Can Black People Be Racist ?

Can Black People Be Racist?:
Rodney, Reginald and Reverse Racism

White America/assassinate my character.

Gotta Have It -Kanye West and Jay Z





After being caught on You Tube with a white sheet, a box of matches and a gasoline can braggin' about burning down the home of AfricanAmerican activist, Emmett Evers, Byron De la Bryant was finally being charged with a hate crime. The prosecution used hundreds of historical documents of cross burnings, brutal beatings and lynchings to prove that Bryant's actions were part of a long legacy of racist crimes against African Americans. However, after the defense showed the jury a video of the 1992 beating of Reginald Denny, they found Bryant not guilty....

April 29, 1992, millions of Africans Americans sat by their televisions outraged that the acquittal of the four white officers accused of beating Rodney King was evidence of white America's racism. Later that same day, millions of White Americans sat by their televisions convinced that the beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny by for Black men was proof of Black racism.

These two events have sparked hundreds of conversations about race over the 20 years since the LA Rebellions with most of them ending in the compromise that there are Black racists as well as White racists.

This conclusion is patently false. There ain't no such thing as a "Black racist."

African Americans can be many things: thugs, gangsta's, Republicans, etc. But the one thing that we cannot be is racist. Although most people define racism as hatred for people of a different race, a more functional definition would be having the power to enforce that hatred socially, politically and economically. And last time I checked, Black people did not posses that kind of juice.

In his work, "The United Independent Compensatory Code," Neely Fuller argued that "the only form of functional racism that exists among the people of the known universe is white supremacy." But that minor detail has not stopped folks from engaging in the never ending hunt for the nonexistent Black supremacist.

In his book, The Ice Man Inheritance, Michael Bradley traced the foundation of the myth of black racism back centuries ago when the Bantu-speaking people "enslaved" the "Hottentots" (Khoikhoi) and the "Bushmen" (San) . Because anthropologist CS Coon divided the Africans into two separate races, some have used this as evidence of "Black supremacy."

Just as many people used the beating of Denny as the quintessential example of Black racism , even today, any time Black folks start marching and yellin' "No Justice No Peace" you can bet that Fox News and others won't rest until they finally capture a Black supremacist.

This is how it has always been.

In 1915, during the height of outrage over the lynching of African Americans, the movie "Birth of a Nation" was used to justify the activities of the Ku Klux Klan by portraying Black men as rapists.

During the mid 50's when Black people were being attacked by police dogs for fighting for their rights, Mike Wallace produced an expose on the Nation of Islam called, The Hate that Hate Produced.

More recently, November 2006 after Michael Richards, aka Kramer from Seinfield, dropped multiple N-bombs, the argument quickly became "well, black comedians use the word all the time."

Who can forget , April 2007, when after Don Imus called the Rutgers University Women's B-Ball Team "nappy headed hoes," civil rights leaders and right wing talking heads found a slick way to blame it all on Hip Hop.

Recently, after the Trayvon Martin murder, Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera blamed the incident on kids wearing hoodies. And Bill O'Reilly sent his top notch producer to gang infested Chicago to promote the idea that we should be focused on Black on Black violence instead of the
Martin murder. Now, with the shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma of five African Americans, allegedly, by two White men, look for Fox to do a series of stories on the history of driveby's in the 'hood.

The purpose here is not to suggest that all White people are racists. However, without a doubt , the small group of ultra-rich people who control the resources of the planet don't live in Compton. The ones behind the curtains pulling the strings are wealthy White men.

In Dr. WEB DuBois's classic work "Black Reconstruction" it is reported that, during slavery, only 7% of the southern population owned slaves. According to DuBois, "the masses of poor whites were economic outcasts." All they had going for them was a false sense of racial superiority. In reality, Blacks and poor Whites were being manipulated by greedy Northern industrialists and the southern planter class.

Not much has changed. Perhaps there is some truth in the linefrom Goodie Mob's, Cell Therapy that warned that one day trained assassins would be coming for " n**** like me/poor white trash like they..."

Ironically, conversations have taken place between those who advocated Black Pride and proponents of White Power.

According to Dr. Tony Martin in his book, Race First, in 1922, Marcus Garvey had an Atlanta meeting with "Edward Young Clarke, acting imperial wizard of the Klan." In, A Life of Reinvention Malcolm X, Manning Marable said that Malcolm X was involved in a 1961 meeting with the KKK also in the ATL. Also, the man credited with popularizing the term "Black Power"
Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael) once had a cordial debate with George Lincoln Rockwell, a major advocate of White Power.

Like EPMD would say racism is "Business Never Personal."

Hip Hop has attempted to address racism over the years from relatively light hearted songs like Kool G Rap's Erase Racism to the more militant works of Paris and early Ice Cube (before he became a movie star.) However, I think that The Lox summed it up best; it's all about "Money, Power, Respect."

The major crime of white supremacy is the hording of the planet's wealth, leaving the masses to fight over crumbs.

The solution to this country's "race problem" may have been best articulated by the late Black Panther, Fred Hampton, when he said "Power to the People." That means Black Power to Black people, White Power to White People, Brown Power to Brown people, etc.

When this is achieved maybe we can finally answer the question that Rodney King asked the world 20 years ago:


"Can we all get along?"

Not yet Rodney, not yet.


