Somehow, Virginia has gone from men who signed the Mayflower Compact to a clown show–one for infanticide. One sexual assaulter. Two blackface racists.
Despite the dumpster fire he has caused, ole Ralph ain’t going nowhere.
Despite a scandal surrounding Northam that has rocked Virginia’s
“He’s not leaving,” said Stuart. “He understands he has to stand up and face this. He knows what he has to do. He’s staying.”
Northam appears now to be in a stronger position as the scandals of the state’s other two top officeholders, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, and AG Mark R. Herring (D) made it less likely he would be forced to step down during the General Assembly session.
But, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus renewed their call for Northam to resign, an action that emphasized how isolated he continues to be over the photo depicting someone in blackface and someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. Northam was 25 at the time.
Yes, politics as usual, while Capital Hill Democrats continue to call publicly for Northam to resign, most now want the governor to stay in office at least until there is clarity on the issues involving Fairfax and Herring–that is because the line of succession goes from the governor to lieutenant governor to attorney general. Keeping Herring in office is a backstop against handing the Executive Mansion to the third in line, the House Speaker, who is a Republican.
Is blackface really that common?
Really, we need to decide, either blackface incidents from decades ago are disqualifying or they aren’t. The question, at this point, is just who hasn’t done blackface at one time or another? How common are blackface costumes? I don’t really know anyone who has done that, maybe you do.
Let’s look. Two of the three highest-ranking Democrats in the State of Virginia are white, and both of them have worn blackface. But, this should not be surprising. Blackface turns out to be fairly common on the elite left.
Actor Ted Danson once showed up at a Friars Club roast for his then-girlfriend, Whoopi Goldberg, wearing blackface. Goldberg now co-hosts “The View” on ABC. Oddly, very little has been said on The View about the blackface controversy now unfolding in Virginia. Host Joy
Liberal actor Sarah Silverman has appeared in blackface also. Her longtime boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel wore blackface on the air. Tom Hanks appears in an old video pretending to auction off someone who appears in blackface.
Remember the film Soul Man about a white man who wears make-up in order to pretend to be black and qualify for a black-only scholarship at Harvard Law School…oh, wait, that’s Elizabeth Warren. My bad.
If anything constructive has come out of the Northam debacle, it has provided a rich and comprehensive look at the
Why are people with private security forces demanding that you give up your guns? How come so many womanizers like creepy Bill Clinton pose as feminists?
It seems those most likely to wear blackface are also the ones that are the quickest to cry racism.
So it goes.
Paul Plante says
As a viewer of what I can only consider a farce or parody that you would expect to be reading about in National Lampoon, or watching as a Mel Brooks movie along the lines of “Blazing Saddles,” or some kind of weird Monty Python’s skit, although in the case of Justin Fairfax, a serious one, I think this article raises some important questions for our times today, starting with why the “people of color” in the Old Dominion are celebrating when the first “person of color” was brought to Virginia as a slave.
What on earth is up with that many people are asking.
Why are those people so fixated on every bad thing that might have happened to Africans in Africa four hundred years ago?
Had Africans in Africa four hundred years not sold their black brethren to slave traders back then, it is likely that there would have been no black slaves to send to Virginia, so instead of celebrating having been slaves in Virginia four hundred years ago, why don’t those people finally get introspective and ponder all the harm their black brothers in Africa did them by capturing them and selling them as slaves?
As to blackface, I have to say I never did it, unless you want to consider getting camo’d up in the military some kind of a form of “blackface,” in which case I guess I would have to say “mea culpa,” which now seems to mean that as a white person, I could never hold any kind of public office in Virginia, or maybe the United States of America, for that matter.
As someone who was a victim of a Democrat mob back when, because I wouldn’t take bribes or honor bribes taken by Democrats to give people “free passes” around the law, and being a moralist, as well, as in “the moral of the story is …,” I do find this Democrat party melt-down to be of interest from the stand-point of hubris and karma, given that among us as a people, only the Democrats are the most perfect of us, and Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Charley “Chuck” Schumer are the most perfect and unblemished of all, being perfect in all the ways it is possible to be perfect, and then some, except it now appears that there is some fallacy with regard to that story, at least in Virginia, which has the national Democrats all in a tizzy because it is going to affect their fund-raising, which involves selling access to our governments to the highest bidders.
With respect to the hubris aspect of this on-going drama, replete with all the drama queens one could ask for, and then some, POLITICO had an article entitled “‘This is an earthquake’: Virginia GOP celebrates Dems’ implosion” by Anita Kumar and Maggie Severns on 9 February 2019, which informed us as follows on that score:
RICHMOND, Va. — Democrats have grown bullish the past few election cycles about putting leftward-shifting Virginia permanently in their column.
Then this week happened.
end quotes
Yes, this week really did happen, didn’t it, and the media is just loving it, because this is a story that is writing itself for them, which takes us back to the POLITICO article where we find this revelation, to wit:
And Democrats worry that the state’s top lawmakers won’t be able to raise money or campaign this year when all 140 seats in the nearly evenly divided legislature are up for grabs.
end quotes
Oh BOO HOO HOO HOO HOO – the Democrats won’t be able to buy up the government in Virginia because of some real stupid Democrats in Virginia.
What a shame, but as can be expected, there are some Democrats who are still bold and brash who are hanging tough here as POLITICO tells us, to wit:
Some Democrats dispute the consequences, saying the focus will quickly turn back to Trump and national politics.
“Six months from now, everything is going to be in the rearview mirror and the focus on D.C.,” state Sen. Scott Surovell said.
end quotes
So there is a prediction we can all be keeping our eyes on as the big-league Democrats in Washington gear up all their various investigations of Trump to make that happen.
