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Past Issues
ENAMORED WITH POLITICAL PARTY LABELING
VAUGHN WILSON
A lot of African-Americans are so enamored with political party labeling that they miss the boat on the reason our ancestors fought oppressive regimes yesteryears. Crispus Attucks didn’t care if he was a democrat or republican when he stepped up to combat the enemy in the Boston Massacre. Frederick Douglass thought less of which political party might benefit his cause during the underground railroad movement without, dare I say it, sanction from a political party chairman. Those men and women operated on the fortitude, bravery, rationale and leadership savvy of freeing Blacks from bondage. The issue at hand was too imperative to be tossed about on a political football. This is what I think is going on today. And it’s why nothing ever gets done on a grand scale for African-Americans in this country.
The Democrats and the Republicans and their Uncle Tom and Aunt Thomasiana cronies are too busy trying to persuade Blacks to join their respective parties, paralyzing both parties to even act on any matters concerning our welfare. I am sure someone somewhere in Washington, D.C. and municipalities around the nation is laughing at the ineffective waste of time, resources, money, manpower and political bickering being employed by so-called enlightened political hucksters or hustlers of our race. It is partly why the Capital Hill powers that be aren’t taking reparations seriously. There isn’t even a grassroots consensus on whether or not Blacks should get any reparations from the U.S. government or how to disburse the funds or what monetary form the reparations would end up as. If you had seen the debate over reparations on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight several weeks ago, you would know that some African-Americans who are conservative and republican aren’t in favor of it and many
Blacks who are liberal and democrat want reparations now. This show made both the proponent and opponent look like children in a schoolyard at recess picking on one another with host, acting as a chaperone, scolding them. (Log on to networkchicago.com for more details on this show.)
There are a whole lot of social, political, economic, psychological and emotional dilemmas in the Black community, which need a platform to address. But while hush-hush payoffs, political organizational kickbacks, campaign cash contributions for Uncle Tom loyalty are being added to the balance sheets of many of these political phonies, the mass populations of African-Americans are getting shafted. And though you know what you see isn’t a movie, still you know many have shut mouths and are going along with the status quo plan as a “good little boy” or “good little girl” to keep their gravy train pulling in the caboose of their gargantuan green.
The spirit of true warrior activism is all but dead. Malcolm X so succinctly talked about the ballot or the bullet in the 1960s. What he meant was there was either going to be a war won by giving Black folks a voice in the political arena or there was going to be a battle in the streets of America for democracy and freedom to exercise basic human rights as was so cavalierly withheld from us after so-called Emancipation and Constitutional liberties were passed. Those staunch, take no-prisoner attitudes of yesteryear is what is needed now. However, we can’t live vicariously in the past. We can learn from it. We can amend some of the lessons of our great heroes, heroines and leaders and adapt them to today.
I think we must do something because our schools are failing, gang violence and drug commerce is worsening, we’re starting to throw our babies in trash bins like an unwanted, frozen TV dinner; there’s entrepreneurial dearth in neighborhoods where predominantly blacks reside (what happened to all that empowerment zone money?), segregation on TV (get ‘em, Kweisi Mfume) and we can’t even elect a mayor of African decent in Chicago. When you look at our problems from a macrocosm perspective, no African-American should be too concerned with a political party that doesn’t really want us to storm the barns of government for victory. Those rich good ol’ boys club members of the U.S. House and Senate, for the most part, frankly don’t give a damn about Blacks nor the things we desire. They probably hope we all just deep dancin’ to hip-hop music and eat our chitterlings and watermelon to bad things blow over.
Does anybody know what time is it? It is time we draft someone, group o r grassroots force to come out fighting with or without boxing gloves to deliver our rightful, just deserts. And stop pretending we are a desert hopelessly and helplessly withering away; for this is not our stock. FIGHT!
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