The Endless American Horror: Lynching and Police

By Devon Bowers

This article was originally published on AHTribune.com.

Please note that this article contains graphic descriptions of lynchings. Discretion is advised.

In 1918 Brook County, Georgia, a local plantation owner was killed by Sidney Johnson, a black man who had been leased out to the plantation via the convict lease system, in a dispute over unpaid wages. Upon hearing this, the white community went on a rampage and lynched not only Johnson, but anyone they thought to even be remotely involved in Johnson's decision. One of these men was Hayes Turner. Not only was he lynched, but also castrated.

Turner's wife, Mary, who was eight months pregnant at the time, began to speak out against her husband's lynching; unfortunately, she too, became a victim. A white mob "hanged her by her feet, set her on fire, sliced her stomach open, and pulled out her baby, which was still alive." They stomped on the child's head, killing it. Then the mob "[took] the time to sew two cats in Mrs. Turner's stomach and making bets as to which one would climb out first."[1]

This can be described as nothing short of demonic. In many ways, even that fails to fully encompass the horror and pure wickedness of this event. Though, the only thing more horrid is that in a way, lynchings continue in the form of police murder.

Before delving into the connections between the aforementioned violence, it is imperative to first understand lynching. The origins of lynching truly lie in slavery where "there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes. Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder." [2] Punishment ranged from lashings to family separation to mutilation and branding. The overall idea behind these actions were that black people were not human beings, in a way, they weren't even property, they were just things, lesser than both humans and animals. This mindset continued in the post chattel slavery era, where slavery took on the form of both the convict leasing and sharecropping systems respectively. Yet, it also took place in the form of mob violence against blacks.

There have been many explorations as to the reasoning behind lynching. E.M. Beck, a professor of sociology at the University of Georgia, posited the argument that lynching was linked to the cotton markets. He argued that lynchings "[increased] during times of sparse cotton revenues, and declining with increasing cotton profits." The lack of profit from cotton led unemployed whites to want to replace black workers and that "Mob violence was a form of intimidation to facilitate this labor substitution." [3] While further studies have shown that fluctuations in cotton pricing don't explain lynching [4], it should be noted that white elites would have an interest in fueling white angst into hatred against blacks, effectively utilizing poor whites as foot soldiers in their mission to maintain the current racial and economic hierarchy.

The cause of lynching was first and foremost the culture of white supremacy that had existed for the past two centuries or so. Blacks became scapegoats for many of the problems that were going on and thus a subculture of violence that had arguably already taken root in the days of slavery, took on new form. "The existence of a subculture presupposes a complex pattern of norms, attitudes and actions" which "reflects 'a potent theme of violence current in the cluster of values that make up the life-style, the socialization process, [and] the interpersonal relationships of individuals living in similar conditions." [5] Effectively, violence becomes normalized and is used as a tool of to socialize and condition people as to how the society operates.

This normalization and conditioning can be seen in the form of the lynching. Lynchings were very much a community affair in which legal authorities seldom if ever got involved as "the judge, prosecutor, jurors and witnesses-all white-were usually in sympathy with the lynchers" and "local police and sheriffs rarely did anything to defend Negro citizens and often supported lynchings." [6] Newspapers as well were extremely biased in covering lynchings. "Southern editors often used sympathetic language in describing lynch mobs while reserving callous damnation for lynch victims. The southern press was extremely creative when it came to providing moral, if not legal, justification for the action of lynch mobs."[7]

We can see the affect that journalists had on the public's view of lynching in the case of the murder of the Hodges family in Statesboro, Georgia.

Henry and Claudia Hodges lived on a remote farm, near a black community, some of whom were the employees of the Hodges. Late on the night of July 28, 1904, two men saw the Hodges home aflame. They went to investigate and found the mutilated, charred remains of the entire family. The suspected motive was robbery as it was known that Hodges was better off than most farmers and it was even rumored that he possibly had several hundred dollars stashed away on his property.

The following morning, Bulloch County sheriff John Kendrick formed a group to hunt down the killers. After discovering strands of hair, a knife, a shoe, and tracks of mud, they were led to a small shack occupied by Paul Reed, a black laborer. While Paul denied involvement, he, along with his wife Harriet, were arrested and taken to jail. When being interrogated, Harriet broke down and revealed that her husband and another black man, Paul Cato, had planned to rob the Hodges. The shoe matched the one found on the Hodges farm and blood stains on his clothing seemed to seal the deal with regards to Paul Reed's guilt, however, no money was found. The sheriff also arrested thirteen other blacks who lived in the general vicinity.

Despite the lack of hard evidence in the form of money, newspapers assumed Reed's guilt. The Macon Telegraph wrote "The wholesale butchery . . . of the Hodges family near Statesboro by dehumanized brutes adds another to the long list of horrors perpetrated in this state since the emancipation of the African slaves in 1865" and noted that "the people of [Statesboro] ... displayed great moral courage and forbearance in permitting the perpetrators to escape summary punishment without the forms of law,"[8] a statement clearly hinting that lynching was on the table as an option. Others went even further in their demonization of the alleged perpetrators, such as the editor of Statesboro News who penned "Good farmers awoke to the fact that they are living in constant danger, and that human vampires live in their midst, only awaiting the opportunity to blot out their lives." [9] Language such as this only served to heighten white anxiety and fears that a black uprising had occurred in response to white mistreatment, something that had been the in the backs of their minds since the institution of slavery began.

The media actively went and pushed erroneous and misleading evidence, such as was with Morning News which stated that Reed had made a 'partial confession' to the murders, despite there being a lack of legal evidence to support the assertion. The Statesboro News continued to utilize inflammatory language, publishing an article which said in part "Their guilt has been established beyond a doubt - every chain has been traced and all lead to their door." [10] Additional stories argued that the rape of both Mrs. Hodges and their daughter Katy, where the real motives for the motive for the murders, again without the slightest shred of evidence.

Newspapers also noted that Reeds and Cato belonged to a distinct subset of blacks who were lazy and shiftless. This contrasts with the blacks who 'know their place' in society and often work on white farms. The only reason this was even discussed was because there were rumors floating around that the Hodges family may have been killed due to Mr. Hodges being too friendly with blacks, something that only aided to reinforce the region's racial caste system and conjure images of murderous black people who would attack whites were they to let their guard down.

An Atlanta News editorial minced few words in its character analysis: "It is true that the negroes in the turpentine campus of south Georgia are in the main a lot of irresponsible and half-savage vagabonds, apparently hopeless to the redeeming efforts of civilization, and that their presence makes a continual menace and threat to the peace and safety of the people."[11]

On August 15, the court case finally got underway. Superior Court Judge Alexander Daley was forbidden by Georgia law to request a change in court venue, despite his wanting to as to possibly give people time to 'cool off.' This was actually dangerous in some ways as such changes were often used by mobs as an excuse to lynch blacks on the grounds that they may have a chance to 'escape justice.'

When the trial began, the press continued to present rumor as fact. The Statesboro News reported that Reed had admitted to being part of a gang of blacks who were roaming the Bulloch County countryside, robbing, raping, and killing whites. Once again this increased the amount of fear in whites and put them more dead-set on lynching. It didn't help that throngs of whites were milling about outside the courthouse.

The actual trial was incredibly brief, lasting less than a day and a half, with Reed's and Cato's respective defenses lasting barely eight minutes, both men plead innocent. Still, the court sentenced them to hanging. As soon as this was done, the white mobs that had been surrounding the courthouse burst in and took both men, making no effort to hide their identities, despite the fact that soldiers (without any ammunition) had been dispatched to protect the men. Both men were beaten and eventually doused in kerosene and set ablaze and dead by 3:30 pm.

Many newspapers actively defended the lynching. The Forest Blade published an editorial which argued "While we will not say we are in favor of lynching principles, there are crimes - and this is one of them - that fully justified the act," similarly another editorial in the Sparta Ishmelite wrote "What society does not do for them [Georgia's whites], efficiently, they do for themselves." [12] The press played a major role in increasing tensions and outright encouraging lynchings, a serious act which helped to normalize the very act itself.

The normalization of lynching was rampant in Southern society. In 1893 in Paris, Texas, a black man by the name of Henry Smith was lynched for allegedly killing and raping the sheriff's daughter. Smith's lynching was in that a spectacle was made of it. It was the first "blatantly public, actively promoted lynching of a southern Black by a large crowd of southern whites with features such as 'the specially chartered excursion train, the publicly sold photographs, and the wide circulated, unabashed retelling of the event by one of the lynchers.'" [13] It should be examined in detail that there were a number of "event-like themes, such as a float, carnival, and parade" all of which indicates "that within the act of justice, the structures of entertainment were organized. […] In addition, the souvenir scrambling for burnt remains as well as promotional materials for acquisition or purchase provides a similar semblance to paraphernalia purchased at modern-day sporting events." [14]

Thus, what we see is within the context of lynching, there was also an aspect of entertainment and even revelry, as if it was something to be celebrated and loved. The squabbling over Smith's remains reinforces the unbroken idea from slavery that black people aren't human beings, but rather just things, in this case a trophy.

The situation went even further in the case of Jesse Washington, a 17 year old mentally disabled boy who was accused of murdering a white woman and subject to a kangaroo court. Children were even bought to view his horrific lynching:

Fifteen thousand men, women and children packed the square. They climbed up poles and onto the tops of cars. . . . Children were lifted up by their parents in the air. Washington was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire of boxes and sticks. Wailing, the boy attempted to climb the skillet hot chain. For this the men cut off his fingers. The executioners repeatedly lowered the boy into the flames and hoisted him out again. With each repetition, a mighty shout [from the crowd] was raised. [15]

It is in acts such as this, with the involvement of children and, as with Smith's lynching, the selling of Washington's remains as if they were memorabilia, that the murder of black people becomes normalized and something beyond a source of maintaining racial hierarchy, something akin to a form of entertainment. Among this murderfest, though, there were those who fought back such as Ida B. Wells.

Wells was a black woman who was mainly focused on battling racial discrimination and penning articles. This changed in 1892, "when a close childhood friend of hers, Thomas Moss, was lynched" in Memphis [16] Wells was of the mindset that lynching was an overreaction by whites against rapists, however, her views quickly changed given the fact that Moss was lynched for defending his grocery store from armed whites and being lynched for the simple act of self-defense. On top of this, Memphis law enforcement didn't even bother to lift a finger to arrest the lynchers, who were publicly known.

Wells took a bit of an academic-esque approach to the situation, thinking that if lynching were exposed as the incarnation of racial hatred it was, it would no longer be socially acceptable. For three months, she traveled around the South investigating lynchings and interviewing witnesses. She found that not only were Black men lynched for having consensual relationships with white women, but also virtually all lynchings became about rape after the lynching went public. She took her information and published a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Eventually due to threats on her life, she fled Memphis and moved to Chicago, where she continued to write and speak out against lynching. Still, there were others who took a more hands on, self-defense approach to lynching as took place in Decatur, IL.

On June 3, 1893, in Decatur, IL, a black day labor by the name of Samuel L. Bush who had been accused of rape, was taken from the Macon County jail and lynched by a white mob after they had went on a rampage searching for him from March 31 to June 2. During this time, rather than meet with members of the black community to discuss Bush's situation, "State's Attorney Isaac R. Mills, Decatur Mayor David Moffett, Deputy Sheriff Harry Midkiff, and Decatur Marshal William Mason were meeting with Charles B. Britton and Charles M. Fletcher, the leaders of the vigilantes." They attempted to appease the leaders, with Mills stating that if Bush wasn't sentenced to death, "it would then be time to resort to extreme measures." [17]

Despite days of lynching rumors floating around, the authorities allowed for nearly one thousand people to gather across from the jail where Bush was being held and made no effort to move or in any way ensure Bush's safety. Just before 2 AM, "a mob composed of some of the county's leading citizens broke Sam Bush out of jail and lynched him." [18]

In response to the lynching, Wilson B. Woodford, the only black lawyer in town that Bush had hired, published an open letter to blacks living in Decatur, urging them to attend a mass meeting where a strategy for dealing with the lynching would be formed. At the meeting, Woodford advocated taking the legal route, pushing the state attorney, the same one who had been complicit in Bush's lynching, to take action. Some, such as Edward Jacobs, rejected it and pushed for armed blacks to go themselves and arrest Bush's murderers. The resolutions committee backed Woodford's strategy and messages were sent to both the governor and state attorney.

