Introduction

On Choosing to Stir from the Bottom

Paper presented at the Fourth Annual Kent State University Symposium on Democracy

Angela Mae Kupenda

 

Globalization and resulting marginalization become even more rampant when ordinary citizens forget their roles, or lose their voices. Therefore, this section of the symposium papers appropriately examines a role for ordinary citizens and especially marginalized or once marginalized citizens in the midst of globalization.

I was especially honored to be part of the symposium at Kent State because, less than two weeks after the incident at Kent Sate, a suspiciously similar incident occurred, just miles from my home, at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. Allegedly quelling dangerous student protests, police opened fire on the campus of the historically black college. More specifically, police directed fire into the west wing of a women’s dormitory and arbitrarily into other directions. Killed were a black pre-law student and a black high school student. Jackson State was an open campus, so the high school student was passing through the campus on his way home from his after-school job. A number of other students were injured. The police said they opened fire in response to sniper shooting.1 Although no sniper was ever found, what remained after the cleanup were emotional pain and many marks from bullet holes in the walls.

When the Jackson State incident occurred, I was thirteen years old, and I was considering attending college at Jackson State. I remember my mother telling me not to worry, that everything would be fine by the time I was to study there. When I enrolled in Jackson State five years later, one of the first things I did was examine the outside walls of the dormitory, where I would reside, that the police had riddled with bullets, searching for and touching the bullet holes. Marginalized individuals ought to be like those bullet markings. We ought to be a voiced conscience that speaks as a reminder to a society, bent on globalization, of likely injuries and explosions that will result with a conscienceless globalization process.

Thus, the purpose of this section of the symposium papers is to examine this role, or this voice, and to assess whether we ordinary citizens usually choose to live up to that clear voice, or whether our voices are mere whimpers with little positive effect. A whimpering voice does not penetrate hardened, steel heads. As a result, we may end up with more and more walls with bullet holes, more and more reminders with no voice. Hoping against that result, the papers in this section explore the theme of “voices and choices” and consider the role of ordinary citizens, especially marginalized or oppressed individuals, as we encounter globalization and the consumption or integration of smaller countries, races, cultures, or societies by greater economic or military powers.

Before I comment on the four papers in this section, with your indulgence, I want to briefly share a cooking analogy that will illustrate the relationships between the papers and the connections between the papers, the 1970 incidents, and present and future globalization. Although I was born and raised in the Deep South, I caution you not to attribute to me all the stereotypes about Southern-born black women. For even though I will use a cooking analogy here, I am no good in the kitchen. Yet, I do understand some aspects of cooking, especially of cooking big pots of vegetable stews. Sometimes I’m trusted with the job of stirring the pot, while the cook is busy elsewhere. On those occasions, I’m chastised with two strong warnings: (1) “Angela Mae, don’t forget to stir the pot!” and (2) “Always stir from the bottom!” In cooking a stew, you start with a big pot, layer in all kinds of vegetables, one layer after another, add liquid, and turn on the fire under the pot.

All of the layers are affected by being placed together in this one big pot and all of the layers begin to cook. However, the layer on the bottom is in more direct contact with the heat. So, if you ignorantly stir from the top, or are only concerned with those layers on the top or in the middle, the bottom layers will begin to burn. Much later the real cook will holler (and, yes, that is a Southern word) from another room, “How’s the stew?” And you, looking only at the top layers, which are bubbling and apparently doing fine, will yell back, “Looking good!” But the bottom layer will continue to burn and burn and burn.

Now if you catch the stew in time and pay at least some halfhearted attention to what has happened to the bottom layers, you may be able to salvage much of the stew by scraping out the bottom layers and trying to eliminate them from the pot. But, the final result will have a slightly scorched taste and will not be as good as it could have been had you stirred from the bottom and preserved all the layers.

