Losing their religion.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. " ~Ephesians 6:5 ~


"Donald Mathews explicated the connection between white supremacist lynchings and the religious milieu that existed among whites in the South in his article “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice” (2000). He concluded his manuscript by writing, “The primary focus has been to suggest a connection between the South’s most dramatic act of brutality and the pervasive drama of salvation preached from pulpits throughout the region.”

The connections Mathews highlights are certainly intriguing and insightful, but whatever the connections between lynchings and white Southern religion, the primary aim of lynchings and other forms of anti-Black violence can be simplified. Lynchings were about reinforcing white economic power and social control over Black lives. Ida B. Wells, the most renowned anti-lynching activist during the height of the lynching era, explains in her autobiography (Wells 1970) that lynching was simply “[a]n excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and ‘keep the nigger down.’” In other words, lynchings were conducted to stymie Black economic progress and to instill fear in affected Black communities.

Economic power and social control are also implicated as the rationale for white extra-legal violence in one of the most influential movie pictures in the early 1900s: The Birth of a Nation. Released in 1915, the film depicted the Klan redeeming the white South from the clutches of “Negro rule” (Blum 2007). A white Jesus appears at the end to bless the machinations of the Klan, which, at first glance, dovetails nicely with Mathews’s thesis. But the appearance of white Jesus is not for the purposes of sanctifying a lynching or accepting a blood sacrifice. Instead, the white Jesus appears in order to bless the rise of the Ku Klux Klan which has wrested control of the South away from the depicted predatory black beasts and placed them under the control and authority of white men (Hutchinson 1996).

Near the end of the film, the horse-riding Ku Klux Klan sweeps into town to save white families besieged by Black Union army veterans (portrayed by a combination of Black actors and white actors in blackface). Klan members align themselves on their horses in the fashion of a blockade in order to prevent Black men from voting (as women were not yet allowed to vote). By blocking Black men from voting, white Klan members were solidifying and securing white political power for future generations. When the white Jesus appears on the screen, it is a divine seal of approval for white power and control.

Whereas Mathews describes how religion in southern white society helps to contextualize and explain lynchings, it may be that the reverse is also true. Perhaps it is truer that lynchings helped reveal the real religious impulse of white lynchers. In his book The Cross and The Lynching Tree, James Cone elucidates the connection between lynching and racial power even further:

Lynching was the white community’s way of forcibly reminding blacks of their inferiority and powerlessness. To be black meant that whites could do anything to you and your people, and that neither you nor anyone else could do anything about it.

This is illuminated further in Edward Blum’s W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet, where Blum discusses “white supremacist theology” and highlights a phalanx of white racist authors, clergy, and novelists who fashioned racism into virtual articles of faith at the beginning of the 1900s. He notes:

They had tried to sanctify the segregation of African Americans and widespread racial violence by characterizing “Negroes” as soulless beasts. …whites crafted a variety of religious and theological rationales for structures of exploitation…. By 1900, white supremacist theology was firmly rooted in white American mainstream culture.

Hence, white supremacist theology was rendered even “crafted” to justify racial violence, domination, and exploitation as “lynchings became acts of Christian service, black men became devils incarnate, and white women became angels”' (Blum 2007). [More]

What do you think?

*Pic from bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com

More news from "post racial" America.

Stories you will never hear on FOX VIEWS and other news outlets like it.

"James Craig Anderson sang tenor in the choir at the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. He’d worked at a car plant near Jackson for seven years, and he enjoyed gardening in his free time. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, a man named James Bradfield, was the legal guardian of a 4 year-old child, and Anderson and Bradfield were raising the child together. This child will not grow up in Anderson’s care, however, because Anderson was killed by a mob of white teenagers.

The murder of Mr. Anderson recalls Jim Crow era lynchings. On a Sunday morning shortly before dawn, a group of teenagers were drinking in the nearby town of Puckett. According to police, one of them told his friends they should leave and “go fuck with some niggers.” Two carloads of the boys then drove to Jackson, where they found Anderson in a parking lot, beat him, and then drove their pickup truck over him. During the beating, some of the teens reportedly yelled out the words “white power.”

Yet, while Anderson’s death may resemble Klan violence from another era, it is hardly a memory from a distant past. James Craig Anderson died in 2011. Three of his killers were sentenced Tuesday by a federal judge.

Judge Carlton Reeves delivered fairly substantial remarks at the sentencing hearing. His full remarks are worth reading in their entirety. In them, he laments the “toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness and unadulterated hatred” that “caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget,” and he lays out the brutal history of racial violence that still defines Mississippi in many people’s minds. Quoting one author’s description of the state, Judge Reeves says that “there is something different about Mississippi; something almost unspeakably primal and vicious; something savage unleashed there that has yet to come to rest.”

This history, according to Reeves, stands in tension with what the judge labels the “New Mississippi.” This is the Mississippi that has struggled to lift the state “from the abyss of moral depravity in which it once so proudly floundered in.” And the murder of James Craig Anderson “ripped off the scab of the healing scars of Mississippi . . . causing her (our Mississippi) to bleed again.”' [Source]

I know I know, we are "post racial" now. And folks like that color arousal agitator, the field Negro, is just looking for racism to chase to stir up folks.

If only that was true.

Sadly, it's not only Mississippi, it's places like Alabama as well. Where police officers can brutalize an elderly man who doesn't speak English because he is...well.. different.

The good news is that the police officer in Alabama has been arrested. And, like the animals in Mississippi, he will have to answer for his crime.

