Category: Brian Browne

Brian Browne

 

 

November 3 is election day in America. Both candidates are significantly flawed to the extent that, no matter who wins, America itself shall lose. Thus, the distant noise you hear is not the collective ruffling of scores of millions of ballots being counted in celebration of that nation’s democratic exercise. Rather, it is the sound that delicate edifice called democracy makes as it slowly crumbles, when the brick and mortal of representative government gradually give way and are pounded into dust by strong, but nigh imperceptible, repressive forces that have always targeted democracy as their prey.

I have consistently asserted that Joe Biden shall win the election. There is no reason to change or hedge this prediction at this late date. Trump has run basically the same campaign he did in 2016. Then he was greatly aided by Hillary Clinton. She was strongly disliked by large segments of the electorate, primarily on the conservative right but also on the progressive left. She ran an aloof but maladroit campaign that signaled to many the type of sterile presidency with which she would have burdened the nation had she gained tenancy in the White House.

To Trump’s misfortune, Biden is not saddled with the animus that stung Clinton. Moreover, COVID has aided Biden’s cause in more ways than one. COVID clearly exposed Trump’s managerial ineptitude as well as his caustic personality – he lacks compassion for the sick and afflicted. He has no pity for those who have been felled or made seriously ill by the disease; they have complicated his presidency and gotten in the way of his reelection. Thus, he sees them as weak people whose susceptibility to the disease reveals flaws in the strength of their character. While this medieval outlook is accepted by his core supporters, it has not endeared Trump to the vast numbers of independent voters he needs to win. They see him as frozen-hearted, lacking empathy. This very factor may be the single greatest impediment to his reelection. COVID also has served to streamline the campaign season and debate schedule. Because of this, Biden’s significant weaknesses as a candidate have not been as readily on display as they would have during a normal campaign.

Trump knows he is against the ropes with time swiftly diminishing and few, if any, real chances to pick up support outside his circle of avid, blind followers. He is searching for the undecided voter but that person does not exist in the main. That Trump realized he was in trouble was apparent during his second debate with Biden. In the first debate, Trump acted like a compost-chomping, fire breathing lunatic on weekend leave from the local sanitarium. His performance was a disaster. Trump’s impression of an angry gorilla made Biden appear statesmanlike simply because Biden did not seem to want to jump out of his clothes and pounce on his debate opponent. In contrast, Trump’s conduct during the second debate was a study in repressed anger and contrived civility. He acted like a normal human being; he even prepared for the debate because he stung Biden with many points he made.  Biden was tossed off course a bit. Toward the end of the debate, he seemed ill at ease as if he could not wait to rush from the stage to visit the nearest bathroom. For Trump, however, it was a case of too little civility too late. He had already done such mortal damage to himself that one decent debate performance would not be sufficient to cure it all. At least, his relatively professional performance showed that you can always teach an old dog new tricks provided the venerable canine is sufficiently desperate.

In some ways, who wins the election may be of secondary importance. America is in trouble. That the election boils down to these broken men is all the evidence needed to confirm the prior statement. One man borders on the illogical, perhaps the insane. The other is so bothered by lapses in memory and thought that any reasonably cautious person should wonder whether this man and his fragile mind can withstand the rigors of office for more than just a few brief weeks before surrendering to acute mental exhaustion. That a nation of 350 million people which professes to be the greatest, richest and most powerful nation that ever existed on this face of the earth would be reduced to selecting either of these two men as its leader teaches us an important lesson. The nation that boasts unduly tends to build a mausoleum with the very words used to exalt itself.

Here I shall attempt a rather curious observation. A record number of people will vote either by mail or by going to the polls. It will not be a surprise if over 150 million people vote as opposed to less than 130 million in the last election. America has not seen such a large percentage of eligible voters take to the polls in over a century. This would seem to indicate that American democracy is healthy and vibrant. On the surface, it would be easy to laud this turnout as a testament to American democracy. But at deeper level, long-term potential trouble dominate the short-term good news over voter turnout.

The record number of voters does not mean that people are confident in the stability of their democracy or in the bona fides of their political opposition. Thus, both Democrats and Republicans do not rush to the polls because they celebrate democracy as a civilized competition between different political parties and their notions of public policy. The people run to the polls because both sides have gone to absurd lengths to convince themselves the other side will destroy the nation. Democrats fear Trump is plotting to transform the nation into a dictatorship with him as the ruthless but comically inept American Mussolini or worse. Republicans delude themselves that Democrats want to turn America into a temple of socialism with an atheistic twist. How they can look at Joe Biden, who has always been a slave to big banks and Money Power his entire career, yet see a combination of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Hugo Chavez boggles the rational mind. However, this is America where people go to Disneyland to learn about foreign countries and diligently watch reality TV shows to learn about themselves. Yet, democracy is in real danger when the two parties in a two-party system come to believe the other seeks to set the land on fire.

Preservation of democracy depends on a certain type of civic education that has become rare in America. A true democrat is a person wedded to a political process more than a certain outcome, as long as the outcome is not a clear precursor to the destruction of the process. This means one must be wedded to the twin principles that the people have a right to vote and that every vote must be counted the same as any other. In other words, the concept of democracy is inimical to the maxim of realpolitik that the ends justify the means. For democracy to flourish, the means must be considered a valuable end in itself. Also, you must have sufficient trust in the democratic pedigree of those considered your political enemies. You must believe that, although they disagree with your positions on certain issues, they will do nothing to mortally wound the democratic way of life.

These concepts are under siege in America. All manner of tricks are being deployed, mainly by Republicans, to eliminate the votes of others. Republicans fear a large voter turnout means a loss for Trump. They are doing things to limit democracy basically by limiting the voting of blacks and others they suspect of being Democratic voters. Thus, the Trump administration has undermined the work of the post office in an attempt to prevent mailed ballots from reaching the election offices on time. This effort is based on the Republican assumption that Democratic voters, being more concerned about COVID than Republicans, would prefer to vote early by mail than show up on election day to cast their ballots. Also,  drop boxes for early ballots in certain communities were vandalized or secretly moved. Worse, some states have significantly reduced the number of polling stations in black communities. This means that the average person in these areas will have to travel farther and wait in line much longer to vote. In white communities, voter wait time generally will be a few minutes. In many black areas, the wait will be hours. Given the fright and fear of COVID coupled with the sheer frustration of waiting outside for hours in less-than-ideal weather,  Republicans hope to dissuade millions of black people from voting.

There are two reasons for this largely Republican assault against black voting. One is historic. Right-wing politicians have always conspired against blacks voting. At America’s conception, all American politicians were right-wing as to race. Thus, blacks were not allowed to vote because they surely would have insisted on voting for their freedom. Slavery and the subsequent systems of racial oppression that followed always had denial of the black vote as part of their foundation. While the racists cannot hold to a strict and bold prohibition these days, they now revert to tricks and underhanded methods to achieve the old goal.

The more modern reason for this hatred of the voting rights of others is the increasing inferiority of America’s social/civic education. Americans are being taught that their individual satisfaction is the zenith of all things. They are taught that they are entitled to have what they want, if they want it bad enough. It is fine to break the rules to get what you believe you deserve. Rules should not keep you from your fate. This is all good and perhaps attractive in the abstract as when listening to the message of a feel-good preacher or a motivational speaker. However, if too many people practice this approach to social processes, they will begin to undermine social institutions when those institutions do not fulfill their selfish wants. In such a situation, the ends tend to justify the means particularly when you convince yourself that those who do not belief as you do must be derelicts in need of a good hiding or irredeemable fiends that should be put down at least in a political or figurative sense.

