Jonathan Gray has responded to my post that mentioned him and says I've misrepresented his views, and suggests that I made a racist comment, to boot. He writes:
As
for your desire to have me attack Sam [Freedman] about the failures of Jewish
culture vis-a-vis Black culture, or the role that Jewish neo-cons
played in starting the Iraq War, um, the panel was about the Jewish
vote and Obama. I didn't want to go down that path, tempting though it
was. That's a conversation I would love to have another time. Perhaps
you could moderate. And, "the intellectual Black community, such as it
is…" Would you care to clarify your phrase? Are you denying that an
intellectual Black community exists? Are you asserting that Black
intellectuals are somehow second class thinkers? Please enlighten me
First: thanks much to Jonathan for publishing his comment here, I didn't even have his first name. Journalism 101. As to the criticisms.
It’s not my duty to represent the thrust of someone’s statements at a forum when the comments are off my subject. This is not a newspaper, it’s a blog. If I got something wrong, of course I’m responsible. I don’t think I got anything wrong. I apologize re “the intellectual black community such as it is.” Maybe that came out wrong. What I was thinking when I wrote those words is that I would not like it if someone referred to the “intellectual Jewish community.” I think there’s a lot of diversity among Jewish intellectuals and the same holds for black intellectuals. It’s hard to speak of “community” when you refer to intellectuals unless you’re talking about schools of fish like Marty Peretz and Leon Wieseltier.
I do think my challenge was apropos. I wonder again whether the setting was intimidating, Jonathan. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is disgraceful–I have witnessed it–and the benedictions that treatment regularly receives from American Jewish media workers and intellectuals reflects the meltdown in the IQ of my people that Israel has produced. I liked your statement against “hegemony” in South Africa, the segregated
south and Israel/Palestine, and I wonder if you don’t share my views on
this subject. When Sam Freedman channeled Bill Cosby and started lecturing the black community about its faults–and I tend to agree with him there–I wanted you to channel me, the Jewish nonZionist left, because we don’t ever get included in these panels. You are right, it’s my problem, but I sense we have a common cause, and our failure to speak out is only damaging our country’s position in the world. As to Jewish neocons, I say, it was a freeflowing conversation, you coulda done it. Some day at the Center for Jewish History, they will have a huge forum, maybe a whole weekend, devoted to the Jewish neoconservatives. Only when they’re safely in the dustbin of history. For now out of a tribal impulse, the Jewish center and center-left continues to provide the neocons cover, and not expose the extent to which their deluded thinking about the Middle East arose from a pro-Israel, pro-settlement outlook. Maybe Scott McClellan will help shake this conversation loose…
I agree completely with Phil here. I have never understood why Black law professors, journalists, ministers have not done more to draw attention to the Palestinian plight. That was why I was so happy to see that Reverend Wright talked about them in his sermons– Kudos to him for doing so. If the black community in this country got behind the Palestinians en masse, the conflict would be over within a year.
So where is Cornell West? Where is Henry Louis Gates? Where was Leon Higginbotham (who has died, I know) and his daughter Evelyn who is now a professor at Harvard? Where is Lani Guinier?
Wasn't one of the main contributions of W. E. B. Dubois and Franz Fanon the attempt to internationalize the experience of African victims of European slavery and colonialism? Where has that internationalism of Black consciousness gone? Has it been replaced by Hip-Hop?
I don't care if I offend anyone here– if Professor Jonathan Gray is reading this, please explain what happened. The moment is too important to let things like this slide.
The organized Jewish community (OJC) uses philanthropy as a political weapon.
See link to members.aol.com
.
The OJC and Israel Advocates can turn off the spigot on a tremendous amount of money that comes into the African American community while individual Jews often very devoted to Israel have government positions from which they can spike important public programs serving African Americans.
Phil
First off, thanks for taking the time to revisit this. I assumed you were referring to the diversity of thought in the Black community when you made your comment about the Black intellectual community, but upon rereading it I felt compelled to address your phrasing. No harm, no foul.
Now, regarding African American support of Palestine, and here I won't pretend to speak for anyone but myself: I support a two state resolution with limited rights of return and a return to some approximation of the 1967 border. When I was an idealistic undergrad three political events moved me to tears. One was watching Nelson Mandela walk out of prison. The second was the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa. The third was the assassination of Rabin by a f***ing settler. They were tears of joy, tears of frustration and tears of despair respectively. So. Now that I have gotten that out of the way…
I want to share something with you, something that you probably already know. Being a Black intellectual in the post-Jesse Jackson, post-Farrakhan, post-Leonard Jeffries academia means that you watch what you say about Jews, at least until you get tenure. I am only half kidding. So perhaps there was a bit of self-censuring when Sam showed his middle-agedness, but it wasn't that I didn't have anything to say it was that I didn't want to turn the topic into a mano-a-mano about our understandings and misgivings regarding Hip Hop and neo-con Zionism. Again, I'd love to have that conversation, and with Sam if possible, perhap under the aegis of something on cultural blind spots.
