WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER - ON WHITE WOMEN AND A CONCLUSION

The books also details the failings of white feminists.

Through this book I understood decision by decision how white suffragists/feminists of the 1920s through to white feminists of the 1980s turned to away from the issues of black women....

- to court southern white women (at anti-lynching's expense in 19th century)

- and even to court black men (like Frederick Douglass)

- to court anti-feminist white women  (timeless)

- RATHER THAN COURT black women for support on various issues.

And because of white women's failures to be what we call now call "intersectional,"  they have failed  at different national efforts decade after decade after decade. But the author, via other black feminists quoted (Angela Davis/Kathleen Cleaver)  make it clear that while our struggle is very different from white women...

- due to our earlier history with anti-black racism

-  due to our common goals against oppression with black men(a link white women don't have)

-and our stronger attempts to embrace one another despite class,

...that some of our ultimate goals are clearly the same.  


I say that only some of our goals are the same because white feminists, mostly middle class or better, are married to a man that is perfectly capable of supporting her on his income alone. That leaves the white feminist with a tendency to focus on things like abortion and slut shaming to the virtual exclusion of all else.

Black women in the 1960s, by comparison, were trying to figure out why they were only being paid 75% of what black men were being paid when they had more education as a group even then. (Black women have been closing that gap since this book was written though) White women could easily figure out why they were making less. White women suffered sexism too. But they did NOT have more education then white men at the time. And it was a status thing for white women not to work - a status behavior they could implement a lot more easily than black women.






For black women our sexism/patriarchy struggle is different. Black women have had to work side by side with black men (not a step behind like white women) due to higher rates of poverty among blacks. This is not a recent (since the 1970s) phenomenon for black women like it is for white women. However, the biggest reason that black women's sexism/patriarchy struggle is different is that black women are completely intolerant of chattel treatment from black men due to chattel treatment from white men during slavery.

Black women have essentially refused to change masters from white men to black men, especially during the early days of our freedom in the United States. And black men appear to have been, at the change of the 19th century, a lot more sensitive to this than they are today.

By comparison, large numbers of white women appear to have tolerated property status from white men, on and off for decades, for so long as an imaginary pedestal was involved.

The average black women may hate the word "feminism" as much or more as the average white woman because they put "feminism" the "copying white people box," ironically enough. But we as black women have been "naturally" feminist in mindset before the word "feminist came to exist.

Maria Stewart (gave a feminist speech that made her sound like she was 100 years before her time in 1832)

Sojourner Truth  (gave a famous feminist speech, "Ain't I A Woman" in 1851--before slavery even ended)

Harriet Tubman (was a Union Spy in the 1860s who led a raid to free 300 slaves in one shot, and led slaves to freedom via the underground railroad)

Ida B Wells was carried off the white train car, in 1884, fighting, kicking, and biting. Then she sued the railroad. Eventually she became an investigative reporter/sociologist that led an anti-lynching crusade that was adopted by the N.A.A.C.P of which she was a founding member. And she was a key mover and shaker in the black women's club movement. And helped get Black Women the vote in Illinois long before women of any color voted elsewhere.   

  
Black American Women are completely feminist in their attitudes and actions.  

And we may also have less tolerance for sexism than women of any color even when we don't recognize it as such. That may be why there are so many unmarried single fathers visiting their children on every other weekend instead of living with their children and their children's mother.

The may be why the most profound thing I've heard this year came from a black woman. "Black men have really done a number on themselves with all the "bitches and hoes" in rap and hip-hop.  "On themselves" she said. They've done a number on themselves to the point that many of them cannot and should not be tolerated inside a respectable woman's home. You wouldn't let a white person who called you the n-word or everybody except you the n-word whenever he thought the title fit. So why would you let a black man, that calls himself your "brotha?" walk around identifying this black woman over here or that black woman over that a b-word or a h-word?

I'll tell you why too many black women allow this and even cosign this. Black female reproduced sexism and patriarchy is evidence of the black female desperation born of missing 1.5 million black men. We want to support be strong race women. We want to be united. So we try to overlook little things that are actually big things.