Whoever wins this election will not cure this growing ill. If Trump wins it will be due to such benighted efforts. Thus, he will seek to intensify not extinguish them. Biden is too entrenched and absent of vision to see the great danger that befalls the land. He simply believes that getting rid of Trump will take America to the moral high ground. Yet, if such a thing were true and if Trump were such a terrible anomaly, he never would have been elected president.

Come election day, Trump will lose. Many will hail it as a return to normalcy. Many will be happy that they helped oust the blatantly racist and mean Trump. However, this giddiness will cause them to neglect the structural problems that help bring Trump to the fore. Structural racism needs to be attacked but Biden will not do it because he has been comfortable with it all of his life. He will just do enough to help ensure black people remain deluded that the Democratic Party is intent on fixing their problems and would have done so but for those devilish Republicans.

More to the point, America must come to grips with its historic reality. Although its rhetoric is that of democracy and equal rights for all, such is not the national reality. The American model is based on white male dominance and suppression of other races and the female gender. These others are now increasingly strident about their rights. Meanwhile, the custodians of the old way oppose change. Something has to give. Maybe it will be accomplished peacefully maybe not but something has to give. One perspective will have to surrender to the other. Until then, tensions will mount with each year and each election. Candidates like Trump and Biden are but two-bit players, minor figures awkwardly representing vast social forces they know how to manipulate in the short-term without being aware of the long-term consequences of their purblind conduct and flippant attitude to these social forces.

Thus, those of you who see America as a paragon of democracy better think again. If America is wedded to democracy it is that type of marriage best described as one featuring a frail spouse who is loyal to a fault being abused by an unfaithful partner increasing prone to spending longer hours away from home. In the end, we all must realize a democrat is not something you are by birth or nationality. it is something you become because you choose this path to the exclusion of others. Thus, democracy is never guaranteed; it must be kept and preserved by studied vigilance and a certain form of civic education that runs contrary to self-centered popular culture. Unless a nation understands these dynamics, it may hold elections but it will not hold to, let alone perfect, democracy. America goes to the polls to vote but, without more being done to right social wrongs, this election will be is an installment in the great unraveling of the American experiment with democracy.

 

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By Briane Browne

 

The four-day Democratic Party convention ended Thursday. It was a disappointment given the severity of the moment. The event was political vaudeville without the live audience that would have given some cover to the utter emptiness of what was said. The Democrats fell short where it counted the most. They offered no tangible policy positions on how to free America and the world from morass in which they now find themselves. The convention was four days of platitudes about how virtuous the Democrats hold themselves to be combined with varying degrees of invectives regarding the current American president. However, if the convention were to be measured by the time devoted to needed policy recommendations, the four-day event could have been condensed into barely a quarter hour.

Despite the obvious lack of substance, the Democrats emerged from the convention quite happy. Their partisan onlookers also seem to have gleefully overlooked the absence of policy content.  Despite the oft-stated claim that the election is an epochal contest for the very soul and future of the nation, the Democrats offered no solution except to assert that they were the solution. The people are merely to accept the Democrats’ positive self-appraisal, no further questions need to be asked, no further scrutiny given. The Democratic convention was thus both a test of confidence as well as a confidence job.

The Democrats placed themselves on sale as the saviors of American-style democracy and decency. In this, they may have something. They may well be the guardians of the American way at least more so than Trump is such a guardian. Thus, voting Democratic is likely the best way to return to what was. However, the way things were does not imply the wonderland the Democrats seem to suggest. Before Trump, things were growing more unjust, inequal, racist and martial. Trump merely continued the erosion, adding his own idiosyncratic twist of buffoonery and overt narcissism. The con job the Democratic Convention seemed to have put over is a rather massive one. The Democrats are set on convincing America and the world that a return to the pre-Trumpian mode is a high exemplar of democracy and decency. As such, they have managed to portray Trump as impending death so that they may be able to hoodwink people by selling chronic disease as instant wellness. The Democrats are not interested in improving the state of things; they are merely bent on returning to the previous shambles and calling it heaven by glossing over its many flaws. But try as they might, there is not enough gloss to accomplish the charade.

If the Democrats win using this vacuity, it may constitute a larger political swindle than the one Trump executed four years ago. Thus, the election now boils down to pitting the shameless Master Swindler of this generation and his dimwit journeymen against a competing guild of con artists who have so perfected the art of false virtue that they believe their own lies. This is a fault of which Trump is not even guilty. He is honest enough to know he is lying.

After what I saw from this convention, America is in grave trouble, more so than I thought. I watched four days of prominent Democrats but witnessed not a genuine leader equal to these grueling times. Yes, some of them were decent perhaps even well-intentioned people. But for the main, they showed themselves for what they are. They are long-term members of a well-lubricated but corrupting political machine. They have soaked themselves in the temptations of power, money, fame and influence.  This immersion leaves little room for true concern for the plight of the nameless, faceless multitude. The socialization these people receive is akin to that received by leaders of a criminal organization. Sociopaths flourish and good souls vanish under the grind of institutions that have gone awry because they are more the conduits of the personal ambitions of elitists than of the collective good of the nation.

The prominence one gains as a member of that machine comes at the price of the person’s democratic soul. The cost of prominence is to detach oneself from the interests and lives of the people duped to vote for you. What a politician gains in polish and appearance to seem as if they are sincere, they lose in actual concern for the average person. The Democratic Party is a party of the corporate boardroom and the exclusive country club as is the Republican Party. Where they differ is simply the different names of the boardrooms and clubhouses they inhabit. In any event, these are places the average person cannot go unless employed to clean the floors or cook the food.

There are no true leaders of the people in the Democratic Party. Anyone who tries to tell the people the truth will be ushered from the gathering much lie a loquacious drunk being escorted from afternoon tea or a vocal ex-wife led from the wake of a wealthy but utterly despicable former spouse. Instead, the people at the convention are not leaders as much as they are managers of a system that is slowly corroding and pulling apart at its seams. Because they have forfeited and sacrificed so much of their core humanity to be promoted within this morbid system, they cannot see its grave structural failings. They are too invested in it and profit too much from it to place it under the fundamental questioning it deserves. Thus, they never see the need for serious reform. They are the advocates of a small patch here and slight paste there.

Everything will be fine if only Trump exits. Yet how can so much wrong belong only to one man? It is impossible. What troubles America is more than Trump. To blame Trump exclusively even primarily is to not really want to fix what has gone wrong.

The speeches given at the convention were the unimaginative addresses of managers of a failing company trying to convince the employees that the firm will somehow avert bankruptcy even as a horde of creditors pound at the front gate. There was nothing said that should convince anyone the Democrats know how to resolve the problems at hand. The essence of their speeches was all the people have to do is place their faith in the Democrats and click their heels three times or shout “God bless America” as they go to bed then all will be well. This was nothing but an elaborate con job of magnificent proportions at a pivotal moment. It shows the decrement of America’s leadership as well as the stultifying of that nation’s collective mind.

Gone is the eloquence and deepness of thought of Lincoln, Roosevelt or even a Kennedy. Definitely, there is no King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Paul Robeson or other such personality among them who has the sheer courage and moral force to tell things as they truly are. Everything was sugarcoated because what existed beneath the coating was of no great value except as a trick. Nothing that was said during that convention will be remembered a week hence. The convention was much like a church revival where the preacher goes about leaping up and down, whipping the people into a stir.  Those in attendance begin to whoop and holler, enjoying a grand old time of it. Catch one of the attendants two days after and he will beam about the event. Ask him to recite one thing learned that will help him in life or save his eternal soul, he will blankly stare at you. He remembers not a word the preacher spouted because there was nothing of substance to it. Same with the Democratic convention. It was but a political tent revival.