Woodford and Jacobs were coming from two separate worlds. Woodford, having a legal background, "was predisposed to distinguish between the law and enforcers of the law. Woodford, like other liberal race men and women, believed that racial prejudice and contempt for law and order were the twin causes of lynching" whereas Jacobs questioned this method of thinking. Jacobs acknowledged the cozy relationship between lynchers and the police and knew that "knew the authorities had mobilized the vigilantes to help them in capturing Bush but had rejected African-American support either to protect Bush or to arrest his murderers." [19]

Interestingly enough, the two strategies would merge as both Woodford and Jacobs were members of the National Afro-American League, an organization that push for black development and fight against white responses to said development. NAAL "combined the pre-eminent philosophy of self-help and racial solidarity with the protest tactics of legalism, direct action, and violent self-help."[20]

A year later, James Jackson, a black male porter, was accused of raping a white woman under questionable circumstances. The father of the woman was pushing for Jackson's lynching and stated that help was coming from Mt. Zion. This situation would turn out rather differently than Bush's.

Blacks controlled the streets surrounding the jail. They could be seen in doorways, under stair wells and behind wagons, armed and ready for action. Other African-Americans patrolled the streets scrutinizing whites who happened to be out at that late hour. And unlike at the protest meeting, at least two black women participated. [21]

They continued to patrol the streets around the courthouse, the police didn't attempt to intervene, and there were no attempts to lynch Jackson.

As the case with Bush shows, the police themselves were many times the very ones who were, at best, complicit (not that that truly matters), and at worst, active participants in lynchings. This shouldn't be surprising as not only were the police entrenched in the same racial mindset as the lynchers, but also the purpose of the police was (and is) a tool of social control, especially against black people.

The police themselves came out of slavery as "slave patrols and night watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities." [22] In fact, in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, "which prohibited state actors from violating the Civil Rights of all citizens in part because of law enforcements' involvement with the infamous group. "[23] (emphasis added) The police themselves oftentimes were directly involved in lynchings such as with the case of Austin Callaway, a sixteen year old boy.

Callaway was shot and killed in LaGrange, Georgia on September 8, 1940, having just a day earlier been accused of assaulting a white woman. He was arrested and taken to the local jail. Later that night, six men, one of them armed, went into the jail, forced the jailer to open the door, and murdered Callaway.[24] Though the killers were never found, it is known that the police were personally involved. It was noted in 2017 by LaGrange's police chief, Louis M. Dekmar, in an apology regarding Callaway's murder. Specifically, Dekmar said "I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin's lynching, both through our action and our inaction." [25] Callaway's story is just one in many[26] where police were directly or indirectly involved in lynchings. It is this historical backdrop in which police actively murder black people that today's police murders continue.

With lynchings, the body would hang for days as both a reminder to other blacks to 'stay in their place' but also a part of the aforementioned spectacle. This spectacle continues as can be seen with "the fact that Michael Brown's body was left on the street for hours after he was killed by police officer Darren Wilson," something "that points to just how little has changed in American race relations since the days of Jim Crow." [27] Leaving Brown's body out to languish was an illustration of the lack of concern and decency the Ferguson police department had for him and is reminiscent of leaving a lynch victim's body out for all to see, to remind everyone where black people stood on the racial hierarchy: the bottom.

The media, too, plays a role in police killings as they did during lynchings. Once again, the Michael Brown case puts this in stark view. Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, described him in disproportionate and even inhuman terms.

"When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan," Wilson, who is 6′ 4″ and 210 lbs., said of Brown, who was 6′ 4″ and 292 lbs. at the time of his death. […]He said Brown tried to get his fingers inside the trigger. "And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked." [28]

Not only are black people described in nonhuman terms, but there is a constant implication that
they deserve to be shot due to past transgressions. In the case of Akai Gurley, "The New York Daily News ran a headline, Akai Gurley had criminal record, innocent when shot by cop, which they later switched out for ' Protesters call for arrest of rookie cop who shot Akai Gurley as victim's sister says he didn't deserve to die . '"[29] There is also guilt by association. When twelve year old Tamir Rice was killed by the police, the media bought up the fact that the family's lawyer had "also defended the boy's mother in a drug trafficking case" [30] and that Rice's father had a history of domestic violence. [31] Regularly, the media brings up information that has nothing to do with the actual incident in question, but actively works to defame and sully the victim's name.

Where there once were slave owners and slave catchers, the KKK, and lynch mobs, they have all now "become largely replaced by state agencies such as the criminal justice system, and local and federal police." [32] In August 2016, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent went on a mission to the United States. In their conclusion on their findings, they wrote: "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching. Impunity for State violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency." [33]

This assessment is quite correct, especially within the ideas of the spectacle and normalization. While there may not be a sports theme to current police murders, there is a spectacle in and of itself in the near constant sharing of videos of black people dying at the hands of police and the footage being played again and again on the nightly news. While one shouldn't discount that videos are being shared to raise awareness and may very well get people involved in activism, at the same time by the videos being shared and viewed over and over, it can very well create a situation where it the death of black people is normalized and an immunity of sorts built up to it. As writer Feliks Garcia notes

To witness the final moments of someone's life is not supposed to be a regular experience, yet it feels like every week, we're presented with a new video of a different unarmed black man-or child-killed by police.

With the reach of social media, each of these videos is viewed ad nauseum, and you have to ask what purpose this serves. Who needs to see these videos at this point?[34]

Due to the constant viewing of black people dying at the hands of the police, coupled with the media's twisted narratives, seeing black people die becomes a normal occurrence.

The ongoing police murders of black people draw strong parallels to lynchings: from the involvement of the police to the utter dearth of justice to the larger social implications. It is both a tragedy and a nightmare, an endless horror.

Notes

[1] This American Life, Suitable For Children, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/627/transcript

[2] Robert L. Zangrando, About Lynching, http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm

[3] E. M. Beck, "The Killing Fields of the Deep South: The Market For Cotton and the Lynching of Blacks, 1882-1930," American Sociological Review 55:4 (August 1990), pg 526

[4] James W. Clarke, "Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South," British Journal of Political Science 28:2 (April 1998), pg 272

[5] Clarke, pg 275

[6] Robert A. Gibson, The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950 , Yale-New Haven Teacher's Institute, http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html

[7] Richard M. Perloff, "The Press and Lynchings of African Americans," Journal of Black Studies 30:3 (January 2000), pg 320

[8] Reed W. Smith, "Southern Journalists and Lynching: The Statesboro Case Study," Journalism and Communication Monographs 7:2 (2005), pg 63

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid, pg 64

[11] Ibid, pg 65

[12] Ibid, pg 70

[13] Rasul A. Mowatt, "Lynching as Leisure: Broadening Notions of a Field," American Behavioral Scientist 56:10 (August 2012), pg 1371

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid, pg 1376

[16] Amii Larkin Barnard, "The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920," UCLA Women's Law Journal 3:1 (January 1993), pg 15

[17] Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, "A Warlike Demonstration,' Legalism, Armed Resistance, and Black Political Mobilization in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898," The Journal of Negro History 83:1 (Winter 1998), pg 54

[18] Ibid

[19] Cha-Jua, pg 57

[20] Ibid

[21] Cha-Jua, pg 59

[22] Victor E. Kappeler, A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing , http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing

[23] Ibid

[24] Northeastern University Law School, Austin Callaway, http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/georgia/austincallaway/

[25] Alan Binder, Richard Fausset, "Nearly 8 Decades Later, an Apology for a Lynching in Georgia," New York Times, January 26, 2017 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-lynching-apology.html )

[26] State Sanctioned, Police and State Involvement with Lynching, https://statesanctioned.com/police-and-state-involvement-with-lynching/

[27] David G. Embrick, "Two Nations, Revisited: The Lynching of Black and Brown Bodies, Police Brutality, and Racial Control in 'Post-Racial' Amerikkka," Critical Sociology 41:6 (June 2015), pg 837

[28] Josh Sanburn, "All The Ways Darren Wilson Described Being Afraid of Michael Brown," Time, November 25, 2014 ( http://time.com/3605346/darren-wilson-michael-brown-demon/ )

[29] Simple Justice, The Outrage of the Victim's Rap Sheet Must End, http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/11/23/the-outrage-of-the-victims-rap-sheet-must-end/ (November 23, 2014)

[30] Brandon Blackwell, "Lawyer representing Tamir Rice's family defended boy's mom in drug trafficking case," Cleveland, November 24, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/lawyer_representing_tamir_rice.html )

[31] Brandon Blackwell, "Tamir Rice's father has history of domestic violence," Cleveland, November 26, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/tamir_rices_father_has_history.html )

[32] Embrick, pg 838

[33] United Nations General Assembly, Report on the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America , https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/183/30/PDF/G1618330.pdf?OpenElement (August 18, 2016)

[34] Feliks Garcia, "Police brutality is modern lynching- and you may be a part of it," Daily Dot, April 20, 2015 ( https://www.dailydot.com/via/black-men-police-violence-lynching-internet/ )

Is It Nation Time?: The Black Nationalism of Black Panther

By Sean Posey

In the fall of 1992, a unique moment in American cinema captured the attention of the nation. Auteur Spike Lee released his magnum opus, Malcolm X, to wide critical acclaim. But more than that, for the first time, a biopic of one of the central characters in the history of Black Nationalism reached an audience around the country and the world. Hats with the 'X' logo appeared on the heads of black youth everywhere, and the film itself inspired introspection and dialogue among not just black intellectuals but also among African Americans from all walks of life. The film's ending credits merged scenes of Malcolm throughout his life and connected Harlem to Soweto and America to Africa.

A similar moment seems to be upon us with the recent release of Black Panther, a comic book film about an African king/superhero and the fictional nation of Wakanda. Symbols and themes from Black Nationalism and Pan-African history are laced throughout the film, which manages to elevate the comic book genre flick to a visual textbook for not just inspiring black pride, but also for reflecting important elements of the black past and possible future.

Black Nationalism is a complicated concept, one with roots stretching back to the nineteenth century and beyond. The reality of chattel slavery in the West led to the call for the birth of a black nation from men such as Martin Delany, often called the "grandfather of Black Nationalism," and Robert Alexander Young, author of the 1829 Ethiopian Manifesto, which postulated a universal connection between all black peoples.

Young was writing about an old idea - Pan-Africanism. Envisioning a future nation for blacks in North America and beyond (Black Nationalism) - and building connections between African peoples around the world (Pan-Africanism) - are concepts that pulse throughout Black Panther. During the early nineteenth century, Paul Cuffee, a black businessman and abolitionist in America, began bringing African Americans to Sierra Leone. The English had already begun to bring freed slaves to the area after the Revolutionary War to a place called Granville Town, also known as the "Province of Freedom." Cuffee hoped the region could be a future homeland for blacks looking to flee oppression in America.

In the twentieth century, Marcus Garvey, perhaps the most famous of the Black Nationalists and Pan-Africanists, envisioned Liberia as a future homeland for blacks looking to flee violence and discrimination in America. He hoped that such a place would become an advanced country where blacks could prosper and build a power the equal of any in Europe. The Garveyites and other such Black Nationalists saw themselves as indelibly linked to Africa.

In Black Panther, a modern and technologically advanced black nation in Africa has already been realized. The nation of Wakanda masquerades before the world as an underdeveloped state, but hidden behind an elaborate façade is the most advanced country on Earth, powered by a fictional metal known as vibranium. Mined from a sacred mound, the substance powers nearly everything in the country.

In this technologically advanced nation, what Patricia Hill Collins calls the "main ideas" of Black Nationalism - self-determination (political), self-definition (cultural), and self- reliance (economic) - are all fully realized.[1]

Maglev trains, Talon fighters, and vehicles designed to mimic flying animals are among the more wonderful aspects of Wakandan technology that we see in the film. Unlike Western countries, Wakanda incorporates technology that both mimics and exists in harmony with the natural world. Afrofuturistic cities mingle with gorgeous vistas of waterfalls and trees. There are skyscrapers sporting thatched roofs, grass sidewalks, sophisticated public transportation systems, and no visible cars.

There is nary a white face in sight as black vendors sell their wares in the street, and a black king, T'Challa, rules over a country that has never known colonization. According to Carvell Wallace, director Ryan Coogler loosely modeled his idea of Wakanda after the Kingdom of Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa. But Black Panther's kingdom is a futuristic polity beyond the wildest dreams of even Marcus Garvey.

From as far back as the nineteenth century, women such as Maria W. Stewart, a servant turned public figure, espoused the ideas of Black Nationalism on the national stage in America. However, in North America and throughout the African Diaspora, patriarchal structures relegated black women to largely supporting roles in the struggle for black liberation. Such gendered systems of power are absent in Wakanda.

It is easy to see the inspiration of historical figures such as Amy Jacques Garvey and Henrietta Vinton Davis in the characters of Nakia (played by Lupita Nyong'o) and Okoye (played by Danai Gurira).