We are too willing to support black men that may be the target of more physically aggressive racism but are rarely ever targets of sexism at all.  We are too willing to step into the belief that "they come for us first" when a black man says it as if there is more direct frontal assault, physical confrontation from white poor and lower middle class on black males than there is back door assault from the white bankers and law makers on all black people

I know black men die at the hands of police more than black women do -- but probably not by much as we think because black women's deaths aren't raised as high in the black community. A black woman's life being counted as worthless, especially if she falls into the bitches and hoes hole that rappers and hiphop artists have dug for her, is the biggest reason why a serial killer called "The Grim Sleeper" likely killed hundreds of black women over decades, in a relatively small area of Los Angeles, without too many people noticing or caring enough to stop it.

Yes racism makes black men subject to geometrically more attacks from white men. But black women are subject to being attacked by white men due to racism and also black men (and women) due to sexism too. That's why I really wanted to do a comparison of black men killed by white presenting police and black women killed by domestic violence but I was afraid of what I'd find. 

It would be even more interesting to add up the number of black women killed by police, the number black women killed in domestic disputes, and the number of black women that literally disappeared off the face of the earth like The Grim Sleeper's victims

* * * * *
CONCLUSION:  The author solidly makes the point that sexism is just as real as racism. From where I sit this is obvious.

Unlike white women, black women have never had the expectation while growing up that they are not going to fully participate in life as a fully functioning adult. 

Even if a black woman decides she will marry, work inside the home, and be the primary raiser of the children, if a black man dies --and they die often in the U.S.-- a black woman knows she will have to stand up and take over making of the living while still feeding the children. Black women, collectively, have had to be more dedicated to education and making a living. to sustain the self and the family that depends on her.

Gloria Steinhem once said that Black Women created feminism. In the moment when I first heard her say that, I thought she was shining the black female reporter on. I've come to the conclusion since that Glo was right on the money that particular time.

At the end of the book, Giddings makes the point that both the civil rights movement and the feminist movement stopped moving in significant ways when black women's needs were not (among many other things) taken seriously and black women withdrew.

There are so many different ways you can think about that. But as I look at the frustration of so many black women as they look at Black Lives Matter and see it primarily holding black men up, not just because there are more black men, but ignoring the deaths of black women when they die in similar circumstances, I see how the Black Panthers, SNCC, and White feminist organizations have failed or are failing. I've heard black women say they will no longer focus on or be a part of the echo chamber that raises black men to the place where the main stream media notices them. They have decided that they will focus on black women until they see reciprocity.
Black women/Black feminists gave up on white women a long time ago.

I see that Giddings almost has to be right about Civil Rights Groups and White Feminists Groups being weak and calling out for black female support because I see it starting to happen again with Black Lives Matter. The only thing more shameful than #SayHerName being necessary when Black Lives Matter was created by black feminists in the first place is that it looks like #SayHerName movement is not working.  And I think one of the reasons it's not working is because black women hold onto higher levels of patriarchy trying to be loyal to the race at the expense of being loyal to their gender in equal measure.

There are so many voices saying that black men are in more danger than black women when that's so unlikely. If you want to know for sure though. Add up the black women killed by police, the black women that have ACTUALLY disappeared from the earth - not disappeared from society as most in the 1.5 million black men article, and the black women dead of domestic abuse.

We don't need to try and out-victim anybody. But we need to fight our own damn corner. We need to demand reciprocation. And in order to demand reciprocation we have to believe that our own lives are just as important as his life (black men) or her life (white women). And we need to learn the stories of other women of color -- like yesterday. We need to come together if we're going to train white women and men of color, both. 

A BLACK WOMAN'S HISTORY BOOK THAT BELONGS ON EVERY BLACK BOOKSHELF

When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America


by Paula J Giddings


Link back to part 1 of this 4 part series  http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/02/when-and-where-i-enter.html

PRESIDENT OBAMA ON REPLACING SCALIA

WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER: COLORISM AND SHIFTING MASCULINITIES

The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
by Paula Giddings

Regarding colorism, the book was very light on this point. I know THIS book wasn't about THAT. But the book would have been a little more perfect if the author had been frank or detailed about linking middle class blackness and being light-colored, and how that came right out of house-slave/field hand. The color divide continued/continues from slavery through the 1960s to now --only most black people don't realize that historically, this is also a class divide. 

a decent supplemental book that addresses race, color and class 

Also, not examining the class/color divide could leave some thinking that whiteness adds IQ to the black race, just as white racists who keep saying "Obama is part white ya know" seem to believe. White racists will believe anything, I know. But a hole in our history can leave some blacks believing this as well. We cannot afford to leave gaps where more internalized racism can get in.

