by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
Righteous hatred of injustice is a very good thing, no matter what the pacifiers and accommodators (get paid to) say. And if injustice fuels determined resistance, then 2010 should have been a gusher year. 2011 promises to provide even more cause for righteous hatred. For example, the NAACP is taking big bucks from Wells Fargo, the destroyer of Black neighborhoods and whole cities, to teach Black people how to be responsible with (what’s left of) their money. Who deserves our hatred most, the giver or the receiver?
Thanks 2010? 2011: The Hate That Hate Produced!
by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
“More Black people are going to prison and police brutality was so rampant this year that it is simply hate gift-wrapped!”
In 1959 Mike Wallace and CBS made the first of what would become the last of the major media mistakes of the modern era. They may have thought that by producing their series The Hate That Hate Produced and by showing a national audience the kind of Black rage at white America that existed beneath the veneer of a seemingly more hospitable Civil Rights Movement that this hate-filled form would be demonized. But their giving air time to Malcolm X and then the subsequent offer of space and time by other mainstream media outlets to other Black radical elements in the country backfired and helped spread a revolutionary consciousness that ultimately threatened this country’s established order. But, no more, and as one movement veteran has said, “today they only put fools on the air.”
I bring this up now because as the year comes to an end and the season’s mythology takes me over I’d like to return to this idea of a mistake made and the potential in 2011 for the hate that hate has produced to become a positive. And especially since being associated with the leading Black left internet operation often means I hear people telling me that “you all at Black Agenda Report are too hard on Black people,” or “you all are too pessimistic” or simply that we are all “a bunch of haters,” I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how 2010 may mean something great for 2011. I mean, I am proud – especially at this time of year – of my anti-religiousness, of being a heathen. And I am also a proud part of a small but growing cadre of haters who look to reclaim that concept from pop rappers who turned “hatin’” into a preemptive strike against legitimate criticism of their complicity in our oppression – our mantra being “Hate Harder!” But even I am not impervious to the impact of seasonal propaganda that has turned an African astrological allegory into an imperial hostile resource and consciousness grab. So lets take this wreckage of 2010 and see in it its accidental – dare I even say dialectical – positive potential for a revolutionary 2011. Let this seasonal moment be more than a commemoration of the birth of Gerald Massey’s “mythological Christ.” Let this become the moment of a rebirth of an organized hate that hate produced!
“Black unemployment and poverty have increased while attention to issues of Blackness in the press have decreased.”
And it can be! Look at the gift 2010 has turned out to be in helping establish a righteous hatred of what exists! Two years into Obama’s presidency and we have to be more clear than ever that Kwame Ture was right! Black visibility is indeed not Black Power! Black unemployment and poverty have increased while attention to issues of Blackness in the press have decreased. More Black people are going to prison and police brutality was so rampant this year that it is simply hate gift-wrapped! Oh, and look! More Latinos have been imprisoned, detained and deported under Obama than any other two year period in U.S. history! And for our dear sisters and brothers of Arab or Persian persuasion, you’ve gotten more bombs, more threats of bombs, more Israeli settlements and targeted assassinations! Yes! All that yummy hatred delivered year-round!
Oh and look! We also got more broken promises regarding the internet. Mhmmm, yummy, hateful goodness. So as we are forcibly moved more and more online we have less protection from those who promised they would offer it to us. Remember Obama’s line once upon a time about being “second to none” in protecting net neutrality? Well, now that he and his FCC have all but made sure this is never going to happen, its just more hate that can produce more hate! And ooh, this summer we also got the One Nation Working Together rally that made Al Sharpton’s Reclaiming the Dream rally look like a guerrilla warfare training camp! And speaking of Sharpton, you know, the one that marched to reclaim Dr. King, he is so hateful that he is now openly referred to by the establishment press as a “surrogate” in service to Obama whose role most recently is to tell Black people that this latest hate-filled tax bill will actually help them. Mhmmm… the hate tastes so good!
And perhaps the icing on this hate cake can be the story that is slowly beginning to emerge of how the oldest civil rights organization now has its financial literacy program funded by the very organization that helped wipe out Black and Brown home-ownership! That’s right boys and girls! Wells Fargo is giving the NAACP a bunch of money to have that organization teach Black people to be more responsible with their money instead of defending those people against the predatory lending of their new sponsor.
Mhmm… I for one couldn’t be happier with 2010 and I couldn’t be more optimistic that 2011 will be the year of the organized hate that hate produced.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Jared Ball. While you still can visit us online at BlackAgendaReport.com!
Jared A. Ball can be reached via email (at least for now!) at freemixradio@gmail.com.
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