Okoye is head of the fearsome Dora Milaje, an all-female bodyguard that protects Black Panther and the royal family. They might be thought of as a cross between the "Amazonian Guard" that protected the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and the Nation of Islam's Vanguard or "Warrior Class" of the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. The Dora Milaje bring to mind the term "an army of Amazons to lead the race," used to describe women in the United Negro Improvement Association. [2] Indeed, the Dora Milaje have been compared to the all-female African army of the Dahomey Amazons, who once fought the French in what is now the Republic of Benin.

Unlike Okoye, Nakia is a spy, a member of the secretive "War Dog" squad, which operates in a capacity similar to the C.I.A., minus the overthrowing of foreign governments. During the course of the film, she attempts to convince T'Challa of Wakanda's responsibility to help other embattled Africans across the continent. However, it has long been the tradition in Wakanda to avoid any entanglements with the outside world that might draw attention to the country's true power.

The tension between Wakanda's wealth and the impoverishment and agony among black populations throughout the world is symbolized in the character of Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger is the son of a murdered Wakandan spy and prince, N'Jobu. While working undercover in Oakland, California, during the 1990s, N'Jobu witnesses the poverty and racial oppression facing blacks in America. He comes to believe that Wakanda should use its technology to aid the suffering of fellow blacks, wherever they may be.

N'Jobu comes to work with hated arms dealer Ulysses Klaue to in order to smuggle vibranium of out of Wakanda in order to facilitate an uprising among African Americans. When T'Chaka, who is both N'Jobu's brother and also T'Challa's father, confronts him, N'Jobu refuses to come back to Wakanda to stand trial and is killed by T'Chaka.

N'Jobu's son, the young Killmonger, is left behind in America. He grows to become a member of a black-ops unit, training for the day when he might return to Wakanda and seize the throne. There is more than a bit of Malcolm X in Killmonger, who wishes to arm the black people of the world for a final battle against white supremacy. But unlike X, Killmonger descends into violent acts against his own people (especially women) in his quest for power.

When he ultimately does return to Wakanda to confront T'Challa, it is easy to hear the words of Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, a Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist, who spoke of the plight of blacks in the United States during the twentieth century: "How long shall we have to wait for something to be done for the black people's of this country?" [3]

T'Challa, the Martin Luther King to Killmonger's Malcolm X, rejects the idea of a global war. But he remains torn over Wakanda's policy of isolation from the rest of the world, particularly the black world outside of his country's borders. By the end of the film, T'Challa decides to open outreach centers throughout the United States, bringing Wakanda's technology to those in the African Diaspora - a true act of Pan-Africanism.

The chant of the Black Power movement during the 1960s and 1970s (Is it nation time?) is symbolically answered in Black Panther. For although Wakanda is a fictional African country, its importance extends throughout the diaspora.

The concept of Black Nationalism in modern times goes beyond the idea of creating a physical polity. According to Kate Dossett, "Black Nationalism in the United States has always been closely linked to Pan-Africanism, and can be better understood through an imagined community notion of nationalism rather than a euro-centric state model." [4]

Wakanda's example is one that reaches out beyond Africa to the masses of people of African descent. It is an imagined nation for an imagined community throughout the world.

Black Panther has the potential to help engage audiences with these concepts and with the history of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. The beauty of the costumes, characters and the fictional world of Wakanda can do much more than entertain. They could mark the beginning of a new cultural and political awakening in a century where the key questions of black self-determination, self-definition, and self-reliance continue to be part of a needed dialogue.

Notes

[1] Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism and Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 75.

[2] Kate Dossett, Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism, and Integration in the United States, 1896-1935 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009), 157.

[3] Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 181.

[4] Doessett, 6.

Revolution and Black Struggle: Marxism as a Weapon Against Racism and Capitalism

By Marcello Pablito

Racism, Capitalism, and Slavery

In his most important work, Marx states that "Labour in a white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in a black skin."1 Despite attempts by political and intellectual groups to deny Marx and Engels' (and, by extension, revolutionary Marxism's) uncompromising stance against racism, the founders of scientific socialism thoroughly understood that racist oppression served as a tool for the capitalist exploitation of all workers. The relationship between capitalism and racism has only grown stronger in subsequent generations. There have been cases in which the falsification of Marx and Engels' positions and the conscious attempts to equate Marxism with Stalinism have led to generalized attacks on Marxism.This brief article will describe how the leadership of the Russian Revolution understood the fight against racism.

Marxism was developed on the foundations of a new worldview based in historical materialism and offering an explanation that was superior to idealism, religious beliefs, or a view of history as a mere succession of random events. Contrary to these views, Marxism explains the development of history and the division of society into classes as emerging from the material development of human society, and it describes class struggle as the driving force of history. It is from a scientific view of the development of capitalism, and from a critique of political economy and the origins of the bourgeois state, that Marxism explains racism as an ideology that emerged to justify and rationalize one of the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind and identifies it as one of the fundamental pillars of primitive capital accumulation: the enslavement and trade of more than 11 million human beings to work on the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean. This is a counter-perspective to idealistic conceptions that view racism as an ideology that has always existed and is intrinsic to human nature or as an idea that emerged out of nowhere, dissociated from its material foundations.

Without recognition of this fundamental aspect, it is impossible to have a scientific view of either the development of racism or of capitalism itself. As Eric Williams writes in his classic work Capitalism and Slavery:

Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery ... The reason was economic, not racial ... The features of the man, his hair, color and dentifrice, his "subhuman" characteristics so widely pleaded, were only the later rationalizations to justify a simple economic fact: that the colonies needed labor and resorted to Negro [sic] labor because it was cheapest and best.2

Throughout the book - whose theses continue to generate important debates - Williams describes the role slavery played in the process of primitive accumulation, focusing on the relationship between the slave trade and industrial development in England. In its imperialist phase, the era of "crises, wars and revolutions," the relationship between racism and capitalism was reinforced. It is no coincidence that theories of scientific racism became more fully developed as nation-states played a decisive role in combining racism and capitalism to increase exploitation, precisely when the African continent was occupied and divided up among the European powers.

This is the basis of a scientific explanation of how racism develops as ideology. It is impossible to understand the development of capitalism without considering the relationship between slavery and racism. It is unquestionable that, to this day, racism serves to further capitalist exploitation. Countless statistics indicate that black people have the most precarious, poorly paid jobs and receive far lower wages than white workers even if they do the same work. By increasing the levels of exploitation of the black worker, and especially of black women, capitalists are able to further undercut the wages and living conditions of the working class as a whole. For this reason, the fight against racism must necessarily be a struggle against capitalism.

Revolution and Slavery

The 1917 Russian Revolution showed the working class and the most oppressed sectors of society a glimpse of a future beyond the narrow limits of capitalist oppression. This did not only apply to the Russian workers; the peasants, who came from a history of serfdom in which they were branded like cattle, achieved their dream of agrarian reform; religious minorities obtained religious freedoms; women gained the right to abortion for the first time in history; and gay people were no longer persecuted.

Internationally, the Russian Revolution had a huge impact on class struggle and demonstrated that, even in underdeveloped capitalist countries like Russia or the countries of the African continent, the masses could lead a revolution.

The Third International, led by Lenin and Trotsky, was born out of the struggle against the social-chauvinists who supported the imperialist war in the early 1900s. The international perspective of the socialist revolution was decisive to its founders. After the triumph in 1917, they aimed to transform the newly created Soviet Republic into a barricade for international and global revolution. The interests of the Soviet workers were intertwined with those of the global working class and of the multitudes of oppressed peoples worldwide. One of the most egregious aspects of the early imperialist era was the division and rule of the African continent by 15 European countries at the Berlin Conference of 1885. The expansion of the Russian Revolution, the defeat of the European bourgeoisies, and the victory of the working class in these imperialist countries - which included France, Germany and England - would have been a fatal blow to their colonial project in the African continent. At the same time, the weakening of the European bourgeoisie would have increased the chances of African workers and the oppressed of overthrowing imperialist rule in their regions.

Great revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Trotsky left various testimonies to their enormous enthusiasm for black struggle against racist oppression and the role of all revolutionaries in merging with this struggle internationally. Even before the Russian Revolution, Lenin was already concerned about the situation of black people worldwide, understanding how crucial it was for communists to connect with the most oppressed and exploited sectors of the working class. In 1920, John Reed wrote a report at Lenin's request, describing the situation of black people in the U.S. to the Second Congress of the Third Communist International:

The Communists must not stand aloof from the Negro [sic] movement which demands their social and political equality and at the moment, at a time of the rapid growth of racial consciousness, is spreading rapidly among Negroes. The Communists must use this movement to expose the lie of bourgeois equality and emphasize the necessity of the social revolution which will not only liberate all workers from servitude but is also the only way to free the enslaved Negro people.3

In a society divided into social classes based on relationship to the means of production and the bourgeoisie's private appropriation of the social labor produced by the working class, Marxists argue that the exploiters end up being their own gravediggers. The working class, by virtue of its strategic role in the production of all that exists in society, is the only group capable of defeating capitalism, taking on the task of emancipating not only its own class but humanity as a whole. Black people are not only a fundamental part of the working class; they also comprise its most precarious sectors.

The Fourth Congress held in 1922, before the Stalinization of the Comintern, ratified its theses on black liberation, declaring that the revolutionary order of the day included the fight against racism and support for the struggles of black people on an international scale. After stating that "the enemy of [the black] race and of the white worker is identical: capitalism and imperialism," the theses affirmed that:

The Communist International should struggle for the equality of the white and black races, and for equal wages and equal political and social rights. The Communist International will use every means at its disposal to force the trade unions to admit black workers, or, where this right already exists on paper, to conduct special propaganda for their entry into unions. If this should prove impossible, the Communist International will organize black people into their own unions and then use the united front tactic to compel the general unions to admit them.4

These historical examples show that black struggle is worker struggle, a message that continues to have relevance today. Fighting for the working class means fighting against racism and defending, for example, wage equality between blacks and whites, men and women, and the direct hire of outsourced workers. This fight calls for an end to police brutality, the right to decent housing, and comprehensive agrarian reform, as this is the only way to unite the working class. This is a decisive question since unity is impossible without fighting against racism, and without this unity, victory cannot be achieved in a revolutionary process.

The Black Struggle and the International Revolution

Lenin and Trotsky did not regard the Russian Revolution as an end in itself but rather as the first step in the international and global expansion of the revolution that would first reach other European countries like Germany. This would mean the end of colonial domination in Africa and Asia and a tremendous advance from the point of view of the world revolution.

The reactionary policy of Stalinism in defense of "socialism in one country" promoted after 1924, along with the failures of the Chinese revolution in 1926 and the general strike in England in 1926, sealed the fate of the black struggles and resistance in the African continent. It signalled for the global imperialist bourgeoisie the possibility of regaining its strength and maintaining its international domination, thus delaying for decades the independence of African countries.

In Brazil, the Stalinism represented by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) played a deplorable role in racial politics. Among several examples until the 1960s, the PCB was opposed to discussing any demand for admitting black people into trade unions because they argued that it divided the working class, blatantly capitulating to the ideology of "racial democracy."

Trotsky devoted all his energy to combating the bureaucratization of the USSR. The Left Opposition, and then the Fourth International, were the continuation of the Bolshevik tradition. The passion and aspirations of these revolutionaries were anchored in the solid theoretical-programmatic foundations of the theory of permanent revolution which strongly encouraged the merging of revolutionary ideas with the most exploited and oppressed sectors of capitalist society such as black people in the U.S., Latin America, and Africa. In Trotsky's words:

We can and we must find a way to the consciousness of the Negro [sic] workers, the Chinese workers, the Indian workers, and all the oppressed in the human ocean of the colored races to whom belongs the decisive word in the development of mankind.5

The revolutionary struggle against exploitation and oppression, particularly among blacks, was decisive for the emergence of a generation of black Trotskyists. The fight against Stalinism and the development of the theory of permanent revolution itself were driving forces for the revolutionary perspective of the fight against racism. Perhaps the individual who most stands out in this respect is CLR James, the author of The Black Jacobins. James is recognized in academic circles as the person who revealed to the world the depth of one of the most glorious black achievements in world history: the Haitian Revolution. Few remember his Trotskyist past or the fact that when he examines Haiti, he does so through the lens of class struggle.

The power of this book is based, among other things, on the way James describes how the revolutionary conditions in France were intertwined with the weakening of Saint-Domingue's elite while highlighting the revolutionary and uncompromising audacity of the black people of the island in search of their freedom. Only someone with a worldview guided by the perspective of the exploited and oppressed in class struggle would be capable of a work that revealed how the revolution transformed the former slaves of Saint-Domingue into heroes.