If you don’t catch the stew at that point and continue to ignore the bottom layers, shortly, the whole pot of stew will smell badly, will taste burnt, and will be good for no one. Had you had the conscience, or long-term good sense to stir from the bottom, the vegetables would have shifted positions at times. Those from the top would have taken a lower position near the heat at times, and those on the bottom would have found some relief from the heat by moving nearer the top. And, something closer to true integration, or delicious result, would have occurred.

Shortsighted globalization and resulting marginalization, or oppression, are similar to the stew disaster. If the greater economic and military powers on top ignore the ordinary citizens on the bottom, soon the whole thing will be burned, charred, and good-for-nothing. Then, likely, tragedies like the 1970 Kent State and the Jackson State incidents will no longer be only painful memories, but will be reenacted in a pain-filled present.

Reflecting on this analogy and the excellent papers in this section, I wonder: Are we forgetting to stir from the bottom? More specifically, I wonder, what obligations do the bottom and middle layers have to each other and to the whole? Are the layers on top feigning ignorance of the burning below, or are they suffering from fear-induced ignorance, as they fear that if they do shift places in the pot, they may never return unchanged to the top? These papers address this theme of stirring from the bottom, or rather globalization from below, and the essential roles of ordinary citizens in this process lest we all end up with a burned, useless disaster.

We are very fortunate in this section to have a paper from a student’s voice. After all, students brought us there. We were pulled to this symposium to learn from the voices of the 1970 Kent State and Jackson State students who cry out for us to learn from those incidents. In his paper, “Popular Public Resistance: Hip-Hop Culture’s Instrumental Role in Challenging Neoliberal Hegemony and Globalization,” student Noah Hibbard argues that the hip-hop culture, or rap music, and the players in this culture are resisters or challengers to globalization. Exploring the basic characteristics of hip-hop and examining the theories of resistance, he suggests that hip-hop gives “voice to the voiceless” as it transcends boundaries and recruits followers from diverse communities. He persuasively contends that rap music is a vehicle of resistance or revolution and is a form of stirring from the bottom, sending shock waves or reminders (that hey, we’re burning down here!) to the layers above.

Hibbard almost persuades me. I will present here my concerns for you to consider as you read his paper and test his insightful thesis. My concern is not with all rap, but with many popular rap or hip-hop selections that express strong anti-female, specifically anti-female-of-color negative messages.2 Of course, some hip-hop or rap musicians have themes that positively empower others, including females. Furthermore, as Hibbard points out in his paper, a number of hip-hop or rap musicians do many positive things in the community. Still, the misogynistic language of “many” hip-hop and rap selections is disturbing to a revolutionary quest for universal liberation. In view of these negative messages, I wonder if some segments of the hip-hop culture make up a bottom layer that is pushing down another bottom layer beneath even it in the pot and hastening that layer’s demise. This burning layer being the layer with females of color. The rapping about black women, specifically, and women, generally, as “bitches” and “hos,”3 not only devalues the females who later objectify themselves in this way but also continues to spread the same old historical sexualized and dehumanized lie about women of color to the whole world.4

Hibbard’s counterargument is that “oppressed people are products of the dominant culture and they adapt the worst aspects of the culture” with violence, materialism, and misogyny. He also argues that including these elements from the dominant society gains more followers to hip-hop, which hip-hop can then enlist as warriors in the revolution.

I have three responses. There is an old saying: When white America gets the sniffles, black America comes down with the flu. In other words, what injures the dominant culture in one negative way will more seriously injure an oppressed culture. So, it is unclear whether the hip-hop culture can be a form of resistance if it multiplies the effect of violent diseases on other bottom layers. Second, using his paper’s statistic that in the United States, whites purchase about 60 percent of hip-hop records, many who are in middle class suburbia, some hip-hop may be less an explosive resistance exposing societal problems, and may be more a bottom layer pushing down a bottom layer of women of color by giving implicit permission to middle class whites, who will likely become the middle managers in corporate America (the globalization engine), to continue the devaluation of women of color. Third, I wonder whether hip-hop can be an effective revolution when the players may be primarily motivated by material gain. It seems unavoidable that hip-hop’s liberating power and goodwill will be diluted where the message is naturally affected by what will sell in the marketplace. In other words, perhaps oppression sells more to middle class whites than messages of liberation.

