'If Neal Street Could Talk: 2008-09-14

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

The Spirit In The Sky

Excerpt from Chapter Four of Woodruff Park:

“Every morning in this land, hundreds of precious Afrikan children will awaken to consume copious amounts of grain, laced with a white adulterated sweetener; just one molecule away from crack cocaine. They will then douse themselves with the mother’s milk of another animal. I can imagine cows speaking amongst themselves saying, “Damn they nasty, I wouldn’t drink their milk!” After receiving their proscribed initial morning high, these drugged up highly addicted drug addict adolescent children will then chaotically run, prior to receiving hours of Apart-Hate education, to the nearest neighborhood candy store; where they will make more sugary drug deals, this time with strange speaking sometimes kindly, sometimes evil foreigners, who will spend their days in these drugged up children’s ghettos, often in total recall of the Black American soldiers who once fought their grand daddies in their own homes. In an economic sense, these little precious drug addicted Black children awaken each morning to watch the rape of their mother, over and over and over again.
This is a community that is clearly under seize; where early on in life, one is made witness to foreign occupiers who spend their days suckling away at the economic life of a people; only to make safe passage back into their own communities, in order to prepare their bounty for yet another day of ritual feasting. Where Black mothers once eked out a merge existence for their families, having white children to suckle at their breast, today the Black child is forced to suckle at the breast of indifference and alienation; and this is a community that has watched truth and falsehood suckle at the same breast for far too long.
The scene is played out over and over again everyday, all over these rolling hills, where foreign occupiers in the hood, run the legal storefront trade safely inside, and young ‘White T’s’ learn to survive, in their own neighborhoods, under a watchful eye, running an illicit trade outdoors. It must be a strange thing to be a foreigner in the land of your birth, because a whole nation seems to consider you and your people mealy consumers, and useless eaters, and your community becomes the political dumping grounds for the nation’s ills. You are colonized, from within, and from without, and alienated in your own homeland, and the world looks on at you with mock indifference. Death comes easy!”

From The Back Cover:

‘Numerous characters inhabit the extraordinary Universe that is the epic narrative world of Woodruff Park. There are creatures large and small, both mortal and supernatural, human and anthropomorphic, ancient and legendary, gods and goddesses, Black leaders, and common folk, some righteous and others not so righteous; and then there are those who only live in ‘blackface’. Nevertheless, all help to curry an original mythos with a distinctly African American Cultural Worldview. Here lies the painful residue that betrays the living witness of mute human discourse hiding inconspicuously behind the veil of Black life in America.

Read through these pages and witness the agonizing and dualistic, seemingly ‘flick-ted’ and schizophrenic Negro personality painfully attempting to negotiate its “two warring minds in one dark body!” ———with its human host hoping only at best to “dodge the spit of ‘their Fellows!’ Nevertheless, this is a world where there exist little dichotomy between the human experience and that of the supernatural world. Through both triumph and tragedy, in both word and deed, these are the passions uttered only in the hush houses of American life. It is an enchanted journey through the sparse foliage of a myriad of uniquely American ‘rituals of deception’. A world born of ‘The Maafa’, and viewed back of the psychopathology and the ‘tricknology’ that appears to hover ever-present upon the illusionary surface of everyday life within the legendary colonial-settler state. This is a place where passions live sheltered lives, like bizarre bitter secrets left perpetually untold; like some deformed twin left hidden in the basement. Of course, we all know that she is there but, ‘we really not supposed to talk about it!’

Woodruff Park eludes all of those fears and engages the reader on a truly enchanted sojourn through a spectacular epic of time and space; and into an authentic world of infinite possibilities. We encounter Auyurashia, the beautiful and seductive water-spirit, Queen of the Dammed and over-seerer of the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It is she who is the comforter to one hundred million tortured souls once carelessly cast into the sea. “I alone control the weather!” she declares. Then, there is Asi Yahola, The Black Drink Singer, come back to the South as a maniacal trickster in the satirical guise of a Harpy Eagle; still forever mocking the U.S. Government. We meet a large family of Live Oak trees (The Crying Trees) that actually do cry real tears in deep never-ending angst towards their complicity in so many senseless lynchings. And, who could ever forget the endearing Little Hannibal; the boy who would slay a Goliath and became a legend overnight. There are mortals, some of which are just so inconceivably cruel, and others possessing humanity so deeply profound that it will simply take your breath away.

This is the world that engulfs you in a Universe unapologetically set in Afrikan Time. Here is Truth spoken to Power with undaunted clarity, self-determination, and Sweet Butter Love; over a vast range of (his-) storical issues, events, and ideas. When viewed through the lens of Black life in America, this is Ourstory, reclaimed for ourselves through the inherently pure and indigenous ethos of a voice that actually looks like us! Yet, this is a vision that actually speaks to all humanity. That’s What’s Up!’

Visit My Profile at http://taschenge.writersresidence.com

Join Me also at www.woodruffpark.wordpress.com

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Why Lady Rothschild’s Rhetoric Against Obama Is Inherently Racist

After taking the time to write an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining why she in now switching her allegiance to John McCain, former Democratic Platform Committee-woman and long-time fundraising surrogate of Hillary Clinton, Lady Rothschild has gone the offensive against Barack Obama. On Thursday morning she seemed to have had a sleepover at the CNN studios in order to continue her curious and garbled broadsides against the Democratic nominee. Her actions and comments appear to be truly personal. To a seasoned observer however, there could be no doubt that they are inherently racist.

Remember now, this is a woman who married into the truly elite billionaire Rothschild family. Yet, she says that she is supporting his opponent because she feels that Obama is “full of himself”. “He is an elitist” she says who “thinks that he is better than everyone else”. His elitism she continues is just “something that you know when you see it!” and he is full of “rhetoric with no substance!” Umm! Curious indeed!

In America, racism is treated like some deformed child that the family keeps hidden in the basement. We all know that it is there, but we really not supposed to talk about it. Unfortunately, I’ve never subscribed to such foolishness.

Her comments are actually a throwback to the barbaric macabre days of Jim Crow Apart-Hate. It was a brutal time when accomplished (especially well dressed) Black men were often deemed ‘uppity’ (read ‘elite’ /’celebrity’) and actually lynched north and south at the slightest whim of White accusation.

So too, Lady Rothschild has easily fallen in line with the Karl Rove racist three part strategy to defeat Barack Obama. It goes like this: Part One: The Countee Cullen (‘to make a poet Black and bid him sing!’). Ultimately, this was only accomplished by linking him with the forged image of an angry Black man. Part Two: The Eloquent Trickster. No matter how replete his speeches or comments always maintain that ‘there is just no substance whatsoever!’ It is all ‘just rhetoric’; like the proverbial empty suit. He is to be painted in the stereotypical guise of a Chris Tucker, Martin Lawrence, or Eddie Murphy caricature. No matter what he says, always maintain that he is just ‘jive talking’. At last, Part Three: The ‘Uppity’-‘Elite’-‘Celebrity’ Negro. “Hey, look at him. He thinks he’s better than us. Lynch him. Lynch him!” That’s What’s Up!

Keep you eyes open for the October Surprise; the ‘new and reveling’ Weather Underground connection. Mark my words!

The Joshua Generation

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay

The Spirit In The Sky

A Novel by T.S. Aschenge

From The Back Cover:

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Why Lady Rothschild’s Rhetoric Against Obama Is Inherently Racist

Blog Archive