CLR James was not only a historian but also a Trotskyist militant who sought to link the struggle for black liberation with the direct fight against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its cowardly counterparts in non-imperialist countries. He demonstrated how, in important moments of class struggle, the goals of the whole working class have more chances of being achieved with the unity of the laboring ranks, that is, between blacks and whites.

The Russian Revolution was the highest point in the struggle for an end to exploitation and oppression. It was a demonstration of the audacity, revolutionary courage, and scientific preparation of the Bolsheviks. Notwithstanding the limits of analogy, the same determination in the struggle for freedom flowed through the veins of the black people of Saint-Domingue in this decisive episode in the history of capitalism. The spirit of the Bolsheviks, the Left Opposition, and the Fourth International is reflected in these words:

What we as Marxists have to see is the tremendous role played by Negroes [sic] in the transformation of Western civilization from feudalism to capitalism. It is only from this vantage-ground that we shall be able to appreciate (and prepare for) the still greater role they must of necessity play in the transition from capitalism to socialism.6

From this perspective, the emancipation of both whites and nonwhites, to which Marx refers, acquires full meaning in the struggle for a society free from exploitation and any form of oppression: a communist society. Who, if not those who suffer the most under capitalism, will fight more vigorously for that future?

Translation by Marisela Trevin

This was originally published at Left Voice .

Notes

1 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, trans. Ben Fowles (London: Penguin Classics, 1990), 1:414.

2 Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 20, previously published in 1944.

3 John Reed, "The Negro Question in America: Speech at the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International, Moscow - July 25, 1920," in Second Congress of the Communist International. Minutes of the Proceedings (London: New Park Publications, 1977), previously published by Publishing House of the Communist International, 1921.

4 Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919 - 1943, vol. 1, 1914 - 1922 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 401.

5 Leon Trotsky, "Closer to the Proletarians of the Colored Races," The Militant 5, no. 27 (2 July 1932), 1, previously published in Fourth International 6, no. 8 (August 1945): 243.

6 CLR James, "The Revolution and the Negro," New International 5 (December 1939): 339-343

Racial Terror by the Rules: On Anti-Black Psychic Violence as a Kind of Governmentality

By Zoe Samudzi

One of the most egregious but canonically crucial colonial acts was to make God and Jesus white men. Jesus, in this imagination, is not a brown-skinned Jewish man from Judea (today's Occupied Palestine): he's a fair complected man with reddish or brown hair. The insidiousness of this anglicization of religious iconography far exceeds contemporary instances of whitewashing; for example, Hollywood's miscasting of explicitly non-white characters with white actors. This whitening, which accompanied Christianity's spread through the Global South by colonial missions, represents the elevation of white manhood to the realm of the divine. The wretched colonized masses would not just worship these figures, but whiteness itself. God was not simply a heavenly father, but rather a kind of conceptual precursor to the modern surveillance state in all of its racializing glory: an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent white man whose wrathful streak can and will punish you for your wrongdoing or reward you for properly adhering to his (sometimes contradictory) cosmic rules. White Jesus is a discursive tool, a controlling image within racially governing technologies .

The first chapter of the book of Genesis says God created mankind in his own image. Friedrich Nietzsche famously posed the question of whether Man was one of God's blunders or God was one of Man's. Countless others have argued the function of a Christian God as a projection of the values of Man. Black interrogations have yielded the most useful attempts to understand the nature of what was once called "Man" - and now "humanity - as a projection of colonial idealism. Sylvia Wynter sees the project of "Man" as the coalescence of European Renaissance and Enlightenment values: this Man is an individual, an agent that is free and is capable of rational thought and self-reflection. This idealized Man is immortalized by Leonardo da Vinci's L'Uomo Vitruviano (The Vitruvian Man). Despite being universalizable, its Greco-Roman visual configuration of ideal proportionality, and its rooting in European aesthetics and anatomy undoubtedly racializes it/him. It was a vision of [hu]Man[ity] created in the image and espousing the values of ideal personhood. As Walter D. Mignolo glosses Wynter, this was an articulation "concocted and circulated by those who most convincingly (and powerfully) imagine the 'right' or 'noble' or 'moral' characteristics of Human and in this project their own image-experience of the Human into the sphere of Universal Humanness." The colonial episteme was not generous in its designations of human: the empire, as we know, was contoured by anti-blackness and it codified "Black" not as human, but as private property (Cheryl L. Harris reminds us how race in the United States is not only phenotypical distinction, but also property relation).

Anti-blackness encompasses so many material things that need not be recited here, but one of its most disturbing facets is intangible: our alienation from humanity. White supremacist systems' thriving relies upon this internalization. Imagine white supremacy as partly psychological conditioning. For Dylan Rodríguez, it is a militarized and enforced hierarchy of "human" difference; in Alexander Weheliye's account, an enunciation of assemblages manifested through visualizations of orderings of "humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans."

Memed images of anti-Black brutality and violence, both extraordinary in its nature and also painfully commonplace and familiar, compound all other reminders of our sub-humanity. The widespread circulation and consumption of these images is not simply careless social media usage, but a means through which whiteness (anthropomorphized for effect) is able to impose its will beyond classic coercion and the monopoly on the legitimate use of force that it flaunts enthusiastically. The accretion of these images, most importantly, constitutes a normalcy: they remind us of our place and position, they provide a unifying language to (non-Indigenous) non-Black people whose own humanity is built upon anti-blackness. They allow the state to gloat and revel in the impunity it has produced for itself.

What represents absolute power more than reducing adults to panic or tears through a single image? While riding the Muni in San Francisco not long ago, I encountered a white man. I scanned him for patches and tattoos and other hate group-identifying insignia and saw a huge swastika tattoo on his forearm. Recalling the racial stabbing attack by a neo-Nazi on a Portland light rail that left two men dead, I froze. No words were exchanged, I attempted to steady my breath and pretend I wasn't looking at him and I could feel his eyes boring a hole in my head. He got off of the train a couple of stops later, and when I finally got to my own stop, I sobbed and called my mother.

Who can defeat you when you hold the minds of your subjects in a vice? Racial terror, whether undertaken by state or non-state actors (or some collusion between them), is a rule-based necropolitical system. Our fear is a response to violent stimuli and also the means by which the state counts on us to "self-govern": in theory, "proper" self-governance is what assures our survival - respectability politics, not challenging authority (though success and survival are never assured when the state can only produce anti-blackness). The politics recently labeled (though long attacked) by the FBI as "Black Identity Extremism" pose a threat to and is a refusal of this rule-based racial order, and the punishment, historically, has been severe and often fatal.

Our internalization of these enforcements, conscious or otherwise, is present in other corporal ways. Epidemiologists often speak of "predisposition" to illness or pathology: they say that Black risk for diabetes or cardiovascular disease or stroke is genetically determined or somehow innate to the biophysiological Black condition. (On the American medical system, though, Lundy Braun writes about the racist history of the spirometer, which confirmed that whites had superior lung capacities than Blacks. Thomas Jefferson, in his 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia (where he also asserted that male orangutans preferred Black women to the females of their own species), noted the inferiority "pulmonary apparatus" of Blacks, which indicated that their bodies were solely fit for labor and little else; Samuel A. Cartwright, the identifier of drapetomania as mental illness, argued that slavery was beneficial for blacks as it helped their weak lungs to "vitalize" the blood and that "liberates their mind when under the white man's control.")

We know, however, that the experience of racial trauma takes a tremendous toll on human functioning, not to mention how structurally delineated racial geographies can heavily predetermine life expectancy, class, and resource access. In 2016, Venida Browder arguably died of a broken heart 16 months after her son Kalief hanged himself following his undoubtedly traumatic incarceration at Rikers Island - the stress of multiple lawsuits against the city of New York compounded by the unbearable grief. On December 30, 2017, Erica Garner-Snipes, the daughter of Eric Garner and outspoken activist in her own right, died of a massive heart attack at age 27: we were reminded, again, the toll these traumas take on Black women.

The aggregate effect of constant exposure to racism, among many other things, can result in a kind of race-based post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma is not simply a single event, but a culmination of seemingly insignificant ones (including things referred to as microaggressions) that comprise the normal landscape of our Black lives. One might characterize many experiences of blackness like the positive and negative reinforcements necessary to heel an animal or silence a petulant child. Our mythical reward is proximity to whiteness (i.e. both humanity and/or material reward vis-à-vis the American Dream); your punishments range from more subtle alienation or humiliation, physical violence, confinement, death. Most of us are intimately familiar with this function of the system.

In the early hours of 2018, a few friends and I walked through Oakland to a New Years gathering. Seeing flashing lights, we knew the party had likely been shut down due to "noise complaints," and after confirming that, we turned to leave of our own volition. As we were leaving, three Oakland Police Department officers shepherded us off the street tapping their sidearms, the rhythm resembling a kind of racist Morse code only discernible to us well-trained Black subjects. My indignation turned into familiar terror quite quickly. I remembered a recent study that found a correlation between long police shifts and an increased likelihood of targeting and shooting Black people; I remembered that Oscar Grant was murdered by Johannes Mehserle, a BART Police officer, around that same time 9 years prior. The repetitive sound tapped into a primal fear of my own, and it reminded me of the rules to which I was beholden and upon which my Black life often depends.

What, then, demarcates this uneasy boundary between coping and capitulation? Between a complicity through compliance and the refusal of needless martyrdom? Frantz Fanon described blackness as a product of "a series of affective disorders" from which we must collectively extricate ourselves. But how? What does it mean to individually or even collectively de-shackle ourselves within a system predicated upon our victimization? A system that sustains itself with a carceral logic that demands we understand ourselves as criminal and deviant, and which ensures our humanity is won by convincingly demonstrating otherwise? We can cope, we can subvert, we can create liberatory epistemologies that refuse the subjugated position we are forced into. But it is not until racial capitalism and all of its various iterations are destroyed that we can be free of these conditionings and psychic violations.

This piece was originally published at Verso's blog

Zoé Samudzi is a Black feminist writer and doctoral student in Medical Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She is co-author, with William C. Anderson, of As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation , forthcoming from AK Press.

Bury Me Not in a Land of Slaves: A Short History of Immediatist Abolitionism in Philadelphia, 1830s to 1860s

By Arturo Castillon (Edited by Madeleine Salvatore)

[The above image is a depiction of the 1851 Christiana Riot, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where a slave-owner was shot and killed when attempting to retrieve an alleged "fugitive slave." The subsequent trial took place in Philadelphia.]

I ask no monuments, proud and high,

To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;

All that my yearning spirit craves,

Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "Bury Me in a Free Land"

In the 1850s, the author of the above poem, Frances Harper, was part of a network of revolutionaries who made it their mission to abolish slavery in the United States. Known as Abolitionists, these partisans of freedom fought for the immediate emancipation of slaves, and developed a specific approach to Abolitionism known as "immediatism." [1] In the 1820s, the most radical Abolitionists in England and the United States began using this term, "immediatism," to distinguish their strategy for abolition from the predominant, gradualist one. [2]

The Abolitionists that we are most familiar with today - Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown - all fought for the immediate emancipation of slaves, a prospect that most people at the time, even most abolitionists, considered extreme and impractical. Yet in the long term, the immediatist tendency proved to be the most practical and strategic. Instead of miring themselves in legislative strategies or insular sects, the immediatists built organizations to secretly assist thousands of people fleeing from slavery, who in taking the risk of freedom, deprived the southern planters of their primary source of labor-slave labor.

In Philadelphia, black abolitionists like Frances Harper, William Still, and Robert Purvis would rise to the forefront of the immediatist struggle against slavery. Because of the city's proximity to the South, it was an important junction point on the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses that people followed northward when fleeing from slavery. Undeterred by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which legally guaranteed a slaveholder's right to recover an escaped slave, hundreds of escapees made their way to Philadelphia every year, most coming from nearby Virginia and Maryland. With the Compromise of 1850, the Southern slaveholders strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, which now required the governments and citizens of free states, like Pennsylvania, to enforce the capture and return of "fugitive slaves." This compromise between the Southern slaveholders and the Northern free states defused a four-year political crisis over the status of territories colonized during the Mexican-American war (1846-1848). For the immediatist wing of the Abolitionist movement in Philadelphia, the implications of the new Fugitive Slave Law were clear: it had to be disobeyed and disrupted, even if that meant engaging in illegal activities to assist fugitives.[3]

Already by the early 1830s, the Abolitionist movement in Pennsylvania had begun to radicalize, reflecting developments on the national scene, such as David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, and the 1831 Nat Turner slave insurrection. The older, mostly white Quakers, who had led the movement for decades, favored legal, non-violent measures for gradually abolishing slavery, while a growing tendency of mostly black abolitionists demanded the immediate abolition of slavery. [4] This growing dichotomy, between the gradualists and the immediatists, reflected the essential difference between reformist and revolutionary politics in the Abolitionist movement.

