yet everyday Black women are being assaulted by Black male rappers, hip hop culture and the recording industry that condones, supports and profits from it.

From the lyrics on the radio to the videos on the tube, Black male rappers engage in an aural and visual assault on the minds and bodies of Black women. This cultural attack on Black women would warrant a state-of-emergency even if the madness began and ended in the studios, but it doesn’t. More and more, Black men and boys are reciting these lyrics until they become the mental script that directs their interactions with Black women even as these tracks advocate the real-life hatred and violence toward women.

At face value, many would dismiss my description and assessment as being over the top, but upon close examination, one will realize that the critical condition of the situation cannot be overstated. My words fall way short of capturing the deadly effect misogynistic rap is having on Black women. The fact is that what many rappers are spewing is criminal by most societies’ standards.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary sexual assault is defined as
“Any willful attempt or threat to inflict injury upon the person of another, when coupled with an apparent present ability so to do, and any intentional display of force such as would give the victim reason to fear or expect immediate bodily harm, constitutes an assault. An assault may be committed without actually or striking, or doing bodily harm, to the person of another.” (p. 114)

As the definition clarifies, assault doesn’t need actual physical contact to be considered such. The mere threat of violence is all that is required. Clearly what rap has become, what it constitutes and perpetuates is a direct threat to Black women who relate to men who listen to and are persuaded by a music that prides itself on being the epitome of reality, not the studio-contrived production that it really is. Given this, Black women walk under the constant threat of being preyed upon by men that step to the beat of a sampled drum loop produced by platinum-laced pied pipers who proclaim themselves pimps.

The combination of violent lyrics and pornographic images result in a poisonous concoction that is literally numbing our youth to the deadly ramifications of what the record industry has made rap to be. Increasingly rap is becoming synonymous with rape as record execs are using rap to violate the minds of our youth with pornographic images even as it works to justify and perpetuate the actual rape of Black women.

What becomes clear through all of this is the role of the state and the corporate structure in producing an image of Black women as “bitch/ho” to substantiate their continued subjugation for the purpose of their economic exploitation. For example, if the corporate structure can convince young Black women at an early age that prostituting one’s body is not a bad life-choice and the state denies the majority of them access to a sound education and economic opportunity even as it demonizes them for making that “choice,” then the role becomes a self-perpetuating prophecy that gets fulfilled with each successive generation. In so doing, this form of social entrapment will ensure that elite men can reap the illicit economic benefits of this debilitating cycle.

Manning Marable describes in particular detail how this process emerged as it relates to the racist/sexist image of Black women and the impact that image would have on their actual lives.

“The Depression and war years produced within the popular culture the figure of the Sapphire: a Black woman who was ‘evil, treacherous, bitchy, stubborn, and hateful.’ The Sapphire stereotype was utilized by white males, who ‘could justify their dehumanization and sexual exploitation of black women,’ and by black males, who could reasonably ‘claim that they could not get along with black women because they were so evil.’” (p. 85)

Today, this has manifested in an inter-racial alliance of white and Black men who are reaping tremendous profits from the overt exploitation of this sexualized Sapphire stereotype. In truth it is a tri-racial alliance as many Asian execs, producers, writers, and artists are attempting to cash in on the crass display of subjugated Black female sexuality. As such, this capitalist assembly line production of CDs, DVDs and magazines amounts to a gang rape of Black female identity.

The now infamous image of a man swiping a credit card through the crack of a Black female’s backside in rap star Nelly’s video “Tip Drill” exposes the way these rappers, the recording industry and their eager clientele view Black women: as commodity, as property. Period. Their value is only determined by the degree that they can be violated.

But what Nelly and his fellow rap cohorts fail to realize is that for every time they swipe a credit card through a Black female’s behind and cash in on this oppressive profit-making scam, someone else is swiping one through their own asses as they remain bent in the position of submission to a system that views them as property too. But then again, maybe they do realize it, and just fail to care given the amount of fame and fortune that has come their way. But what we must realize is that there are millions of Black girls who are being violated in the name of hip hop culture and reap no profit from it whatsoever. And so the question that faces the Black community is: Do we care?

The lines between what is art and what is reality are blurring when artists’ marketability is based on a street credibility that they are expected to tote. And in too many cases Black women are the casualties of their rap mantra of “keeping it real.”