This is the second part of the month long series "Rap, Race and Riots: Hip Hop 20 Years After the LA Rebellion"


TRUTH Minista Paul Scott's weekly column is "This Ain't Hip Hop," a column for intelligent Hip Hop headz. He can be reached at info@nowarningshotsfired.com website NoWarningShotsfired.com or Twitter @truthminista

Ol' Dirty MLK: America's Most Wanted

Ol' Dirty MLK:
America's Most Wanted

TRUTH Minista Paul Scott


"I said it before and I'll still taunt it. Every young brotha with a color is most wanted."

Amerikkka's Most Wanted- Ice Cube






He was considered by some the most dangerous man in America. He spent many nights locked up in jail cells. There were constant attempts made on his life. During his last years he was constantly harassed by law enforcement. The real reason for his untimely demise before the age of 40 still remains a mystery. I'm not talking about Grammy nominated rapper Russell "Ol' Dirty Bastard" Jones," I'm talking about Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....


Recently, the website Gun.io posted FBI documents suggesting that ODB and the Wu Tang Clan were under surveillance for alleged, illegal activities. It must be noted that the late Dr. Martin Luther King was also under surveillance as documented in Kenneth O'Reilly's book "Black Americans: The FBI Files", proving that if you are an outspoken Black man in America, you don't have to be a criminal for the Feds to watch you.


Although many people today celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King as one of the greatest American heroes, that was not always the case. According to historian Taylor Branch in his book "Pillar of Fire," former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to King as not only a "tom cat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges" but a "notorious liar" and "one of the lowest characters in the country;" in the Hip Hop vernacular " an ol' dirty bastard."


For most people who are only familiar with King via the overplayed "I Have a Dream Speech," this may come as quite a shock. How could a man of peace who only wanted "this nation to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed" become Public Enemy #1. However, in reality, King was a lot closer to the ideologies of "militants" such as Malcolm X and Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael), especially in his later years, than many people would like to admit. This fact, however, has not been lost on Hip Hop, as even the most revolutionary rappers such as Public Enemy, Immortal Technique and Rakim have all paid homage to him in their songs.


The real Martin Luther King Jr is captured in the parts of his speeches and writings that have been whited-out of high school history books. Most people don't know that in his last speech, " I See the Promised Land," delivered in Memphis the night before he was assassinated, he called for a boycott of Coca Cola, Sealtest Milk and Wonder Bread and also asked that Black people transfer their money from white banks to a black one.


Nor do they know that ,although he is portrayed as the great integrationist, King was as just a strong of an advocate of Black Pride as ODB was of "Knowledge of Self." In his work ""Where Do We Go from Here" King defines Black Power as "a psychological reaction to the psychological indoctrination that led to the creation of the perfect slave." Also, although some only associate Dr. King with songs like "We Shall Overcome," Dead Prez once sampled one of his "missing" speeches where he proclaimed , "Yes I'm Black..I'm proud of it...I'm Black and beautiful!"


This is the King that many hated; the one who dissed President Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam by saying that "we have been wrong from the beginning in Vietnam, we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people." (Which was just a nicer way of putting Muhammad Ali's statement that no Vietcong ever called him the N word. )


These are the types of voices that many in this country have always wanted silenced.


Now does that mean that at some point, ODB might have stopped a Wu Tang concert and spoken out against George Bush's "War on Terror?"


We will never know but wild boys do wild things.


Remember, in an AllHipHop interview conducted shortly after his release from prison, ODB accused George Bush and the government of trying to kill him. While most people wrote this off as the paranoid ramblings of someone suffering from too many years of drug abuse , history makes us take another look. As they say in Greek mythology "those who the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad."


It is no secret that the FBI bugged Dr. King's hotel rooms and ,allegedly, had tapes of him gettin' his freak on with women which they delivered to his wife in an effort to push him to commit suicide.


Also, according to Clay Risen in his book "A Nation on Fire," before his assassination in Memphis, " the 111th Military Intelligence Group had been keeping tabs on King and the SCLC for signs of an impending riot." Also Risen states that on the day of us murder, anti-riot operations were already put in place by the Army Operations Center "before his death was even confirmed."

Even Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote in the forward of Kings "alleged" assassin, James Earl Ray's book "Who Killed Martin Luther King, " "I have always believed that the government was part of a conspiracy, either directly or indirectly, to assassinate him."

So what is the connection between the ODBs, Tupac Shakurs and even the Soulja Slims of the world and MLK ? Every Black man with a microphone is a potential threat. Whether that threat is realized or not, they all had the potential to incite the youth to revolutionary action. After all, law enforcement has always paid an inordinate amount of attention to rappers. Recently, it was even reported that the DC police and the ATF set up a fake Hip Hop record label in Washington DC.


What if Russell Jones had lived long enough to become more political? What if his ideologies were expanding in the same manner as Dr. King's. Remember the purpose of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO was to "prevent the long range growth of militant Black organizations especially among youth."


Maybe the truth lies in ODB's haunting words when he bum-rushed the stage at the 1998 Grammy awards,


"Wu Tang is for the children. We teach the children!"


And this is America's greatest fear.



Article courtesy of "This Ain't Hip Hop;" a column for intelligent Hip Hop headz.


TRUTH Minista Paul Scott can be reached at (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com