Going Too Far : Essays about America's Nervous Breakdown

Ishmael Reed

Description

Ishmael Reed goes too far, again! Just as the fugitive slaves went to Canada and challenged the prevailing view that slaves were well off under their masters, Ishmael Reed has gone all the way to Quebec—where this book is published—to challenge the widespread opinion that racism is no longer a factor in American life.
In some ways, says Reed, the United States very much resembles the country of the 1850s. The representations of blacks in popular culture are throwbacks to the days of minstrelsy. Politicians are raising stereotypes about blacks reminiscent of those that the fugitive slaves found it necessary to combat: that they are lazy and dependent and need people to manage them.
Ishmael Reed establishes his diagnosis of a nervous breakdown in three parts. Part I on a black president of the United States is entitled “Chief Executive and Chief Exorcist, Too?” Part II on culture and representations of African Americans in our supposed post-race era, “Coonery and Buffoonery.” In Part III, “As Relayed by Themselves,” cultural figures have a chance to tell the story in their own words.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Discrimination

Informations

• Publié par: Baraka Books
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781926824581
• Langue: English

Extrait

Cover
GOING TOO FAR
Essays About America’s Nervous Breakdown
Also by Ishmael Reed

N ONFICTION
Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media, The Return of the Nigger Breakers (Baraka Books)
Another Day at the Front
Mixing It Up
Blues City, A Walk in Oakland
Airing Dirty Laundry
Writin’ is Fightin’
God Made Alaska for the Indians
Shrovetide in Old News Orleans

F ICTION
The Free-Lance Pallbearers
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
Mumbo Jumbo
The Last Days of Louisiana Red
Flight to Canada
The Terrible Twos
Reckless Eyeballing
The Terrible Threes
Japanese by Spring
Juice
Title page
Ishmael Reed
GOING TOO FAR
Essays About America’s Nervous Breakdown

Montreal
Credits
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Reed, Ishmael, 1938-
Going too far: essays about America’s nervous breakdown / Ishmael Reed.

ISBN 978-1-926824-58-1

1. African Americans— Social conditions —21st century. 2. African Americans in popular culture. 3. United States— Race relations. 4. Racism— United States. I. Title.

E185.86.R43 2012 305.896’073 C2012-905245-0


Copyright © Ishmael Reed 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover cartoon by Ishmael Reed
Back cover photo: Tennessee Reed
Cover and book design by Folio Infographie
Conversion to ePub format: Studio C1C4

Legal Deposit, 3rd quarter, 2012
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Library and Archives Canada

ISBN (paper) 978-1-926824-56-7
ISBN (Epub) 978-1-926824-58-1
ISBN (PDF) 978-1-926824-59-8

Published by Baraka Books of Montreal.
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Foreword
Dedicated to Thelma V. Reed
June 2, 1917 to March 6, 2012
Author of Black Girl From Tannery Flats


