THE RACE ISSUE: VOLUME TWO, NUMBER TWO
THE BEAST OF BURDEN
by Malik Isasis
















Malcom X once said, “You can’t stab a man in the back 9 inches, pull the blade out 6 inches and then say you are making progress.” But this is what it’s like when discussing race in America. Today’s white supremacy is still based in the idea of white superiority, but it is much more subtle than men in white sheets, or skinned heads, thumping their chests. People of color are still marginalizing outside of the institutions of power. What makes it difficult to discuss white supremacy, is the philosophy itself, which has been normalized.

The corporate media often tries and often succeed in normalizing oppression, that is, women and people of color are in the positions that they are in because of their ability. Writer Kendall Clark articulates it better, “If you can convince everyone, but especially members of the oppressed group itself, that the way things are is natural or inevitable or unavoidable, people will be less likely to challenge the way things are”

It sounds like the rugged individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstrap bullshit that is often thrown around by Republicans. White liberals aren’t off the hook here either, it is the colorblind philosophy that ignores the heritage of 400 years of slavery, genocide, and American apartheid that has left deep emotional scars, and intergenerational trauma, which still cripples Native Americans as well as African Americans. Don’t trust me, trust the statistics, here and here, for Native Americans.

Mainstreaming Oppression



Although the sheets have come off the heads of those who snort white supremacy like cocaine, they’ve donned suits and ties and are employed by the dozens in the ivory towers of the corporate media, keeping a vigil and aiming their sniper rifles at all of the righteous protestations that dare to point out injustices. One such vigil is Patrick J. Buchanan, employed by NBC Universal, also formerly employed by CNN. Just as an aside, General Electric owns NBC Universal. General Electric has contracts in Iraq. This is not random, it is important to point out the synergy. The United States is currently occupying two Muslim countries, and have killed approximately one million, and displaced another four million Iraqis, brown people and the corporate media hasn’t batted an eye—especially those whose parent companies are sharing in the profits from the pillage. Yet, if someone flips out and goes on a shooting spree at a university, or a white woman comes up missing, it is in the news for weeks.



Now back to Patrick J. Buchanan.

Buchanan after hearing Obama’s race speech responded something like this:

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure? Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.” (1968 Kerner Commission Report, here.)

It wasn’t until 100 years after the abolishment of slavery that African Americans gain their right to vote in 1965. So, in 1967 black folks were still being lynched, underemployed, brutally beaten by the State, languishing in the depths of poverty, and feeling powerless and disenfranchised, decided to riot in frustration. Here is were Malcom X’s quote, “You can’t stab a man in the back 9 inches, pull the blade out 6 inches and then say you are making progress”, is apt. In Patrick J. Buchanan’s worldview, these black folk should have been grateful for their condition. White supremacy is the anti-dote for compassion, and not taking responsibility for one’s action, which is always being preached to black folk.

Here’s a whopper from Buchanan:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

White supremacy in full effect.

Patrick J. Buchanan. America uprooted from the bloodied soil of twin genocides, Native Americans and Africans. But your history is a little twisted my friend, and when I say my friend, I mean dipshit. Both European and Africans founded the United States. Africans fought in every single war from the American Revolution to the misguided wars of Vietnam and Iraq. Buchanan’s false sense of superiority befalls him because he’s under the impression that America magically became a superpower because of the will of his white God, instead it was the 400 years of free labor that built the halls of power in Washington D.C. in which he lurked during the Nixon Administration.

Pat works for a major media conglomerate that purport to be news, yet his words has gotten no coverage in the media. Why?

Martin Luther King Jr. said something to the effect that white people have bought into their false sense of superiority, while black people have bought into their false sense of inferiority.

White man has imbued himself as God by carving himself into stone and marble in the image of God; he has painted himself on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as God. He has stated that he is God’s chosen people. What kind of entitlement do you think this creates?

Continued colonization, maybe? Maybe it’s a sense of duty of having to tame wild peoples and civilizing them with brute force, cluster bombs, rapes, and occupation.

It’s amazing to me that the United States can waltz into a country and occupy it, slap the people around, and when the people slap them back, they act surprised and offended and lash out like a frighten raccoon. It is the height of arrogance and ignorance, but then again, this is America's founding philosophy.

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