The Rise of the "Neo-Negro"

This post is from a Special guest contributer to the Blog; My Dad! It's a powerful post, hope you enjoy...

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When you’re called a nigger you look at your father because you think your father can rule the world—every kid thinks that—and then you discover that your father cannot do anything about it. So you begin to despise your father and you realize, oh, that’s what a nigger is.

-James Baldwin (1924–87), U.S. author. A Dialogue (1973; with Nikki Giovanni), from a conversation, 4 Nov. 1971, in London.

The Neo-Negro

Neo-Negroes are Americans of African or mixed African descent who show a marked preference for far right wing neo-conservative ideologies and are opposed to efforts to continue affirmative legal action against racism and discrimination. This designation is particularly applicable to those who, having benefited from affirmative civil rights legislation in the past, now wish to reverse such legislation and deny those benefits to the generations to come.

Not wishing to be all closely associated with Blacks, they tend to seek out friends and long term relationships with non-African Americans, and while it is not unusual for them, like other closet reactionaries, to hide their true motivations behind the convenient cloak of “libertarianism,” their compulsive preoccupation with race becomes all the more obvious by their obsessive focus on ignoring, changing or eliminating racial classifications and reversing civil rights legislation; matters that are of little urgency to true race neutral libertarians.

Their ultimate goal, if carried to its logical conclusions would, in fact, eliminate the black race as a legal entity. It would actually end racial discrimination as a matter of 'law' while leaving racial discrimination as a matter of 'fact', free to spread like a virus with no cure. That is why they are so coveted by the neocon movement. They would end the problem of racism by fiat; eliminate the crime by simply legalizing the act. (One might wonder if they feel equally as libertarian in their position on illegal drug usage…) In any event, they truly live in a fool’s paradise; which is probably amusing to many of their neocon “friends.”

The Neo-Negro solution to racism is the “Unilateral Fiat” used, most infamously, by GW Bush in his “Mission Accomplished” speech to declare unilateral victory over one problem while blithely ignoring the far greater emerging dangers in the ensuing situation.

In similar fashion, from their high towered house of cards, propped up by neocon puppet masters and paid for by civil rights battles of the past, modern self-congratulating Neo-Negroes, can only secure their own prominent positions by declaring mission accomplished and turning a blind eye to the deteriorating situation outside of their own immediate environment. This is the hallmark of the Neo-Negro, who under no circumstances should be confused with the many hard working successful African Americans who openly acknowledge their debt to the civil rights sacrifices of the past and who are still willing to take positive steps to insure that the fruit of that bloody labor is passed on to succeeding generations.

While genuinely concerned African Americans may rightly assert that affirmative action legislation is neither a substitute for positive action on the part of individuals nor a valid excuse for persistent failure in its absence, Neo-Negroes are those who openly declare the problems of racism solved and deny the need for continued affirmative action while the situational effects of racial discrimination persist and in some cases worsen. Try as they may to rationalize their behavior, actively working to weaken or circumvent affirmative action legislation is the Neo-Negro’s ultimate act of betrayal.

African Americans must be made to recognize, rise up and ostracize this insidious enemy from within and declare to the world that the deep seated and pervasively institutionalized effects of racism cannot be eliminated by declaration of the privileged few but must be whittled away by constant vigilance, exposure, determination and positive action.

In that any form of racial discrimination without the power of enforcement is a paper tiger that cannot influence events to any significant degree, accusations of so-called “reverse discrimination” can easily be seen as just another in a long line of tired old strawman maneuvers, covertly financed and directed by entrenched right wing extremists to impede harmonious racial progress. These wily old-school ultra conservatives, after generations of exploiting racial animosity and profiteering from racial discord, were threatened by new understandings, coalitions, open communication, and above all, the affirmative action legislation of the sixties. So they began financing and developing a new strain of neocons to deal with liberals and Neo-Negroes to deal with Blacks.

Like their “Askari” predecessors from around the globe, the Neo-Negroes are rewarded for their willingness to stifle dissent, belittle civil rights activities, openly oppose affirmative action, and make “Negro problems” appear to disappear while leaving the underlying unrest of African American situations essentially unchanged, unchallenged, and unassisted. Sweeping the problem under the rug, as Neo-Negroes would have us do, provides cosmetic improvement to the surface, while the hidden but ever deteriorating foundation is allowed to fester and grow.

Neo-Negroes would have you to believe that those who stand up and fight to address America's racial problems ARE the problem. Traditional Organizations that work for Social Justice are 'Relics', 'useless' or 'unnecessary' because in the Neo-Negro's brave new world, race problems will cease to exist as soon as you stop discussing them. New foundation-funded organizations are created which borrow heavily from the vocabulary and imagery of the Civil Rights Movement, and with Neo-Negroes at the helm, they operate merely as storefronts for the same status-quo that the movement sought to overturn.

Make no mistake about it, these Neo-Negroes are willing to bargain away the civil rights that their ancestors were willing to suffer and die for. They are the arrogant and ungrateful sons and daughters of those whose blood and sweat are the mortar and pestle of roads built over the rocky terrain of racial terrorism, and to their everlasting shame, they have chosen to take the personally profitable path offered to them by the residue of the very forces that fought most fiercely against emancipation, integration and equal opportunity in the past, and now would engage their services as front men in the battle against affirmation action.

Having passed through the narrow corridors of legally mandated equal opportunities opened up to them only through the trials and tribulations of the civil rights movement, these Neo-Negroes now seek to close the doors behind them and give the keys to those who would see them locked once again. They have declared open warfare in well-funded and orchestrated efforts to betray the very acts of positive civil rights legislation that gave them the opportunity to give voice to their treachery. And for this, as long as they behave, they are very well compensated by right wing reactionaries who might otherwise drive them out of their fool’s paradise for a deed undone or misspoken word.

It is precisely because of the precariousness of their positions, over which they have no autonomous control, that they struggle all the harder to overturn the gains of the past and thus keep other African Americans from rising to levels from which they can see into the sham and the hypocrisy of their false bravado. The Neo-Negro house of cards can ill afford the additional weight of their brothers and sisters.

For all of that, the real victim of the Neo-Negro is not the black man or woman who must be better and brighter to be treated as equal. The true victim is the black child, born or yet unborn, coming into this world with no more to guide them than the tools, the system, the laws and legacy we leave behind. Unless we can pass the rights, the liberties, and the opportunities won in the civil rights struggle on to our children and our children’s children then we won nothing; it was all for nothing. That is what the Neo-Negro seems to have forgotten. That’s whose future they would trade for their present self-indulgence.

Claiming that civil rights laws are no longer needed and therefore should be reversed or circumvented makes no more sense than arguing to repeal the Thirteenth Amendment because legal slavery has ended. An important question for us to consider is why are human rights and civil rights laws kept on the books long after the urgent need for them is ended? What is their purpose? The Neo-Negro says we should do away with them. Feeling confident that their problems are apparently solved for their lifetime, they see no need for the continued existence of such laws to protect others. After having received their comfortable foundation funded offices, hand-picked appointments, and fast-tracked promotions on the basis of their special talent they can no longer see the need for such laws not only to undo wrongs of the past and protect us in the present, but even more importantly, to secure our future and the future of our children.

RMyles

The Neo-Negro Show
By light of day he is confident enough to need no big show of confidence
He swaggers just a bit, not too much, just the right amount
In dark of night he prays that no one will see through his false bravado
Not just yet. Not just yet. He is not yet ready for such exposure
-RM

Tech Tags: Neo-Negro Race Discrimination Affirmative+Action Steele Thomas Meyers Connerly Current+Affairs Social+Commentary