The same questions I have about hip-hop apply to the other papers in this section. They all boil down to a major question: Does hip-hop or any other form of bottom-layer resistance have to be “pure” and spread a universal message of liberation to be an effective revolution. My first impulsive answer is “perhaps not.” The civil rights movement and the black power movement, too, were accused at times of failing to promote true gender equality within the ranks,5 yet the movements brought about positive changes. Additionally, the white feminist movement experiences failures in embracing goals of racial equality,6 yet society has changed in response to this movement. Finally, we cannot say for sure that hip-hop is ineffective as a revolution, while considering the outpouring of student antiwar protests and counterprotests and the student protests in favor of diversity and inclusion in higher education.7 These protests suggest a social conscience in young people that may have been spurred by the messages of hip-hop.

While Hibbard’s theoretical argument seems sound and with some support, it may not address on a practical level each bottom layer’s responsibility to other bottom layers. When I discussed Hibbard’s paper with a young, white, male law student, that student was persuaded of the validity of Hibbard’s thesis, and thought my objections irrelevant. He urged that a revolution does not have to free everyone. However, one of the symposium keynote speakers expressed a response similar to mine. Filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson pointed out that the bottom layers are allowing themselves to be manipulated against each other by the top layers. As the bottom layers push each other down, struggling over a few crumbs from the economic and power pie, the upper layers walk off with the vast majority of the globalization pie and leave the bottom layers simmering at the bottom and struggling against each other. Kim-Gibson suggested, both in her remarks and in her moving film, Wet Sand: Voices from LA, Ten Years Later, that each bottom layer is in fact struggling for justice, but is struggling against each other. So although Hibbard’s thoughtful analysis might persuade me eventually, for now, I agree with Kim-Gibson and another scholar who suggests that unless a group embraces universal liberation, its message “will only be a small whimpering voice that never reaches maturity.”8

All bottom layers should shoulder some responsibility in the face of marginalization and conscienceless globalization. The occupants of these bottom layers are not just oppressed victims. These bottom layers made up of ordinary citizens are actually the majority in number, in the face of globalization, and, in a true democracy, should control in conscience. On the one hand, these ordinary citizens can choose to use their voices to work against each other and hasten their own burning, the burning of other oppressed, and the burning of the entire pot. On the other hand, the ordinary citizens can, working together, move together away from the fire and with explosive voices cause a shifting in the entire pot all the way to the top layers.

The role of these ordinary citizens called to action is further explored in Professor Gamaliel Perruci’s enlightening paper, “Citizen-Leadership and Community Action in Latin America: The Global Dimension of Local Politics.” He adeptly uses stories of two cases from Latin America and explores the conflicts that occur in the bottom layers in the midst of globalization. Perruci argues that, while many analyze globalization by focusing on the impact at a global or national level, the most important impact takes place at the bottom layers. The bottom layers closer to the fire try to determine what adaptive response to take in response to the pressure of globalization from above and the intense heat felt at the bottom or local layers. Perruci shares very compelling stories of Latin Americans’ struggles for some degree of economic security where globalization has increased their insecurity. In these struggles, citizen leaders emerge who then seek to align their local communities either in favor of or against the global movement.

I agree with much of Perruci’s argument, but here is my concern: It seems that the emergence of citizen leaders occurs only in the wake of an immediate globalization movement. The response is often then a violent reaction to attempt to arrest the situation and restore the local community to its status quo. Seemingly, usually only after an explosion will those bent on globalization be open to negotiate. Therefore, I wonder whether an explosion, with the resulting injuries to persons and properties, is inevitable. As you read his paper, I suggest that you ask yourself this question: Who has the greater fault or, better yet, who has the greater responsibility for remedying the situation pre-explosion?