Claudette refuses to get off the bus 9 months earlier than Rosa
She's young but was also the wrong shade and the wrong class to be representative

Since Giddings was so brave in other sections of the book and covered so much of black history in general in order to give context to black women's history, it just seems odd to have skipped over the colorism link to class as it didn't exist.

Paula Giddings also explained much about shifting gender roles for women, of course. But unlike most authors that right about shifting women's roles she also wrote about how men's roles changed --and not in reaction to women changing. 

For some reason it never really occurred to me that men had a shift in ideals in regards to what "a real man" looks like, a shift that was independent of wanting equality.

According to Giddings
there was a shift from men wanting to be
establishment/corporate/always in a suit/ideal dude (1920s - 50s?)
who did all for his family out of a sense of duty
TO

independent dude who did
what he wanted,
when he wanted
including open promiscuity (a word generally not applied to men but it applies)

And this shift in male consciousness in the country affected black men as well.

Early in The Civil Rights Movement black women were still respected as leaders but that shifted as a result of changing ideals in masculinity, as "macho"   More overt forms of domination became seen as "true masculinity."  Shutting women down became good. As Giddings eventually points out, quite convincingly,  Black Civil Rights groups lost power at the very same time lost respect for black women's leadership.


* * * * *

Angela Davis was in the Black Panthers for a hot minute and left due to the sexism. Elaine Brown was a leader of the Black Panthers and even admitted to using the tools of black male sexism to negotiate her way through, to maintain her own power.
Brown may not be the only one to tell us that Regina Davis, the person most responsible for setting up the Black Panther School, was beaten so badly by black male panthers for having the audacity to chastise them that they broke bone(s.) Black female panthers left after that incident.  And Huey did not stand behind his feminist sounding words to check the men that did this either.

Some say the Black Panthers were trying to clean up their macho act toward the end. And they probably were. But you take your fists to me and the leader doesn't condemn it outright and immediately, you aren't for me. Period.

So much is made of how white men were attacking the Black Panthers from the outside. Yeah well, they always were. What was happening inside the Black Panthers, between black women and black men, probably mattered more.

The Black Lives Matter movement isn't going to be as strong as it should be until #SayHerName is no longer necessary either. It makes me deeply sad that so people are not screaming for heads to roll and people to be jailed on behalf of Gynnya McMillen. #SayHerName came out just before Sandra Bland and it seems like her cause is the primary one it's benefited.

READ PART 4, CONCLUSION   http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/02/when-and-where-i-enter-white-women-and.html

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Book LinkWhen and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

by Paula J Giddings

A WORLD WITHOUT BLACK HISTORY

Feeling Rebloggy
                                          by Franchesca Ramsey


FRANCHESCA IS KINDA AWESOME

I need to relisten to that part where France winds up owning the United States and everybody in the here and now is speaking French instead of English IF NOT for ye olde blacken folke being here though. (I was half listening) 

WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER - EDUCATION, SEXISM, AND CLASS

Blacks are divided by class just like everybody else. Intellectually that's not surprising, I suppose. But was interesting to read how black people had to work to overcome that. 