As the Abolitionist movement became more immediatist in the 1830s, the Vigilance Committee, as it came to be known, emerged as the principal organizational form for assisting fugitives as well as victims of kidnapping. After black Abolitionist David Ruggles founded the first Vigilance Committee in New York City in 1835, Robert Purvis and James Forten formed the "Vigilant Association of Philadelphia" in 1837. Abolitionists in the rural counties surrounding these cities soon followed suit, becoming part of a regional network between Philadelphia, New York City, and other nearby cities, like Boston. The Vigilance Committees raised money, provided transportation, food, housing, clothing, medical care, legal counsel, and tactical support for people escaping from slavery. [5]

The committee in Philadelphia was a racially integrated group that also included a (predominantly black) women's auxiliary unit, the "Female Vigilant Association." This degree of inter-racial and inter-gender organization was unheard of at the time, even in the Abolitionist movement. [6] The committee also included ex-slaves. Amy Hester Reckless, for example, was a fugitive who went on to become a leading member of the committee in the 1840s. [7]

While providing strategic resources to fugitives, the committee also carried out bold interventions. Members of the committee orchestrated two of the most notorious slave escapes of the 1840s: 1) that of William and Ellen Craft from Georgia, who used improbable disguises to make their way to Philadelphia in 1848, and 2) that of Henry "Box" Brown from Virginia, who arranged to have himself mailed in a wooden crate to Philadelphia in 1849. These daring escapes were widely publicized in the antislavery movement, and these fugitives appeared in public lectures in order to rally support to the Abolitionist cause. [8]

However, by the early 1850s, several waves of repression had left the committee disorganized. These included anti-abolitionist riots, and a string of crippling lawsuits against those who defied the Fugitive Slave Law, including participants in the Christiana Riot of 1851, wherein a slave-owner was shot and killed after attempting to capture a "fugitive." A new organization was needed, so in 1852 William Still and other abolitionists established a new Vigilance Committee to fill the void left by the older, scattered one. [9]

Led by William Still, who had escaped from slavery as a child with his mother, the new Vigilance Committee was even more effective than its predecessor, assisting hundreds of fugitives every year in their quests for freedom. By the mid-1850s, Still and the immediatists had transformed Philadelphia into a crucial nerve center of the Underground Railroad, by then a massive network that spanned the U.S. and extended into Canada. The most prominent "conductors" of the Underground Railroad, people like Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett, directed hundreds of fugitives to the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee every year. [10]

Although the original Vigilance Committee was a clandestine organization, its reincarnation operated both publicly and in secret. Some of the members of the committee were lawyers who defended fugitives in the Pennsylvania courts, while others assisted fugitives using methods that were unequivocally prohibited by those same courts. Some even published their names and addresses in the Pennsylvania Freeman newspaper and in flyers so that fugitives could easily find them. In order to generate public support for their cause, they used the antislavery press and public lecture circuit to broadcast the success of their illegal activities-without revealing specific incriminating details and only after the fugitives were safe. Carefully documenting the daily operations of the committee, William Still wrote extensively about the hidden stories of slave resistance and the inner workings of their secret network. When he finally published The Underground Railroad Records in 1872, it would be the first historical account of the Underground Railroad. [11]

This delicate balance between secret operations and public activity was dramatically demonstrated in the summer of 1855, when William Still and others organized the escape of Jane Johnson and her children from their owner, John Wheeler, as they were en route to New York, docked in Philadelphia. During the escape, Passmore Williamson, one of the only white members of the Vigilance Committee, physically held back Wheeler, a well-known southern Congressman, while Still led Johnson and her children away to a nearby safe house. [12]

In the legal proceedings that ensued, a federal judge charged Williamson with riot, forcible abduction, and assault. The judge in the case rejected an affidavit from Johnson affirming that she had left Wheeler of her own free will and that there had been no abduction, and Williamson spent 100 days in Moyamensing prison. The case became a national news story, as Abolitionists used the media to trumpet the success of the Johnson rescue, and to expose the southern slaveholders' domination of the federal court system, which the Abolitionists called a "Slave Power Conspiracy." Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and other Abolitionist leaders visited Williamson during his confinement and wrote admirably of his actions in the antislavery press. [13]

The Philadelphia immediatists were fully aware of their strategic role in the national struggle against slavery. At a mass meeting in Philadelphia in August 1860, leader of the immediatist wing, William Still, explained that because they were "in such close proximity to slavery" and their "movements and actions" were "daily watched" by pro-slavery forces, they could do, "by wise and determined effort, what the freed colored people of no other State could possibly do to weaken slavery." [14] By defying the Fugitive Slave Law in a border city, the immediatists in Philadelphia exacerbated the growing conflict between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South to a degree that few other Abolitionists could.

The Vigilance Committee acted as the organizational nucleus of the Underground Railroad in a city that was publicly very hostile to Abolitionism. Most white workers were opposed to the abolition of slavery as well as the legalization of racial equality, while the merchant elites and early industrialists of the city had close economic ties to slaveholders in the South and throughout the Atlantic. There where numerous anti-black and anti-abolitionists riots throughout the 1830s and 1840s in Philadelphia. [15] Even though they were vastly outnumbered, by subverting the Fugitive Slave Law in this border city, the immediatists antagonized the slaveholders and their allies-a much larger and well-established enemy.

As the overall antislavery movement continued to grow throughout the North, the southern slaveholders went on the defensive. With the John Brown attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, and the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who campaigned against the expansion of slavery, the slaveholders in the South became more entrenched and alienated from the rest of the United States. In February 1861 the Lower South region of the U.S seceded, creating a separate country called the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. The U.S. national government, known as the Union, refused to recognize the Confederacy as a legal government. The Civil War officially began in April 1861, when Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. As the Civil War took its course, Abolitionists from Philadelphia, like Octavius Catto, worked to radicalize the Unionist cause from within. Catto and other Abolitionists organized the enlistment of black troops into the Union army and advocated for a coordinated military assault on slavery in the South, for which they were strongly condemned by white Philadelphians. [16]

Before the war, and during its initial years, much of white Philadelphia was sympathetic to the Southern slaveholder's grievances. But with the deepening of the conflict between North and South, most Philadelphians came to support the Union and the war against the Confederacy. A turning point came in 1863 when the city was threatened with Confederate occupation. Entrenchments were built and people fought to defend the city, defeating the Confederate Army at the Battle of Gettysburg. [17] However, even with the shifting of opinion against the South, most white Philadelphians still believed that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Many white Americans continued to believe that the Civil War was a "white man's war" to preserve the Union and nothing more. Abolitionists and black Philadelphians continued to be the targets of mob violence, and some white Philadelphians even blamed the Abolitionists for the war. [18]

With all odds stacked against them, the Abolitionists proclaimed the need to end slavery from the very beginning and identified the structural contradictions that would tear the nation apart. But rather than wait for the gradual disintegration of slavery, the immediatists worked to hasten its destruction. In a society that was for the most part hostile to their cause, the immediatist wing of the abolitionist movement performed the historic duty of following through, with long-term consistency, those revolutionary tactics that alone could save the Union and drive the Civil War to a decisive conclusion. More and more slaves escaping from plantations, the enlistment of black troops into the Union army, the immediate emancipation of slaves throughout the South-these tactics were indeed the only ways out of the difficulties into which the Civil War had descended.

The Civil War stemmed from a breakdown of the structural compromise that developed between two distinct modes of production-northern industrial wage labor, and southern slave labor. The growth and radicalization of the antislavery movement over time made this "unholy alliance" impossible to maintain. In this, the Civil War confirmed the basic lesson of every revolution, which stands the logic of gradualism on its head. Revolution doesn't advance with small increments, with legislative preconditions, but with prompt, uncompromising actions that destabilize the structural limits of the existing system.

The will for revolution can only be satisfied in this way-with strategic, revolutionary activity. Yet the masses of people can only acquire and strengthen the will for revolution in the course of the day-to-day struggle against the existing class order-in other words, within the limits of the existing system. Thus, we run into a contradiction. On the one hand, we have the masses of people in their everyday struggles within a social system; on the other, we have the goal of immediate social revolution, located outside of the existing system. Such are the paradoxical terms of the historical dialectic through which any revolutionary movement makes its way. The immediatists transcended this contradiction by responding to the mass self-activity of the slaves, who in their day-to-day resistance to the slave system offered the Abolitionists a means to realize their revolutionary objectives.

For over three decades, through ebbs and flows, victories and defeats, the immediatists consistently engaged with the everyday struggles of the slave class. They constructed multi-racial, multi-gender organizations that operated both legally and illegally, publicly and secretly, in order to help people emancipate themselves from slavery, to help them stay free, and to help them gain basic legal rights. In doing so, they fostered the development of a revolutionary movement that precipitated the U.S. Civil War and culminated in one of the greatest social revolutions of world history-the emancipation and enfranchisement of millions of slaves and workers in the South during the Reconstruction Era.

By the end of the Civil War, a once-persecuted minority of fanatical Abolitionists were now national leaders. Today we see them as good-hearted activists, or even as moderates. But there should be no mistake about it-all Abolitionists were considered extremists prior to the Civil War, and during most of it. Few people believed that the slave system would fall. The Abolitionists certainly did not believe their revolutionary goal would one day become official government policy. In the end, the Abolitionists recognized the historical crisis in front of them for what it was, and the immediatists responded to it better than any other Abolitionist tendency of their time.

"Lines," Frances Ellen Watkins Harper:

Though her cheek was pale and anxious,

Yet, with look and brow sublime,

By the pale and trembling Future

Stood the Crisis of our time.

And from many a throbbing bosom

Came the words in fear and gloom,

Tell us, Oh! thou coming Crisis,

What shall be our country's doom?

Shall the wings of dark destruction

Brood and hover o'er our land,

Till we trace the steps of ruin

By their blight, from strand to strand?

Arturo Castillon is an independent historian and retail-service worker from Philadelphia, who has participated in movements and struggles against gentrification, police violence, sexual harassment, homophobia, workplace exploitation, and racism.

This article was previously published on the blog of the Tubman-Brown Organization .

Notes

[1] On Harper's and others contributions to the abolitionist movement in Philadelphia, see Still, Underground Rail Road, 740-61; Helens Campbell, "Philadelphia Abolitionists ," The Continent; an Illustrated Weekly Magazine, January 3, 1883, 1-6.

[2] Junius P. Rodriguez, "Immediatism," The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1; A-K (Santa Barbara, California, 1997), 364.

[3] On the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, see Fergus M. Bordenwich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement (New York, 2005), 49; Carol Wilson, "Philadelphia and the Origins of the Underground Railroad," unpublished essay on file in the archives at Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia.

[4] On the radicalization of the antislavery movement in Pennsylvania, see Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2002), chapter 3.

[5] Beverly C. Tomek, "Vigilance Committees," http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/vigilance-committees/

[6] Ibid, Tomek.

[7] Joseph A. Borome, "The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 92 (January 1968); 320-51.

[8] Elizabeth Varon, " 'Beautiful Providences': William Still, the Vigilance Committee, and Abolitionists in the Age of Sectionalism" Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 230-31.

[9] Ibid, Varon; Borome, "The Vigilant Committee of Philadelphia," 320-51.

[10] James A. McGowan, Station Master on the Underground Railroad: the Life and Letters of Thomas Garret (Jefferson, N.C, 2005); Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New York, 2004), 122-25.

[11] Varon, "'Beautiful Providences'" Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia, 233- 34.

[12] For a detailed account of the Jane Johnson rescue and its impactions, see Nat Brandt and Yanna Koyt Brandt, In the Shadow of the Civil War: Passmore Williamson and the Rescue of Jane Jane Johnson (Columbia, South Carolina, 2007).

[13] Ibid, Brandt.

[14] National Anti-Slavery Standard , August 18, 1860.

[15] Russel F. Weigley, "The Border City in Civil War, 1854-1865" Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, (New York and London, 1982), 295-296.

[16] Donald Scott, "Camp William Penn's Black Soldiers in Blue-November '99 America's Civil War Feature" http://www.historynet.com/camp-william-penns-black-soldiers-in-blue-november-99-americas-civil-war-feature.htm .

[17] Ibid, Scott, 389-93.

[18] Ibid, Scott.

How Liberals Depoliticize White Supremacy

By Amir Khafagy

It could be argued that this past year was the year that the term "white supremacy" has gone mainstream. Everybody and their mother is talking about fighting or resisting white supremacy. White leftists are usually the ones who are seemingly throwing themselves on the front lines. They also come across as the most eager to smash white supremacy, ultimately overshadowing the ones who are directly oppressed by it. Since the arrival of Trump, liberals have joined the fray, focusing much of their anger on the man himself.