It has become an expectation that every gangsta rapper’s CD will have an obligatory “Beat that Ho” song in their rap repertoire. Gangsta rappers take the persona of the pimp as their street archetype of choice. To be a pimp means that the possibility of slapping, beating or otherwise assaulting a woman is just a look or a word away. This valorization of violence sits at the center of the current image of the rapper. And many rappers are being turned out by an industry that is invested in keeping Black men in the role of violent-prone sexual predator.

50 Cent, one of the most popular rappers on the scene today, is heard intimidating a woman on his 2003 top ten track, “P.I.M.P.” that stayed in rotation on radio for weeks upon its release: “Bitch choose with me, I’ll have you stripping in the street/Put my other hoes down, you get your ass beat/Now Nick is my bottom bitch, she always come up with my bread/The last nigga she was with put stitches in her head.”

Beanie Sigel’s “Watch Your Bitches” from his Def Jam release entitled The Reason takes an even more morbid turn when he threatens a woman with “bye bye bitch/fuck that red dress on/get a head step on/speed on before you get peed on/when I piss I don’t miss/get mad, scratch your ass and get glad/before I scratch your ass and get Glad bags/throw your shit out on the trash.”

The celebrated rap producer Dr. Dre is heard in his rap “Housewife” from the CD Dr. Dre 2001 saying, “Naw hoe is short for honey/almost had her wailing like Bunny/telling tales of being pregnant, catching Nordstrom sales with abortion money/I spotted her seeing her with my niggas when I shot at her.”

On Lil John’s track “Bitches Aint Shit” from the popular Crunk Juice CD, he regurgitates the master/slave relationship with him, a Black man, assuming the role of the master with the Black woman as his slave. “Acting all sophisticated spending money that she didn’t make/I get so mad that I could slap her acting like she Cleopatra/aint no need to ask she’s a slave to the money and I’m the master.”

Snoop Doggy Dogg has an entire track about beating women on his latest CD R&G: (Rhythm and Gangsta) The Masterpiece. The rap, “Can U Control Yo Hoe” has Snoop schooling another guy on how to beat the woman he is living with. The chorus is instructive in its brutality:

“Can you control your hoe? (You got a bitch that won’t obey what you say)/You can’t control your hoe? (She hardheaded, she just won’t obey)/Can you control your hoe (You’ve got to know what to do, what to say)/You’ve got to put that bitch in her place, even if it’s slapping her in her face/Ya got to control your hoe/Can you control your hoe?” Later in the track he says, “What kind of pimp holds back?/Never met a bitch that a pimp can’t slap/What’s wrong with pimpin’?”

This is the same Snopp Dogg that gets featured in movies and commercials selling fabric softener! It is also the same Snoop Dogg that produces porn and “Girls Gone Wild” videos. These self-admitted womanizers and women-beaters are rewarded and celebrated in our society, and we see nothing wrong with this?

Some might argue that this is just a case of “boys being boyz.” “No harm done. They’re just acting. It’s all entertainment.” But as an article in a recent issue of Vibe magazine delineates, this verbal assault is just a description of what many of these rappers actually do in their personal lives.

According to the article “Rap’s Black Eye” rapper Big Pun (now deceased) sent his wife Liza Rios to the hospital three times over the course of their ten year relationship and “prevented her from seeking medical attention on many other occasions.” Recounting one episode Liza Rios is quoted as saying, “One time he told me to change the batteries in his beeper … I totally forgot about it, and he took a lead pipe and started swinging on me. I had my daughter in my arms, and I told Cuban [Link, another rapper] to take the baby. After he finished beating me, my elbow was twisted out of place. I was limping for two months.” For Liza Rios and numerous other women, the last thing this is is entertaining.

As Elizabeth Mendez Berry questions expose the main issue here: “When you get paid to call every woman a ho, at what point do you start believing you are a pimp?” 50 Cent’s rap, “P.I.M.P.” would suggest as soon as the ink on your recording contract dries. And many rappers and would-be rappers are in agreement with him.