Music was one of the things civil rights workers used to bring different classes of blacks together. That is, it was a calculated and deliberate thing using music to unite black people at protests. It was not just a black people love music thing like I was always taught (--put this in the bag with the other stereotypes black people like to believe in, right along side the big dick one)


How sexism and poverty come together to create black women's achievement in school was made clear in "When and Where I Enter" as well. It was so obvious, in fact, I couldn't believe I hadn't just come to it myself.

imagine what the year 1890 numbers
looked like down south. As I recall80% of blacks were still down south at the start of WWII

Black men used to quit school to support the family by working the farm or by getting blue collar jobs. Black women would couldn't get the same kind of pay as black men doing manual labor. When doing female manual labor, domestic jobs, black women were paid little or nothing, and raped besides as the rape of black women by white men did not stop the day slavery officially ended.  Therefore, in order for black women to bring more money into the household, they had leave jobs rather than get jobs so they could get an education

Again, blue collar black women (domestics) made a lot less money than black men in blue collar jobs. In white collar "women's jobs," teachers and social workers, black women better off than un-credentialed female domestics, yet they still didn't make as much money as un-credentialed/blue collar black men. At one point during the 60s, despite black women having more education, black women were still, on average, making 75 cents for every black male dollar.


And THIS wage earning, the black female earning a wage so close to that of the black male,  according to The Moynihan Report was part of black women emasculating black men and destroying the black family.

A black woman earning a wage that was critical to the family's survival and earning a wage so close to her husbands (remember it's 1965) was undermining of his masculinity. That's just one of many stereotypes about black women created by men of all colors between during the mid 20th century.

According to the author (and others)  The Moynihan Report was reviewed by many black male civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, prior to publication. So, Moynihan must have been quite shocked at the nasty reaction he got from the black community.

In the 1960s, many feminists recognized the flaws in Moynihan’s analysis. To African-American feminists in particular, Moynihan propagated a pernicious myth of black “matriarchy” that combined racism with sexism. They noted that many male Black Power radicals shared Moynihan’s idea that achieving racial equality required black men to be patriarchs. For instance, African-American activist Pauli Murray was outraged when she first read in Newsweek about the Moynihan Report and how it endorsed increasing economic opportunities for African-American men at the expense of jobs available to African-American women.

Born in 1910, Murray spent her career combating both the racial discrimination of Jim Crow and the gender discrimination she termed “Jane Crow.” A single African-American woman frustrated by the male monopoly of her chosen profession of law, Murray identified with “the class of unattached, self-supporting women for whom employment opportunities were necessary to survival . . . the ones most victimized by a still prevalent stereotype that men are the chief breadwinners.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/moynihans-report-fiftieth-anniversary-black-family/

I'm not sure if The Moynihan Report was the first attempt to shift the effects of white racism onto black culture via the black woman, complete with black cosigning, but it surely wasn't the last.

Read More Part 3   http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/02/when-and-where-i-enter-colorism-and.html

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Book Link 

When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

by Paula J Giddings

SUPREME COURT: TIME FOR A BLACK WOMAN

A few black female names 

that have been thrown out there.
 

LEAH WARD SEARS

Currently in private practice

Sears was a State Supreme Court Justice for Georgia

KAMALA HARRIS 

Attorney General for the state of California

DEBORAH BATTS
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Read Morehttp://www.theroot.com/photos/2013/07/diversity_on_supreme_court_who_could_be_the_first_black_female_justice.html

WHEN AND WHERE I ENTER - AN INTRODUCTION

The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
by Paula Giddings

The book "Sword Among Lions," Paula J Giddings biography on Ida B Well made me curious about the Black Women's Club Movement which began to develop a couple of decades after slavery among middle-class, black women.

These clubs were focused on uplifting the race and also focused on getting black women the right to vote. (Black men had gotten the right to vote in 1870.  Black women would eventually get the right to vote, nationwide, in 1920)

As I read the book, it became clearer and clearer to me that black women and black men of that time (late 1800s to 1920s) might have been much closer to having equality between the genders than white were people were THEN and also also closer to it than black people are NOW. 

Maybe slavery, and the poverty immediately following slavery, forced black men and black women to work as a team toward advancement without hard divisions in gender roles.

There was gender bias in the black community, don't get me wrong.

However, black women of the time had fresh memory of slavery in their own heads from experience or from the oral history of their mothers to keep them from accepting or expecting their men to treat them like second class citizens - unlike white women.  Black women had to work to support the family just like the black men did.

Maybe black men had a fresher memory of domination as well for a while, too fresh to reproduce it in the direction of black women---for a time.