So, let me be real about this and come out and say that it bothers me. For the longest time I couldn't really articulate it but in my gut something just didn't feel right. The term "white supremacy" has never been a popular colloquial term, nor has it ever been even truly acknowledged by white America as a very real reality for most black Americans. If white supremacy was ever discussed, it was generally talked about in its isolated fringe form and relegated to annals of day-time talk shows.

Throughout the 90s I would remember the times I stayed home from school and watched sensationalist shows such as Jerry Springer or Geraldo Rivera when they would bring on neo-Nazis and Klan members to generate easy ratings. Geraldo even got his nose broken during one episode, when a Klan member threw a chair at his face. For the majority of white liberal Americans of the post-civil rights era, white supremacy has been viewed in the context as a mere relic of history only maintained by isolated, fringe, far-right groups. White supremacy was viewed as a part of history, not as existing in the present or lingering into the future.

Only with the rise of Trump have we begun to have mainstream discussions about the role white supremacy plays in our society. And that's great! We need to be having that discussion. Yet what has been lacking from that conversation is the systematic nature of white supremacy and how it's directly tied to capitalism. Liberals who claim to be part of the "resistance" are acting as if Trump has opened a long, dormant Pandora's Box of hatred, xenophobia, and white supremacy. The "resistance" accuses the current head of the American empire of being a white supremacist fascist, without ever questioning whether or not the American empire is inherently white supremacist in nature.

Much of the focus coming from liberal camps has been on the symbolism of what Trump the individual represents, and not on the material reality of what America represents. With this approach, the horror of white supremacy is ultimately stripped of its historical and current roll in supporting capitalism and empire. It becomes diluted when liberals only see white supremacy through the prism of individualistic, interpersonal relations.

Privilege politics is a manifestation of individualizing white supremacy. If "radical" means "grasping things at the root," like Angela Davis once said, then this myopic approach taken under the banner of privilege politics is the opposite of radical. It is superficial. Rather than recognizing and struggling against the structural forces that create white privilege in the first place, we are instead expected to politely ask that white people somehow give up their privileges; or, at very least, recognize that they have privilege.

It should be obvious to anyone that this approach makes little sense because it forces us to depend on white people to enact symbolic change while we surrender what little power we have in the first place to make fundamental change. Privilege politics also assumes that white supremacy in our society is result of individualistic patterns and behaviors - that is an outlier, not a norm. In reality, people's patterns and behaviors reflect the political and economic conditions of society. Systems don't change because people change, people change because systems change. All of this amounts to the depoliticizing of white supremacy, and it's preventing us from fully understanding that America's foreign, domestic, and economic policy is essentially white supremacy in action, and always has been.

For an example of what the depoliticization of white supremacy looks like, we can assess the reaction to the recent debate between Dr. Cornel West and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In an article he penned for the Guardian, Dr. West put it bluntly and accused Coates of being "the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle." West went on to say that "any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading." He then adds his most powerful indictment by saying "In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical, and unremovable."

In looking past the controversy and fanfare sparked from his article, we can see that West's words and message are crucial. He accurately theorizes that any discussion which removes structural white supremacy from its central role in upholding America's capitalist empire will inadvertently end up reinforcing white supremacy. However, instead of seeing West's critique of Coates as a valid insight on the state of the black liberation struggle, most folks chose to frame the debate as some sort of personal beef between the two most prominent black intellectuals in the country, resembling some sort of Hip-Hop celebrity feud.

Detractors of West, such as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, have even gone on accusing West of "throwing shade" because he's somehow jealous of Coates' success, echoing the same responses given to West's vital critiques of Obama. As if West's criticisms were based on piety narcissism rather than grounded in a legitimate concern for the fate of black America. It's just plain dismissive to reject what West has to say without fully analyzing the points he was trying to make. Borrowing West's own logic, the reactions are indicative of a neoliberal culture that is insistent on removing all traces of critical thinking which challenge the orthodoxy of privilege politics.

Critics of West have completely ignored his points, choosing instead to denounce him as a "washed-up, bitter, old man." An important message has been lost in the winds of this drama. West was trying to make us understand that white supremacy is embedded into every fabric of American life and society. It is not relegated to fringe groups or individuals like Trump, and it is not some mystic force that is indestructible. He wants us to understand that the responsibility to make change is not held by those who have privilege. It's not for them to kindly give up their privilege or come to terms with it; rather, it is our responsibility to struggle against this unjust system that creates such unearned privileges.

Only when we are able to see that the fights against white supremacy and capitalism are interconnected struggles (two sides of the same oppressive coin) is when we will finally be able to make real progress towards liberation. The gatekeepers of neoliberalism come in many forms. West was handing us a key.

Amir Khafagy is a self-described "Arab-Rican" New Yorker. He is well known as a political activist, journalist, writer, performer, and spoken word artist. Amir is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Urban Affairs at Queens College. He can be reached at amirkhafagy@gmail.com

Decolonizing Zwarte Piet

By Darryl Barthe

When I arrived in the Netherlands in March of 2016, I was forewarned by a number of colleagues and friends that the Dutch tradition of Zwarte Piet would challenge me. I'd seen the images of Dutchmen in blackface handing out candy while dressed as Harlequins, but I honestly had no idea how it would affect me until my daughter came home from school with a little "golliwog" figure that she had colored that day as a part of Sinterklaas festivities. I'd heard the arguments from Prime Minister Mark Rutte's people: this is a "normal" expression of Dutch culture. I'd also heard the arguments from Geert Wilder's people (who really didn't sound so different from Rutte's people, in this regard): anyone who has a problem with this part of Dutch culture should get out of the Netherlands. [1]

I like haring. I like being able to ride a bike everywhere. I like the fact that cannabis is decriminalized and that prostitutes are organized into labor unions. However, I do not like racist caricatures of African people that inspire my neighbor from Djibouti to keep her child home from school rather than allow him to be subjected to cartoonish representations of black people as brutish, goofy, slaves. This dilemma inspired me to look to the origins of Zwarte Piet to interrogate this narrative of golliwogs being integral to some Dutch people's sense of national identity.

The connections between the Germanic god of Magic, War and Rulership, known variously as "Woten," "Woden," and "Odin," and "St. Nicholas," "Father Christmas," "Sinterklaas," and "Santa Clause" are convincingly documented by a number of scholars. The figure of "Sleipnir," Odin's 8-legged horse, is re-imagined in the English poem "The Night Before Christmas," as "eight tiny reindeer," for example. The All-father's habit of visiting unsuspecting families and testing their hospitality is the reason that American children leave Santa milk and cookies ("koekjes," being the original Dutch word; what Americans call "cookies" are called "biscuits" in the UK) and why Dutch children leave hay or carrots for Sinterklaas' horse. It is ironic that this tradition, grounded in a belief in the transcendent, moral, value of hospitality, should be expressed in blackface, a mode of drama and comedy steeped in a history of racist dehumanization and exploitation.

In the case of the "naughty" children -those who do not show the All-father hospitality-there are a number of re-interpretations of the Old Norse myth which involved Odin, in some way, cursing the offenders. All involve some reinterpretation of the mythical "svartalfar," or "dark elves," who controlled all the minerals under the mountains. So, good children get gold while bad children get coal; good children get presents while bad children get abducted by the dark elves in a manner suggested by the German Christmas tradition of "Krampus," and the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. In the Santa Claus tradition, the svartalfar have been reimagined as "Santa's elves" who leave children lumps of coal in their stockings if they are naughty, as opposed to treats.

The present tradition of Zwarte Piet can be directly traced to the middle of the 19th-century, and a children's book written by Jan Schenkman,Sint Nikolaas en Zijn Knecht ( Saint Nicholas and his Servant). The myths of the svartalfar were submerged in a colonial narrative of servile (yet simultaneously violent and cruel) "Moors" (or, alternatively, "Spaniards") accompanying the aging (white) patriarch, Sinterklaas, to Holland. When Netherlanders don their blackface and pantaloons, the pre-Christian significance of that imagery -a significance that speaks to an older, pre-Romanized, sense of "Dutchness"-is, for the most part, lost on them. What is confounding, however, is the extent to which the racist, colonial, White Supremacist, significance of that imagery is also lost on many Netherlanders, as well.

Dutch identity, today, is only vaguely related to the Batavians, the ancient Germanic tribe that lived at the Rhine Delta during the 1 st Century CE. Even less so is contemporary Dutch identity related to the Chatti, an ancient Germanic tribe of Lower Saxony and Hesse, from whom the Batavians supposedly descended. Rather, contemporary Dutch identity is most often articulated as the collective social and cultural inheritance of 17th century merchant seamen, who traded mostly in spices and flowers.

There is a vague notion that the Dutch played some role in the slave trade, but only rarely is this fact seriously interrogated in the Netherlands where, according to University of Amsterdam Professor Gloria Wekker, "fear and avoidance of the axis of race/ethnicity are dominant" in academic discourses.[2] The Dutch embrace a view of themselves as a tolerant, anti-racist, people despite the glaring, obvious, historical silences surrounding the brutality of Dutch colonialism, the underlying ideology of racism and White Supremacy that fueled that colonial program, and the lingering effects that that history has had on the Dutch people (and, perhaps more to the point, Dutch people of African descent). My Dutch students often recoil in horror and righteous indignation when I relate the bloody, gory, history of racism and lynching in the US; this is in contrast to the looks of surprise and confusion that I get when I tell those same students that the first enslaved Africans brought to the English colonies in North America were brought there by Dutch sailors.

Every year the Dutch legacy of colonialism (and the attendant white Supremacy that justified the Dutch colonial program) is articulated through the "innocent tradition" of Dutch people donning costumes portraying buffoonish images of fat-lipped, Afro-wearing, golliwogs, prancing about goofily, handing out candy. To suggest that this display accomplishes the racist dehumanization of black people can often invite defensiveness from Dutch people who are genuinely horrified at the thought that anyone would ever call them racist. Many Netherlanders - fair-minded, reasonable people, committed to notions of equality and ideologically opposed to racism and prejudicial discrimination-will admit in candid moments that they honestly cannot understand what it is about Zwarte Piet that is so offensive to black people.

The best among the Dutch are willing to allow space for Black people in the Netherlands to explain it to them. Since 2013, there has been a growing movement to discontinue the portrayal of Zwarte Piet. In 2014, the city of Amsterdam decided to discontinue the blackface tradition. In 2015, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the Netherlands to confront the problem of this national celebration of racist stereotypes, a suggestion the Dutch government took under advisement. Not all Netherlanders are so reasonable, however.

A few weeks ago, pro Zwarte Piet demonstrators blocked a highway, preventing antiracist activists from marching on the city of Dokkum where "traditional" Zwarte Piet celebrations were commencing. Mark Rutte's response to the (illegal blockade) protest was to suggest that children should not be forced to deal with angry Zwarte Piet demonstrators when they were simply out for a little Christmas fun: "Sinterklaas is een mooie traditie, een kinderfeest. Dus laten we met elkaar een beetje normaal doen" ("Sinterklaas is a beautiful tradition, a children's holiday party. So, let's all get together and be a little normal"). [3]

I am certain that Mark Rutte was unaware of the deep irony in his suggestion that racist theater represented Dutch "normality." For the most part, the sort of active, aggressive, racial hatred that exists in colonial contexts (like the US, for example,) does not exist in the Netherlands. At the same time, the racism of the Dutch colonial program was always buttressed by a principle of "white normativity" which posited only white people as people, and which recognized the humanity of non-white people only to the extent that those non-white people resembled (and internalized the value systems of) white people. That principle of white normativity -a passive, unaggressive, racism which even allows for individual kindness and intimacy, including the legendary "black friend," or even the occasional black spouse- defines the parameters of the discourse on race in the Netherlands and that will not change until the Dutch start honestly confronting their own history of racism and colonial violence, and not until the vantages of people of color in the Netherlands are properly integrated into Dutch notions of "normaal."

Notes

[1] See Mark Rutte, "Lees hier de brief van Mark," (VVD.nl, 22 January 2017) https://www.vvd.nl/nieuws/lees-hier-de-brief-van-mark/ (accessed December 23, 2017). See also Ben Winsor, "Wilders prepares law to protect 'Zwarte Piet' holiday blackface," ( SBS.com.au, February 16, 2017) https://www.sbs.com.au/news/wilders-prepares-law-to-protect-zwarte-piet-holiday-blackface (accessed December 23, 2017).

[2] Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 52.