Rapper Mystical of “Shake that Ass” fame pleaded guilty to sexual battery after assaulting a woman in January 2004 – an incident that was caught on video tape. Damon Dash has had at least one order of protection granted against him and has been arrested several times for reported domestic abuse. Busta Rhymes has also had a restraining order imposed against him by a woman who has children by him. Rapper Charli Baltimore has gone on record describing the abuse she experienced at the hands of none other than the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace). Also, friends of his wife Faith Evans have spoken out about how the bruises she covered under make-up and sunglasses didn’t stop until after his murder.

A childhood friend of Wallace has said that he “treated women like a pimp with his hos … He would talk about hitting them. He’d say things like, ‘She was out of pocket, so I had to put that bitch back in line.”

Biggie protégé and former partner of Dash, Jay-Z, would find himself embroiled in a controversy after video of him smacking on a woman repeatedly surfaced on the net. His Roc-A-Fella Records, in L.A.P.D. fashion, would have us not believe our lying eyes and claim that the video tape was wrong. Their press statement titled, “Jay-Z Was Not Beating a Woman,” is a clear attempt at damage control. They would have us believe that it was a case of Jay-Z just playing around with an old friend from the neighborhood. “Love taps. That’s all. She was enjoying herself as she was being knocked to the floor!”

The Black community’s relative reluctance to call this behavior for what it is – sexist – and resist it on all fronts as an act of sexual assault on all Black women, has resulted in the normalization and general acceptance of calling Black women by a name used to refer to a female dog. And once you start calling someone a dog, it is not a stretch to begin treating them like a dog.

Pearl Cleage details the socialization process that teaches us all to accept the dehumanization of Black women when she writes in Mad at Miles that,

“It is impossible to live in America and not be tainted by sexism and a participant in it, either as a victim or a perpetrator. As women, by the end of our African American girlhoods, we have learned and perfected a dizzying variety of slave behaviors which we are rewarded for mastering by the men who made them up in the first place.
As men, they were taught that we were inferior, unworthy of their respect, subject to their whim and present on earth primarily for their sexual pleasure and the bearing and mothering of their children.
We were all taught that it is acceptable for them to hit us when they think we have “asked for it” and that their opinions carry more weight in all critical decisions simply because they were men and therefore assumed to be of superior knowledge and more vast experience.” (p. 41)

No, rap music did not start the abuse, assault or rape of Black women, but it does advocate, glorify, justify and condone it – and as such – it works to reinforce and ensure its continuation and survival. Rap music and the rappers who create and produce it are responsible for the impact of their message on the minds of impressionable youth. When a sixteen or seventeen year old boy hears a rapper he admires counsel him to “smack that bitch,” why do we think that he would not consider doing that? What other force is as compelling that is advising him not to strike a woman, when the majority of mediums in American life only reinforce his destructive desires? Who are we fooling? None but ourselves if we think we can deny the impact rap(e) music is having on the minds and behavior of our youth. These would-be men are living their lives saturated by a socially accepted soundtrack that is riddled through with references to women as dogs that can and should be treated as such, kicked or killed at will.

In her article, Elizabeth Mendez Berry cites the scary stat that “Murder at the hands of a romantic partner is a leading cause of among African American women between the ages of 15 -24 according to the National Center for Health Statistics.” The bruised bodies of Black women in inner-city streets and suburban homes are proof enough of the damage being done in the name of being true to a game that nobody wins.

Further evidence of the normalization of abuse and assault of Black women is popuar New York radio station Hot 97’s “Smackfest.” Promoted like a pro boxing match, two women are squared off in a contest to see who can outlast who as they take turns smacking each other in the face with the hope of winning a consolation prize. In one video contest one woman is slapped to the point of busting her lip. The Black male DJ stops the match intervening with “we got mouth blood,” only to have them return and keep beating on each other.

Smackfest has currently been shut down by New York state officials after City officials intervened, citing a state law that protects people from dangerous and demeaning competitions. According to the State Athletic Commission, Smackfest is an unlicensed and illegal boxing match that could lead to Hot 97 executives and their parent company Emmis Communications being indicted and charged.