The Democrats have decided they do not have to offer much to the people. They figure it will be enough to light Trump in effigy. The Democrats are likely right. This empty, somewhat cynical, strategy will win the election. Yet, it will not do much to improve the nation. Whether Trump or Biden is the captain, the ship continues to slowly go under; but those who can change its fortunes are too in love with frolicking about the top deck. They cannot see the misery of the toilers in the engine room.

Former President Obama said that Trump was unfit and uncaring. The truth of this is unassailable. However, that Trump is a broken president does not render Biden fit for the job. Obama offered nothing to score Biden high but to say he is decent and avuncular. These are good recommendations for someone renting a house but woefully insufficient endorsements for someone who sees tenancy in the White House. Obama’s speech lacked bite and higher purpose. He danced the soft-shoe even though he thought he had tossed dynamite. Had he the bluntness the moment required, he would have said, “Donald Trump has gone about claiming he would make America great again. Well, by one singular act Trump can make that claim immediately true. And what is that act? All he has to do is get the hell out of the White House!!” Obama said nothing close to this. He had the chance to lead the charge. He demurred for he selected false decorum over the demands of the moment and thus the opportune moment passed. Obama is still afflicted by the belief that merely using the word “bold,” is an adequate substitute for bold action itself. Thus, he mischaracterizes minor steps as if they are great leaps. Meanwhile, the ship keeps slowly sinking.

Michelle Obama tried. She spoke about how Biden had the morality and decency that Trump lacked. Here I must make an observation. Both the Obamas and many others spoke in a pitch half a step higher than their normal tones. This was rehearsed affectation. They knew their speeches were a retinue of nice-sounding but meaningless platitudes much like a string of glossy commercials selling an attractive but fundamentally tasteless confection. Thus, they had to try harder to sound sincere and profound because the value of their speeches was frightfully less than the sum of the words used.

Hypocrite of week goes to Colin Powell. The Republican came to the convention to endorse Biden, the Democrat. Fair enough as more is fair in politics than in either love or war. However, Powell stepped in the mud when he harped on Trump’s lack of integrity. Uncle Colin should be among the last to go that road. Here is a man who went before the UN and entire world to purposefully lie when the truth could have averted grievous war. Instead, the result of his fabrications was an unwarranted conflagration that claimed approximately one million lives. Powell abetted wholesale slaughter just to save one job — his own. Very few men in world history have committed so unbalanced a tradeoff; thus, he is in rare but infamous company. If America were subject to the writ of the World Court, Powell and others would be in the prison grab of war criminals.

Instead, he is being paraded as a genuine national hero simply because he is a photogenic black man willing to lend his name and smile to unwarranted international homicide on a massive scale. His complexion is light enough to place Whites at ease while just dark enough to get blacks to board the lunatic train. Thus, he is a precious device to attract black support for military imperialism and its attendant evils.

However, Powell’s blackness is but skin deep. His true color is the drab banality of power deployed to crush the weak and vulnerable who cater not to America’s will and whim. His blackness is only a political affectation used when the moment is keen and the price is right. He is the antithesis of the entire black freedom struggle yet he is now being portrayed as its natural offspring. But when does the olive branch produce an errant but eager bomb as its fruit? He has been brought forth to make black America believe that war is good. In this sad venture, he along with Obama have been highly successful. The drums of peace have been silenced in black America. We have largely joined the war mongers in the lust for foreign land and in the spillage of foreign blood.

Here, I must admit I am being harsh on Powell and other black figures. As a black man, I have that right, I have that duty for I hold my people to a higher standard. White American leaders are inculcated with racism and empire at an early age. They are lost in the main. However, black people should have a different perspective due to our unique history as hunted and tortured people. This history should figure in the worldview of Powell and Obama. Yet, it does not. Power is apparently more than an aphrodisiac; it seemingly induces a strong amnesia as well.

This brings me to the address of VP nominee Kamala Harris. She spoke over a thousand words but did not give us even a sliver of a picture of what she stands for. All she did was emote a fake sincerity while looking nice.

Then there was presidential candidate Joe Biden. Pundits say he gave the speech of a lifetime. This is hyperbole. His talk was competent and well delivered. But it was an address that failed to address the moment at hand. He spoke of chasing away the Trumpian darkness and of a return to dignity and decency. He spent barely two minutes talking about what he would actually do as president. What he said about the economy was so airy and vague as to almost seem dismissive of the catastrophe that has come.

Meanwhile, his top aides were using the spotlight on the convention to assure Wall Street and Money Power that Biden would do nothing significant to reform the economy or help the working and middle classes from the doldrums they now face. This suits Money Power just fine as it has profited handsomely from the joint pandemic/economic crisis and cares not what becomes of the rest of the people.

This is Biden’s true idea of a return to decency and normalcy. Not only is this insufficient it is an insult as well as a danger. Biden’s idea of decency is that of feigning to be nice and smiling benevolently while committing one foul act after another for the benefit of Money Power. This is what the Democratic Convention sold and most Americans likely bought it.

Thus, the coming election will result in a change that will either be “from worse to bad” or perhaps “from bad to worse.” Either way, there will be little respite for the American people or for the world. The ship slowly but inexorably continues toward the bottom.

 

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 Brian Browne

 

Before assessing the current state of the American presidential campaign, brotherly respect and gratitude impel that I offer a few words about the departure from us of a pan-Africanist hero: former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington. Generally, I am fairly hard on the famous and the powerful. They have already gotten their rewards. They need not expect encomiums from me for they generally think themselves better than they are. Such people are the ones who led this world into its present sorrowful condition. Walter Carrington is a noted exception. He deserves more acknowledgement and plaudits then he has ever gotten. He gave of himself to make this world and this nation better.  Walter, in my humble way, I offer these thoughts so that those who read them might attain a better understanding of your selflessness and gentle but strong heroism.

Walter Carrington had just celebrated his 90th birthday last month. This extraordinary man was distinctly an African-American hero which meant that his great courage and deeds would go largely noticed or would be condemned by many in the land of his birth. Yet, he did not care much that he would not be the recipient of accolades from his own nation. He knew enough about the tenets of American racism to understand his deeds would not be weighed fairly. That his courage would be seen by many, not for the excellent thing it was but as a heavy dose of insubordination. Too many of his countrymen saw him as a disobedient black man who thought a bit too highly of an African nation and thus thought a bit too independently.  The mostly white power structure would feel a tad uncomfortable with this principled man. If they knew what Walter Carrington was going to do as Ambassador to Nigeria, they likely would have petitioned for his recall that he might be sent to some sinecure where he would do their racism no harm and his race no good.

Walter Carrington was far more than an Ambassador. Being both African and American, he was a son of two worlds. He would act accordingly. As Ambassador, he would promote American interests because that was his mission. But as a black man, he would define American interests in a manner materially different than how the staid mainstream diplomat would define it. His definition of American interests would be shaped as much by the history that American tried to obscure as by the history it celebrates. Thus, his definition of American interests would be shaped by the struggle against racism and by the Civil Rights Movement. It would be shaped by Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King as much as by Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy and Roosevelt,

When he came here as Ambassador, Walter Carrington found the world’s most populous black nation in an existential quandary. Some thirty plus years after independence, Nigeria struggled against itself as much as Nigerian struggled against fellow Nigerian to achieve self-definition. Would the nation remain true to its colonial past by perpetuating a harsh and repressive governance? Or, would it open the door to freedom and justice so that all would have a fair say in the affairs of the country? Carrington knew the correct answer. More than that, he would devote his energies that he might help turn that rightful answer into reality.