Black women of the late 1800s and 1920s were a members of white run women's groups but they also created their own clubs and political organizations.  Northern white women's groups would not fully commit to things like anti-lynching when they were doing things like attempting to court white women, among other things. And many white women simply didn't see black women as equals.  So for the black women's clubs getting anti-lynching legislation in place and getting black women the vote were two of their main functions. Some of these women, like Ida B Wells, were practiced at doing political battle prior to starting the battle for black women's suffrage. Ida B Wells was one the Black Americans to effectively lead a national anti-lynching battle.

Background: In the late 1800s, the south was still trying to rebuild itself from the devastation of the civil war. And they were trying to make the south work without the free labor provided by slaves. And the white south was selling cotton to get the money they needed to rebuild. The other thing the white south was trying to do was push black people back into a social position that was as much like "slave" as possible. One of the primary methods white racists used on blacks to get this done was lynching.Ida B, through the newspaper she owned and wrote for, produced some of the first sociological studies in this country on lynching. And to stop lynching, she traveled all over the country and even outside the country so as to have an effect on southern white income.

She traveled to where some of the primary cotton buyers were, England, and got anti-lynching resolutions passed there. As a result of her speeches people in England made commitments to not do business with white savages that were killing black people for sport.  As a result,  whites in Memphis --a location that was a primary cotton producer of the world-- were shamed into stopping lynching cold. There was no lynching at all for 20 years straight in Memphis after a string Ida B Wells trips.

In fact, through the actions of black women's clubs, lynching was reduced across the country from all time highs.

The NAACP ( Ida B Wells one of the founders) copied her methods and used the anti-lynching issue to establish itself.

This book gave me so much more of an overview of black history from a black female perspective that was nothing short of amazing to read. It covers the period from slavery through The Civil Rights movement.

  

READ PART 2 http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/02/when-and-where-i-enter-education-sexism.html

THE DAY BEYONCE TURNED BLACK

Yep. This is pretty much the behavior I've been seeing. How about you?

BLACK PANTHERS VERSUS WHITE HISTORY

Any black person, activist in nature, that has advocated shooting back when shot at by white people has been identified as "violent" in school textbooks for decades. And those textbooks, mostly approved of and put together in Texas by descendants of (more recently) slave-owning, southern, white people, have been spreading these rumors forever.The falsehoods are spread by the addition and omission of certain adjectives and verbs, for the most part.

For example, white controlled main stream newspapers would often write: 

"Black Panthers advocate shooting white people" or "Black Panthers advocate shooting police officers" 

instead of 

"Black Panthers advocate shooting back at violent white racist people whenever they attack us"  or "Black Panthers advocate using their second amendment rights to stand guard when racist, white police officers accost black citizens, seemingly without provocation" 

And the white newspapers racism-e-raced story would be the story that found its way into textbooks. And these are the stories that 40 and 50 year old white adults choose to believe right now and have passed on to their children.

That is, white people lied about and e-raced racism in their day-to-day lives in favor of believing in their own superiority, which e-raced racism and the motives of white violence from newspapers, which e-raced racism and motives of white violence from history textbooks.

And they want us to believe they haven't heard a single word on the subject since. Hence, the confusion about Beyonce's nod to the Black Panthers during the Superbowl Halftime celebration. 

And when a white textbook author liked a historical black activist but not their willingness to defense themselves or that black activists willingness to outright say 'white people are doing bad' thing X, they only selectively repeat that black activists ideas. Martin Luther King, for example, is selectively quoted. 

When Ida B Wells' story is told by white people, the part where she talks about telling black people to leave the city of Memphis because of a lynching and move to Oklahoma may or may not be omitted. But the fact that one of the things that made she liked about Oklahoma is that the black people there had rifles standing in the corner's of their homes is most definitely omitted. Her anger at white people of Memphis taking away black people's guns immediately following a lynching men guilty of running a grocery store that was successfully competing with a white store is omitted too because black anger all by itself is scary.
 

And all this e-racing of white violence also e-races the motives of people like The Black Panthers, Malcom X, and Ida B Wells essentially saying, "We need to physically defend ourselves when white people attack us due to our skin color."