And not to be left out of the fray lest some other media organization gets all the credit for keeping this story breaking, the venerable “Grey Lady,” the New York Times has an article entitled “Justin Fairfax Puts Virginia Democrats in Bind on Impeachment” by Jonathan Martin, Alan Blinder and Campbell Robertson on 9 February 2019, which details the saga as follows:
RICHMOND, Va. — Justin E. Fairfax’s refusal to resign as lieutenant governor of Virginia in the face of two allegations of sexual assault has presented Democrats with an excruciating choice: whether to impeach an African-American leader at a moment when the state’s other two top leaders, both white, are resisting calls to quit after admitting to racist conduct.
end quotes
“Racist conduct?”
Give me a ******* break, people – how about A-HOLE conduct, instead, given that there are not “people of color” who are a different race than are people with white skin?
And to put that issue finally to bed, what we need in this country are some real clear guidelines as to every single thing that serves to disqualify a person with white skin from holding any public office here in the United States of America, starting with dog catcher, starting with having put shoe polish on your face at an y time in your life prior to running for office.
Getting back to the NYT:
The political turmoil for Democratic leaders this weekend is unfolding at the intersection of race and gender, and risks pitting the party’s most pivotal constituencies against one another.
If Democrats do not oust Mr. Fairfax, at a time when the party has taken a zero-tolerance stand on sexual misconduct in the #MeToo era, they could anger female voters.
But the specter of Mr. Fairfax, 39, being pushed out while two older white men remain in office — despite blackface behavior that evoked some of the country’s most painful racist images — would deeply trouble many African-Americans.
“I think the Democratic Party would lack credibility if they followed a double standard,” said Representative Karen Bass of California, who is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Ms. Bass said that both Mr. Northam and Mr. Fairfax should step down.
On Saturday, an adviser to Mr. Fairfax said the lieutenant governor was deeply distraught over the allegations and had no intention of resigning.
Mr. Fairfax, who says he is innocent, wants an independent investigation to ensure both sides are heard and their stories assessed, said the adviser, who spoke under condition of anonymity to share private conversations.
But there is no apparatus for such an inquiry in Virginia.
“It’s a nightmare right now,” said Representative A. Donald McEachin, a Virginia Democrat who can trace his history here back to Revolutionary War-era slaves.
“We’ve worked hard on the Democratic brand for so many years,” he said, “and now we have to deal with this.”
Almost all of Virginia’s Democratic leaders and lawmakers on Friday night called on Mr. Fairfax to resign and a legislator vowed to introduce articles of impeachment if Mr. Fairfax did not quit by Monday.
The state Democratic Party, after a conference call of its steering committee on Saturday morning in which there was near-unanimous support for Mr. Fairfax to resign, issued a statement saying he no longer had “their confidence or support” and should quit.
Gov. Northam also insists he will not resign.
He does not face an imminent impeachment threat, and neither does Mr. Herring, the attorney general and second in line to the governor, who has been effusively apologizing for once wearing blackface.
The governor, in an interview on Saturday with The Washington Post, said he intends to use the remainder of his term to pursue racial reconciliation and has been reading works like “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Alex Haley’s “Roots” to learn more about experiences of African-Americans.
end quotes
For those who don’t know the gentleman, Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, born September 30, 1975, is an American author, journalist and comic book writer of a Black Panther series for Marvel Comics drawn by Brian Stelfreeze, so somehow, it is fitting in a surreal sort, of way that it would be to him that Ralph Northam is turning in his quest to learn more about the lives of the “people of color” in this country to make Ralph a better governor of Virginia.
Getting back to the perspective presented by the NYT:
Just how far Virginia Democrats go to confront these three statewide officials — who swept into office in 2017 on the first wave of backlash to President Trump’s election — will send a signal about how committed they are to taking a hard line on racial and sexual transgressions, and will echo well beyond this state’s borders.
To some Democrats, Mr. Fairfax’s alleged conduct is the most serious because he is the only one of the three accused of a crime.
But that does not make the political quandary any less torturous at a moment when the party’s 2020 presidential primary is getting underway with more black and female candidates than have ever run for the White House.
“To show a firm grasp of the obvious, the optics would be difficult and the substance would be difficult,” said State Senator J. Chapman Petersen, who is white, about how it would look if Mr. Northam and Mr. Herring remained in office while Mr. Fairfax was exiled.
end quotes
And there for the moment, I will take a pause in what has to be the most bizarre political story I have encountered in my lifetime, anyway.
anthony sacco says
also a killing state
Paul Plante says
This is a resurgence of opera bouffe here in the United States of America with a distinctly American flavor to it!
A genre is being born right before our eyes.
May we always live in interesting times!
Chas Cornweller says
You only have to read Samuel Clemens’ autobiography (The Autobiography of Mark Twain) and his vivid description of the minstrel shows he attended in the 1840’s in Missouri and again in the latter 1880’s to understand the total degradation of black Americans. It seems it isn’t/wasn’t enough to capture and kidnap the children of African tribes and force them to live in the lower decks, stacked like cordwood in Trans-Atlantic passage, only to be sold into a permanence of back breaking, dangerous, and wholly soul sapping existences. Whites just had to appropriate their culture, their music, and their mannerisms, only to cruelly elongate those experiences into humiliating caricatures and wanton ridicule. Those were the minstrel shows of the nineteenth century. And one of the many issues’ whites seem to forget to remember about their fellow countrymen and black brothers and sisters is this…they have a long memory. You see, blackface came from the minstrel tradition. The minstrel tradition played on the humiliation of a race of people. Whites instituted this humiliation. Jim Crow enforced it.
It’s really not hard to connect the dots on this one. All you’ve got to do is come out from under that bubble you live in, take a look around and show a little empathy. Know your history, know your past.
Paul Plante says
Dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, let me say as a fellow American citizen who does know his history, because he bothers to look it up and learn it before spouting off about it, how glad I am to see you joining in on this conversation to put forth your ideas about black-face from your perspective, which is always, or generally always, diametrically opposed to mine, which doesn’t make yours wrong, just different, as is the case here.