As the epic battle between democracy and dictatorship played out, Carrington did not watch passively, sending periodic dispatches to Washington chronicling events on the ground. He waded into the tumult on the side of good. Carrington could have maintained his diplomatic distance and stood behind the four corners of his formal assignment to become chummy with the architects of the military regime. His life would have been less dangerous. Instead, he actively and publicly stood for democratic governance against the might of the military regime.

Military head of state Abacha was perplexed and did not know what to do with this man. Through his extraordinary acts, Carrington helped promote democracy and likely saved the lives of many activists. Yet, you would be wrong to think all that he did was at America’s official behest. In many ways, he stood a man alone. It is when a man is alone that we may gauge the true extent of his valor. A crowd or large army lends utmost courage to even the worst of cowards. But standing alone on uncertain ground is when bravery is weighed in the balance. Carrington did more than pass the test. He created a new balance.  In doing so, he ventured far beyond the call of duty and his official remit. He transcended diplomatic protocol to pursue a greater mission. He sought the freedom of his brothers and sisters from whom slavery had stolen him so long before.

He was to pay a price for his actions. Several times danger brushed against him in Nigeria. In America, detractors complained that he had “gone native” and was more Nigerian than American. White American envoys could do such things in Europe but a black envoy was to be reticent and reserved, simply happy and thankful the power structure had given him a comfortable job permitting him to wear a suit and tie and go home with a reasonable paycheck. Thus, a hero’s welcome did not greet him when he returned home. He was met largely by a cold shoulder. In America, an independent-minded black man is perceived as a riot or a slave rebellion in the making.  Thus, he is in constant danger of the power structure falling upon him with its full weight so as to discourage others from emulating him. While much of the racism against him went unsaid because it would have been obtuse to openly berate such a staunch advocate of democracy, such was the mindset of many who walk the corridors of American power.

This quiet and humble man of letters would endure the danger and criticism with preternatural equanimity. He was so much better than those who sought him wrong.

Nigeria has had many foreign friends. Most of them come here to make a profit unattainable in their home lands. Walter’s mind did not work like that.  Carrington gave first than gave some more. He personified the unbreakable but largely unattended bond between Africa and Black America. As such, he was your brother as much as he was mine.

By his actions, he ranks among the foremost pan-Africanists of our time. Many people will speak lofty words but when the wind blows, they are the first to run to shelter. Not Walter Carrington. He braved the ill winds and the dangerous uncertainty that comes with following the path of high principle and love for a downtrodden race. As such, his name must be written beside that of George Washington Williams, the 19th century African American who initiated an international campaign to mitigate the worst excesses of Belgium’s murderous colonial enterprise in the Congo and that of John Robinson, the “Brown Condor.” Robinson flew in the service of the Ethiopian Air Force, fighting the fascist Italy invasion during the 1930s. Robinson would later create the groundwork for Ethiopian Airlines. Williams and Robinson were both great men but you likely never heard of them.

This is because those who control the world do not want you to now of such figures; they do not want you gaining inspiration from them or following in their footsteps. However, whosoever knows his history is not easily deflected from it. Such knowledge allows a person to define himself and the purpose for which he came into this world. Walter Carrington was such a man. He was truly an African-American in the profoundest sense of that term.  Walter, I do not cry much these days as there is too much to cry over. But the tear now rolling down my cheek is for you. Good bye my, older brother. Good bye.

Now, back to the struggle at hand!

Last week also Joe Biden finally selected Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. This is history making; Harris is the first nominally black woman on the presidential ticket of one of the two major parties. She is now being hailed a champion of the progressive case and a bridge to a better future. Such talk is so exaggerated as to be more accurately classified as a willful falsehood.

Harris climbed to prominence as Attorney General of the California. She was a nonsense prosecutor whose star achievements were her martinet attitude toward jailing young black men for petty crimes and minor drug offenses while showing tremendous leniency to big dollar, white collar criminals who pinched hundreds of millions of dollars from the unsuspected poor and working class. When compelling evidence came to her that a black man had been incorrectly sentenced and imprisoned, Harris refused to do reparative justice by seeking the man’s release. When her staff presented evidence that a major bank had improperly dunned people for money not owed and had wrongfully foreclosed on the homes of many, Harris kicked the file into the wastebasket. She would no more prosecute a greedy rich white criminal than free a poor innocent black man. No wonder her climb to national prominence came quickly.

The CEO of that criminal bank is now Trump’s Treasury Secretary. This is no surprise. Before going over to the Republican Party, both Trump and his daughter Ivanka had been big fans of Harris, supporting her with political donations. Harris belongs to that strata of American society that includes Trump and his daughter. Who it does not include is most black Americans. Thus, Harris’s political ascent is because she purposefully disconnected and freed herself from the burdens of the people that she might take full advantage from the assistance of the rich and powerful to advance her cause as long as she agreed to protect their interests.

Just because her selection is historic from the racial standpoint gives no cause to depict Harris as other than she is. Given the racial significance of the moment, it would be a perfect political tale if she were a staunch reformer or a progressive policy maker. She is neither.  She is highly intelligent, well-spoken and as opportunistic as any major political figure on the American scene. Harris is like a magical canvas. No matter how many times it is painted, the thing remains blank. There is no view that she will not embrace if it will advance her cause. There is no view, no matter how right, she will not discard if it might drag her politically. She is not only capable of changing horses in midstream, she has mastered the art of changing streams without the horse being any the wiser.

As such, she is the perfect complement to Biden who does not now where he is much of the time and struggles to articulate a thought of even mild complexity. The more he campaigns the worse he looks. She is a fierce and energetic campaigner who will more than take up Biden’s slack.

While Harris built her career by caging black men, but for George Floyd, she would not have gained the nomination. That Harris owes her new status to Floyd is a caustic turn of events, somewhat bitter to swallow for she would not have hesitated to throw the entire book at George Floyd if his case ever came across her desk. Moreover, she was not quick to prosecute police brutality of black men when such instances happened on her watch. Again, news of such injustice was regularly pushed into that now full wastebasket.

Early in the political campaign, Biden had vowed that a woman would be his running mate. He did this to shore his support with female Democrats. He had to. Come what may, the Democratic ticket was going to feature a woman. A female on the ticket was genuinely well overdue. Biden had a few preferences in mind. He apparently wanted Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. Then Floyd was murdered. The ensuing social uproar threw Biden off course. He had to change his calculation or risk black apathy toward him in the general election. Even the sturdy Jim Clyburn, the black South Carolina congressman who rescued Biden during the Democratic primaries dared not run interference for Biden on this one. Biden had to pick a black woman; but his heart was not in it.

He had to be convinced that he had no other choice but to turn away from his first choice. This is why Biden tarried so long in making the decision. He waited to the last moment, hoping the black furor would subside, allowing him to select the white woman of his choosing. When the urgency of blackness did not fade, Biden finally did what he didn’t want to do. He called Harris and told her she would be his partner in this race.

Once Biden was resigned to a black woman, Harris became nigh inevitable. She was a senator with high name recognition. Culturally, she was the least black of all the black female contenders. Harris travelled in the white feminist circles which none of the other contenders could assert save for Susan Rice. But former NSA Rice was always a longshot. She had never run for elective office and was barely known outside of Washington political circles. The other black women like Congressperson Karen Bass and, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms were both too black culturally and had never hooked themselves to the white feminist circuit.

