Saturday, October 01, 2005

Bill Bennett, Young Jeezy and the Politics of Genocide

Min. Paul Scott

How we stop the Black Panthers?
Ronald Reagan cooked up the answer.

Crack Music -Kanye West


Rollin' through my 'hood, yesterday I stumbled on a NPR radio program discussing Bill Bennett's comments about how the abortion of Black babies would lower the crime rate. As my heart began to race, I grabbed my cell phone to alert the Brothers that our worst fears had been realized and that "the man" was really planning to kill us all. Just as I was trying to tell the comrade on the other end to grab every Black man that he sees and have them meet us at 8PM at our secret headquarters in the back of Soul City Seafood Restaurant and Juice Bar , my voice was drowned out by the Brotha with the snowman T-shirt in the car next to me bumpin' Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation 101......

Bennett's comments just help to confirm rumors of genocidal plots to destroy Black people that have been discussed in barber shops and book stores for years. I remember building with a Brotha on the subject one day for hours until old man Johnson interrupted the conversation and started babblin' about how his Cousin Leroy died from a heart attack back in '72 when the government sent infrared rays through his TV set during the Big Money Grip episode of Sanford and Son.

The historical reality of genocide cannot be ignored. After all, the west wasn't won by diplomacy but by the genocide of the indigenous people of this country. For Afrikan people, the threat of genocide has been present since the end of slavery. With the so called Emancipation Proclamation, the problem of what to do with the thousands of suddenly unemployed "slaves" caused many plantation owners and politicians many a sleepless night. There are also tales of medical experiments being performed on Black men in the 1900's that still send shock waves through the bones of Brotha's, even today. Try asking the average Black man over 60 about going for his annual physical and watch him mumble something about the Tuskeegee Experiment and march out of the room cussin' like a sailor.

Towards the end of the initial Black Power Movement, the introduction of large quantities of heroin into the Black community is credited with transforming Bro. Raheem Mustafa, Black Revolutionary into Jimmy the Junkie from down the block.

With Reaganomics came crack. For some it was the road to the riches but to others it was a path to destruction. As times got tight, once close nit Black communities began to turn on each other. You were either the predator or the prey. However, tired of the death and destruction in the hood, Hip hop artists got together and did a massive anti-crack marketing campaign. Almost spontaneously, "Crack Kills" and other subliminal messages started showing up in music videos on Rap City and Yo' MTV Raps. It was not uncommon for an MC to end his set with an impromptu redemption of "Leave them Drugs Alone." Hip Hop's biggest and brightest got together and established a code that if they couldn't keep crack out of the Black community, at least they could keep it out of Hip Hop.

But in 2005 with the success of Young Jeezy and Boys in the Hood: Crack is Back! While it was not unusual for a rapper to spin tales of rap sells from his distant past, Young Jeezy, the Snowman (Get it? Get it ? Jeezy the Snowman.) talks about it in real time. Not only is his 18 track CD solely about sellin' rock or " trappin'" , he has a nation of black boys walking around with snow man T-shirts yellin' "Trap or Die."

The question should be, with the recent trend for Hip Hop to again become political and the threat that the recent happenings in New Orleans will make even the most stuff shirt conservative , Barry Manilow listening Brotha go out and get an Afro pick, what is behind the recent influx of crack music back in the game.

This question makes the recent comments coming from right wing politicians talking about how the drowning of hundreds of Black folks was the wrath of God and Bill Bennett saying that abortion of Black babies will prevent someone from breaking into your crib while you're on that Disney World vacation even more disturbing.

For years we have heard Brotha's slangin' crack on the block parrot the familiar phrase "we don't own the planes, trains and ships that bring drugs into the Black community' and Brotha's in Hip Hop saying they are just reflecting what's goin' on in the streets. Unfortunately, these statements often remain eternal rhetoric and are never viewed within context of the global condition of Afrikan people. While most people would automatically assume that politics of Right Wing Conservatives and Trap Rappers are in opposition could the two entities actually be in cahoots?

While we are quick to check the politics of another Brother or Sister, we never question the political ideologies of the Jimmy Iovines, Lyle Cohen's, Steve Gotlieb' s and others who are really responsible for the state of Hip Hop. We never question their ultimate vision for the future of Black people. While it is easy to pretend that all of the problems facing the Black community; the gun sales, liquor stores on every corner, unemployment, the prison industrial complex, etc are accidental, what if there really is an effort to remove Afrikan people from the face of the planet? Could it be that Bill Bennett's words reflect a larger master plan of both prebirth and post birth "abortions." Within this context, is the conspiracy theory that levees could be blown up to drown undesirable Black folks in New Orleans , really that far fetched?