Personally, Chas Cornweller, and this is just me, I think anyone over the age of 18, regardless of what color their skin might happen to be, has to have some real serious psychological disorders to be getting themselves upset by the fact that Mark Twain when he was alive went to a minstrel show.
The dude has been dead now, Chas Cornweller, since April 21, 1910, so it’s more than a little late to be trying to hold him guilty of anything, isn’t it?
So why get yourself all upset today about something Mark Twain did over a hundred years ago?
What kind of sense does that make?
And for those who are not so erudite as our dear friend Chas Cornweller concerning Mark Twain and minstrel shows, which, right, or wrong, were a form of entertainment in America a hundred years or so ago, there is an on-line essay on the subject entitled “Mark Twain’s Account of Minstrelsy” by Matt Shedd, where we learn about mwhat our dear friend Chas Cornweller is condemning Mark Twain for, as follows:
In Chapter 12 of his autobiography (1958 Harper ed.), Mark Twain describes his life-long fascination with minstrel shows.
He mentions specific minstrels by name: “Billy Rice,” “Billy Birch,” “David Wambold,” “Backus,” and “a delightful dozen of their brethren who made life a pleasure to me forty years ago and latter”
end quotes
Now, to get all freaked out about any of that today seems to be to be somehow perverse, given that Mark Twain is now dead and in his grave, and beyond censure from me, anyway, but that is just me.
Now, here is what has our dear friend Chas all upset, and one can see why, as follows:
Throughout the essay he refers to them as “n-word shows” and claims he would take an old minstrel show over the opera any day.
However, in his old age they just weren’t what they used to be.
Twain writes, “The minstrel show was born in the early forties and it had a prosperous career for about thirty-five years.”
end quotes
Like all forms of entertainment, the minstrel show came and went, and here is our poor dear friend Chas Cornweller still wearing a hairshirt, sack cloth and ashes because Mark Twain happened to like them when he was alive.
Getting back to Mark Twain:
Twain recollects seeing his first minstrel show in Hannibal, Missouri, and how the church people would not attend because its perceived impropriety.
It’s important that, as Twain describes it, the religious people’s revulsion toward minstrelsy had nothing to do with resisting racism, but rather a perception of minstrelsy as a vulgar and worldly form of entertainment.
end quotes
Chas, dude, those people are dead!
As much as you want to punish them all, you can’t!
They’re gone, Chas Cornweller!
The past is over!
When will you finally be able to let lose of it and live in the present moment, instead?
Why do you cling to four hundred years worth of racial hate?
Do you want to end up shriveling away like that pus-filled rancid sack of toxic hate, the Right Reverend Al Sharpton?
Getting back to Mark Twain, and what upsets our dear friend Chas Cornweller so about him, e have:
Twain takes great pains to describe the details of the shows from his boyhood: the entertainers’ bright costumes of rags, which parodied the slave’s ragged clothing; their white hands and faces covered by dark make-up; the dialect, which he describes as “a very broad negro dialect.”
He describes the way they imitated African-American speech as funny in itself.
He describes the typical early minstrel troupe as containing usually three members, two of whom appeared as I described above.
One minstrel acted as a sort of moderator, attempting to dress and act like a gentleman in contrast to the other performers who represented plantation slaves and played the banjo and the bones.
end quotes
Now, let me interject here as a banjo player myself that whether Chas Cornweller likes them or not, and it is pretty clear to me he loathes them, these minstrels in fact did the people of color a boon by getting their music out into the main stream in America so that people of color like William Grant Still (May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978), an American composer of more than 150 works, including five symphonies and eight operas, and often referred to as “the Dean” of African-American composers, being the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera, and known most for his first symphony, the “Afro-American,” could bring that same music forth and find success in the world.
Born in Mississippi, Still grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and was a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and later Edgard Varèse.
Of note, Still was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony (his 1st Symphony) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television.
Chas never mentions successful people of color like William Grant Still, choosing instead to focus on a different demographic like Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, but I like to focus on them myself, because I am for success and people who are successful, as opposed to people who are fixated on things that happened before they were born.
But, it’s America, people, and Chas is as entitled to be who he is, and to see the world through his own lens, as I am to be myself, with my views on life, liberty and the pursuit of justice that run counter to his, and that is the way it will be until Chas finally gets a more positive outlook on life based on a realization that anyone who owned a slave in Virginia is most likely now dead and gone, so there is no sense wasting emotional energy on how they are to be punished for their sins.
Chas Cornweller says
Paul, Paul, calm yourself. You’ll stroke out! And no one, including me, wants that! No, in the line where I mentioned Mark Twain, I was NOT stating he wrote glowingly, or lovingly or any of those type of accolades of the Minstrel show. In fact, in the later one, (1880’s) he writes of his disappointment and his distaste of the whole thing. Sure, he had favorites in those shows, but he still wrote of the dehumanizing spectacle those shows were. Especially in later years.
My point was this…if someone of Twains stature (which, in my thinking, is HUGE in journalism) and his ethical stance on human issues, could clearly write about the integral workings of those shows with an eye and an ear for the times in which they were portrayed and still come away with the thoughtfulness of their intent, then I feel we all owe it a read. You only have to understand the Minstrel shows in their context, to understand how humiliating they were to Black Americans. That was my point!
You said: “I think anyone over the age of 18, regardless of what color their skin might happen to be, has to have some real serious psychological disorders to be getting themselves upset by the fact that Mark Twain when he was alive went to a minstrel show.” That! Is when you ran off the rails and incorrectly responded to my writing and my intent. I was not upset by what Twain wrote. Neither at the time he wrote it or the time I read it! Are we clear? All the rest of your rebuttal falls flat at that point, sir. I am sorry. You wasted a lot of time and a lot of reader’s time. And I apologize if I was not clear with my first statement and caused that.