Biden would select Harris because she answered the call for blackness but would minimize the disappointment of white feminists for promises or at least near promises had been made to them. But now those vows had to be broken due to the weight of unexpected events and their political repercussions.

However, this focuses attention on the historic tension between the struggle for racial equality and white feminism. Most white feminists have been unreliable allies and often clear enemies of black equality and progress. Many of them are only concerned with the discrimination that bridles them. For discrimination that does not affect them directly, they tend to be indifferent or even active practitioners thereof.  A good number of white feminists are as racially bigoted as their male counterparts.  When in the company of white men, they press for equal treatment and representation. When in the company of black people, they believe they should lead for after all, in their worldview, they are better educated and more accomplished.

Thus, they now rankle because black people have gotten two bites at the apple, first with Obama and now Harris who is nothing but Obama with long hair and a pantsuit. They will not publicly voice their anger because it will reveal the elitist bigotry that permeates their gathering. Still, many of them seethe behind closed doors. Meanwhile, black progressives also rankle because they see Harris much as they saw Obama, a counterfeit who used blackness as a convenient electoral asset yet whose policies intend nothing good for black people. However, most black people will be mildly to well pleased with the selection of Harris. The vast majority of blacks will eagerly vote out Trump. Seeing Harris become VP will somewhat reinforce the urge to come out on Election Day. White feminists are left holding an empty bag. But like the Democrats have done to blacks so often in the past, where else can the white feminists go? For now, I guess black people must take this as some form of progress but it seems to me no more than giving a crumb to be shared among a starving people.

 

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Brian Browne

 

In July 30, a beloved and respected black American was buried after a week of fitting tribute. Several times during his time on earth this man placed his mortal life in precarious balance such that others might live with the justice and dignity too long denied them though such things are the indefeasible rights of every human being.

That same day a different kind of black American celebrity died. At best, he perished a discredited figure; to many, he cut the swath of one who betrayed his origins that he may acquire a few extra dollars he otherwise would not have obtained.

One was a child of valor. The other was a child of vanity. This is a short tale of two black men, the hero and the knave. It reveals why we are as we are, a people who have travelled long and far yet still have longer and farther to go before attaining safe harbor.

Congress John Lewis was born in Troy, Alabama. This was the heart of the heart of the Deep South. It was also cotton country. The once fertile land had turned hardscrabble due to decades of overuse.

Lewis was born into a poor rural family just 75 years out of slavery. Along with his parents and his siblings, he picked cotton mostly on lands owned by whites much as his enslaved forebearers had done. It was backbreaking, hand-bloodying tedium.

If there is but one vision of the United States that captures the essential history of this society it is the harsh tableau of shabbily-clad black folk bent over with face to the ground, sacks strapped across their straining backs as they toiled row after endless row under the strong Alabama, filling those sacks with the cotton they picked.

The long century of black toil in those cotton fields was a vital element in America’s  rise to global economic power.

Picking cotton did not well commend itself to the  intelligent and restless  Lewis. He wanted to learn and go to school. Instead of picking the white man’s cotton, he also wanted to fight the injustice that demanded black folk work those fields for the immense profit of people who hated them. I understand this well. Like Lewis, I too was born in Alabama; but, unlike him my parents had come from the north and I was born nearly two decades after him.

After having volunteered, my father had moved up the ranks to become an officer in the nation’s army while John’s parents had been drafted into the dreary army of Alabama sharecroppers.

Being a black boy in Alabama during that era meant you were to swallow more indignity than a child ought to bear, John Lewis endured far worse than anything required of me. I never picked cotton or went to bed hungry except if my parents were punishing me for some childhood indiscretion I might have committed. Over a half century has passed since then. Yet, when I close my eyes, I still see it, the unjust tableau.

With my face pressed against the back window as we drove the county roads, I stared from the car, my eyes fixed on young and old black people doing slave labor in the fields. I would watch as one image fades into the distance only to be replaced by another as we passed by the next patch of cotton.

Every now and then, we would see a prison chain gang working along the roadside. I saw these dreary looking black men clad in soiled and tattered prison garb shackled one to another in a long row of chains and sorrow swinging their pickaxes under the stern and watchful eye of rifle wielding white oversees in clean if not always crisp uniforms.

Those cotton toilers and chained men were of me and I was them. I did not know any of these unfortunates yet I knew they were my world. Every time I saw them, my heart would ache a deep and strong ache for which my young mind could not find words to express. I just kept silent and cried inside at the wrong done to my people.

Often I would wonder who was worse off, the cotton people or the convicted ones. Had the convicted ones once been cotton people who tried to run? Most of times, the cotton people were too far away for me to see their faces. All you could see was their images against the setting sun. But sometimes, just sometimes, their labor would bring them close enough to the roadside.

One time driving by the fields, the eyes of a chocolate-skinned little girl met the eyes of the six-year-old boy in the car. Separated by so much, we were joined by our color. In that one instance, I felt as if I knew her and that she was more of a friend than those white kids I was forced to play with on the Army base.

 

We instantly smiled and waved at each other as if we had done it a thousand times before. I twisted my neck, continuing looking her way until my neck could twist no farther and our car had driven too far down the road. I never saw her again.  Even now, I wonder what became of her and the rest of the people. Did she escape the drudgery? Was the little chocolate-skinned girl struggling with that large bag of cotton move tied to the land by some insatiable malevolency? All those nameless toiling souls who should never have be treated as harshly as they had been are my family which I had both gained and lost at the same time.

After all these years, I still think of them. I still see them. I still shed a tear. But there is no time to cry the fullness of the cry I feel. We still have too much work to do.

John Lewis was driven by this spirit, even more so. Despite the racism and poverty arrayed against him, Lewis escaped the cotton fields. He did so with his humanity and large soul intact. The young Lewis enrolled in Fisk university, a black institution. He went there not just for personal advancement. He had bigger dreams in mind. He would devote himself to winning equality for his people. At the time, there was no more urgent or more dangerous a vocation for a young black man in the Deep South.

He became a founding leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC was formed initially as an informal student arm of the Dr. King-led SCLC. While King’s group gained the headlines, SNCC would quickly show organizational independence and become more proficient in actual grassroots organizing and projects than King’s organization. In many ways, the university students led the way and  kind and the rest of the preachers followed. John Lewis is due much of the credit for SNCC’s performance.

Lewis and SNCC organized the first successful sit-ins that led to desegregation of stores and eateries in the south. Taking his life in his hands, he was the first of the freedom fighters who put themselves at risk so desegregate bus services and interstate transport in America. While Dr. King gave the most famous speech during the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis was the youngest speaker that day and his intervention was second only to king’s statement. Lewis would become the youngest member of King’s inner circle.

As such, Lewis would return to Alabama to fight for voting rights. He led the first attempted march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital. Upon crossing the infamous Edmund Pettis bridge, the marchers were met by evil force. The racist state government leaders unleashed its uniformed goons on the mobile but serene procession.

In an orgy of violent chaos, police and state troopers waded into marchers attacking the meek and mild.  Attempting to shield a female marcher with his body, Lewis was pummeled viciously about the head. The police clubs had fractured his skull. He almost died that day. His blood was not spilled in vain.

The violence forced the federal government to act. The march would be repeated this time without violence. The historic voting rights act of 1965 was a direct result of this sacrifice. Without that act, few of the black politicians you now see, including President Obama, would have run let alone been elected into office.

