Monday – Martin Luther King Day
Martin Luther King Day couldn’t be better timed this year, coming as it does between an aborted white supremacist insurrection and the swearing in of the first woman African American vice president. A fair number of white Americans—enough to make a difference in the presidential election—are awakening to the reality of systemic racism, which African Americans have been trying to tell them about all their lives. Such people, I suspect, will now be much more open to June Jordan’s poem “Jim Crow: The Sequel,” written in 2000.
Before turning to it, a note on why it has taken such whites so long to wake up. For me, the principal virtue of Lee Harper’s own sequel, Go Set a Watchman, is that it shows how white privilege works corrupts otherwise decent people. As long as he is comfortably situated atop America’s racial hierarchy, Atticus Finch can be the principled defender of justice. Once African Americans demand advancement, however, the man who once expressed contempt for the Ku Klux Klan joins the White Citizens Council, the Chamber of Commerce version of the KKK. This explains why Calpurnia, who raised his kids, is no longer speaking to him.
Because he has a fundamental sense of fairness, however, there’s a chance Atticus can still be swayed. Just as he’s willing to listen to a disillusioned Scout, now an adult, I like to think he might give ear to Jordan’s poem.
The Black Lives Matter protests received an unprecedented amount of white support last summer. So did Joe Biden in the past election. And while it may not mean a lot, two days ago Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford apologized to his black constituents for questioning the results of the presidential election, which could cause him a lot of grief from Trump supporters. We may be seeing significant cracks in the white wall.
I don’t expect the cracks to open up into a flood, and we’ve all been deluded by hope before. Jordan quotes Lyndon Johnson’s call for “equality as a fact and as a result,” and the occasion of her poem is George W. Bush’s dog whistle racism thirty years later. Bush, like his father, employed the Lee Atwater playbook, using coded language (“states’ rights,” for instance) rather than the n-word. When Trump turned the dog whistle into a bullhorn, however, certain whites found themselves choosing decency over entitlement. They may, for the first time in their lives, be willing to listen to “an angry Black woman on the subject of the angry White man.”
Dare to dream.
Jim Crow: The Sequel
By June Jordan
An angry Black woman on the subject of the angry White man:
We didn’t always need affirmative action
When we broke this crazy land into farms
when we planted and harvested the crops
when we dug into the earth for water
when we carried that water into the
big house kitchens and bedrooms
when we built that big house
when we fed and clothed other people’s
children with food we cooked and
served to other people’s children, wearing
the garments that we fitted and we sewed
together, when we hacked and hauled
huge trees for lumber and fuel, when we
washed and polished the chandeliers,
when we bleached and pressed the linens
purchased by blood profits from our daily
forced laborings, when we lived under the
whip and in between the coffle and chains,
when we watched our babies sold away
from us, when we lost our men to
anybody’s highest bidder, when slavery
defined our days and our prayers and our
nighttimes of no rest–then we did not
need affirmative action.
Like two-legged livestock we cost the
bossman three hundred and fifteen dollars
or six hundred and seventy-five dollars
so he provided for our keep
like two-legged livestock
penned into the parched periphery of very
grand plantation life. We did not need
affirmative action. NO! We needed
freedom: We needed overthrow,
revolution and a holy fire to purify the air.
But for two hundred years this crazy
land the law and the bullets behind the law
continued to affirm the gospel of
God-given White supremacy.
For two hundred years the law and the
bullets behind the law, and the money and
the politics behind the bullets behind the
law affirmed the gospel of
God-given White supremacy/
God-given male-White supremacy.
And neither the Emancipation Proclamation
nor the Civil War nor one constitutional
amendment after another nor one Civil Rights
legislation after another could bring about a
yielding of the followers of that gospel
to the beauty of our human face.
Justice don’t mean nothin’ to a
hateful heart!
And so we needed affirmative action. We
needed a way into the big house
besides the back door. We needed a chance at
the classroom and jobs and open housing
in okay neighborhoods.
We needed a way around the hateful hearts of
America. We needed more than freedom
because a piece of paper ain’t the
same as opportunity
or education.
And some thirty years ago we agitated
and we agitated until the President said,
“We seek…
not just equality
as a right and a theory
but equality as a fact
and as a result.”
And a great rejoicing rose like a spirit
dancing
fresh and happy on the soon-to-be-the-
integrated-and-most-uppity ballroom floor
of these United
States.
And Black folks everywhere dressed up in
African-American pride
and optimism.
From the littlest to the elders
we shined our shoes and brushed our hair
and got good and ready for
“equality as a fact.” But
three decades later, and come to find out
we never got invited to the party
we never got included in “the people”
we never got no kind of affirmative action
worth more than a spit in the wind.
And yesterday
the new man
in the White House/
the new President declared,”What we have
done for women and minorities is a good
thing, but we must respond to those who
feel discriminated against…This is a
psychologically difficult time for the
so-called angry White man.”
Well I am here to tell the world that
46 percent of my children living in poverty
does not feel good to me
and my brothers in prison and not in college
does not feel good to me
psychologically
or otherwise!
Catch that angry White man and tell him
“Get a grip!”
Forty-six percent of the American labor
force is constituted by White men but White
men occupy 95 percent of all senior
management positions!
And as a wise Black man
recently observed
“This supposedly beleaguered minority
(White males are about one-third of the
population) makes up 80 percent of the
Congress, four-fifths of tenured university
faculty, nine-tenths of the Senate
and 92 percent of the Forbes 400.”
Tell me who’s angry!
I say the problem with affirmative action
seems to me like way too much affirmative
talk and way too little action!
And unless you happen to belong to that
infinitesimal club of millionaire Black folks
got one hundred and eight thousand dollars
to throw into the campaign pot of their
nearest and dearest
full-time political racist,
I think you better join with me to agitate
and agitate for justice and
equality we can eat
and pay the rent with
NOW.
Previous Martin Luther King Day posts
2020—Langston Hughes: Hughes and King Dream a World
2019—Beowulf poet: Pelosi-Mueller vs. Grendel-Trump
2018 – Claude McKay: America, Racist and Reactionary Both
2017—Ralph Ellison, Lucille Clifton: We Benefit When We Check Our Privilege
2016—Clint Smith: Black in a White World
2015 – Lucille Clifton: Against Race Oppression, Turn to Love
2014 – May Justus: My Town’s Desegregation Battles
2012 – Nikki Giovanni: In the Spirit of Martin
2011 – Aphra Behn: The Challenges and Necessity of Interracial Friendships
2010— Upton Sinclair: Life before Health Benefits: A Jungle