And dead or not, minstrel shows are of a by gone era. An era by gone for many reasons. I leave that for history. I cannot punish anyone. I judge no one. The black face was created for artistic and racist reasons. It served its purpose. I stated my case quite clearly what that purpose was. And you know I did! So, respond to that, sir and stop insinuating any other. Now that I have made myself clear.
Paul Plante says
Chas, Chas, calm yourself, dude.
Seriously!
You’ll stroke out otherwise and no one, including me, wants that!
Now, in the line where you mentioned Mark Twain, you were NOT stating that he wrote glowingly, or lovingly or any of those type of accolades of the Minstrel show, nor did I mistake you for saying that.
To the contrary, what you actually said, and what I actually read was this: You only have to read Samuel Clemens’ autobiography (The Autobiography of Mark Twain) and his vivid description of the minstrel shows he attended in the 1840’s in Missouri and again in the latter 1880’s to understand the total degradation of black Americans.
end quotes
There, Chas Cornweller, are your own words, and where my discerning focus went was to your statement that all you had to do was to read his autobiography to understand the total degradation of black Americans, which I will say is pure bull*****.
Let me say this, dear friend Chas: ALL comedy is at the expense of somebody or something, and the minstrel shows, which were a form of entertainment, were no different.
Watch these celebrity roasts today to see exactly what I mean.
I could well say that I find these celebrity roasts to be quite disgusting and dehumanizing, but so what, Chas, they still go on, do they not?
And then you wheel off into outer space with this gem , to wit:
It seems it isn’t/wasn’t enough to capture and kidnap the children of African tribes and force them to live in the lower decks, stacked like cordwood in Trans-Atlantic passage, only to be sold into a permanence of back breaking, dangerous, and wholly soul sapping existences.
Whites just had to appropriate their culture, their music, and their mannerisms, only to cruelly elongate those experiences into humiliating caricatures and wanton ridicule.
end quotes
Come, come, Chas, get real here.
You make these emotional appeals based on nothing that are supposed to have us people who were born with white skin, instead of your beloved black skin, feeling guilty about all our supposed “white privilege,” which is intellectual hog**** for a plethora of reasons, and I simply do not buy into it, dear friend Chas.
WHO was it, dear friend Chas, who was doing the “kidnapping?”
It was the BLACK AFRICANS themselves, was it not?
Consider, dear friend Chas, that the vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders, so who was it doing all the degrading and dehumanizing besides the black folks them selves?
If you ever bothered to try to get some facts to balance out your emotions here, you would know that slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, which didn’t begin until the 1500s.
We know from actual history, my dear friend Chas, that slavery was a practice about as old as the Bible, and it pre-dated the birth of your Nazarene by hundreds of years, if not longer, and people of all skin colors were made slaves.
For example, “Va, pensiero,” also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, is a chorus from the opera Nabucco (1842) by Giuseppe Verdi which recollects the period of Babylonian captivity after the loss of the First Temple in Jerusalem in c. 500 BCE, which is 500 years before the birth of the Nazarene, and some 2500 years ago to us, so why are you, a reader of the Bible, not on about that dehumanization and degradation?
What about all the tens of thousands of Celtic and Germanic slaves taken by Romans like Julius Caesar?
Why are you silent about them?
What of all the white people made slaves in this country by the Native Americans?
Why your silence about them?
How come you seem to persist in forcing only the misery of the black folks down our throats, as if for everyone other than the black dudes, like was all milk and honey?
Getting back to objective reality here, slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, and there is evidence that enslaved people from some parts of Africa were exported to states in Africa, Europe, and Asia prior to the European colonization of the Americas.
BOO HOO HOO, you know what I am saying, Chas?
As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
“The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes.”
“Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic.”
“At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth) …”
“Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean.”
According to John K. Thornton, Chas, Europeans usually bought enslaved people who were captured in endemic warfare between African states, and some Africans had made a business out of capturing Africans from neighboring ethnic groups or war captives and selling them.
So talk to us white-skinned people in the United States today in 2019 about all this dehumanizing and degrading of the black folks in this country by minstrel shows in the 1880s.
And “cultural appropriation,” Chas?
Get ******* real, Chas – what about Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble?
Or the Beatles and Ravi Shankar?
Or Mahavishnu John McLaughlin?
Or me?
Are you saying, dear friend Chas, that I can’t play the banjo, because it is an African instrument and I am pretty obviously white?
And what about Padma Lakshmi being accused of “cultural appropriation” for wearing her hair in cornrows on an episode of Top Chef filmed at the University of Kentucky’s basketball arena last June that aired Thursday, with mindless TWITTER users criticized the India-born Bravo TV host for donning the hairstyle that is deeply rooted in black culture, with one viewer TWEETING: “Your hair is an awful example of cultural appropriation?.”
Where are you on that, dear friend Chas?
Should she be life-time perma-banned from television for that offense against the black folks in this country?
Have we finally reached that period in our history as a nation of where the black folks get to dictate to everybody else in this country what it is we can’t wear, or what it is we can’t say, and what it is we can’t think, and how it is that we can’t wear our hair, lest we be seen to be “appropriating” black culture?
Do we need some new laws in this country, dear friend Chas, to protect black culture from being appropriated by people not certified as being actually black?
The candid world would truly like to know!
Chas Cornweller says
Ahhh…I see now who I am dealing with here. And I apologize for being so slow on the uptake. I guess appropriation is in the head of the beholder. Comparing Mr. Harrison’s appropriation of Indian music for his own benefit to the appropriation of black culture to benefit white entertainment makes for an interesting discussion, doesn’t it? But then again, didn’t Sam Philips (Sun Recording Studio) once say;” Give me a white boy who can sing like a (insert n-word here) and I’ll make a million dollars.” This of course before one Mr. Elvis Presley came along to sing a birthday song for his mother. And before being sold off to RCA by one Mr. Philips for the paltry sum of $40,000. And, of course, the famous story of Bo Diddley and his now very famous guitar riff being appropriated by the likes of Buddy Holley (Not Fade Away) or the Young Rascals (Good Loving – actually written by Rudy Clark and Author Resnick). Of which, Bo Diddley STILL hasn’t been paid. That is the music business for you. But, I digress.