Specifically, is the upper layer responsible, after all it is the greater economic or military power that wants to exploit the local resources, or engage in market transactions, that negligently or intentionally underestimates the impact its military or economic move will have on the local or bottom layer? It has to be an ignorant underestimation, because the upper layer loses, too, as it must deal with the local uprising or revolt.

Is it the bottom layer’s fault or responsibility, specifically the ones that choose to adapt by aligning with the upper layer of power? Are these local leaders that turn global just “sell out Uncle Tom’s”?9 Or are the local leaders who turn global leaders with enough vision to see the inevitability of economic progress and integration?

Perhaps it is the fault of the citizen-leaders who resist change and who try to maintain the local character or culture of their communities. Are they to blame for selfishness and failure to have a greater global vision? Or, perhaps they are just trying to lead honest lives sacred to themselves, who maybe like American Indians did not care to be discovered, occupied, assimilated, conquered, and certainly not exploited. Are they still to blame for lack of trust of upper layers or national powers?

My second question is, why is any adaptation, necessarily it seems, violent? Moreover, for the upper layer, why is negotiation resisted except where there is first a display of aggressive or “lawless” power by the local or smaller cultures? As you carefully read Perruci’s paper, consider the process by which the local adaptive reaction occurs. Just like the Kent State and Jackson State incidents, the protests and the police reaction were not isolated incidents. Place them in the context of widespread state-sanctioned oppressions and assassinations of civil rights leaders. Before the explosive incidents of 1970, the pot was simmering, and voices were crying out for change and greater social consciousness.10

This question, why violent reaction, reminds me of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s explanation of the Negro revolution in his book, Why We Can’t Wait.11 He describes the injustices, the long suffering among the oppressed, the attempts at diplomacy, and then how one day the bottom layer “[awakes] from a stupor of inaction with the cold dash of realization.”12 Perruci’s stories are only slightly different if a special event occurs and poses a more direct threat to the local. In both situations, though, the question remains, why does the upper layer resist negotiation except where there is first a display of power by a bottom layer?

The upper layer feigns ignorance of the burning on the bottom. Perhaps this is rooted in fear—fear that if the bottom layers are not pressed down, they may rise up and become the new top layers. For, if the upper layer does not fear the competence or power of the bottom layer, the upper layer will see that it gains nothing by burning the lower layer and gains nothing by using unscrupulous methods, and even the law, to oppress a bottom layer. Using the law to oppress, therefore, forces the bottom layers to resort to an “unlawful” resistance. This desperate display of unlawful resistance then forces the top layers to take heed. However, shouldn’t there be a better way that does not risk “unlawfulness” and bloodshed. A common reaction may be that citizen leaders and other protestors ought to engage in nonviolent, peaceful, direct action like that of the Negro revolution. The warriors in that movement were trained to be nonviolent, still they were also unafraid of creating “tension” and breaking unjust laws, as a necessary incident to requiring shifting in the top layers. As Dr. King stated:

 

My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But, I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.13

 

Furthermore, even though these warriors were nonviolent, we must remember that there was violence. Their peaceful war was met by state-sanctioned violence against their demand for self-power. I wonder, though, whether measures like education can assure that any globalization proceeds with some conscience and without violence.

These concerns are directly related to Professor Huey-Li Li’s superb paper, “Bioregionalism and Global Education: Contention and Confluence.” As she keenly illustrates, lack of education about the local misinforms the global. In addition, lack of education about the global ill prepares the local, assuming we are destined to function under the ambit of global economic or military power. Individual persons often mistakenly assume that integration means the bottom layers must give up all identity and culture and accept the values of the upper layer or the greater power.14 True integration, however, changes both parts, not just the bottom layer. We hope we will never see our earth exist with total sameness: how uninteresting earthly life would be.