Oh and Madrid, there is a ton of hip hop that comments on the Palestinian situation. This work tends not to receive much airplay, but its out there. For example Mos Def and Talib Kweli performed a song on the Chappelle Show called What's Beef. The song was a critique of the attention paid to conflicts between rap artists relative to imperialistic injustice throughout the world. Mos Def's lyrics contain the following:
…Yeah, beef is not what Ja-Rule said to 50
Beef is Weldon Irv not bein here with me
When a soldier ends his life with his own gun
Beef is tryin' to figure out what to tell his son
Beef is oil prices and geopolitics
Beef is Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip
Some beef is big and some beef is small
But what y'all call beef is not beef at all…
Still, when political hip hop critiques imperialism it tends to do so in ways that reference the more direct concerns of the Black community. So, things like police brutality, the prison-industrial complex, the exploitation of black labor abroad (think Haitian sweatshops), conflict diamonds. It would be nice if american hip hop artists engaged the situation in Palestine as directly as Mos does above, but, you know it might be bad for record sales if ADF calls for a boycott of your record.
and of course I meant ADL and not ADF whatever that is.
and Madrid, I forgot to mention that Cornell West does a tremendous amount of work on Palestine with Michael Lerner in support of Palestinians. And that work gets roundly ignored by organizations like the Center for Jewish History, for the reasons that Phil enumerates above
The representation of hiphop as all misogyny and clap clap, bling bling bullshit is for ignorant old fogies.
Mighty Mos oughta be a requirement on the curriculum:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IxvQKZPb6Wo
…
There are places where TB is common as TV
Cause foreign-based companies go and get greedy
The type of cats who pollute the whole shore line
Have it purified, sell it for a dollar twenty-five
Now the world is drinkin it (New World Water)
Your moms, wife, and baby girl is drinkin it (New World Water)
Up north and down south is drinkin it (New World Water)
You should just have to go to your sink for it (New World Water)
The cash registers is goin "cha-chink!" for it (New World Water)
Fluorocarbons and monoxide
Got the fish lookin cockeyed
Used to be free now it cost you a fee
Cause it's all about gettin that cash (Money!)
Said it's all about gettin that cash (Money!)
Said it's all about gettin that cash (Money!)
Said it's all about gettin that cash (Money!)
"with Michael Lerner in support of Palestinians."
with such a friend who needs an enemy.
"with Michael Lerner in support of Palestinians."
with such a friend who needs an enemy.
"with Michael Lerner in support of Palestinians."
with such a friend who needs an enemy.
rabin? israelis/jews are made so insane rabin couldnt even lie without getting killed.
Just so people are not left with a bad taste in their mouths, here is a very different black voice than Professor Gray's–
link to thecrimson.com
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I guess I'd rather stay an ignorant old fogie whatever that means. It takes a lot of penguin flesh to make a hipless monkey hop.
Cause it's all about penguins that splash (Monkey!)
Said it's all about penguins that splash (Monkey!)
There were lots of comments on that J. Lorand Matory piece. Looks like they were hiphoped unto penguinian deeps of oblivion.
Re. hip-hop addressing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, there's also Immortal Technique, whose song 'The 4th Branch' contains the following:
"Trapped in a ghetto region like a Palestinian kid,
Where nobody gives a fuck whether you die or you live"
"I have never understood why Black law professors, journalists, ministers have not done more to draw attention to the Palestinian plight."
NEWSFLASH.
The black community cares about… the black community.
Jewish Americans care most about… Israel.
Chinese Americans care most about… themselves and China.
We now return our intrepid liberal bloggers to their make believe world.
Jewish Americans care most about… Israel.
Chinese Americans care most about… themselves and China.
jews in america. chinese in america. neither is american
the black community is american
"Chinese Americans care most about… themselves and China.
jews in america. chinese in america. neither is american
the black community is american"
Posted by: 5 dancing shlomos | May 30, 2008 at 09:57 PM
i need to apologize to the chinese americans. i dont know that the chinese care most for themselves and china as the poster stated – to dilute jewish traitorous actions – everyone does it.
the only group(meaning very large numbers of its members) i know that has consistently been traitors to america is the jewish group
The black community know who the are now. Thanks to a new book written by the Foundation for Africa's Restoration Movement. Check out the URL above for more…
The black community know who the are now. Thanks to a new book written by the Foundation for Africa's Restoration Movement. Check out this URL: link to stores.lulu.com
for more…