BMORENEWS.com : News, video and live radio for the black community in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area

Doni Glover, Publisher, www.BMORENEWS.com

(BALTIMORE – July 27, 2008) – There has been much discussion as of late regarding Soledad O’Brien’s CNN Special about the challenges of being black and male in America. Many agree that she magnificently laid out the problem.

This afternoon, radio journalist David Brown of WEAA 88.9 FM in Baltimore asked me a question regarding what many feel was a sad rendition of the same ol’ song of the drugs, prison and poverty that is so often associated with African American males. He asked me why we – as black men – have this stigma.

I then began to read some of the blogs and commentaries online regarding the CNN series. And one thing I noticed immediately is that people – black people in particular – want to hear more about the successful blacks: The Oprah’s, The Dr. Ben Carson's, and so on and so forth. However, that doesn’t answer David’s question.

So, here’s my take on why black males in America – mostly the descendants of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – are the way we are.

I’ll give you two different angles.

From an historical perspective, the black male has been the most ostracized and targeted member of American society – along with the indigenous peoples, a.k.a. the Indians. Now, I don’t play the victim game; let’s get that clear. I know that Africans were just as responsible for us being sold to European and other slave traders.

The issue comes in once our ancestors got on the slave ships. We were introduced to the “n” word. We were essentially broken. I guess Kunta Kinte being made to say “Toby” is a pretty clear example.

I think that once we entered the shores of North America, European Americans did everything humanly possible to degrade, demean, retard, damage, isolate, violate, imprison, and castrate the black male. To them, it was simply an act of war. The goal was to reduce the black man to the level of a four-legged animal.

My dear friend in Chicago, Brother Richard Muhammad – Contributing Editor of The Final Call Newspaper, puts it this way: “The black male has historically been targeted for elimination.” Further, he insists that from the onset, there has been an “assault on the black family.”

BMORENEWS.com Special Correspondent Bobby Marvin puts it another way, all with the same angle: “America was designed to treat the black male with such disregard.” He believes that the CNN Special was “watered-down for white America” and that the white power structure has “failed to take responsibility” in the dilemma of the black male.

My God, when black males were used as studs to breed stronger slaves, when black women were raped by white men in front of their man, when pregnant black women were lynched and had their babies cut out of their wombs in front of mobs of angry white people – you are not going to tell me that black Americans inherently don’t have something locked into our DNA – something deep and dark and ugly. I am not a doctor or a scientist, but common sense says if you have a dog – and beat that dog, and then breed that dog to have more dogs, and beat those dogs, and continue that process for generation after generation after generation – you are not going to tell me that that 5^th, 6^th, 7^th generation dog is going to be as happy and as loving as a dog that comes from generations of loving masters.

In short, as the movie "Claudine" reminds, the black man was never encouraged to be in the home - especially when the welfare worker did their home visits. In fact, I believe it is a wonder the black family even exists. 

Again, I don’t play the victim role. I don’t blame anybody. For me, it was simply war. The first object of power, as any good leader knows, is to stay in power. So, for me, there is no wonder why blacks lead in just about every negative socio-economic category out there: AIDS and HIV, prison, under-education, underperforming businesses, broken marriages and homes. The answer is very clear to me.

David Brown also said to me that there was a time when we, black people, “were a proud people. We were a praying people.”

And that leads to my second angle on the whole Soledad O’Brien CNN Special.

We were once proud and loving, David! You are right! And, if I am not mistaken, that was last most visibly evident in the 60’s. Black Power was the order of the day. Black Panthers were amongst our grassroots leadership. Malcolm X was speaking truth to power. And Martin Luther King, Jr. was rocking the world with his incredible oratories.

And then came the government.

I was most reminded of the effects of the ‘60’s during a 2006 trip to Tanzania where I sat with Pete O’Neal. The former Black Panther has being living in exile for nearly four decades.

Other heroes and sheroes come to mind like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur.

One by one, our pride and our love was replaced with heroine, cocaine, and assassins’ bullets. Piece by piece, this government did everything possible and necessary to quell the native uprising such that what happened in Haiti under the leadership of Toussant L’Overture would never happen in America. White America realized that people like Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser and Harriet Tubman were a serious threat to the maintenance of their power.

Understand, what happened to blacks in America was also attempted on blacks in Jamaica and Brazil and everywhere blacks were sold as slaves. And back on the continent, as outlined by author Chinua Achebe, a similar annihilation was underway, a.k.a. colonialism. Every country in Africa – with the exception of a two-year occupation of Ethiopia by the Italians – was colonized and then neo-colonized. European powers split-up the continent like a pizza with the British over here and the French over there and Belgians down there and the Dutch all the way down there. Several European countries – and the USA – owe their wealth, in my best estimation, to either the free black labor or the natural resources and minerals stolen – yes, stolen – from Africa.

So, here’s the hit to my second point. Black men, black women, black families: We have to go back to our spiritual roots. We have to be obedient. If one is Muslim, get back to the dien (the faith). If one is Christian, go back to church. Faith and prayer is the only solution to the madness of this world. And, truth be told, while whites have typically been the oppressor, I believe the real oppressor is evil. And evil is colorless.

That’s my take. No disrespect to anyone.

One final thought: Black people must learn history from a black perspective. And that means that the Black Diaspora needs its own independent media – like www.BMORENEWS.com. For when others tell our story (Wendell Phillips said similar words to Frederick Douglass, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"), the picture gets distorted. A classic example of this happened during my 2002 trip to Jordan with the late, great Arthur Murphy. There I learned that the Jordanians I met knew nothing about Malcolm or Martin or Rosa or Harriet. They only knew about hip hop videos.

‘Til next time, be well. Even more, take your children to the library and read some books by people like Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. DuBois, and Malcolm X.