I confess, my initial reaction to Li’s perceptive and optimistic analysis was fear. I fear that in my worst nightmare, globalization is nothing more than an attempt to rid the world of the richness of its diversity and to institute a world power with which the greater economic powers feel comfortable. Perhaps as you read her paper, you will be persuaded that the dual education she advocates will lead us to a better society and will not fall on unhearing ears attached to unseemly motives. Also quite interesting is a closing reference in her paper that uses an analogy to W. E. B. Dubois’s concept of double consciousness and a suggestion that it is a positive thing. In my discussions with other African Americans, the double consciousness is seen as a burden. Dr. Dubois explains:

 

It is a peculiar sensation this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt or pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, . . . to warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.15

 

Now if the global could perceive the local the way the black also understands America, globalization would proceed, if at all, with much greater sensitivity to the local. I wonder though, what motivations are there for the global economic or military power to willingly take on the burden of this double consciousness?

After my conference presentation, one of the other participants challenged my theme that we are all in one big globalization pot burning together. He suggested that the greater economic and military powers are unconcerned, because they are unaffected, especially in the short-run, by burning of other layers. He said the top layers can lock the doors to their homes, stay out of certain neighborhoods, and live their lives unaffected by the suffering of the bottom layers. He thought, then, the only motivation for the top layers to pay attention to the bottom layers is for moral reasons, which appear to fail as social motivators.

To a great extent, I disagree with his argument. We are all in the pot together, whether we like it or not. On a global layer, the upper layers are affected by the bottom layers environmentally and because the bottom layers also have access to bombs, nuclear and chemical weapons, and so on. We indeed will survive or perish together with this advanced technology. The upper layers are definitely affected by the fear that now grips as a result of the September 11, 2001, incident, especially for those who had rarely felt sexism or racism or other oppression. Moreover, on a national level, the upper layers are affected by burning caused by disempowerment and oppression of those on the bottom. Surely having to install super home security systems, gating their communities, sending children to expensive private schools (and still being concerned for their safety there), and worrying daily about crime affects the quality of life for the upper layers. The burning on the bottom means upper layers must spend energy and resources trying to barricade themselves from the bottom layers and from the steadily rising heat. Moreover, the upper layers lose out on dollars that could be devoted to education, health care, and other positive quality-of-life investments as these dollars are spent instead on building more and more prisons, weapons, the military, and so forth. Additionally, the whole pot, including the upper layers, loses when genius from the bottom is burned rather than encouraged.

The upper layer cannot seal itself off as the bottom layers burn, the upper layer is scorching too, and soon, it too will be burned unless it shifts with the layers beneath it.

Perhaps then, the source for motivation for the upper layer to stir from the bottom is found in Li’s argument for education. The upper layer is in need of education about this interconnectedness. Then these layers might see that the salvaging of the global is connected with the salvaging of the local. Without this understanding, the upper layers are perhaps the layer that is suffering the greater poverty, a moral poverty.

This poverty is addressed in Professor Camilo Pérez-Bustillo’s enlightening and courageous paper. His paper made me wonder whether perhaps in a spiritual or moral sense, the upper layers are in danger of suffering a greater poverty, not the bottom layers. Pérez-Bustillo’s paper, “The Poverty of Rights: Barriers to the Achievement of Global Justice in the Era of Globalization,” suggests an intriguing new paradigm of human rights, “international poverty law,” to redress inequities in the expanding global system. Using a historical study of human rights, his paper persuasively examines this poverty of rights from the perspective of the victims.

As I read his documentation of the rich becoming richer, the inequalities, the oppression and so on, I kept thinking about the first story told in his paper, one movie I recently saw, and an old television game show.

The first story from his paper, to summarize, is set in a small village. There lived a very rich man and a very poor man. The rich man took his son to the highest mountaintop overlooking the village and said, “Look, my son, someday all this will be yours.” A few days later, the poor man climbed up to the same mountaintop with his son, spread his arms, and simply said, “Look.” Now my response to the story initially was out of the imperialistic part of my personality, and I felt sorry for the poor man who could bestow no ambitious nature on his son. However, my second response came from what I consider to be my higher or better self, and I felt sorry for the rich man. You see the economically poor man could behold beauty, abundance, and culture without needing to conquer or control it. The rich man, however, affected by his own greed and need to control, could only understand the village as something to later globalize, suppress, or exploit. So, the rich ones are really the ones in danger of poverty. The upper economic and military layers don’t understand that they are really the ones pushing the bottom layers down and hastening the demise of the entire pot. They don’t understand the beauty and value of all the layers in their social, cultural, and economic diversity.