[3] "Zwarte Piet supporters close motorway to stop demo as Sinterklass arrives" (DutchNews.nl, November 18, 2017), http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/11/zwarte-piet-supporters-close-motorway-to-stop-demo-as-sinterklaas-arrives-in-dokkum/ (accessed December 23, 2017); "Premier Rutte over Zwarte Piet-discussie: 'Laten we een beetje normaal doen'" ( rtvnoord.nl, November 18, 2017), https://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/186365/Premier-Rutte-over-Zwarte-Piet-discussie-Laten-we-een-beetje-normaal-doen (accessed December 23, 2017).

Hashtag Me Two: Reflections on Women's Solidarity

By Michelle Black Smith

When Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano tweeted #MeToo in solidarity with the all too many women who have been subjected to sexual assault and harassment, she started a firestorm, but not a movement. That distinction belongs to Tarana Burke, founder of the nonprofit Just Be Inc., an organization devoted to the "health, well being and wholeness of young women of color everywhere." Burke created the Me Too movement in 2006 after listening to young women speak of their experiences with sexual abuse. Burke, who has remained active in the fight for women's health and justice, raised the antennae of numerous women of color. Much to the chagrin of some, Burke was largely unacknowledged by many notable white feminists.

Burke's niche popularity and subsequent rise to prominence following research into the origins of the hashtag MeToo bring to the forefront a troubling but persistent state of being for white and black women in the struggle: how the former can be entirely committed to the equality of all women, and the latter become trustful of a group with members who have practiced betrayal in every movement central to the freedom of women, from the suffrage movement to women's rights to women's rights redux in 2016. This tension, existent since African girls and women arrived on American shores, shape shifts, becoming more or less easy to grasp with each decade but never abates. #MeToo is a powerful and galvanizing tool in the chest of women who wield it to assert voice while feeling support and safety in numbers. For her part, Burke has supported the hashtag with her own tweets. Yet, the movement Me Too, the #MeToo, and Burke's reaction to it leapfrog us backward in time to the mid-1800s when Sojourner Truth stood before a large conference of white women to assert her pain, her struggle, her femininity before a feminist gathering that recognized oppression through a narrow, exclusionary gaze. The "Ain't I a Woman" declaration by Truth has come under skepticism in recent years as histories of her direct quote and reaction to it at the 1851 Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio differ. What is certain: the "Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?" motto dates back to the British abolitionist movement of the 1820s, and the American abolitionist movement of the 1830s. Sojourner Truth, as her surname suggests, was in fact calling for a political landscape in which white men acknowledged the equality of black people and all women, and surrendered to the inevitability of power sharing. Fast forward to the present and Truth might be surprised to learn that the basic tenets of the struggle have not changed. White men and women are still fighting over power between themselves while black women are positioned in the middle, still having to determine who is an ally while carving out their own spheres of power and protecting their flanks.

The position of black women located between and behind white women and men is historical fact and contemporaneously significant. From the first wave of Africans landing on America's shores to the legal end of slavery in 1865, black girls and women were routinely caught between two brutal masters - the white men who owned and raped them, and the white women who commanded and resented them. There are documented examples of emotionally and spiritually mature white women who saw the enslaved woman's status as a moral dilemma if not a legal crime. Those legally free women sought to protect their sisters in bondage within their realms of power, their ability ranging from meager to substantial. That protection could take the form of bringing the enslaved woman from the fields to the big house, negotiating terms for the woman to grow special food or make extra clothes, or teaching her children - often the mistresses de facto step-children - how to read. More often, the enslaved girl or woman was seen as the "mistress," the adulterous female stealing affection and corrupting the slave master. Moreover, the enslaved woman was often a surrogate - the proxy sexual partner who relieved the slave master's spouse of her "wifely duties."

So, it is against this historical backdrop that I begin to examine my own unease with #MeToo, the hashtag and the movement. My black woman's cellular memory is wary, concerned that a repeat scenario of Sojourner Truth's experience in Akron is eminent. And it is. Witness the statistical majority of white women who voted for Donald Trump. While ninety-four per cent of black women voted for the over 60, flawed but unarguably qualified white woman, fifty-three per cent of white women voted to elect the over 70, sexually aggressive, "pussy-grabbing" unproven and underqualified man to the most powerful political office in the country. If white women cannot in a majority vote in their best interest, where does that place black women and other women of color in an ostensibly inclusive feminist struggle?

Simultaneously and increasingly, I am made uneasy by the number of complaints against prominent men concerning their sexually aggressive behaviors ranging from harassment to criminal assault. Are the accusations reported in the media indicative of actions by powerful men limited to certain professions, or are these pervasive behaviors that go largely unreported or unaddressed in spaces not commonly held in the public eye? Will the volume of complaints begin to desensitize a society to the grievances of wronged women? Will society become desensitized to the point of discouraging women from speaking out, thus victimizing the very population that deserves justice for the violence done to them? The feminist in me rejects any inclination to discount the legions of women who have come forward in the wake of the first Harvey Weinstein allegations, arguably the opening of the floodgate. My concern for humanity wants to place a protective arm around every niece, sister or girlfriend's daughter who might be a victim of the abhorrent and/or criminal behaviors named. The black activist in me struggles to understand how Bill Cosby is more dangerous and newsworthy than Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes. The womanist in me can't comprehend how so many of my white sisters could practice such an obvious act of self-hatred and sacrifice of self-interest that the result is a 21st century America that feels as perilous to me in my time as my grandmother must have felt in hers, as Sojourner Truth must have felt in hers. To be sure, Ms. Truth's life had none of the choices, freedoms or protections that I enjoy in mine. However, fear, like power, is both relative and real.

So, this January 20, 2018, I contemplate with apprehension whether to participate in the second national Women's March. Proximity is not an issue - I am an hour away from New York City. My late mother, a smart, progressive, self-loving and self-respecting black woman, was born on January 20th - I could march in honor of her. Or would she consider my marching honorable? A part of me thinks staying home will honor her as well. But, to stand in truth, and to stand with Truth is, for this black woman, the opportunity to wield my power, claim possession over my body, celebrate the black female aesthetic, and resist the simultaneous over-sexualizing and de-sexualizing of the black feminine form.

Let me be clear, I am not marching for the self-loathing, naval-gazing women who voted against their self-interests and mine. However, I will march for their offspring. If I march, I put foot to pavement to honor my mother and all the Sojourners of this world. I will march in support of the girls and young women and the vulnerable women who do not (yet) share my fully realized place in this world. I will march with the same pride I felt watching women of all colors, self-identifiers, cultural, ideological and faith backgrounds organize, lead and participate in the march of January 2017. I will not, however, accept the number two spot in a movement that only purports to empower and include all women. I will not proclaim "me too" at any white woman's latest ambivalent protest against a white male patriarchy where I am cast as the interloper in a marital spat. I can, however, walk alongside my white feminist sisters, as long as they are able and willing to walk alongside black womanist me.

Works Cited

Garcia, Sandra E. "The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags." The New York Times 20 Oct. 2017 <https://mobile.nytimes.com>

Just Be Inc ., Tarana Burke <https://about.me>

Young, Gifted, and Black: Art's Power for the People

By Corinna Lotz

Outside the door opening up to the Soul of a Nation exhibition at Tate Modern screens offer vintage news footage of Black leaders Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Angela Davis.

These men and women - two of whom were assassinated - shaped the political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. The echo of their voices lends resonance to Nina Simone's call for artists to reflect their times.

In the wake of white supremacist brutality in Ferguson and Charlottesville, revisiting the Black power movement in America has gained a new urgency.

Soul of a Nation shows how artists were swept up in the struggle against the oppression of the institutionally racist US state. Through determined resistance, self-organisation, self-education and study of revolutionary theory, the movement and its artists asserted the possibility of a non-racist and revolutionary culture.

Support for Black power arose out of frustration with the pacifist orientation of the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King. Leaders like Malcolm X called for justice "by any means necessary".

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party in October 1966 to defend victims of police violence. The party championed Black self-determination. At the same time, its 10-point programme was distinctly anti-capitalist and socialist. It appealed to all oppressed and working class people to unite against the ruling classes and the state.

But the US state struck back. Under its chief, J Edgar Hoover, the FBI's counter intelligence programme (COINTELPRO) targeted Black Panther leaders. Police backed by FBI agents murdered Black Panther leaders around the country. Amongst the first to be killed in this way was the BPP's 21-year-old deputy chair, the talented and popular organiser, Fred Hampton. After being drugged by an FBI agent, Hampton was shot whilst asleep in his bed. It was an act of extreme brutality commemorated by artist Dana C Chandler in his reconstruction Fred Hampton's Door.

David Hammons' multi-media Injustice Case (1970) leaps out of the wall: shadowy body marks move around like ghostly x-rays on a white background, framed by the Stars and Stripes. Hammons used imprints of his own body on paper in this cry of anger against the treatment of Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale. Seale was bound and gagged by the trial judge when he was accused of conspiracy after anti-war demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Emory Douglas became the Panthers' Minister of Culture designing a remarkable series of propaganda posters and back covers for The Black Panther newspaper. Large-scale outdoor murals gave artists a chance to reach out to large numbers of people. The famous Wall of Respect, which 14 artists painted on a derelict building in Chicago's South Side in 1967, commemorated Black heroes and heroines including Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin and Martin Luther King. It was part of a nation-wide mural movement.

Black and Asian photographers made a special contribution. They celebrated the streets and inhabitants of Harlem as well as engaging in more abstract and lyrical subjects - musicians and singers in performance, still lives and nudes. Just waiting to be re-discovered is a 1955 photo book, The Sweet Flypaper of Life. It is a miniature gem of a story by Langston Hughes accompanied by Roy DeCarava's photographs.

Controversies arose about whether Black art had to be figurative or openly propagandist or whether the artist could work in an abstract idiom. Some like Jack Whitten used abstraction to pay homage to Malcolm X and African American history. British-Guyanese painter, Frank Bowling, took part in these debates. His magisterial Middle Passage features in the second to last space. A superb display of his work is currently at Munich's Haus der Kunst .

The last space at Tate Modern takes on a new spirit of joy in the inventiveness of Lorraine Grady who involved hundreds of people on a parade celebrating Harlem's African American Day Parade.

This is a knock-out show. Go and see it.

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power will be on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas at the beginning of 2018 and at the Brooklyn Museum in New York from September 18, 2018.

This article was originally published at the Real Democracy Movement

...And (Quality) Education For All: A Case Study on Race, Poverty, and Education in America

By Milo Levine

Four years ago, when senior Tre'chaun Berkley first came to Tamalpais High School (Mill Valley, CA) from Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, he was nervous. "I felt that I wasn't ready. Coming from a class with 11 students to a class with 20 is something I had to get used to," he said. "On top of that, [I worried about] not knowing how to speak with the people in my class, because I don't speak as proper [as them], so they wouldn't probably understand me or they would make fun [of] the way I say something," he said. Berkley is not alone. Many students of color that come to "Tam" from Marin City experience societal and systemic hardships that disrupt their educational experience.

"The Academic Achievement Gap"

We live in Marin County: the 17th wealthiest county in the country, and also one of the most segregated.

This segregation manifests itself in what teachers and administrators call "the academic achievement gap." According to the Glossary of Education Reform, an achievement gap is "any significant and persistent disparity in academic performance or educational attainment between different groups of students, such as white students and minorities, or students from higher-income and lower-income households."

This problem is very much alive in the Tam community. "The achievement gap correlates to socioeconomic status, and it is a countywide, statewide, and nationwide issue," Sausalito Marin City School District (SMCSD) Board of Trustees President Joshua Barrow said. "This is not something new. It's been around for decades."

Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy (MLK) and charter school Willow Creek Academy (WCA) are both part of SMCSD. Mill Valley Middle School (MVMS) is part of the Mill Valley School District (MVSD). MLK and WCA teach students in grades K-8, while MVMS teaches students in grades 6-8. All three schools feed into Tam, and though they're within four miles of each other, they couldn't be more different.

The aforementioned schools differ significantly in statewide testing results. Student skill, knowledge, and achievement are largely measured by the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) scores. This test is given to students in grades 3-8 and 11. There is a large disparity in student performance when MLK and WCA are compared to MVMS. CAASPP determined that 77 percent of MVMS students are proficient in math, and 83 percent are proficient in English. In stark contrast, 25 percent of MLK students are proficient in math and 25 percent are proficient in English, well below the statewide average of 37 percent in math and 48 percent in English. WCA passed more students than the state's average in both math and English, at 43 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

CAASPP also reports that 82 percent of MLK students and 40 percent of WCA students are either African American or Hispanic. These two demographics perform the lowest in both math and English testing at Tamalpais High School. According to CAASPP, 31 percent of Hispanic students are proficient in math and 36 percent are proficient in English, while only 17 percent of black students are proficient in math and only 23 percent are proficient in English.

