Politically correct. Civilized. Lynchings and catfish and the more “dangerous” notions of interracial sex.”How could a black revolutionary ever be sure that white radicals would not return to the fold of white racism.” …IS the road to racism, a separate but equal paved with good intentions. Is this the white liberal spirit of inclusion, which means the contrary? After Twain’s death his works gradually became canonized, but following World War I commentators such as William Faulkner and Van Wyck Brooks cast doubt on the greatness of Huckleberry Finn.And they were probably correct. Samuel Clemens was overrated.
...original cover of Agatha Christie’s bestselling novel And Then There Were None, which is also the bestselling mystery novel of all time and the seventh most popular book ever. In it the murder mystery takes place on “Nigger Island” (later renamed “Indian Island” and now “Soldier Island”)....
As literature, its not that exciting; it reads like a first draft that needs a major revision and Twain took the path of least resistance by liberally sprinkling the N word as a red herring under pretext, to some extent, that he was attempting vernacular. Like Ronald Reagan rapping while doing a break dance. Later, Ernest Hemingway, took a break from bullfighting and safari to show off all 247 hairs on his chest which he claimed equaled the mentions of the N word thereby asserting his right to shoot at anything dark and misunderstood. This was followed by T.S. Eliot in the late 40’s who when writing the Wasteland was more concerned with duking it out with shades of white phoenicians and the metaphorical poetics of hanging corpses like Christmas decorations under London Bridge.
Is Eldridge Cleaver a black Samuel Clemens. Should we sanitize Eldridge Cleaver into a new shiny?Published in 1968 at the end of a vibrant decade of intense civil rights struggle in the South and and flamboyant racial rhetoric in the North, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice was an immediate sensation among white liberals and the New Left. Young, shutout white American radicals and their counterparts in the white intelligentsia discovered in this ex-con’s erotic-political writings that they could be an integral part of a “Black Revolution.” Aware that Marxist thought was no longer controlled by the Soviet Union, these wandering nomads of the counterculture, finally and joyously, had somewhere to place their “revolutionary” zeal.
"But what did Cleaver really expect to find within a prison population of dysfunctional black men? After all, the love/hate conflict between black men and black women was nothing new even in the1960s. The tale of Shakespeare’s "Othello" had demonstrated how ancient and complex the relationship was between black men and white women. In effect, Cleaver’s self-revelation spoke more about himself than what went on or goes on between black men and women. Only the prisoner named Butterfly spoke plainly of his hatred of white women. "It’s a sickness," he said. "All our lives we’ve had the white woman dangled before our eyes like a carrot on a stick before a donkey: look but don’t." Butterfly became a "Black Muslim" and was "chiefly responsible for teaching him..."
“A federal jury will be asked to decide whether it is acceptable for an African American person, but not a white person, to use the “n” word in a workplace. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick has ruled that former Fox 29 reporter-anchor Tom Burlington’s lawsuit against the station, claiming a double standard and alleging that he was the victim of racial discrimination may go to trial.”
When the revolution comes
Jesus Christ is gonna be standing on the corner of Lennox Ave and 125th St trying to catch the first gypsy cab out of Harlem, when the revolution comes
When the revolution comes
Jew merchants will give away motza balls and gifilka fish to anyone they see with afros. Frank Shieffin will give away the Apollo to the first person he sees wearing a blue dashiki, when the revolution comes
When the revolution comes afros gone be trying to straighten their heads and straightened heads gone be tryin to wear afros
When the revolution comes
When the revolution comes
When the revolution comes
But until then you know and I know niggers will party and bullshit and party and bullshit and party and bullshit and party and bullshit and party… ( The Last Poets, When The Revolution Comes )
"In response to the change, noted American movie and culture critic, Roger Ebert tweeted the following: “I’d rather be called a Nigger than a Slave.” And then some black people got upset. Because that is what we do, we get upset. Whether we do anything constructive after we get upset is another story. However, it is interesting that it took Ebert’s twitter statement to capture the attention of my peers, rather than the whole story itself. Roger Ebert is white who is happily married to a black woman…but is still white. As a white man he wouldn’t normally be associated with the word “nigger,” “nigga,” or “negro,” and in his statement he demonstrates that he is in the position to have a choice of what to be called, a choice that is not available to black people in this country when the slur is hurled at them. Even still, as a black wom
I agree with his statement fully, and don’t agree with NewSouth’s decision...."ADDENDUM:
That is, Cleaver creatively combined a bit of Norman Mailer’s “White Negro” and Baldwin’s prophetic apocalypse (The Fire Next Time) between slices of Malcolm and Elijah.
This imaginative scenario of young, white Americans playing a part in a world-wide revolution, in which white imperialism would be run out of Africa and Asia, as a result of a class of white liberals assisting a “Black Revolution” at home was for many whites a tantalizing, though flattering, bit of philosophical cooking. When we consider that the most influential revolutionaries of the 1960s, Malcolm X and Mao tse Tung (internationally), had not suggested such a hand-in-glove alliance, Cleaver’s spread was curious indeed
Malcolm’s early message, influenced by Elijah Muhammad, held that whites were “devils” and the arch-enemies of black people. Later after his trip to Mecca, he recanted this position and stated that only a John Brown, a white who died freeing slaves, could join his organization. In short, Malcolm found all whites problematic.