White violence against people of color in United States History has been so successfully erased that white people appear to have no idea that the horrific actions of the terrorist group ISIS on people around the world have been visited upon black people by white racists in this country over and over again and ignored anomaly by the white majority over and over.

Anything that gives off the slightest whiff that black people
could respond just like white people do
to being attacked is altered or made milder.

I've known the story of lynching since I could read, maybe before. I'm not sure how much my parents could protect me from this information when I was walking through the room when recent history images of white police officers using attack dogs on black people for demonstrating were flashing across the television screen of the room I was in. I am assuming they couldn't protect my mind from the knowledge of the violence of white racism anymore than white people could stop their young children from knowing that 9/11 was happening while 9/11 was in progress on 9/12, 9/13, and 9/14 etc.


So yes, I've known about lynching since I was very young. But I haven't read extensively on lynching, by accident while reading an Ida B Wells biography, until recently.  For instance, I did not know that

- hanging wasn't necessarily the primary method of "lynching" a black person. Since I was a young girl, I thought "lynching" meant wild group of white people hanging somebody outside the law. Lynching though,  has a specific definition that doesn't necessarily involve hanging at all. It seems that hanging was a method of displaying the body afterward. 

 -Lynching was not linked to black men raping white women as much as we think. Ida B Wells found that black men lynched were only ever accused 1/3 of the time. And the link above says lynching was only linked to rape 1/4 of the time (link above may be including black women victims?) 

-torturing the person slowly as they died, burning them alive, etc was a regular part of the entertainment. I knew that this kind of thing happened.  I've seen this in photos. But now that I've read about a number of lynchings that Ida B Wells investigated, I am understanding that this was the normal progression of events-- not the more flamboyant lynchings white people executed on black people

-White people taking body parts as souvenirs after the lynching was done? I can't be sure from reading only one or two biographies, but this  probably was not "just part" of the more flamboyant lynchings white people executed black people.  It seems that souvenir taking after torture was the normal progression of events for white people that attended these things. 

Keep in mind that black people living closer in time and place to these events didn't have to read about these things happening. They saw people being dragged off to be lynched for themselves. They were beaten or killed when they tried to fight a white mob off; Those that survived told the story. They heard from a friend why their next door neighbor is dead and how she screamed when she was taken. They heard from a friend why the black store they used to shop at is now a shelled husk of  a building and how the black owners wound up shot dead.

Ida B Wells was writing a story elsewhere, out of town, when she heard about the lynching of the owners of "The People's Grocery" who happened to be friends of hers. That launched her anti-lynching crusade. Her methods of investigation and reporting would be copied by the N.A.A.C.P.  And while the N.A.A.C.P was more political(?) or accomodationist(?) in it's approach, Ida B Wells, though a founding member of that organization, believed in shooting back. 

White people were not entitled to the peaceful approach of Martin Luther King. The natural reaction to people threatening to attack you violently is to let them know you'll fight back. The main reason Martin Luther King advocated non-violence was not just because of "the rightness" of it or because white people attacking blacks weren't violent thugs. The reason Martin Luther King advocated non-violence was because: 

1) White people out-numbered black people by 6 to 1, at the very least. Blacks couldn't do anything but be wiped out in an all out war

2) Post WWII and the invention of the television set, Martin Luther King in a way similar to Ida B Wells 70 years earlier, knew he could show the world the hypocrisy and violence of this country just by standing around in large black groups asking politely to vote, sit down anywhere when riding a bus, sit down anywhere at a Woolworths lunch counter. He knew that these small requests would bring out the animal in white people on television, that it would embarrass the U.S. government as far as getting any other country to believe in the U.S. mantra "All men are created equal."
* * * * *

And  MLK's method, in my opinion, mostly worked in that it reduced some forms of overt white violence significantly.

Today, we call the police and are outraged that police do little or nothing when white racists attack sometimes. However, prior to the Civil Rights Movement it was the white police officers themselves that were throwing manure on people, throwing paint on houses so they had to be re-painted, throwing acid on cars to destroy them. And if a black person went to the police with the license plate of the police car that black person was threatened with death inside the police station.

Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson

  * * * * *

However, I do believe that the carrot and stick method works most effectively when the carrot and stick used separately. And while Martin was dangling the interracial harmony carrot groups like the Black Panther Party (BPP) were definitely were mostly stick where white people were concerned. And white people needed the fear of that stick to move toward Martin Luther King. White people needed to know that the alternative to peace was "eye for an eye."

Martin Luther King's method doesn't work without the old testament eye-for-an-eye backdrop of the Black Panthers, Malcom, and Ida, in my opinion.  

Yes the BPP mostly focused on pro-black ideals and did positive things for black people. That was 90% of their focus. But they were also about self-defense. The full name of the Black Panther Party was "The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense" 


White racists  and white people who read the textbooks of old think black self-defense is synonymous anti-whiteness. But that's only true if white people think of themselves as entirely made up of racists as a group. That's only true if white people think there was nothing to defend against --even back in the 1960s and 1970s when Parchman Farm (prison) was still being run like a plantation using black men arrested for things like loitering. The BPP didn't think that white was synonymous with white racist. The  BPP's 10 point program make it crystal clear that they did not believe that about all white people. 

But the BPP also made it clear that anybody who physically attacked them would meet physical resistance. The BPP also made it crystal clear that they were aware of those white people calling for peace were really calling for black people to 'just sit down, be quiet, and maybe the white racists will forget about you. It's not that bad.'

Knowing when another group, for the most part, doesn't give a damn about anybody not like their own group is not racist, sexist, or any other kind of "-ist."

And white people, who do not consider themselves racists, still do not like the idea of physical fight back from black people. Many white people don't want to acknowledge that they actually think, in the back of their minds, that they are entitled to a second round of throwing things at, spitting at, and pouring milkshakes on black people without black people responding in kind --when that's gone forever and ya shoudn'a been given that mess the first time.
 

Dear White People Drop It Like It's Hot, The Calls For Peace

http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2015/06/dear-white-people-drop-it-like-its-hot.html

BEYONCE AND CREW AT HALFTIME

You know how I know about how deep white ignorance and white entitlement runs? I know because of the way they've responded to Beyonce's Formation video and her subsequent Superbowl 50 halftime show. I know because there are so many white people --who do not consider themselves racists--  that think people like....

Ida B Wells, Malcom X, and the members of Black Panthers SAYING  'We will shoot back at you if you shoot at us.' 

is the equivalent of 

the Ku Klux Klan, a white group born as a direct result of slavery ending in order to keep the relationship between white no-longer-masters and black no-longer-slaves exactly the same as SAYING   'We will kill you if you do not stay in your subservient place. And we will even bomb your homes and your churches where four little girls are attending bible school in order to make you obey us.

'  
The statements of the BPP and KKK are not the same.

The motives of the BPP and the KKK are not the same.
  
But the motives of the predominantly white people trying to make it look like the two groups ARE ideologically identical hasn't changed.

The predominantly white group that doesn't understand black people being interested in "self defense" are descended from the same people who erased "white violent racists" from their speech, from their newspaper articles, and from their school textbooks

This ignorance is at least quasi-deliberate in 2016.

The Black Panthers were problematic for black women, and I will address that at another time because white folks are not the only ones white washing their own history, clasping ignorance to their breasts, and cherishing it. But the Black Panthers were not anti-white people.


The BPP made their aims and attitudes clear with their 10 point program. Anybody who has not read it or read about the Black Panthers as written about by numerous people without a Black-Panther-Wanna-Be card in their back pocket is willfully trying to erase the white racism of the past and the white racism of the present just like their foremothers and forefathers did.


a still from "Formation" - Video below





10 point program on next page

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA DIES AT 79

I was writing about the possibility of President Obama getting replace a Supreme Court Justice (or three) before he leaves office either late yesterday or early this morning. I wrote and re-wrote the line over and over again trying to make it sound tasteful

...before I gave up.

And, I wrote and edited so many blog posts yesterday, I have no idea which blog post I wrote it in. It could be in the Black Suffrage Timeline I've been writing on for a while-- probably won't be done until the very end of the month.

I can't believe it. 




I been puttin the whammy on Texas  today too. The textbooks, including history books, written and/or edited and influenced there -- are no bueno

I can't believe it. 


Read Morehttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35571868