But, you want it both ways. You want to imply that whites had very little to do with the degradation of blacks. Silly me. And I thought you knew history. Seems like you twist that back road around so many bends, no one knows where you will end up. Did Africans exploit other Africans? Of course. But, they weren’t the ones who put them on ships anchored off the coast of Gambia. They weren’t the ones who profited off of human souls. They weren’t the ones who sold them into a life of perpetual servitude. The ultimate holders of the sins of slavery, are the ones who created and perpetuated the business…even to this day. THAT! My friend is America’s legacy. (Along with other more genocidal tendencies) Everyone along that path is culpable. Or twists the truth. Everyone who turns a blind eye or remains silent. Every single American is culpable, as long as slavery and indigenous people’s wrongs are being brushed aside in favor of unbridled patriotism and a false American pride.
You sir, by excusing the sins through your prismed glasses of history are just as culpable as the rest. It’s no different than saying what does it matter that six million Hebrews died in the Holocaust, when twenty million Russian people died fighting Hitler? To think along those lines denies the truth of the deep, deep structures of race and division. I thought you were a humanist. I see that you are nothing more than a revisionist. A white revisionist at that. The history you want, is the history you want to know. It is the history that puts you on top. Free from blame, free from sin, free from the answers to questions that still linger in the hearts and souls of people like me who want to see equality and integrity in mankind. People like me who want to discuss the sins of the fathers with those that were harmed. But, you want people to take a ticket and get in line. You want them to wait their turn…meanwhile, the world still burns, and people still remember. The candid world already knows.
Note: “Bo Diddley and his now very famous guitar riff”, was not actually a riff, but a beat (big difference). A five accent rhythm, which has roots in African music. Can’t leave John Lee Hooker out of this conversation either.
Paul Plante says
Ah, Chas, you do make life so very interesting, and yes, Chas, I personally am guilty for every sin America has ever made, even though I might not have been yet.
Because I happen to have skin that isn’t black (very few people have skin that is white, outside of Michael Jackson) it all falls down on me.
Oh, well, Chas, you know what I am saying?
I’ll just have to deal with it, now won’t I!
And no apology of any kind is necessary, dear friend Chas, especially if you are slow on the uptake, for which it would be totally dehumanizing if you were made by me to have to apologize for it.
And you are damn right, Chas, when you say “appropriation” is in the head of the beholder, because it most certainly is, as we can clearly see from the recent case of Padma Lakshmi being accused of “cultural appropriation” for wearing her hair in cornrows on an episode of Top Chef filmed at the University of Kentucky’s basketball arena last June.
If that isn’t assinine, then nothing is, and yes, dear friend Chas, comparing Mr. Harrison’s appropriation of Indian music for his own benefit to the appropriation of black culture to benefit white entertainment does make for an interesting discussion, given that George Harrison looked pretty white to me, and he was an entertainer.
And did Sam Philips (Sun Recording Studio) once say;” Give me a white boy who can sing like a (insert n-word here) and I’ll make a million dollars?”
Personally, Chas, I don’t know the answer to that existential question, never having made the dude’s acquaintance.
And if he did, Chas, how does that concern me in any way?
Is that something I have to take responsibility for, on top of all these other things I have to take responsibility for, because I happen to have been born with skin that is not black?
And what if that is true, Chas?
What message can we glean from that, besides nothing of consequence?
And dear friend Chas, what on earth does Mr. Elvis Presley coming along to sing a birthday song for his mother have to do with these Virginia Democrats, the two blackface clowns and the alleged rapist, making Virginia into the laughingstock of the nation?
And when you say Elvis Presley was sold off to RCA by one Mr. Philips for the paltry sum of $40,000, are you saying that Elvis Presley was actually a slave?
Sounds like a reach to me, anyway, but I suppose there could be some truth to it, so for now, not knowing any different, I’ll take your word for it.
And what famous story of Bo Diddley and his now very famous guitar riff being appropriated by the likes of Buddy Holley (Not Fade Away) or the Young Rascals (Good Loving – actually written by Rudy Clark and Author Resnick)?
Where do you get this stuff from, Chas – movie magazines?
And where did Bo Diddley get the riff from?
Did he invent it, or did he appropriate it?
And then you say Bo Diddley STILL hasn’t been paid.
By who, and for what?
Are you saying that because I can play riffs that Earl Scruggs played on the banjo, that I have to pay Earl Scruggs money?
How very droll the concept, dear friend Chas.
And yes, Chas, you do digress, quite a bit actually, and quite often, but that is what makes your writing so very interesting.
And dear friend Chas, I don’t “want to imply” that whites had very little to do with the degradation of blacks.
Perhaps they did, Chas, but only after the blacks has already degraded themselves.
And silly you, Chas, because I do know history.
Did Africans exploit other Africans, Chas?
Of course, they did, and if you keep up with current events as you are supposed to do as a productive American citizen knowing what is going on in the world around you, you would know they are still doing it today.
Which brings us to this existential gem you have served us up here: “But, they weren’t the ones who put them on ships anchored off the coast of Gambia.”
Oh!
My goodness!
Who did then, Chas?
Wasn’t it the Portuguese, who were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century?
And do you mistake me for being a Portuguese, dear friend Chas?
And the other major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empires.
While I happen to be an American, dear friend Chas, who lost a relative in the United States Civil War to free the black folks, for which sacrifice I have never heard a word of thanks or gratitude, but such it is, Chas, when it is.
