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REVISITING THE RADICAL EVIL RACISM:

Section: Business

REVISITING THE RADICAL EVIL RACISM:

CARTOONS, COWARDS AND NATIONAL COMPLICITY

Los Angeles Sentinel, 022609,

A7

DR. MAULANA KARENGA

If we want to critically understand

American or any society, we cannot simply

accept or mindlessly mouth its selfcongratulatory

narratives—neither those

masquerading as curriculums in colleges and

universities nor the daily media dose of patriotic

stimulants and sound bite sedatives

that produce alternating states of fear and

aggressiveness towards “others” and uncritical

acceptance and support for the established

order. Nor can we gain a useful insight

by simply reading and repeating as sacred

text the high principles and hopeful

promise found in its most cherished documents.

Indeed, as our experience in this

country has proved, it’s a good thing they’re

on paper, since it has been difficult to find

them anywhere else, especially in the daily

and demanding life we live. For even after

390 years—so many of us still struggle to

move not only from the recurrent American

racist nightmare to the promised American

dream, but also to a secure and sustainable

life of dignity and decency worthy of the

name human.

So, it is not from society’s sanitized

and officially sanctioned portrait of itself

that we understand it in a critical and noncomplicit

way, but especially by studying

the life and treatment of its most vulnerable

persons and populations. And although the

contrary is discussed quietly in some quarters

and argued openly in others, there is no

identity in this country more indicative of

the level, extent and various forms of oppression

than race. Moreover, given the racial

hierarchy in which Black and White are

polar opposites and all others fall somewhere

in between, there is no one conceived

of and constantly discussed and dealt with in

more pathological, oppressive and degrading

ways than Africans, Black people. And this

racist web of evil is woven so tightly, not

even a Black presidential candidate or sitting

president can escape it.

Thus, the New York Post cartoon of

two White cops shooting a chimp and saying

“They’ll have to find someone else to write

the next stimulus bill” crudely reminds us

that in a racialized and racist society, no one

of the devalued and degraded race is exempt—

not the President in this one, nor the

billionaires caricatured in corporate conversations

or comedic and cartoonist portrayals

camouflaged as fun and free speech. This

cartoon and similar caricatures of Black

people and other people of color are not isolated

acts or events, but are taken from a

masterrace

template created with the emergence

of the racist mind and everready

for

repeated use.

The cartoon, placed in such a context,

sent several messages, each with its own sinister

signification. First, it is a reflection of

the reach of racism in every aspect of

American life whether in cartoons, comedy

shows, courtrooms or commentaries on the

president and congress. Secondly, it is a reflection

of the American addiction to the

official and unofficial use of violence to

solve problems, extract confessions and

compliance, and act out hatred and hostility

toward rejected ideas, policies and people.

Third, it is also a reflection and reminder of

the role police play in the suppression of

peoples considered problematic. And it is an

especially poignant image given the recent

and recurring police killings of Blacks and

the depraved disregard for Black life that

prompts and promotes this.

Finally, it is a recurrent reprint from

the mental and cultural template of the

White supremacist mind which has long viciously

associated apes and other animals

REVISITING THE RADICAL EVIL RACISM:

CARTOONS, COWARDS AND NATIONAL COMPLICITY

Los Angeles Sentinel, 022609,

A7

DR. MAULANA KARENGA

2

with Blacks and gods, angels, saints and

other ascendant beings with Whites. It was

and remains part of the process of dehumanization

in order to call for, facilitate and

justify dominance, suppression and terrorist

violence against the dominated. And this

violence is especially directed against those

who step out front and dare to defy and reject

the established order’s understanding

and arrangement of things.

Although our man in Washington has

tried so hard to put race behind him or at

least to the side, those committed to White

privilege, power and superiorpeople

status

will not let him. Moreover, it is not just a

question of moving beyond racialized and

racist attitudes as imagined, but of eradicating

racism itself. Bad attitudes require therapy,

but the radical evil of racism requires

radical change in the structure of society that

alters the way wealth, power and status are

distributed and shared. And it is here where

Attorney General Eric Holder’s call for

moral courage rather than cowardice is most

relevant and required.

To define racism as a radical evil is to

indicate its morally monstrous history which

ranges from domination to decimation, from

daily injustice to genocide, and from systemic

exclusion to the Holocaust of enslavement.

Also, it is to stress racism’s

deeprootedness

in the conception and history

of America. Indeed, it was grotesquely

present at the very founding of the country,

received consideration in its Constitution,

and found life in its laws, comfort in its

courts, chosen people status in its churches,

and pseudointellectual

support from its

learned men and universities.

The problematic of racism has proved

resistant to eradication due to several interrelated

and interlocking realities. Among the

most difficult to deal with and most resistant

to reason and socioethical

consideration is

first: the selfmedicating

national myths

about the flawless founding of the country; a

manifest destiny to conquer, convert or

crush; and existing equal access to freedom,

justice and opportunity regardless of racial,

class and gender obstacles. Secondly, there

is the accompanying addiction to acute denial

of the raw realities of oppression, the

daily pain and depth of suffering it imposes

on persons and peoples, and the normalcy in

the minds of so many Whites of White

dominance, privilege and centrality and the

marginal, minimized and less than meaningful

position of others. And then there is the

dominant group’s lack of will and internal

motivation to change, to seriously engage

new ways for humans to relate without the

unnatural need to oppress, exploit, dominate,

deprive and degrade.

At this point, we unavoidably find ourselves

in a decisive struggle at Adua with

Menelik; vowing commitment at the crossroads

of freedom and enslavement with Harriet

Tubman, and wrestling with ourselves

and our oppressor on the ground of battle

with Frederick Douglass. And at each juncture,

the lessons are ever and always the

same: we are our own liberators; real freedom

is always forged in struggle; and there

is no alternative to our own initiative; no

substitute for our own sacrifice; and no

wonders without hard work and the masses

selfconsciously

committed and in radical

and resilient motion toward a new opening

on the horizon of history.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State UniversityLong

Beach, Chair of

The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle:

African American, PanAfrican

and Global Issues, [www.MaulanaKarenga.org; www.UsOrganization.

org and www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org].

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