The bad news is that America continues to think that she has turned the corner on racism and ignorance.

"On Tuesday, Anderson’s family found justice. But Anderson remains dead. Mr. Bradfield, a man who cannot even call himself a widower due to another form of unconstitutional injustice, said in a statement to the court that his adopted son sleeps in his bed because “he doesn’t want those people to get me.” The United States of America has a black president. That president appointed a black judge, a black attorney general, and a black prosecutor. And none of these men have the power to restore what a small band of drunk teenagers took away from Anderson and his family.

Almost two years to the day after racism killed James Craig Anderson, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder. “Things have changed in the South,” Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his opinion for the Court. “Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” On these points, the Chief Justice is correct. The South is different than it was in 1965. Racial minorities do enjoy high offices, including the office of President of the United States.

But it only took a few boys from a tiny town in the poorest state in the nation to re-create the age of Jim Crow lynchings.

This is what Chief Justice Roberts missed in his opinion scrapping a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on the theory that it did not reflect “current needs.” He missed the fact that racism can be an intensely individualistic crime against reason. A police force can be committed to equality, and a single cop can still fire impulsively on a black suspect. A nation can be committed to universal suffrage, and yet a single state legislature can erect obstacles to the right to vote. Lynchings are now infrequent in the South, but that does not make Anderson’s death any less tragic. And it certainly does not justify eliminating laws banning racially-motivated killings.

We are fortunate to live in a nation where most people do not commit serious violations of the law. Most employers do not act with racist intent. Most cops do not fire their guns unnecessarily. Most teenagers do not follow up a night of drinking with violence. Judge Reeves’ “New Mississippi” is slowly but consistently displacing the old one.

But that does not mean that we should make Roberts’ mistake of blurring the line between less racism and no racism. Anderson did not die due to a racist regime of state-sponsored apartheid, he died because of a small band of hateful Americans."

And because a majority of Americans choose to believe that those "small bands of hateful Americans" do not exist.








 

"Stephen" strikes again.

The Supremes punted to the lower court today in the University of Texas affirmative action case. No new groundbreaking law, just a note to the lower court to use a stricter level of scrutiny when considering things such as affirmative action. This is the toughest judicial evaluation allowed to consider whether government action is proper.

No problem. I am quite sure that universities have their ducks in a row and can justify how their admissions process works to create a better student body for learning. 

The Supremes were pretty much unanimous in their decision, except for our favorite Uncle, who, although he wrote a concurring opinion, had to go out of his way to point out why affirmative action is a bad thing. (This from a man who himself benefited from affirmative action.) Clarence actually compared affirmative action to Jim Crow segregation and slavery. Think about that for a minute. Slavery!
 
"Slaveholders argued that slavery was a 'positive good' that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life," Thomas wrote in his separate opinion on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. "A century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students."

Thomas cited Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that led to the desegregation of public schools, in drawing a comparison between segregation and affirmative action.

"Following in these inauspicious footsteps, the University would have us believe that its discrimination is likewise benign. I think the lesson of history is clear enough: Racial discrimination is never benign," he wrote in the 20-page opinion. "The University’s professed good intentions cannot excuse its outright racial discrimination any more than such intentions justified the now-denounced arguments of slaveholders and segregationists." [Source]

But Uncle Clarence, race is but one of many considerations schools such as the University of Texas use to make up a diversified student body. They consider things such as your economic background, geography, family history, and whether you served in the military. Sadly, this Negro is so full of self hate that all he sees is the racial aspect of what schools are trying to do with their student body.

People like Clarence Thomas will never understand this, because he does not live in the real world. The poor man is still running as far away from Pin Point, Georgia as he can.

Anyway, while Clarence was comparing affirmative action to slavery, his fellow republican, Rand Paul, was comparing the NSA surveillance program to slaves being lynched back in the day. Something about the lack of due process.

Excuse me Rand, but there is no moral equivalence between the two. 

"One of them was when we judged the guilt of African Americans by lynching. People say, ‘Oh, that’s a dramatic comparison.’ Well that’s why we have steps and processes you go through to make sure you don’t have adjudication of guilt without a trial, without a lawyer, without a judge involved.”

Yes, but the last time I checked, Edward Snowden was not hanging from a tree with his eyeballs popping out and his skin turning gray.

*Pic from jobsjusticedreams


 

I was going to apologize but I changed my mind.

Sometimes you post an essay that you regret........Ahhh fuck it, I can't even lie, I don't ever regret anything that I post. I recently posted about the copious (is that a good word woozie?) amount of nooses popping up all over A-merry-ca, and I attempted to do it in a satirical way. Some people were offended. "Would you think it was funny if someone made a joke about oven shops when talking about Jews field?" Well let's see now; if a bunch of ignorant mother fuckers were going around putting toy ovens on the homes of known Jews, or on synagogue doors, and a Jewish person decided to call attention to the barbarous and cruel nature of such an act in a satirical way; then yes, I probably would.

But here is the problem when I use satire to make a point. I get ignoramuses like this, who actually believe that everyone is as stupid and as limited in their knowledge as their inbred trailer park asses. So they approach the shit in a literal way, and you get links like the one I just gave you. You see, these types of people think that putting up nooses is actually funny. And if they were alive back in the day; they would have been the same motherfuckers that would bring their children to town lynchings for some popcorn and candy while they watched the bad niggers hang and burn.

So I really hated to give that link, because I don't like giving traffic to those clowns. But it's important for people to see what we are dealing with in A-merry-ca. A place where the pursuit of happiness has become a full time job; right along with putting niggers in their place.