And of course, those black people in Africa were the ones who profited off of human souls, and they were indeed the ones who sold them into a life of perpetual servitude.
And yes, dear friend Chas, of course the ultimate holders of the sins of slavery are the ones who created and perpetuated the business, which is just about every civilization under the sun, including the Native Americans in this country, the Babylonians, the Romans, and on and, on that list goes.
You read the Bible, Chas, how many times in there do you come across an admonishment to be a good slave?
More than once, isn’t it, and the slaves they were talking to were not black Africans.
Even the Jews had slaves, dear friend Chas, and Judaism’s ancient and medieval religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves, including the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), the Talmud, the 12th-century Mishneh Torah by rabbi Maimonides, and the 16th-century Shulchan Aruch by rabbi Yosef Karo.
The original Israelite slavery laws found in the Hebrew Bible bear some resemblance to the 18th-century BCE slavery laws of Hammurabi, and the Hebrew Bible contained two sets of laws, one for Canaanite slaves, and a more lenient set of laws for Hebrew slaves.
From the time of the Pentateuch, the laws designated for Canaanites were applied to all non-Hebrew slaves, while the Talmud’s slavery laws, which were established in the second through the fifth centuries CE, contain a single set of rules for all slaves, although there are a few exceptions where Hebrew slaves are treated differently from non-Hebrew slaves.
So THAT, my friend is the world’s legacy, not America’s.
Everyone along that path WAS culpable, Chas, because they are all now dead.
And everyone who turned a blind eye or remained silent is also long-since dead.
And it is patent bull****, dear friend Chas, that every single American is culpable, as long as slavery and indigenous people’s wrongs are being brushed aside in favor of unbridled patriotism and a false American pride, given that we haven’t had slavery in this country since the 1800s.
And since I don’t wear prismed glasses of history, as we can see from the above, I am culpable of exactly nothing!
And what is this “truth of the deep, deep structures of race and division,” dear friend Chas?
Are you telling me that you are one of those raving lunatics who believes that because people have skin that is black, that they must belong to some other race than the human race?
And of course I am a humanist, Chas.
And you can’t see that I am nothing more than a revisionist, because I have “revised” nothing at all.
And what is this line of bull****, dear friend Chas: “The history you want, is the history you want to know.”
You can’t “want” history, Chas – history is what has happened.
You can perhaps wish it didn’t, or wish it went some other way, so that you could have a history that puts you on top, free from blame, free from sin, free from the answers to questions that still linger in the hearts and souls of people like you who want to see equality and integrity in mankind, but it simply doesn’t work that way, Chas, and you do harm to yourself trying to have it be some other way that puts the blame for things you don’t like onto people ypou don’t like, which seems to be everybody here in the United States of America.
People like you want to discuss the sins of the fathers with those that were harmed, but you are deluding yourself there, Chas, given that the people who were harmed are now long since dead.
Perhaps one day, you will come to realize that, dear friend Chas, and I shall pray for you that one day, it will be so.
Life goes forward, Chas, while you are trying to go backwards in your search for all these terrible things that have happened in the last several thousand years do you can have even more things to blame on people like me who happen to be American citizens!
WHY?
Do you really hate America that much that you blame it for everything that happened in the world before there was a United States of America?
Do you think you would be happier living in the Republic of Congo, or Zimbabwe, or Kenya, so you wouldn’t have to be around Americans anymore?
Paul Plante says
And dear friend Chas, scroll up to the original post and look at Whoopie Goldberg, who I believe is black, and the smile on her face, as she looks up at Ted, who looks like an absolute A-HOLE with that shoe-polish on his face, and give us some color commentary on that, if you would.
WHY is Whoopie smiling at Ted?
Why isn’t she outraged?
What is your theory to explain that?
Paul Plante says
With respect to the institution of slavery in the world, prior to there being a United States of America, in FEDERALIST No. 18, The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union, for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison circa 1787, this was said on the subject, as follows:
Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the necessity of a closer union, and would have availed themselves of the peace which followed their success against the Persian arms, to establish such a reformation.
Instead of this obvious policy, Athens and Sparta, inflated with the victories and the glory they had acquired, became first rivals and then enemies; and did each other infinitely more mischief than they had suffered from Xerxes.
Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds, and injuries ended in the celebrated Peloponnesian war; which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the Athenians who had begun it.
end quotes
Ah, yes, the slavery of the Greeks, who were not black Africans at all, and there we are talking about something that happened some 450 years or so before the birth of Christ.
As to the Africans themselves, in FEDERALIST No. 42, The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered, from the New York Packet to the People of the State of New York by Virginian James Madison on Tuesday, January 22, 1788, this is what he had to say on the subject, which is most definitely relevant to this discussion, as follows:
It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation.
But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed.
It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union.
Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!
end quotes
Had I been around back then, which I wasn’t, I would have proudly stood by Jemmy in that regard.
And those words ought to serve to enlighten all these people who think every white person in America was for slavery and bears responsibility for the institution, which is pure, unadulterated horse****.
As to how the Bible of our dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller looks upon the subject, we have as follows:
1 Peter 2:18
Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
1 Timothy 6:1
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.
Colossians 3:22
Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Ephesians 6:5
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Exodus 21:2
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years.
But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
Exodus 21:7
If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.
Exodus 21:32
If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.
Titus 2:9-10
Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
Exodus 21:20-21
Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Exodus 21:26-27
An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye.
And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.
1 Timothy 6:1-2
All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.
Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers.
Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.
These are the things you are to teach and insist on.
Leviticus 25:44-46
Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property.
You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
Exodus 21:7-11
If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.
If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed.
He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her.
If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter.
If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights.
If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.
Exodus 21:2-6
If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years.
But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him.
If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges.
He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl.
Then he will be his servant for life.
Ephesians 6:5-9
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
And masters, treat your slaves in the same way.
Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Deuteronomy 15:12-18
If any of your people—Hebrew men or women—sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free.
And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed.
Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress.
Give to them as the LORD your God has blessed you.
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you.
That is why I give you this command today.
But if your servant says to you, “I do not want to leave you,” because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an awl and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life.
Do the same for your female servant.
Do not consider it a hardship to set your servant free, because their service to you these six years has been worth twice as much as that of a hired hand.
And the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.
end quotes
Back to you, Chas Cornweller!
Chas Cornweller says
So, in other words, Paul…you are for the Equal Rights of Women. Got it. Well, on that we can agree. So am I!
“Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men. It does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean you are a bitch or a dyke, it means you believe in equality.” Kate Nash
“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” Margaret Thatcher
Paul Plante says
Of course I am for equal rights for women, dear friend Chas?
Why on earth wouldn’t I be?
My mother was a woman, afterall, so why would I want her to have less rights than I do?
Speaking of that, however, dear friend Chas, what of Exodus 21:7-11, which says “if a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do?”
Does that not seem to say that in actuality, according to the law as expressed in the Bible, the good book that American politicians swear their oaths on, men and women both, that women are not really equal, at all?
And the same thing goes for slavery, dear friend Chas.
When those American politicians swear their oaths of office on the Bible, they are swearing on a book that contains within it rules for slaves.
And talk about ironies abounding in here, when the Nazarene was alive, slavery was so common that Jesus did not even notice it.
Consider 1 Peter 2:18: Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
Peter, of course, is the same dude Jesus appointed to be the head of his church on earth, so it is not possible that Jesus could have been ignorant of slavery, and yet, he never spoke out against it, as did Virginia’s Jemmy Madison in FEDERALIST No. 42 on Tuesday, January 22, 1788.
So, given that in early-America, when slavery did prevail, the Bible was the most common book and was used to teach children, with the silence of Jesus on the subject of slavery, and all the rules for slaves, such as “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh,” why would those people have thought slavery was a bad thing, especially in light of the “Curse of Ham,” which is the curse upon Canaan, Ham’s son, that was imposed by the biblical patriarch Noah.
The curse occurs in the Book of Genesis and concerns Noah’s drunkenness and the accompanying shameful act perpetrated by his son Ham, the father of Canaan (Gen. 9:20–27).
As you will recall from your own studies on the subject, dear friend Chas, the story’s original purpose may have been to justify the subjection of the Canaanite people to the Israelites, but in later centuries, the narrative was interpreted by some Christians, Muslims and Jews as an explanation for black skin, as well as a justification for slavery.
For a period in its history the Latter Day Saint movement actually used the curse of Ham to prevent the ordination of black men to its priesthood.
So there is a lot going on here, isn’t there, dear friend Chas, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank both you and the venerable Cape Charles Mirror for having the courage to bring forth these points which are getting lost in this discussion about a couple of adolescent A-HOLES in Virginia state government wearing shoe polish on their faces so somebody would think they were actually black, when they weren’t at all, just a couple of wannabees.
Slide Easy says
There is nothing equal. My god stop that madness. If you took two identical twins, feed, educate and clothe them the same…give them the same job …they will not perform the same job equally. I have been told it is equal opportunity for all, I say Bull-sh1t. The person doing the choosing has an agenda. They may appear to choose equally, but someones perfume could disgust them. Equality is a liberal wet dream. No two people are equal on the face of this Earth.
Paul Plante says
You’re dead on the money there, Slide, when you say there is nothing equal, especially when it comes to rights.
Some people seem to have plenty of them, and others, none at all.
And they certainly are not guaranteed.
I had my right to equal protection of the law stripped from me by Sonia Sotomayor as punishment in retaliation for me going after public corruption in New York state, so if Chas wants women to have “rights” equal to mine, they will enjoy the same nothing I have.
Paul Plante says
So, talk about ironies stacked ten and twenty high, this thread is positively loaded with them in large part because of our dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller who is not at all afraid to dive in where others of lesser stuff than he fear to tread, such as the true role John Lee Hooker, a black dude who was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist who was the son of a sharecropper and who rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues, often incorporating other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues, and who developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie, played in making African music available and accessible via cultural appropriation, as is told in the famous story of Bo Diddley and his now very famous guitar riff being appropriated by the likes of Buddy Holley (Not Fade Away) or the Young Rascals (Good Loving – actually written by Rudy Clark and Author Resnick).
The Hooker children, including John Lee, were homeschooled, and they were permitted to listen only to religious songs with the spirituals sung in church being their earliest exposure to music.
With respect to cultural appropriation, in 1921, long before any of us in here were born, including Chas Cornweller, who is younger than I, their parents separated, and the next year, their mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar, and whom he would later credit for his distinctive playing style.
So, just as white boy Buddy Holley got his riff, actually a beat (there is indeed big difference), a five accent rhythm, which has roots in African music from Bo Diddley, John Lee got his from William Moore, and in the world of music, that is the way these things go.
For proof of that, check out Stairway To Heaven on Banjo by Ross Nickerson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htH2thi_1I4
That, people, is cultural appropriation, big-time, and yet, you don’t hear anyone condemning it, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with the practice, at least among rational people who are not emotional basket-cases.
Getting back to John Lee Hooker, William Moore, a local blues guitarist who in Shreveport, Louisiana, learned to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time, was his first significant blues influence.
Another influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker’s sister Alice and who helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar, so that for the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician.
Speaking of cultural appropriation, among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of “Crawlin’ King Snake” and “Catfish Blues”.
At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again, and in the mid-1930s, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed on Beale Street, at the New Daisy Theatre and occasionally at house parties.
He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943.
He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit’s east side.
In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce so that Hooker’s popularity grew quickly as he performed in Detroit clubs, and, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.
