Nigger Factory

Gil Scott-Heron

Description

The Nigger Factory is a scornful statement about the way in which human beings are conditioned to think. On the campus of Sutton University, Virginia, the students are trying to carry forth the message of reconstruction to a university resistant to change. The failure of Sutton to embrace the changing attitudes of the sixties has necessitated extreme action and the revolution is nigh.

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 04 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781847678997
• Langue: English

Extrait

this book is dedicated to:


Sister Jackie Brown Brother Victor Brown Brother David Barnes Brother Brian Jackson Brother Eddie Knowles and Brother Charlie Saunders whom I met on the assembly line
Contents

1 Seven p.m. Phone Call
2 MJUMBE
3 Earl
4 Lawman and Odds
5 Confrontation
6 The Plan
7 O’Jay’s
8 The Head Nigger
9 Wheels in Motion
10 Angie
11 Calhoun’s Assessment
12 Preparation
13 Evaluation
14 Ten O’clock Meeting
15 Captain Cool
16 Executive Conference
17 High Noon
18 MJUMBE Mandate
19 A Three-pronged Spear
20 Self-help Programs
21 Reactor
22 Counterthreat
23 Choosing Sides
24 On the Spot
25 Calhoun Moves
26 Lying in Wait
27 The House on Pine Street
28 Destruction
29 Plans Abandoned
30 Final Word
31 Faculty Only
32 Exodus
33 Explosion!
34 MJUMBE Discovery
35 Downhill Snowball
Author’s Note
Black colleges and universities have been both a blessing and a curse on Black people. The institutions have educated thousands of our people who would have never had the opportunity to get an education otherwise. They have supplied for many a new sense of dignity and integrity. They have never, however, made anybody equal. This is a reality for Black educators everywhere as students all over America demonstrate for change.
It has been said time and time again that the media makes the world we live in a much smaller place. It is no longer possible to attend Obscure University and be completely out of touch with the racist system that continues to oppress our brothers and sisters all over the country. Black institutions of higher learning can no longer be considered as wombs of security when all occupants realize that we are locked in the jaws of a beast.
Change is overdue. Fantasies about the American Dream are now recognized by Black people as hoaxes and people are tired of trying to become a part of something that deprives them of the necessities of life even after years of bogus study in preparation for this union. A college diploma is not a ticket on the Freedom Train. It is, at best, an opportunity to learn more about the systems that control life and destroy life: an opportunity to cut through the hypocrisy and illusion that America represents.
New educational aspects must be discovered. Our educators must sit down and really evaluate the grading system that perpetuates academic dishonesty. The center of our intellectual attention must be thrust away from Greek, Western thought toward Eastern and Third World thought. Our examples in the arts must be Black and not white. Our natural creativity must be cultivated.
The main trouble in higher education lies in the fact that while the times have changed radically, educators and administrators have continued to plod along through the bureaucratic red tape that stalls so much American progress. We have once again been caught short while imitating the white boy. While knowledge accumulates at a startling pace our institutions are content to produce quasi-white folks and semithinkers whose total response is trained rather than felt.
Black students in the 1970s will not be satisfied with Bullshit Degrees or Nigger Educations. They are aware of the hypocrisy and indoctrination and are searching for other alternatives. With the help of those educators who are intelligent enough to recognize the need for drastic reconstruction there will be a new era of Black thought and Black thinkers who enter the working world from colleges aware of the real problems that will face them and not believing that a piece of paper will claim a niche for them in the society-at-large. The education process will not whitewash them into thinking that their troubles are over. They will come out as Black people.
Wednesday Night