Lewis would be elected to Congress in 1986. He served there until his death. As a congressman, he remained a staunch defender of voter rights and a fighter against racial inequality. He was a man for the people and a hero for the times,

Herman Cain died the day Lewis was buried. I will sy less about Cain than Lewis simply because there is less to say.  While mindful of our cultural norms regarding criticism of the dead, I also must be mindful of the truth for we must realize certain things so that we overcome what has been set in our pathway to overcome.

Cain was born in Tennessee, a neighboring state to Alabama. He was born five years after Lewis. Growing up in the city of Memphis he must have faced his share of discrimination but not to the extent of Lewis.

Cain attended prestigious Morehouse College, as Dr. King had previously done. Cain was a mediocre student. He also came upon a different view of the world than a King or a Lewis. A mediocrity with a desire to be noticed, Cain would not be able to rely on talent and ability alone to gain the personal richesand attention he craved.

The man cared precious little for the advancement of the race in comparison to his own personal ambitions. Thus, he would use the progress made through the civil rights movement in a most perverse way. He would climb the corporate ladder and become a darling to racist America by becoming a vocal “anti-black black” man.  As such he would cast aside centuries of racism as if they never happened. Instead, he would lop all of the troubles of the black predicament entirely on black people themselves. In conservative circles, he was a rare and precious commodity, a black man not only willing to absolve them of racism but going so far as to suggest that their racial practices were justified. He was willing to imply that his own black people were pathologically unfit.

Cain’s greatest asset was his ability to imbibe implicitly racist screed then to repeat it louder and longer than its originators. He was paid generously for his services. He rose to become the CEO of a famous fast food chain.

He also ran for the Republican Party presidential nomination 2012. He was the black Trump before Trump, a boisterous showman of no great substance but of a large yet fragile ego.  Spewing a hodgepodge of simplistic solutions to complex issues, Cain temporarily became the Republican front runner after a few primaries.

Then just as he thought he was being seriously taken as a candidate, party operatives publicly released scandalous information that caused him to scuttle his own campaign. The black minstrel had deigned to think he could become king. The racists who run the Republican show would never hitch their hopes on a black counterfeit. They only had to wait four years for the apparition of the Great White Hope to appear in the form of Donald Trump.

Cain would become one of Trump’s most vociferous and loyal supporters. For this, he would pay dearly. Trump nominated Cain for the Fedral Reserve Board but the gesture came to naught after it collapsed under heavy condemnation that Cain was singularly unqualified and even dangerous for the important financial position.

Cain still maintained his love of Trump. When COVID came, he did as Trump said.  Mask-less and without regard to keeping sanitary distance between him and others, Cain attended the controversial Tulsa rally for Trump. Within two weeks, he was diagnosed with COVID. Now he is dead.

Both now gone, these two vastly different men encapsulate why black America is as it is. Lewis saw himself as holding a special duty at a special time but never saw himself as special. Cain never did anything special but nonetheless viewed himself as great beyond measure. Lewis wanted a better world. Once he got paid, Cain was happy with the world as it is. However, both made  mistakes we are obligated to correct.

 

Brian Browne

The strong man shouts loudly to drown out the cries of the ill and dying. He thinks he can outlast the dead and the sickly so that the lamentations will only be heard by those who render them. Yet pestilence and death comply not with the man’s desires; they persist in growing numbers. Thus, the strong man is forced to continue shouting even beyond his normal bombast. The more he shouts the worse he gets. He will shout himself into madness for madness now creeps toward an intimate proximity.

Such is the condition with President Trump. He entered this year believing reelection within reach. Now his chances evaporate like the flames of a faint and laggard pyre. Trump may never get infected by COVID-19; but his electoral chances have been felled by the disease. Try as he might to blame China, Democrats and nefarious but unnamed others, America’s troubles in handling this matter bear Trump’s name. He may call it the “China Flu” but the real sickness has been Trump’s mismanagement. The crisis was inevitable; there was no choice but its proliferation once the first person was infected. However, choice resided in the quality of a nation’s response to the disease. Here, Trump failed miserably. Almost every step he took to counter the disease contributed to its might.

For Americans, this is the Trump-virus. In this, America has suffered a compound misfortune. The first misfortune was that the disease came. America shares this with the rest of the world. Worse, Trump was in office when it did. In a way, America shares this with the rest of the world as well.

President Trump entered office boasting he would reclaim America’s greatness and the world would be better for it.  In this, he failed perfectly. The nation is torn and disoriented. Racial tension has not been this visible since the 1960s. The economy is in the sink. Unemployment and economic contraction have not been this bad in the 90 years since the Great Depression. Trump’s retinue of allies and friends is shrinking. Former White House staffers and an aggrieved relative have published books that reveal the dumbest and darkest corners of this unregenerate man. He proclaims that he is the best president the nation has had. But, reality speaks otherwise. With the possible exception of Warren Harding and barring divine miracle, Trump will go down as the worst chief executive to command the halls of the White House.

Reality has a way of searing the tares of unwarranted ambition. When a fool gets what he wants, tragedy tends to ensue. In 2016, Trump benefitted from the nation’s ennui with the cautious Obama and with its general dislike of supercilious Queen Hillary. The boorish Republican did not win the 2016 contest. Hillary lost it; with all of her high intellect and high-handedness, she somehow mistook the uncertainty of an election for a sure coronation. The crown was not applied to her awaiting head and the buffoon of the decade was ushered into office upon her overconfidence. Trump was given the chance to prove himself. This proof he has given in the most negative way. He has become the most reviled figure in American politics by a wide measure. When the 2020 election is over Trump will go home lamenting that he lost this election much the same way he won the previous one.

Joe Biden will likely win a landslide although he is a feeble, unattractive candidate. Biden suffers obvious mental decline. The past few years have not been kind to his intellectual capacity. Without a prepared text before him, Biden is incoherent and rambling. He struggles to carry mildly complex thoughts. Biden is also troubled by scandal although the mainstream media speaks naught of this. Biden is a named defendant in a Ukrainian criminal case based on his public admission that he forced the ouster of that nation’s former anti-corruption prosecutor. At that time, the Ukrainian was investigating a notorious gas firm that had Biden’s ne’er-do-well son on its board of directors.

In a normal election against a normal candidate, Biden would be brusquely routed. However, for every blemish that stains Biden, Trump suffers a more glaring one. Neither man has many positive attributes but Biden does not evoke the deep hatred that accompanies Trump. Nearly half the votes Biden receives will be from people whose main concern is removing Trump from office. Less than 5 percent of the votes Trump gets will be from those whose primary concern is precluding Biden from the presidential lair.

Trump has managed to irk every element of American society save for the overtly racist segment of the white population and the most venal aspects of the business community, particularly the financial sector. This coalition, however, is too narrow to cast an electoral victory. Trump is destined for the exit due to his bedeviled strategies regarding COVID-19, race relations and the economic fallout of COVID. Trump has laid his wager and struck a loser’s trifecta.

With regard to COVID, Trump blurs the lines between science, myth and braggadocio. Science said America would be bashed like any nation and perhaps worse because of its centrality to the global economy but also because of its peculiar, less than ideal health care system which is run to optimize profit not to maximize public health. Myth says America is a special place where the normal rules of science regarding diseases and other forces of nature do not apply; armed with a virtue above that of any nation, the divine hand would immunize it from what was to douse the rest of the world.

And if God and Providence proved insufficient, there stood Donald Trump. He would simply huff, puff, push and bully the disease from the shores of the magical country he wished were his personal kingdom. Funny how the foolish believe they can summon Greatness as if by whim or believe they may purchase it as if it were crass merchandise. Stranger still, is the belief that Fate can easily be duped.