Smackfest represents the latest stage in the devolution of hip hop culture. Just when you thought the culture could not get any more crass, here comes Smackfest. Now that the abuse of Black women has been normalized, embraced and defended, poor Black women are being super-exploited and their rights violated to increase radio ratings. A stew of hyper-sexual sadomasochistic rhetoric and imagery bombards the senses of America’s youth everyday and Black females are the most targeted and hardest hit. And now many are being programmed to see no wrong in hitting each other. Rendered invisible as they are simply seen as hoes, bitches, nameless gold-diggers who will do just about any damn thing for a dollar even allow themselves to be peed, spat, or hit on for the hope of getting paid and being seen.

This Smackfest is very reminiscent of another exploitative and oppressive contest known as the Battle Royale. It is described in bone-chilling detail in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Black adolescent boys are blindfolded and herded into a makeshift boxing ring that is surrounded by the white men who watch them pummel each other until one is left standing. They are then carted into an adjacent space where the blindfolds are lifted enabling them to see a mound of coins and a dollar bills on a rug. They are told that they can have as much as their hands can carry. So they commence to grab with a greed born of impoverished need. Only to learn that it is all a hoax being played at their expense. As soon as their fingers touched the coins, they were sent convulsing in shocks of pain. The coins were charged and these white men sat there laughing in evil delight as they watched these bloodied Black boys electrified like live wire. That day those boys learned what it meant to be young Black and poor in America. It means to be vulnerable. It means to be easily exploitable. It means to be invisible. This is the same lesson Black women are learning about America today. And the irony is that many of their teachers are Black men.

Today Black men are choosing to emerge out of their invisibility against the shadowy backdrop of battered and bruised bodies of Black women. In the process muffling their voices and rendering their female truths invisible.

As the late Audre Lorde observed,

“Because of the continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our own Black communities as well. It is a disease striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these women-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women.” (p. 119-120)

It is that kind of communal silence that enables the rate of assault, rape and even murder to continue to wreak havoc and heartache in our community.

At the time of this writing, a 33 year-old Black woman named Lisa Eatmon was recently found dead in the Hudson River in New York. Eatmon was pregnant with Roscoe Glinton’s child. According to friend’s of Eatmon’s, Glinton, a Black man, wanted her to have an abortion, but Eatmon intended to give birth. Glinton, a suspect in this case, would lead police on a high-speed chase, having his wife and child in the car with him. He is currently in police custody. Police found blood at his workplace, a sanitation plant that sits right on the Hudson River.

This case could easily have been a rap song penned by B.I.G., Snoop or 50 Cent. But it isn’t. It is the real life account of the murder of another Black woman. It is a story that hovers like an imposing dark cloud over the lives of thousands of Black women each day who wonder if they will be next.

The normalization of the abuse of Black women only works to condone such crimes and leaves the Black community complicit in the beatings and killings that go down. No lyric is innocent when it advocates the outright infliction of violence on the bodies of Black women. We are implicated in this madness until it stops, for who will be the ones to stop it, except ourselves?

This truth is brought brutally home in the case of Cherae Williams, a Black woman from the Bronx who called 911 after being beaten by her boyfriend in September 1999 only to be beaten again by the officers who arrived on the scene. According to a CNN report, when police officers Damian Mercaida and James Caputo failed to intervene, Williams asked for their names and shield numbers. It was at that point that “Eyewitnesses say she was shoved into the police car and driven away.” Williams was then driven to a secluded area and assaulted by the officers. She would undergo surgery at the Bronx Lebanon Hospital to repair a broken jaw. “She also had a fractured nose and a large cut on her forehead.” Although both officers deny the charges, after the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau conducted DNA testing, they “found that blood stains from Caputo’s clothing and Mercaida’s handcuffs matched that of the victim.”

The case of Lisa Eatmon and Cherae Williams exposes the fact that for too many Black women there are pitifully few resources; they have no recourse. The justice system is trifling when it comes to enacting justice on the behalf of Black people in general. Our reluctance to acknowledge the sexism in our community and put an end to the abuse of Black women and girls is just as trifling. We are quick to rally when a sister has been raped by a white guy, but will deride the same sister if she is raped by a Black guy, especially if the Black guy is famous. Our contradictions only leave us wide open for criticism as a community.

If Black people cannot rely on the justice system for our protection, then we are especially pressured to act justly toward each other. And every ounce of our communal energy should be spent insuring such.