1
Seven p.m. Phone Call
Earl Thomas was wiping shaving cream from under his chin when the telephone rang. He waited, thinking that his neighbor Zeke might answer, but when he heard a second shrill jingling he opened the bathroom door and released the receiver from its holster.
‘Earl Thomas,’ he announced.
‘Thomas?’ A bass voice boomed. ‘This is Ben King. I called cuz I wanned t’tell you ’bout this meetin’ we had dis afternoon wit’ the studen’s.’
‘Meetin’? What meetin’?’ Earl asked. He was afraid that he already knew the answer to the question.
‘MJUMBE had a meetin’ wit’ the studen’s this afternoon ’bout fo’ thutty. We had drew up some deman’s fo’ Head Nigger Calhoun an’ we had t’fin’ out ’bout hi the people felt ’bout things … I called you befo’ but I got a bizzy signal.’
‘Zeke,’ Earl muttered.
‘What?’
‘Nuthin’.’
‘Anyway,’ King continued, ‘I wuz callin’ befo’ cuz we were gonna like confer wit’choo befo’ we handed the shit to the Man, but when I couldn’ get’choo we cut out over t’the Plantation,’ King laughed. ‘Calhoun wudn’ home so I called agin.’
‘Yeah …’
‘We figgered you might wanna be in-volved,’ King added.
The sarcasm that dripped through the receiver as King slowly drawled his way through the monologue was beginning to grate on Earl’s nerves. Something very screwy was going on; something that Earl felt an immediate need to pinpoint. But too many ideas were dashing through his head. There was no real way to slow down the thoughts that were turning him into a huge knot. What were the demands? Why hadn’t he heard anything from anyone? Faster and faster the questions came, obscuring the words King breathed slowly through the telephone.
‘What did you say?’ Earl asked. ‘I missed that last part.’
‘I ast you hi long it’s gon’ take you to git down here.’
‘Down where?’
‘Well, we in the frat house on the third flo’.’ King said.
‘I guess I can be there in ’bout twenny minnits,’ Earl calculated.
‘Right on!’ King laughed. ‘We’ll be waitin’!’
The call was terminated. Earl felt for the first time the beads of sweat that had been sprung loose from wells at his hairline. Blood was circulating again in his left ear now that the phone had been unclamped. A very sick smile was spread over his face.
There was nothing he really felt capable of doing or saying at that moment. It was sixth grade all over and he was watching his girl being walked home from school by someone else. Everyone in the world was waiting, watching to see what he would do. There was nothing that could be done. Odds had warned him. Lawman had warned him. The pulse of the campus had told him. ‘MJUMBE is up to something!’ the messages read. But Earl Thomas was not a hasty young man. He had been drawing up a list of demands and researching every item carefully with the Board of Trustees and members of the administration. When he went after Calhoun he was going to be damn sure that everything was perfect. Now the whole thing was shot to hell.
‘Where the hell is Victor Johnson?’ he asked out loud.
Victor Johnson was the editor-in-chief of the Sutton University Statesman , the campus’s weekly newspaper. Earl often referred to Vic as the editor-in-everything because the bespectacled senior seemed to be the only one who ever did any newspaper work on campus. Wasn’t a coup newsworthy any more? Wasn’t the story of the president of the Student Government Association being shot down worth the print? They printed shit like the ZBZ sorority’s news.
Earl slumped heavily on the side of the bathtub. See! See! he heard stumbling through his head. Here you sit inna damn bathrobe splashin’ aftershave on yo’ mug while some two-faced muthas run ’roun’ an’ pour freezin’ damn water down yo’ goddamn back! An’ you can’ rilly even ac’ su’prized cuz evybody tol’ you …
Earl started counting backward. He was trying hard to remember the various dates he had marked on his political calendar; still searching for that one elusive idea that felt so important but could not be captured. Today was October 8th. School had opened on September 9th. He had been elected the previous May and had taken office on June 1st. He had promised the students then that by the end of the coming September he would have a list of their prime grievances drawn up and ready for their approval. It had taken longer than he had thought it would. The old bylaws and old Student Government constitution hampered everything that he wanted to do. He found himself struggling like a man in quicksand; the harder he fought the deeper he sank. It had been as bad as Lawman had predicted: ‘It’s impossible to move faster within the system than a turtle with two busted legs.’
The truth was that it was his inability to make any headway that was really upsetting Earl about King’s call. The message meant that MJUMBE was running head on into Ogden Calhoun, the university president, with nothing to back it up. MJUMBE’s act might have been courageous, but it was definitely unwise politically. Calhoun hadn’t lasted at Sutton for nine years for no reason. He knew what could and could not be allowed. He had kicked more student reformers out of school than the presidents of any other five schools combined.
Earl switched off the bathroom light and flip-flopped in his shower shoes down the second-floor hall to his room. He strode past the room of Zeke, the handyman, with the record player playing Mongo Santamaria full-blast, and past Old Man Hunt’s room, where absolutely nothing was ever going on.
‘So the great Sutton revolution has finally begun,’ he muttered sarcastically, flinging his door open. ‘And Earl Thomas has been kicked the hell out.’
At that point another real question arose. Why had he been called? To hell with why Lawman and Odds, his best friends, had not called. Why had Baker let Ben King call? Earl Thomas and Ralph Baker, the MJUMBE leader, were political enemies. Earl had defeated Baker for the post of SGA president. What was going on?
The chain of events that had wired Earl for the phone call were at that very moment wiring others to the fuse slowly smoldering on the campus of Sutton University. The meeting. Phone call. Busy signal. Calhoun not home. Second call. Earl s