So I wonder, as we try to get the upper layers to accept the humanity or dignity of the bottom layer, perhaps some effort ought to be spent trying to understand the upper layer’s insistence on domination and control. I wonder if there is any way to free the upper layer from its own power issues. Is the upper layer so ignorant of the fact that burning the bottom layers will eventually burn the upper too? Or, is the upper layer bent on greed? Or, is the upper layer in fear that if there is no layer worse off than it on the bottom, that it is nothing, for it doubts its own competence?

A movie comes to my mind that stars Chris Rock, Head of State. In the movie one of the United States’ presidential candidates repeated slogan was, “God Bless the U.S. and no one else.” God bless us and no one else and not the “other.” That candidate lost the election. I wonder, will globalization, with a similar slogan, ultimately too lose out, because the “other” is actually the majority of the layers?

An old game show was To Tell the Truth. On the show, three contestants would pretend to be one person. The celebrity guests would ask them questions trying to ascertain who the actual person was. At the close of the show, the host would say, “Will the real [for example] Mr. Smith, please stand up?” And, he would.16 Well, initially I was going to ask, will the real majority stand up (and stand up together this time). However, maybe a better question is, will the real minority please sit down?

Globalization that is insensitive to human rights, local effects, the bottom layers, is an upper layer that is thin in comparison to the many who suffer below as a result. This upper layer is dominated by a few who benefit from the complicit silence of many in the middle layers and who benefit from the disagreeing, but fearful or complacent, silence of many in the bottom layers.17 If you look in the middle and bottom layers, you will see, starting to burn at the bottom of the pot, voiceless American youth and poor counting on the hip-hop culture to be their voice, people of color worldwide (and especially in our United States), rural persons losing their farms and homes, inner-city workers losing their jobs, white women subjugated to patriarchy even within themselves, people of nonheterosexual orientation living double lives, citizen leaders not knowing how to be saviors, and others, including those white men who are bold enough to question continued conquests for the sake of power.

We are all in the pot together. Most of us are in the middle or bottom layers. Unless we stir from the bottom, we will not get a delicious result, a stew with blended but uniquely individual units, rather we will end up with nothing but a burned, tasteless, blob.

 

Notes

1. The Jackson State students were protesting racism, the Vietnam War, the Kent State killings, and other state-sanctioned or allowed injustices. The student protestors were already following police orders and were dispersing when some police opened fire. Killings of blacks and their supporters who spoke out against injustice were not uncommon during those times. See the comment by Gene Young, a student witness to the killings at Jackson State. J. Gregory Payne, ed., Twenty-five Year Retrospective of Kent State and Jackson State (Boston: Center for Ethics in Political and Health Communication, 2000), 22–25. For more on the tragic story, see the Jackson State Web site regarding the Gibbs-Green Plaza (named for the students who were killed) at www.jsums.edu/~ww/gg01.htm (accessed May 7, 2003). See also Burton v. Waller, 502 F.2d 1261 (5th Cir. 1974).

2. At the symposium, a young black male student, with his nonblack female companion, approached me privately to chastise me for criticizing hip-hop, especially in mixed racial company. One of his requests was that I change my language from suggesting “most” rap music to say instead “many” rap songs send negative messages about black females. He acknowledged that many rap songs have negative messages about females, and especially black females. I told him that I would take his word and gladly comply with that change of language, especially because I myself enjoy some rap music.