I wonder if the Boys in tha Hood who sell crack in the hood and on wax have ever thought about their role in the genocide of Afrikan people. Have we ever taken the time to slip them a book or CD by one of our scholars or expert researchers on the subject? ? Maybe they're unaware.

Maybe, the reason that we are still headed down the role of destruction over 15 years after the Stop the Violence Movement recorded "Self Destruction" is because the destruction is not originating from ourselves.

To borrow from a Young Jeezy ad lib, "That's real talk, right there."

Minister Paul Scott represents the Messianic Afrikan Nation in Durham NC. He can be reached at (919) 451-8283. Email minpaulscott@yahoo.com website http://members.blackplanet.com/THE-MYD

1 comment:

  1. So we're discussing what Bill Bennett said and people are, you know,
    going
    through their various stages of shock and outrage, whatever it is, and
    people are, I'm sure, having their own thoughts about this. The thing that
    amazes me is, we all get caught up in words and what people say and get
    righteously indignant. "How dare that person say that! Who do you think they
    are?" Of course, it's all within these confines of political correctness.
    Okay. So Bennett is having a theoretical, philosophical discussion with a
    caller about abortion, and the caller is making the point that, "Hey, you
    know, if all these kids that have been aborted in the last 30 years had not
    been and had been born, a good number of them would have become productive
    members of society. They would have become taxpayers. We would have had that
    much more money in the federal treasury and we might be not having a Social
    Security problem or anything else," and Bennett said, you know, you can go
    so many ways on that and it gets tricky. You can talk if you abort here, if
    you don't abort there, but that's not the way to talk about abortion. We've
    got to talk about it on the issue of morality. It's life. It's wrong to
    abort innocent life, pure and simple.

    He's just following the lead of his caller and in the midst of his answer
    to the caller, he said, "Well, you know, it's true, if you aborted every
    black baby, you'd reduce the crime rate." He said, "That would be crazy,
    it's reprehensible, morally indefensible. It's silly." You don't go there.
    There's shock and outrage. "How dare he say that? How dare he say it?" Who
    cares what anybody says? It's only political correctness that's gotten into
    this place. What about those who are doing that, folks? What about those who
    are doing it? Is talking about abortion, regardless what's said about it,
    worse than the act itself? Where's the equal condemnation here? How in the
    world are we going to sit around and get all worked up and bent out of sorts
    over words, when abortion is happening to the tune of 1.3 million a year and
    has been for 30 years? Planned Parenthood? Many of you think it's a grand
    organization, very worthwhile, doing great work. Margaret Sanger, founder of
    Planned Parenthood, called for the sterilization of "genetically inferior
    races" in 1939. Who was she talking about? You don't have to ask. I'll tell
    you. In 1939, she organized the Negro Project, and wrote, "The poorer areas,
    particularly in the South, are producing alarmingly more than their share of
    future generations," hence, she called for the sterilization of "genetically
    inferior races." Margaret Sanger was the founder of the National Birth
    Control League, now known as Planned Parenthood.

    She was an advocate of eugenics, improving human population by control of
    hereditary factors in reproduction. There was a big eugenics movement in
    this country back in this era, in the '30s and they wanted to pick who could
    "mate." They wanted to determine who could have children and who couldn't,
    and it was based on IQ and a number of other things. They didn't want to
    mess around with all these inferior races and inferior groups and inferior
    intellects mass producing out there and creating a bunch of idiots that were
    going to live off the federal dime or whatever. Now, you can't even say this
    about Margaret Sanger anymore. Planned Parenthood says, "You are
    misrepresenting what our founders said!" No, I'm not. Take a look at it.
    Now, I'm not saying that the Planned Parenthood movement today is a carbon
    copy of Margaret Sanger's ideas, but we do know that Planned Parenthood's
    primary objective in life is to abort as many babies as possible regardless
    of the color. Now, you tell me, folks, where is the sense here in getting
    all upset over the words uttered by somebody -- when they're taken out of
    context when you first hear about them; hat's the only way you about them
    and they're taken out of context -- you get all upset. "I can't believe
    anybody would say that." Well, I frankly can't believe anybody, like a
    doctor in Arkansas, would actually ask black evacuees from Hurricane Katrina
    to come to his office for abortions. Where is our sense of proportion here?
    Like I say, I'm through going on the defensive with these bunch of people
    who claim to be superior and morally and intellectually above everybody
    else. They're the elites?
    (RL)

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