“For unless you do your own acting and write your own plays, your theatre will be of no use; it will in fact vulgarize and degrade you”.
George Bernard S HAW
INTRODUCTION
G oing T here
W hen they tell me “don’t go there” that’s my signal to navigate the forbidden topics of American life. Just as the ex-slaves were able to challenge the prevailing attitudes about race in the United States after arriving in Canada, I am able to argue from Quebec against ordained opinion that paints the United States as a place where the old sins of racism have been vanquished and that those who insist that much work remains to be done are involved in “Old Fights,” as one of my young critics, John McWhorter, claims in articles in Commentary and The New Republic , where I am dismissed as an out of touch “fading anachronism.” Benjamin Drew recorded the testimony of fugitive slaves, who, from Canada, challenged the prevailing opinion in the United States that slaves were content under the management of merciful slave masters. In The Refugee : Narratives of the Fugitive Slaves in Canada , he wrote: “Their enemies, the supporters of slavery, have represented them as ‘indolent, vicious, and debased; suffering and starving,’ because they have no kind masters to do the thinking for them, and to urge them to the necessary labor, which their own laziness and want of forecast, lead them to avoid.”
I was struck by the fact that some of the same issues confronting Drew’s 1851 generation are contemporary. Since the ushering in of right-wing administrations, beginning with Ronald Reagan, the wealthy have been financing foundations staffed with intellectuals and academics who have issued a number of books and papers proposing that whichever problems faced by what they refer to as “the underclass,” are caused by their “laziness,” and “idleness.” Rick Santelli, who refers to himself as the Tea Party’s “lightning rod,” and the former presidential candidate Rick Santorum have used the argument of black dependency as career moves, the kind of stereotype that is still aimed at Italian Americans.
Santelli says that Tea Partiers are angry because minorities are receiving all of the entitlements, when a recent study showed that the entitlements are being hogged up by the Red States, where most Tea Party members reside.
For his part, Santorum accused blacks of ripping off money from white people, when it would take a few hundred years for blacks and Hispanics to catch up with the kind of government and private sector favoritism that whites have received. The line that the problems of blacks are self-inflicted is subscribed to by some media, academic and artistic blacks, whose opinions and roles are managed by their sponsors whether it be Lionsgate, a studio that produced Precious, or MSNBC, which actually has an ex-Santorum black speechwriter as a regular. Though the support for Republican presidential candidates runs at about two percent among blacks, Michael Steele, a former black chair of the Republican National Committee wanders from studio to studio all day on MSNBC to offer commentary against the president.
A younger generation of black commentators and writers propose that black nationalists have hampered their ability to express themselves. I made the same argument in the 1960s and 70s until I realized that black nationalists didn’t have the power to impede my expressions as a writer. Black nationalists don’t have the power to prevent Touré from enjoying Beethoven or John McWhorter from enjoying Verdi.
It was with the advent of the white middle class feminist movement, a powerful ally of corporate patriarchy, that my problems with censorship began. Some members of the younger generation also accuse me of being a curmudgeon and a crank and that my problems with the police for example have been exaggerated or made up all together, yet there are members of their generation who see it differently. Alex Maynard, an actor, and son of the late Robert Maynard, the first black publisher of a major newspaper, was beaten by members of the notorious New York Police Department, whose fascist measures against blacks led to the exodus of blacks from the city. Adam Kennedy, the son of the great playwright Adrienne Kennedy, was beaten by police in his front yard.
These young post-black and post-race writers, whose leader is “intellectual entrepreneur” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have even convinced economist Paul Krugman that Jim Crow is dead. Apparently Paul Krugman hasn’t read his newspaper, which has printed accounts of the Bank of America and other banks settling lawsuits whose plaintiffs accuse them of discriminating against black and Hispanic borrowers. A post-black proponent, Touré, who told an audience at a Washington D.C. club called Busboys and Poets, that racism is no longer “overt,” doesn’t read the newspaper for which he is a contributor, The New York Times , which publishes studies and reports frequently showing that blatant racism is still a problem against which blacks must struggle, daily, whether they are a black youth murdered because he was found walking in a gated community, or the black superintendent of New York schools, who got harassed by two New York policemen. Here are some examples of blatant Nazi-like experiments that are only covert because a media that criticizes China for its alleged human rights abuses ignores them and media commentators like Touré are restricted from talking about them. Here is one of the “old fights” that I consider important: the continued use of blacks and poor people as guinea pigs, which has been reported on regularly. * (See note at the end of the Introduction.)
Not only does blatant racism like these Mengele-like experiments still exist, reminding us that the Nazis learned from the U.S. eugenics movement, which succeeded in getting poor people sterilized, but black access to the ballot box, the issue over which hundreds of blacks lost their lives, is being challenged in a number of states. This is part of a plan promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a foundation supported by corporate sponsors, whose aim is to diminish the black vote in order to defeat a black president. These discussions are deemed off limits by the media from which most Americans receive information. I’ve watched dozens of panels in which every motive is ascribed to the president’s opponents except racism. The producers believe that such a topic would alienate their target audience, which Rick Sanchez, former CNN anchor, described as “angry white males.” Because he was fired, he had nothing to lose by being candid.
Just as there was a consensus between Northern and Southern whites, a consensus criticized by Frederick Douglass, who saw the rise of a pro Southern literature as an unsettling trend, an alliance between progressives and the far right is beginning to form.
I predicted that such an alliance would begin in my book, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media, The Return of the Nigger Breakers . The title of that book is still apt. A recent PEW study reports that of all of the presidential candidates the president has received the most unfavorable treatment by the media. Both CNN and MSNBC have formed an alliance with the Tea Party, which includes leaders who’ve called for the president’s assassination. Even Melissa Harris-Perry, a black woman, described by MSNBC as a progressive, said that “There are a lot of things I like about the Tea Party.” What lot of things? A prominent Tea Party member referred to the president as “a skunk,” a reference to the president’s bi-racial heritage. Does she like the Tea Partiers showing up at ra