Those who refuse to address our intra-racial abuse and state their motivation as that “we should not air our dirty laundry,” are not dealing in reality. The fact is that the stench of our “dirty laundry” is being dispersed worldwide. It is being bottled and sold on the marketplace as the latest perfume and cologne as many in our community are profiting from the proliferation of pornographic and violent images of violated Black women.

When writing about addressing and putting an end to the abuse, I am not echoing the “respect and protect the Black woman” rhetoric that is the popular chant of some groups either. That rhetoric is just that. As good as it may sound to some, it doesn’t remedy the problem. Never mind the fact that it is problematic to begin with given that the slogan implies protection of Black women by Black men thereby reinforcing the notion that women should look to men for protection rather than create their own forms and forces of self-defense. It is not our duty as Black men to define protection for Black women. Rather, it is our duty to take their direction when it comes to how they want to be treated and addressed.

But sisters ain’t waiting on us brothers to get our act together. Although conditions are beyond dismal, Black women are not taking this lying down. Many women have been, and even more are becoming, active in their local communities. Black women all over this country are taking their bodies back from the marketplace, resisting violence and domestic abuse, redefining their relationships to men and this male dominant system.

Nationally, Aishah Simmons’ NO! The Rape Documentary has become a rallying cry for our times. Her nearly decade-long sojourn to give voice to the silenced memories of Black female survivors of rape, incest and sexual molestation stands as a clear example that African American women are refusing to remain silent.

When rapper Nelly wanted to host a bone marrow drive on Spelman’s campus, Black women protested to hold him accountable for his demeaning display of Black women in his music and videos. Moya Bailey, president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and other student activists had to withstand a barrage of criticism from every side -- and did – in the effort to make their point. They were not about to allow Nelly to come to use them in his effort to make himself look good only to turn around and make another (s)exploitative video.

Conferences and community dialogues are taking place all over the country and many more are still needed. No only is our future at stake, our very present is precarious. What we do now is what matters most.

As Black men, we are challenged and encouraged by none other than the man that Ossie Davis called “our living Black manhood,” Malcolm X. Let us be guided in this work by Malcolm’s self-critical words as expressed in a letter written to his cousin-in-law Hakim Jamal just one month before his assassination as quoted in an essay written by Barbara Ransby and Tracye Matthews published in the anthology Words of Fire:

“I taught brothers not only to deal unintelligently with the devil or the white woman, but I also taught many brothers to spit acid at the sisters. They were kept in their places – you probably didn’t notice this in action, but it is a fact. I taught these brothers to spit acid at the sisters. … I taught the brothers that the sisters were standing in their way … I did these things brother. I must undo them.”

Let us in the spirit of “Our Living Black Manhood” also undo the spitting of acid at the sisters that still continues and in so doing build up a new generation of Black men who refuse to define manhood based on their ability to manipulate, control or otherwise threaten the lives of women.

Until we do, how can we expect Black women to trust us?

Pearl Cleage, speaking to women, gives us men direction on this question.

“If black men won’t admit that their sexism and male chauvinism and domestic violence are problems, how can we consider them allies in the search for creative solutions?
We can’t. Not yet. Not until they are willing to redefine their black male reality to incorporate the equally valid reality of our black female experiences. Not until they are prepared to recognize their role as oppressors in the struggle against sexism and see their crimes as no less serious than the crimes committed in defense of racism.” (p. 39)


Sources Cited

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Berry, Elizabeth Mendez. 2005. “Rap’s Black Eye.” Web page [accessed March 2, 2005]. Available at http://www.vibe.com/print.php?sid=645.

Cleage, Pearl. 1990. Mad at Miles: A Black Woman’s Guide to Truth. Atlanta: The Cleage Group.

Dicker, Frederic U. 2005. “Hot 97’s Vicious ‘Smackfest’ KO’d.” Web page [accessed March 25, 2005]. Available at http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=425&u=/nypost/20050325/lo_nypost/hot9.

Farrell, Elizabeth F. 2004. “It’s Getting Hot in Here.” Web page [accessed March 2, 2005]. Available at http://lists.acpa.nche.edu/read/messages?id=10846.

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, ed. 1995. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: The New Press.

Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press.

Marable, Manning. 2000. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Updated Edition). Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Simmons, Aishah. NO! The Rape Documentary: http://www.notherapedocumentary.org/.