I'm not a Martin Luther King and a Gandhi motherfucker. I don't know what they were talking about. Spit on my ass and I'll knock you out. I ain't going to sing and march, man. But I'm fair.It's the biggest crutch we can ever have: I'm a victim because of what white folks did. I was a slave. I didn't get a fair shot when I went for the job that they didn't give to me. I look and say, Look how you look, motherfucker. I wouldn't hire you myself. So let's deal with the fundamentals, man. Get yourself together and then we can fight the battle.
Tell you what you got to do to compete. What you got to do to compete is compete.
If you're smarter than me, tell me some shit. I'll listen, you know. This is an open forum.
fist tap the Brotha Big Man
6 comments:
I'm not a Martin Luther King … motherfucker.
Courage has to be placed into the proper context. Certainly those Afrikans who led their people into battle against their enemies such as Thutmosis III, Ramses II, Taharka, Makeda, Nzinga, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Cetshwayo kaMpande were courageous people.
Certainly Harriet Tubman was fearless.
But no Afrikan American in the last 100 years (including Jim Brown) walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, (fearing no evil, no matter if it wore a white sheet or if it sat in the White House) more often, than did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
MARTIN LUTHER KING (From Citizen King): They were there to really assassinate me but they could never get me as a clear target because I was surrounded. But that wasn't the scariest moment. Philadelphia, Mississippi and Chicago on the day that we marched through that narrow street and we marched about four or five thousand people that day, but they were in trees and they were throwing so many rocks and things that I saw the policeman duck at least one time -- you remember it looked like you could see four or five policeman duck. They all went down. It was... and that's a fact. And that to me and Philadelphia, Mississippi were the most ... I just gave up. I wouldn't say I was so afraid as that I had yielded to the real possibility of the inevitability of death....
[Dr. King led a night march in Philadelphia, Ms, in 1967, if memory serves correctly. At some point law enforcement officials stopped the march, and the marchers asked if they could pray. During his prayer, Rev. Abernathy said (paraphrasing) that the killers of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were probably near by. Someone in the crowd responded, yeah, they’re standing right behind you. Dr. King believed that he would be killed that night, yet he continued to tread his way through the blood of the slaughtered.]--MB
From Citizen King (Cicero March)
RENAULT ROBINSON, Chicago Police Officer: Dr. King decided that, um, he was going to march in Cicero. Cicero is a suburb to the west of Chicago. It was not a place that you wanted to go or be.
POLICEMAN to a white man: Get out of here!
WHITE MAN: I live in here. I live here. Those fuckin' niggers don't live here.
RENAULT ROBINSON: Our job was to watch King. And to keep danger from occurring to him. Now King, of course, had no fear.
WHITE RACISTS: We want King. We want King.
RENAULT ROBINSON: He didn't want to appear to be surrounded by bodyguards. He didn't want to appear to be afraid.
ADDIE WYATT, Chicago Organizer: As we'd march down the streets... it was disheartening to hear workers saying, "There's John" or "There's Mary that works in my plant or in my office." And they are now swearing at us, throwing bricks, firecrackers.
RENAULT ROBINSON: One guy hit King with a brick in the Cicero march, and gashed him in the head ... And we caught him ... And the police had to help rescue him from those who caught him.
REPORTER: Were you hit Dr. King?
MARTIN LUTHER KING: Yes, uh huh.
REPORTER: Are you all right?
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I think so, yes.
WHITE MAN: Your Mother's a whore....
ADDIE WYATT: We had walked for I don't know how many miles. And when we got back to the park where our cars were, they were on fire. And as Dr. King said, it was one of the worst situations that he had been in.
MARTIN LUTHER KING: I think it is one of the most tragic pictures of man's inhumanity to man that I've ever seen and I've been in Mississippi and Alabama. But I can assure you that the hatred and the hostility here are really deeper than what I've seen in Alabama and Mississippi.
Courage?
Yes Brother Mak, MLK was as courageous as was Jesus of Nazareth.
But 'erybody aint MLK or Jesus of Nazareth.
I think MLK's and Jim Brown's can coexist.
As matter of fact, there could be no MLKs without muhfuggas inclined to shoot back and often.
As matter of fact, there could be no MLKs without muhfuggas inclined to shoot back and often.
This has been said many times in many different forums and it always rings true.
If you have to choose between the man asking for equality politely and the man threatening to kill you to get his equality, most sane folks are going to go with the former.
But, if your chose is giving in to the person asking nicely, or continuing to enjoy the fruits of your evilness, well most folks are just going to keep being evil.
Power is never surrendered unless the alternative appears worse.
"It is necessary, therefore, if we desire to discuss this matter thoroughly, to inquire whether these innovators can rely on themselves or have to depend on others: that is to say, whether, to consummate their enterprise, have they to use prayers or can they use force? In the first instance they always succeed badly, and never compass anything; but when they can rely on themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force. "
The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli
I think MLK's and Jim Brown's can coexist.—DV
Agreed, Martin and Malcolm did shake hands.
http://piervincenzocanale.wordpress.com/tag/dr-king-malcolm-x-hands/
As matter of fact, there could be no MLKs without muhfuggas inclined to shoot back and often.—DV
Well my friend a picture of Charles Sims would have been more appropriate than an actor in a movie scene.
http://www.workers.org/ww/1997/deacons.html
http://www.nathanielturner.com/deaconsfordefense.htm
Power is never surrendered unless the alternative appears worse. – BM
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. – Dr. King
Dr. Martin Luther King clearly understood the value of alternatives, as proven by his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”
[You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation, and, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness, and hatred comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable "devil." I have tried to stand between these two forces saying that we need not follow the "do-nothingism" of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I'm grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.]
Personally, I had a different perspective of Dr. King before talking with the brothers who were with him on the Black Power March—Mukasa Dada (Willie Ricks), Cleveland Sellers, and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). They all had the utmost respect for Dr. King as a leader who was always on the frontlines of the battlefield with the masses. Mukasa had a unique relationship with Dr. King which he’s yet to write about.
I don’t know where the great Jim Brown was while Dr. King was marching through the dangerous Mississippi Delta. Perhaps he was dreaming of love scenes with Raquel Welch. (Okay, I couldn’t resist the sarcasm driven by the picture on the right)
Nevertheless I do respect Brother Brown for being the Black Man he is, particularly for his work with our youth. Without reading the full context of his comments posted here, I simply take offense to what I perceive as disparaging remarks towards Dr. King.
OBTW, I don’t see this as an either or situation. As a synthesizer I always take the best of both.
The Black people assaulted by Mubabe.....while they are victims of the legacy of "European Colonialism".......that AK47 and machete operated by the Black African of to-damned-day sure appears to be more deadly than these White Supremacist forces that lurch forth from decades prior.
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