Equally strange is that this foolish man believed he could verbally dismiss the virus as a gruff master would wave away a pliant but dull servant. Thus, Trump downplayed the awaiting peril. He further invited calamity by inviting America to ignore public health measures. He portrayed mask wearing as effete, a sign of defeat and a loss of testosterone. In Trump’s imaginings, America never backs down or surrenders. It always wins by virtue of itself and white Americans always defeat the enemy, just like in the movies.

Thus, after a brief lockdown, Trump’s only goal was to reopen the economy. If America only acted normal, it would return to normal was his simplistic catechism. The results would be spectacular but not in the way Trump hoped. Instead of reopening the nation for business, he plunged it toward greater death and sickness. Thus, he had to shout ever the louder to muffle the enlarging bleak chorus of the moribund and the dying.

While developed Asian and European nations have largely boxed the virus, Trump gave it freer range. The price for his premature reopening of the economy has already been a heavy one. The number of daily infections has skyrocketed. While the mortality rate has fallen, the number of daily deaths is climbing toward a thousand. The lower mortality rate coincides with the fact that more young people are contracting the virus.

While the young are less likely than the elderly to die, their encounter with the virus is not without consequence. Hospitalizations are on the rise. In several states, medical facilities are running at near capacity. An unoccupied intensive care unit bed is hard to find. While not dying, many young people are getting seriously ill. The more we learn about the virus, the more we understand that it exacts a toll on those who have no apparent symptoms. They may still have permanent and significant damage to the lungs and other organs. The virus can be a quick assassin but also a patient and quiet crippler.

In the state of Florida, cases approximate 10,000 per day. Arizona has the highest per capita infection rate in the world. Both states followed the Trump policy of ignore the virus and it will flee. Instead of fleeing, it multiplied.

While bordering on lunacy, Trump’s policy is not without its cynical electoral rationale. At first, the virus hit northern states such as New York the hardest. These states tend to vote Democratic in presidential and statewide elections. Thus, Trump wanted the southern, more Republican states to reopen and economically flourish while the Democratic north languished in disease. This would prove his Republicans held the magic wand and he should be reelected. He convinced Republican governors in key southern states like Florida, Georgia, Texas and Arizona to be lax on public health measures yet move quickly to reopen their economies.

The steep increase in cases in these states was predictable to the rational mind. The political mind, however, is adept at tricking itself. Trump will not back down. He is pressing these and other states not to retrace their steps. Again this is based on an even more cynical slant on the infection numbers. Blacks and other minorities disproportionately suffer greater infection and mortality from the virus. This does not bother Trump. He is banking reelection on the belief this fact will not unduly bother his supporters. In reality, he hopes that like him, they will take malicious solace from this racial disparity.

He hopes that his sacrifice of minority lives and health in order to reclaim economic normalcy will be seen by the wider segment of the white population as sound, innovative policy. This will be their rebuff of Black Lives Matter. This also is segues into Trump’s racial strategy.

Trump has clearly decided to run the most visibly racist presidential campaign since Reagan. He has stationed himself as the bastion of white America and its cultural trimmings no matter how foul. While black people and conscientious whites seek a fairer rendition of history to set the stage for present reform, Trump holds that White America must be glorified. For him, greatness lies not in the quality of a historic act but in the whiteness of its doer. Thus, the perpetrators of slavery are to be revered as are those who massacred and stole the land from under the foot of the Native American.

Consequently, Trump launched his campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That Tulsa was the site of an infamous massacre and destruction a prosperous black neighborhood that cost hundreds of lives was not lost on Trump. He reveled in it. Then, he went to Arizona which has a significant Latino population. There he railed against illegal immigrants in a manner that brought insult to Latinos. Next he was off to Mt. Rushmore, a national monument carved from the Black Hills of South Dakota. By formal treaty, this land belongs to the red man who considers those hills sacred. But when whites learned those sacred hills were filled with gold, they discarded the treaty they signed. They hunted down red man and destroyed his way of life. The red man protested Trump’s visit on their stolen land. To them, he is not their president but a trespasser. He went their not to rectify the unfair past but to exalt it. He went there to remind everyone that America is a white man’s nation and that its original inhabitants serve as nothing but disposable villains in the white quest for glory.

Trump has succeeded in insulting black, brown and red people in ways that leave no question. He rejects all notions of restraining police brutality. Meanwhile, he protects symbols of black servitude and red annihilation. In the bluntest way, Trump is making this election about race in America. He thinks this is a winning strategy. Thirty years ago, it was. But not now, given the demographic changes undergone since then. But Trump lives more in his own mind than in the real world. Trump wants to make this a “White Peoples Election.” In fact, this may be the lone strategy open to him given his bumbling and his hateful tendencies. Yet, this may prove to be the last stand for an overtly racist presidential campaign. If so, Trump would have contributed to national progress but in a manner he never envisioned and one which he forever will regret.

Trump has crowned his maladministration an elitist economic policy ordained in neoliberal heaven. His government has availed the financial sector of several trillion dollars. Big business and his big donors have been rendered more than whole though the crisis is not even over. Meanwhile, a pittance has been given the working American. Defaults on car loans, home mortgages and rentals have soared as Trump and the Democrats turn their backs on the average person. Under Trump, America has seen the largest transfer of public funds to big financial houses that has ever been recorded in human history. Trump has given the rich a choice luxury liner to sail through the crisis. But he has not tossed the common man even a string let alone a life rope.

In the end, Trump must carry Florida, Texas and Arizona to be reelected. Because of COVID and racial demographics, he may lose one or all of them.  Of the states of pivotal states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, Trump can perhaps be reelected if he loses but one or two of them. He will likely lose five.

Trump has made a grave miscalculation which he has little time to amend. This election is a once in a generation health pandemic superimposed on a once in a generation racial encounter. Trump believes he will garner enough white support to win despite or perhaps because of his handling of the COVID matter. His flawed reasoning places too much reliance on the racial disparities regarding COVID.

Just because white people proportionately suffer less does not mean they do not suffer from COVID at all. Whites still get sick and die in greater absolute numbers than any single minority. No matter how Trump tries to glorify and extol some notion of American exceptionalism, his fellow whites are normal people. They are no more heroic than any other race; many of them fear COVID; many of them fear Trump’s cavalier handling of it. While they may not love black people, many recoil from Trump’s shameless racism.

As such, Trump has lost the support of what may be called the moderate racists and those who once believed he would work economic miracles for the average person. In losing these people, Trump will lose the election. America will replace a near madman with a man whose mind is no longer nimble and is collapsing into itself. This election will not turn night to day. At best, it will turn night to dusk.  Sadly, the cries of the dead and dying will continue.

 

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Brian Browne

 

I WRITE this piece on June 19th or what black Americans call “Juneteenth.” This day is of symbolic import in American history. On that day in 1865, black people in Texas were finally informed slavery was ended by the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Lincoln. The odd thing is the proclamation was issued September 1862 with an effective date of January 1, 1863. Due to the sheer racist tenacity of slaveholders in Texas, it took over 2 1/2 years for enslaved blacks in Texas to learn of slavery’s demise. Texas had stolen another 30 months from their lives by keeping them in bondage when they no longer were. Something that never should have happened was maintained beyond its expiry date. Something long overdue was delayed out of sheer evil.