These results are heavily influenced by both race and poverty, given that white Tam students from low-income families also receive significantly lower test scores when compared to the general population, but higher test scores than students of color.

Only 3 percent of African American students attending WCA are proficient in math, and only 10 percent are proficient in English. Among low-income students, who make up 42 percent of WCA's population, 23 percent are proficient in math and 35 percent are proficient in English. At MLK, 17 percent of black students are proficient in math and 14 percent are proficient in English. While these statistics highlight SMCSD's shortcomings, they also show that there is a significant racial element to the achievement gap.

The principal of MLK, Dr. Chappelle Griffin, did not respond to multiple email requests for comment.

At Tam, multiple former MLK students said they felt under-served by the teachers at MLK. Freshman Tyrell Atkinson went to MLK from grades K-7, but transferred to WCA for the 8th grade. "I learned a lot in math and English [at MLK], but in all the other [subjects] I didn't," Atkinson said. "The bad teachers let us do whatever we wanted, and we had a sub every week. [I received] average grades, even though I didn't learn a lot from most teachers."

Atkinson said his school experience changed after he transferred. "At WCA they didn't give us much homework like they did at MLK. The teachers were nice and taught us a lot. It was an improvement over MLK," he said.

Unlike Atkinson, sophomore Daeshawn Burr attended MLK for the entirety of his pre-high school education. "MLK was academically bad for me," he said. "They weren't teaching us some stuff that we needed to learn. When I came to Tam I felt underprepared."

Burr elaborated on his rough transition. "I had an F in [Algebra 1-2], both semesters last year," he said. Although he admits that "I wasn't pushing myself to do well," he also added, "My [freshman math teacher] was kind of bad. She was all over the place. I went up to her to get help a few times, but she never helped me. I think she was probably busy." Burr is now in Algebra Foundations.

Tam Social Studies teacher Dr. Claire Ernst defended Tam, in response to Burr's claim that he was underserved by a school instructor. "Our job is to teach all students and to differentiate [instruction] so every student can learn and succeed," she said. "Math poses a lot of challenges in that regard, but our math department in general does a great job. A lot of support is available for kids that need it."

However, Ernst does notice a pattern among the students who require the most additional academic support. "Broadly speaking, students that have been through MLK come in with fewer skills," she said. If a student is struggling, Ernst said she will "meet [the student] at tutorial, restructure assignments, break things into smaller pieces, [and] individualize attention during class."

Berkley, who came to Tam from MLK, also spoke about a rocky transition to high school. "I wanted to go [to MLK], because it was close to my house and in my neighborhood, [but] I didn't feel prepared coming here from MLK," he said. Berkley had a particularly challenging time upon arrival at Tam. "It was a bigger school and I didn't know a lot of the students," he said.

Senior Jaiana Harris, who went to MLK and WCA, has also experienced a fair amount of alienation at Tam. "At MLK everyone's black, but [at Tam] you feel like an outsider," Harris said. Multiple African American students expressed outrage over how welcomed they were by the Tam athletic community, only to then be rejected come school time.

"We are only important during sports, but when it comes to academics, they don't care about us," Harris said, as several nearby African American students chimed in with their agreement. "[Black students] are used for sports… and during the classroom, [there's] no love for us," Berkley added.

Racial issues arise frequently at Tam, unbeknownst to many white members of the community.

"Students feel isolated, due to being black and alone in a class…You feel like you don't belong," Principal J.C. Farr said. At Tam, events such as Breakthrough Day, which took place on February 27 (2017), can help the community unite to mend issues of racial segregation. However, many minority students felt that Breakthrough Day didn't do enough. "I thought [Breakthrough Day] was a waste of time, because it was teachers running it instead of students, and all our teachers that ran it are white," junior Pedro Mira said.

Another issue, according to freshman Ta'Naejah Reed, was a widespread indifference expressed by white students during the day's activities. "I felt [Breakthrough Day] was good, but people couldn't really connect. If you weren't colored or weren't a different race you didn't really connect to it and it wasn't that important," she said.

Breakthrough Day may have catalyzed conversations about race at Tam, even though it evidently left plenty to be desired. Regardless, the Tam administration is actively exploring race and poverty, with regards to the achievement gap. "It's a very complex issue," Farr said. "Some of it is due to preparation and the quality of middle school education."

Chaotic Teacher Turnover

Farr went on to explain one problem in particular that MLK recently faced. "They went months without having a single math teacher for the 8th grade. Those who even receive instruction are greatly advantaged," he said.

Berkley has experienced firsthand MLK's chaotic teacher turnover. "There were so many teacher switches at MLK. There were always new teachers and subs. It was confusing," he said. Almost every former MLK student interviewed mentioned teacher turnover as a substantial difficulty.

SMCSD has had an ongoing problem with teacher turnover, especially as of late. "Sausalito Marin City is a revolving door district. Statistically, having good teachers is the most important thing, and there is definitely more turnover than you want to see," Barrow said.

Referring to MLK's math teaching vacancy, Barrow said they had had a teacher lined up to fill the position, but he quit unexpectedly after a week.

"I don't know the reasons why he left. It could have been culture shock. Maybe he had another job lined up. It takes a special kind of teacher to operate in this environment," Barrow said. "Money doesn't drive the turnover. People just like to be involved in something successful."

The Shanker Institute reported significantly higher turnover rates at schools with a large disadvantaged population, compared to schools with a smaller disadvantaged population. When 34 percent or less of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, teacher turnover rates average 12.8 percent per year. At schools where upwards of 75 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, teacher turnover rates nearly double, to an average of 22 percent per year.

Acknowledging that "all teachers are special in their own right," Barrow listed some of the qualities that make a person a good fit for working at MLK. "[They need a] desire to work with low-income and minority students, cultural awareness and sensitivity, particularly with African American, Hispanic, and the many other ethnic groups we serve, [and the] ability to work in a small district which may not have the specialization, process maturity, systems, or support structures of a large district," he said.

In a research analysis report, the Center for Public Education corroborated Barrow's analysis, suggesting that a good teacher is integral to student success. "Research consistently shows that teacher quality-whether measured by content knowledge, experience, training and credentials, or general intellectual skills-is strongly related to student achievement: Simply, skilled teachers produce better student results," the organization reported.

Tam has recently taken on an active role in trying to stop MLK's teacher carousel. "[Math department teacher leader] David Wetzel was assigned to teach at MLK, part time, for the semester," Farr said.

"MLK, for over a year, did not have a math teacher, so I asked the school to let me go over there to teach math and they said yes. I have been teaching there [part time] since the start of the semester," Wetzel said.

This is not the first time Wetzel has sought to help the academically challenged school. "Ten years ago, students coming [to Tam] from MLK were underperforming, so we started the MLK Math Transition Program, and MLK student's performance went up," he said. "Then SMCSD canceled the program, after three years, and performance went down again." Wetzel and Barrow both said that they did not know why the program had been cancelled.

Regardless, things are now looking up for MLK 8th graders, according to Wetzel. "The students are very grateful and positive now that they have a math teacher again. They are working very hard to learn as much material as possible," he said. From SMCSD's point of view, Barrow said, "The Wetzel situation is kind of like a band-aid. It's a temporary fix."

Funding, Education, and Added Stressors

Teacher pay could be a factor in SMCSD's turnover problem, given that teachers at MVMS have a higher average salary than teachers MLK or WCA. However, it would appear that funding in general is not the main driving force behind the district's poor academic performance. "On dollars per student, SMCSD is far ahead of MVSD, even after all of Kiddo's contributions," said Barrow.

Kiddo, which Barrow is referring to, is a nonprofit founded in 1982 that funds all Mill Valley School District (MVSD) campuses, covering kids from kindergarten to 8th grade. In the 2015-2016 school year alone, Kiddo raised almost $3.5 million for the district. A vast majority of this money goes straight into the schools.

Barrow is convinced that there are many other causes at play, unrelated to finances. "It's not all about money. It's about leadership, structure, consistency, and many other factors," he said. "I wouldn't say that Kiddo is why MVSD is doing so great. It helps, but it's not primary, and I don't know what they're doing right, but I do know that they have [a greater] size and a [smaller] disadvantaged population."

Students who come from low-income families face many academic obstacles. In their book about improving school performance, William Parrett and Kathleen Budge, both of whom have Ph.Ds in the educational field, wrote that "[Students living in poverty] may have limited access to high-quality day care, limited access to before-or after-school care, and limited physical space in their homes to create private or quiet environments conducive to study." They also reported that economic privilege manifests itself early, and those who don't have it suffer from the start. "…Substandard housing, inadequate medical care, and poor nutrition can affect the rate of childhood disease, premature births, and low birth weights, all of which affect a child's physical and cognitive development," they wrote.

In addition to navigating potential stressors at home, many students reported struggling with an environment at MLK that they did not find conducive to learning. "It was so easy to get in trouble there. It's a small classroom, with all of your friends. A lot of students in there were messing around and stopping the class," Berkley said. When faculty tried to intervene with students' misbehavior, Berkley felt that it sometimes made things worse.

"[I had an] English teacher [who] was too busy punishing kids that she didn't teach us anything," he said.

Berkley was not the only MLK alum whose experience was marred significantly by feuds between the students and the adults. Many felt that the constant conflict hampered their ability to learn much at all.

On the other end of the spectrum, MVMS alumna and current Tam sophomore Alexis Detjen-Creson said, "The school [MVMS] made sure that you did well. If you were struggling, the teacher would talk to you in private about getting your performance back on track."

Compounding the inequities between the two districts is the contrast in their sizes. Because MVSD has a massive population of around 3,400 students, compared to the relatively tiny SMCSD population of 540 students, it has more resources and can operate more efficiently. "[SMCSD] is one of the smallest [districts] in Marin. There are nineteen school districts in the county. We need to fix that," Barrow said.

Barrow has started a committee to try to combine SMCSD and MVSD into one district. "To consolidate like this, you need to hold a vote on it. If it got through, the governing board and the voters would be invested in improving Sausalito Marin City student's performance. The community at large would be pushing for this betterment," Barrow said. The community, in this case, would be families from Sausalito, Marin City, and Mill Valley, all working together to accomplish the same goal: improving academic success. The issue has not yet been brought to a vote; however, for the measure to pass, two-thirds of voters would have to approve it, a tall order for any bill.

Politics and Education

SMCSD has been subject to a fair amount of controversy as of late, primarily due to the release of a Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) report, an organization that investigates the financial status of local educational agencies. Published on August 10, 2016, the report concluded that: "The district has not met the needs of students at Bayside MLK, and the result is that students are underachieving." More specifically, MLK students are scoring well below average in statewide testing, in addition to being outperformed by their own district counterpart: WCA.

The assessment has since been disputed by SMCSD, who stated on their website that "The report was called into question by the Sausalito Marin City School District Board of Trustees, as it contained several factual inaccuracies and unfounded allegations."

The political controversy surrounding SMCSD can distract from the most important issue: the well-being and success of the students. There are some external organizations that are actively helping out, such as Marin Promise, which aims to propel disadvantaged students through high school and into college. There has been an increased effort to improve student's 9th grade math readiness, and Wetzel is currently working with the group to find solutions.

Another group is Bridge the Gap College Prep, which is a "college preparatory and youth development organization that provides programming aimed at preparing Marin City students for college success," according to their mission statement.

The effectiveness of such programs cannot accurately be measured at this time, due to a lack of available information and statistics from said non-profits.

Barrow has made an effort to address the matter at an earlier grade level "By high school, it's too late to integrate low and high income students," he said.

Measure A of 2016, a bill that would have, among many other things, created low price or free preschool for underserved children in Marin County, failed. This was a great disappointment for Barrow, who was hoping to improve kid's readiness for kindergarten.

The Marin GOP was a staunch opponent of Measure A, due to a common conservative opposition to welfare expansion. This may have resulted in the failure of the bill, even in a predominantly liberal area.

Granted, it's best to confront the achievement gap with younger kids, but high schools still have to take responsibility for their role in the issue, according to Farr. "We are amping up transition programs over the summer, to build up student's skills," said Principal Farr. "[It has taken me] some time to try and develop an understanding of the situation." Farr wants the Tam community to know that "We're committed to addressing the achievement gap."

Despite facing many obstacles throughout his educational career, Senior Tre'chaun Berkley is now looking to move forward, via higher education. After looking into various options, he finally made his decision. "I'm going to go to a community college, then [I'll] transfer into a university after two years," Berkley said. Reflecting on his time in high school, he added, "For the future [minority] students [at Tam], I want to say look to be a leader, [not] a follower."

Milo Levine is a student-journalist who serves as a news editor and editorial board member for The Tam News, a school paper located in Mill Valley, CA. Milo has won a national Certificate of Merit from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.