Tagged: professor

“The sellers of slaves, [Cornell University professor and author Edward E.] Baptist insists [in his book “The Half Has Never Been Told”], were not generally paternalistic owners who fell on hard times and parted reluctantly with members of their metaphorical plantation ‘families,’ but entrepreneurs who knew an opportunity for gain when they saw one. As for the slave traders — the middlemen — they excelled at maximizing profits. They not only emphasized the labor abilities of those for sale (reinforced by humiliating public inspections of their bodies), but appealed to buyer’s salacious fantasies. In the 1830s, the term ‘fancy girl’ began to appear in slave-trade notices to describe young women who fetched high prices because of their physical attractiveness. ‘Slavery’s frontier,’ Baptist writes, ‘was a white man’s sexual playground.'”

To carry on in the tradition and spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “nonviolent, creative protest,” we — American citizens of African descent — must now seek and demand REPARATIONS. Over the last five hundred years, whites have demonstrated to us that they are never going to change and as a result, they must pay for their egregious and on-going crimes against humanity (e.g. slavery, Jim Crow, continuing discrimination, genocide, using Hollywood to project the myth of black inferiority on the collective conscience, etc.).

Source: Eric Foner. “A Brutal Process.” New York Times. October 3, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/books/review/the-half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-e-baptist.html.

“[T]he linguist and political philosopher [Noam Chomsky] lamented to interviewer John Nichols last week that while activism is flourishing in communities throughout the country, there’s no cohesive movement for a more just society.”

Source: Luke Brinker. “Noam Chomsky Blasts The Assault On Labor: ‘‘’Right To Work” Means “Right To Scrounge.”‘” Salon. March 25, 2015. http://www.salon.com/2015/03/25/noam_chomsky_blasts_the_assault_on_labor_right_to_work_means_right_to_scrounge/.

“[W]hen the Africans said ‘know thyself,’ they weren’t just talking about knowing yourself. They were saying to know yourself in relationship to everything else that exists in the cosmos. It is important that as we come together as a community, that we share the knowledge that we know, that we do it in a most magnificent way. We do it in a very humble way. Now when I use that word humble, I don’t mean it in the way that they define humble because all of us most know our greatness — but our greatness does not make us greater than other people. It is important that as we learn this and teach this and move forward, that we remain strong as our ancestors because we’re not inventing strength, we’re merely replicating what we see already. And brothers and sisters, as Dr. King has told us, as Malcolm has taught us, as the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey taught us and as one of the greatest prophets that ever lived, the Honorable Bob Marley sang to us — we shall overcome by any means necessary. We are a people who will rise by the will of our wills because no one can curse who Jah has blessed. And by the very fact that we’re still on this Earth…the Creator force has blessed us and has a job for us and we must carry the torch across the field into the promise land for those yet unborn.” — Booker T. Coleman, Jr.