As we talked, I shared that perhaps the more interesting issue he raised was whether it is appropriate for me as a black woman to air dirty laundry in public. My theory is that as bottom layers, we must confront “our” issues between each other. Perhaps, as another woman-of-color participant at the symposium suggested, we need to take out our dirty laundry and wash it. We cannot do that unless we hold one another accountable, as opposed to keeping the dirty laundry hidden in the closet forever. As another professor expressed:

 

Increasingly, though, conflicts between liberation and domination will implicate intramural disputes among African Americans ourselves. For years within African-American culture a survival imperative prohibited airing dirty laundry in public. But those days are over and other risks are associated with such an act, primarily shame or embarrassment. . . . The theme of airing dirty laundry becomes a complex matter, [an] attempt to silence black women from raising claims of sexual harassment and subordination at the hands of black men.

 

John O. Calmore, “Airing Dirty Laundry: Disputes among Privileged Blacks, from Clarence Thomas to ‘The Law School Five,’” Howard Law Journal 46 (2003):175, 179 (italics mine).

3. I am reminded of a discussion I had with an intelligent, young, black, female law student regarding speech rights. She was trying to spell the word “whore” and all she could come up with was “h-o,” as is sometimes used in rap.

4. For a discussion of the oppressively dehumanized images of black women, see Gail Elizabeth Wyatt, Stolen Women: Reclaiming Our Sexuality, Taking Back Our Lives (New York: John Wiley, 1997); Susan D. Newman, Oh God!: A Black Woman’s Guide to Sex and Spirituality (New York: One World/Ballantine, 2002), 65–69. See also Angela Mae Kupenda, “Law, Life, and Literature: A Critical Reflection of Life and Literature to Illuminate How Laws of Domestic Violence, Race, and Class Bind Black Women,” Howard Law Review 42 (1998): 1.

5. See, for example, Bell Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End, 1981), and Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1992). Brown is the only woman to have ever led the Black Panther Party.

6. See Kupenda, “For White Women: ‘Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine,’ but We All Hide Our Faces and Cry,” Boston College Third World Law Journal 22 (2002): 67.

7. See Katherine S. Mangan, “Reacting to War,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 28, 2003, and Kendra Hamilton, “Activists for the New Millennium,” Black Issues in Higher Education 20, no. 5 (2003): 16.

8. Delores S. Williams, “Afrocentrism and Male-Female Relations in Church and Society,” in Living the Intersection: Womanism and Afrocentrism in Theology, ed. Cheryl J. Sanders (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1995), 56.

9. An “Uncle Tom” is defined as “a black person regarded as subservient or deferential to white people.” American Heritage College Dictionary,3d ed., s.v. “Uncle Tom,” (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 1469. In this context, an Uncle Tom could be a local leader who sells out the local interests to the national or international powers.

10. See Payne, Twenty-five Year Retrospective of Kent State and Jackson State, 68–70 (remarks by student wounded at Kent State).

11. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: New American Library, 1963).

12. Ibid., 11.

13. Ibid., 68.

14. In “Tales of Simple,” Langston Hughes tells the story of a fictional black man, Simple, having a coffee break with his white boss. The white boss wanted Simple to explain to him what THE NEGRO wants. The closing part of that story reads:

 

            “Negroes are the ones who want to be integrated,” said my boss.

            “And white folks are the ones who do not want to be,” I said.

            “Up to a point, we do,” said my boss.

            “That is what THE NEGRO wants,” I said, “to remove that point.”

            “The coffee break is over,” said my boss.

 

Hughes, “Tales of Simple,” in Black Voices, ed. Abraham Chapman (New York: Penguin, 1968), 108.

15. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam, 1989), 3.

16. To Tell the Truth, www.timstvshowcase.com/tttt.htm (accessed September 18, 2002).

17. Dr. King spoke of those who were sympathetic to injustice but “remained publicly silent.” King, Why We Can’t Wait, 36. “It was a silence born of fear–fear of social, political and economic reprisals. The ultimate tragedy . . . was not the brutality of the bad people, but the silence of the good people.” Ibid.

 

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