Hooker was working as janitor in a Detroit steel mill when his recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit.
That single, “Boogie Chillen'”, became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949.
Despite being illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist, and in addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs.
In the 1950s, like many black musicians, Hooker earned little from record sales, and so he often recorded variations of his songs for different studios for an up-front fee.
To evade his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, including John Lee Booker (for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951–1952), Johnny Lee (for De Luxe Records in 1953–1954), John Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man.
His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman, and with respect to Bo Diddley, and by extension white boy Buddy Holley, Hooker rarely played with a standard beat, but instead he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song.
Beginning in 1962, Hooker gained greater exposure when he toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival, and his “Dimples” became a successful single on the UK Singles Charts in 1964, eight years after its first US release.
Getting back to cultural appropriation, Hooker began to perform and record with rock musicians, and one of his earliest collaborations was with British blues rock band the Groundhogs.
In 1970, the year I got back from fighting in Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson’s war against humanity in VEET NAM, John Lee Hooker recorded the joint album Hooker ‘n Heat, with the American blues and boogie rock group Canned Heat, whose repertoire included adaptations of Hooker songs.
It became the first of Hooker’s albums to reach the Billboard charts, peaking at number 78 on the Billboard 200.
Other collaboration albums soon followed, including Endless Boogie (1971) and Never Get Out of These Blues Alive (1972), which included Steve Miller, Elvin Bishop, Van Morrison, and others.
Hooker appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.
He performed “Boom Boom” in the role of a street musician.
In 1989, he recorded the album The Healer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xox9J0FNjZ8 with Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and others.
The 1990s saw additional collaboration albums: Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don’t Look Back (1997) with Morrison, Santana, Los Lobos, and additional guest musicians.
His re-recording of “Boom Boom,” the title track for his 1992 album, with guitarist Jimmie Vaughan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwt15IwwTdw&list=PL4082DDABBFCE0C2D became Hooker’s highest charting single (number 16) in the UK.
Come See About Me, a 2004 DVD, includes performances filmed between 1960 and 1994 and interviews with several of the musicians.
As to the white man exploiting the black man, and keeping the black man down, Hooker owned five houses in his later life, including houses located in Los Altos, California; Redwood City, California; and Long Beach, California.
And there is some irony for you, people – cultural appropriation is not a bad thing at all.
Paul Plante says
And in all truth, people, when you look at the story of “people of color” in America like John Lee Hooker who didn’t let something totally superficial like skin color hold him back, it’s really not hard to connect the dots on this one.
All you’ve got to do is come out from under that bubble you live in, take a look around and show a little empathy.
Know your history, know your past.
And that brings us back in time in our own history to February 24, 1840, when John Quincy Adams began to argue the Amistad case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
As we Americans who do know our history learned in the seventh grade or so, a practicing lawyer and member of the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams was the son of America’s second president, founding father and avowed abolitionist John Adams.
Note those words, “avowed abolitionist!”
Contrary to what our dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller is trying to sell us in here, all white people in America do not share the sins of slavery.
Getting back to the history we should all know, regardless of your skin color, although John Quincy Adams publicly downplayed his abolitionist stance, he too viewed the practice of slavery as contrary to the nation’s core principles of freedom and equality.
After serving one term as president between 1825 and 1829, Adams was elected to the House of Representatives, in which he served until his death in 1848.
During his tenure, he succeeded in repealing a rule that prevented any debate about slavery on the House floor.
In the meantime, in 1839 a Spanish slave ship named La Amistad appeared off the coast of New York, with “slaves” aboard it, who were free Africans kidnapped in Africa and originally bound for sale in Cuba, who had rebelled, killing the Spanish ship’s captain and cook.
The African mutineers then promised to spare the lives of the ship’s crew and their captors if they took them back to Africa.
The crew agreed, but then duped the slaves by sailing up the coast to New York, where they were taken into custody by the U.S. Navy.
As we learned when we were but young children, a complicated series of trials ensued regarding the ownership and outcome of the ship and its human cargo, as the capture of the Amistad occurred in an era in which debate over the institution of slavery, its legality within the United States and its role in the American economy had become more intense in the days leading up to the American civil war.
Although the federal government had ruled the slave trade between the U.S. and other countries illegal in 1808, the “peculiar institution” persisted in the South and some northeastern states.
The Navy captains who commandeered the Amistad off the coast of New York turned the ship in to authorities in Connecticut.
In Connecticut at this time, slavery was still technically legal, a fact that further complicated the case.
Abolitionists filed a suit on behalf of the Africans against the slave captors for assault, kidnapping and false imprisonment.
Spain, backed by a 1795 anti-piracy treaty with the U.S., also claimed rights to the Amistad and her cargo.
President Martin Van Buren, personally neutral on the issue of slavery and concerned about his popularity in southern states, supported Spain’s claim.
After two district courts ruled in favor of the abolitionists, President Van Buren immediately instructed the U.S. attorney general to appeal.
Abolitionists hired Adams, who some referred to as “Old Man Eloquent,” to argue for the Africans’ freedom in the Supreme Court.
In a seven-hour argument that lasted two days, Adams attacked Van Buren’s abuse of executive power.
His case deflated the U.S. attorney’s argument that the treaty with Spain should override U.S. principles of individual rights.
In appeasing a foreign nation, Adams argued that the president committed the “utter injustice [of interfering] in a suit between parties for their individual rights.”
In a dramatic moment, Adams faced the judges, pointed to a copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging on the courtroom wall, and said “[I know] no law, statute or constitution, no code, no treaty, except that law…which [is] forever before the eyes of your Honors.”
Adams’ skillful arguments convinced the court to rule in favor of returning the Africans to their native country, but later, President Tyler refused to allocate federal funds to send the Africans back to Africa.
Instead, the abolitionists had to raise money to pay for the expense.
And that, people, is real American history!