Amin Sharif:For an entire year, Cleaver explored his attraction for white women. Then, in 1955, he heard that a young Negro in Mississippi "down from Chicago on a visit, was murdered, allegedly for flirting with a white woman. He had been shot, his head crushed from repeated blows with a blunt instrument, and his badly decomposed body was recovered from a river with a heavy weight on it." The murdered Negro boy was Emmett Till. Two days after discovery the tragedy of young Emmett Till, Cleaver had a "nervous breakdown" and "began to look at America through new eyes." His attitude toward white women changed radically, he suggested. "Somehow I arrived at the conclusion, that as a matter of principle, it was of paramount importance for me to have an antagonistic, ruthless attitude toward white woman." At this point in Cleaver’s life, things seemed to have become very mixed up. He turned his purported hatred of white women into a kind of "guerrilla" war. For when he was released from prison in 1957, Cleaver decided, he claimed, consciously to "become a rapist." He considered the sexual dominance of white women through rape a "political" act. Rape was an insurrectional act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women . . . I felt that I was getting revenge.
Read More:
http://www.nathanielturner.com/soulonice.htm
http://sassafrasjunction.wordpress.com/category/low-funtioning/
http://parlourmagazine.com/2011/01/huck-finn-roger-ebert-nigger-me/
http://harlemworldblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/eldrige-cleaver-flash-back/
http://stackedblog.com/news/huckleberry-finn-d-w-griffith-and-the-role-of-racism-in-art
Sorcia McNasty: …for any lucky soul who has escape this nonsense! Ok, we get Huck Finn, a filthy youth clearly in the pay of Samuel Clemens, since he opens the story with a foreal plug for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Thanks for the lesson in marketing, ya douche. Then he SUMS UP Tom Sawyer for us. God. Really?! Long story short, Huckleberry has been adopted by a kindly widow, inherited a pile of gold stolen from robbers and is chafing under the Widow’s well-meaning efforts to turn him into less of a filthy urchin than he is. Naturally, he resents this. I guess we’re suppose to side with him or laugh at him (Twain goes out of his ever-loving way to make Huck appear as superstitious and ignorant as humanly possible, because I guess under-educated abused children of alcoholics are hilarious?) but it’s hard when you’re distracted by the N-word being thrown around like pinata candy.
… Wocka-wocka — Huck dresses like a girl! (Just like Tom did in Tom Sawyer — what the good hell, Twain? You need to tell us something?) These “adventures” allow Twain the opportunity to heartlessly mock all walks and forms of Southerners, good and bad alike, including cruel lampoons that make fun of poems written for DEAD CHILDREN. Nice. Defenders of Twain say that he is deliberately trying to exploit the failures of Reconstruction, which is fine, except that the lazy bastard never bothers to suggest how to actually correct or escape the situation. He just criticizes the shit out of everything and we’re all supposed to be “Har-dee-har-har!” He was like a 19th-century Glen Beck, and just as humorous.
Sharif:At this point in Cleaver’s life, things seemed to have become very mixed up. He turned his purported hatred of white women into a kind of "guerrilla" war. For when he was released from prison in 1957, Cleaver decided, he claimed, consciously to "become a rapist." He considered the sexual dominance of white women through rape a "political" act. Rape was an insurrectional act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women . . . I felt that I was getting revenge. Troubling, Cleaver did not however immediately seek his revenge on the white man by raping his woman. When released from prison, Cleaver did not proceed directly to execute his "insurrectionary act" against the white man and his property. He detoured: I started out practicing on black girls in the ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the Evil of a day. When I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically. There is nothing "insurrectional" to be found in the rape of white women. The act, itself, is rooted in a sick, mad, drive for personal power. And no philosophical nor psychological justification can be made for it, especially when the act starts out as a distorted "practice run" performed upon "black girls." He felt not only inadequate with white women but with black women as well....
Keep in mind that this whole thing was written by a financially-inept tool who fame-whored his way back into good credit-standing, even lecturing while his daughter died of fucking meningitis while visiting her childhood home — the one her dad thoughtfully lost to outstanding debt. Where’s the mockery of dead kids now, Clemens?
There is one good character and one good moment in this book. Jim, the runaway slave, is both smarter and kinder than any other character, and also provides the few moments of genuine humor (i.e. not Minstrel Show in quality), usually when he’s fucking with Huck. He’s also the only one on the raft who has a good reason for running away, since he’s a SLAVE. The one good moment is when Huck finally (and I do mean FINALLY, it only takes the little sonofabitch 31 chapters to get there) decides to NOT turn Jim into the authorities despite the law-breaking involved in harboring a runaway slave. He doesn’t actually decide that slavery is wrong, of course, but he does realize: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” – hell being better than turning over your best pal to be lynched (Twain 202). And that’s a pretty profound moment. If the book ended right there, we’d be gang-busters….
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