The black people of Texas were the last of the blacks to learn of slavery’s end. By the time they knew of it, the Civil War had ended. President Lincoln was felled by an assassin’s bullet. A nation was plotting new methods to maltreat this abused race. Over time, black Americans would come to celebrate this strange date as the end of slavery. We do so because of the compound irony of the moment. We were made free but were not told of it. By the time we were told, we would find that we were not really free. We were filled with the best of dreams but emptied by the bleakest of realities. Black America celebrates this day just as we remain haunted by it. If justice were truly done, this day would have no special importance except for those born on it. We celebrate that we have endured the Great Ordeal; but today we also protest the incidents of those of us so recently murdered because the Great Ordeal still tarries and refuses to leave us alone. We continue to ask why freedom delayed so long in coming and injustice has delayed so long in leaving. But we no longer seek the answer in the artificial goodness of others.

One was the cruelest of murders, the other the most thoughtless. The police murders of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks occurred under different circumstances in different places. Yet they were the same. Both tell the tale of the black man’s distressed status in America and of how death can rapidly come upon him via those claiming to be officers of the peace. The peace they protect is not a universal or equal peace. It is a peace meant for others; it is a state of existence that calls the black man to be still and obedient, to submit himself to an unfair silence. In this world, a black man’s quiet gaze into his maltreatment is the white man’s peace.

The murder of George Floyd is globally infamous. Its cruelty was incontestable even by American standards. Most sentient human beings when watching the videoed incident knew they were viewing unalloyed sadism. The killing of Mr. Brooks was equally wrong but more nuanced in appearance. Floyd seemed always compliant. He allowed him to be handcuffed and arrested without resistance. Yet, some minor hesitancy about being crammed into the back of the police vehicle landed him on the pavement which 9 minutes later would become his death mat as three officers rode his body, slowly squeezing the life out of him. Brooks’ ordeal would be more active.

Brooks was drunk yet drove his car. He fell asleep while his car was in line at a fast food drive-in. This was wrong. This also is where his encounter with the police began. Things started cordially. The officer knocked at the raised window on the car’s driver’s side. The slumbering man awoke. Police asked him to pull his car out of the line into an isolated parking space. He complied. They asked him a serious of questions. Brooks responded amicably, probably slightly embarrassed that sleep had caught him in this manner. They checked the car’s ownership. It was his and not stolen. He had no outstanding arrest warrants but had previously served a jail sentence and was on probation. He answered, “No,” when asked if he was with weapon. They searched him anyway. They found none. Even when they tested his breath alcohol, he complied.

He was legally drunk. At that point, the officers had a choice. They could have been nice and driven him home. They could have called his family to have someone sober take him home. However, cops rarely extend such kindness to black men although such mercy is regularly extended to whites. Instead, they decided to arrest him which was within their legal authority to do as he had committed a crime although minor. Events quickly took their fatal course. When the cops sought to handcuff him, Brooks resisted. Perhaps he became agitated because he knew his arrest would violate his probation meaning he would be returned to prison. Perhaps he thought that handcuffed he would be defenseless and the officers might manhandle him as was done George Floyd. Perhaps he was just frustrated that, despite his compliant attitude, the officers refused to give him a break. How come they never give me a break, Brooks likely questioned.

In an instant, he was on the ground wrestling the two officers. With desperate energy, he overcame them both while managing to strip one of his Taser. While watching the video of this encounter, I was not surprised by the deadly outcome.  The moment he resisted, Brooks entered dangerous territory; he crossed a point from which only a rare few of us return alive.

The Atlanta police force was first established to enforce slavery. Its purpose was to keep slaves in check and hunt down runaways. While Atlanta may be a majority black city with a black female mayor, engrained institutional culture long survives and rebuffs superficial electoral change. The moment Brooks resisted, the time switch was flipped. 2020 became 1820. Brooks’ flight would be that of a runaway slave. He would either be caught or killed as there is no value in property that cannot be used as the owner wants, especially if the owner fears that recalcitrant property may one night return to slit his throat.

In this manner are the police taught to think of black men who offer even the slightest resistance. What Brooks did was more than resist. For a moment, he controlled a situation in which he was supposed to be the obedient captive. The officers would respond in an extreme way to reestablish their authority and their sense of exalted status in the racial universe they occupy. Whether he knew it, Brooks had signed and sealed his own death warrant the moment he resisted being manacled.

That he took officer’s Taser and fired it toward the officer made death even more inexorable. After Brooks’ errant try at the Taser, the pursuing officer shot him twice while missing once. With Brooks down, the officer seemingly kicked the wounded man. The other officer reportedly stood on the dying body. The 19th century slave patrollers would have applauded the officers for following in their tradition of treating a runaway black as a wild animal to be killed and conquered. Stepping on a dying man is both a conquering act as well as a sign of utter contempt. It is what big game hunters do when they bag their prey. To further signal their disregard for Brooks’ humanity, the officers waited a few minutes before calling for emergency medical assistance. They wanted him dead. Simply because he scuffled a bit and ran, Brooks went from drunk to dead within minutes.

The officer wrongfully killed the man. An officer should only use deadly force if in reasonable fear of his life. Such reasonable fear did not exist. Brooks was fleeing which means he had no intent to injure let alone kill the officer. His stealing and using the Taser was wrong, but a Taser is not lethal. Moreover, the Taser missed the officer. Having been discharged twice, the Taser was no longer operative when the officer shot Brooks in the back. The officer knew this but shot the man anyway. The officers had the man’s car and knew where he lived. They simply could have let him go for the moment.  They could have impounded his car then other officers could have later found him at home.

But officers are not trained to give leeway to a black man. Even the slightest resistance deserves severe beat-down or death. The officers knew the nation and their own city were experiencing protests over Floyd’s brutal killing and police brutality in general. This mattered nothing to them. They were too well trained to shoot a resistant black man to even doubt that their racism was anything but right and correct. They would rather flame the embers of more protests than prove unfaithful to the racial creed and social order they vowed to uphold.

When I saw Floyd’s killing, I was angered. When I saw Brooks’, I was unmoved. Once I saw him resist the handcuffs, I expected his demise. What the officers committed was murder but it was the type of murder black people have been forced for so long to accept as their place in America. Under the law, the officer criminally killed a man. Brooks’ conduct was wrong on many fronts; but nothing he did justified his late night parking lot execution. But a police officer’s crime is not a crime when committed against a black man; such a crime is deemed an implement of social and racial order. A black man knows that resisting the police is to invite death. This knowledge is deposited deep in our souls, in the very marrow of our bones. Though I knew the officer was the villain, part of me blamed the dead black man for bringing death on himself. This was shameful of me.

The frequency of this type of injustice had deceived me into seeing it as the natural order of things. Thus what the police did was nothing more than what was expected of them. Brooks was the one who sprung a surprise and such a turn always exacts a dear price. Legally, Brooks did not deserve to die. But according to American social ethos, he warranted capital punishment. Yes, this has been the order of things but it is far from natural. It is depraved.

Having witnessed and experienced so much injustice, I had been made numb to a certain extent. It is wrong for police to kill a man at the slightest perturbation but that is what they do. Thus, the black man is at fault for irking the police; he should have been well aware of the severity of their potential response. This is what society has taught. I knew this was wrong but still a part of me succumbed to the force of this sordid logic. The Brooks incident has completely chased this ill from me. Sadly, it took the murder of a young black man to free me of this servitude.

Compare this to the case of Dylann Roof. This avowed racist entered a black church in South Carolina in 2015. Upon seeing the stranger, the pastor invited him to join the prayer group. After the prayer session ended, Roof fatally shot nine people who had lovingly extended their hand to him moments earlier. Roof fled.  The pastor was one of his victims. White police apprehended him without a scratch to his brow.  They were even so kind as to pick up some fast food for him because the poor mass murderer felt hungry after his evil deed.

Strange, how white police can treat him with such mercy yet come down so hard on Brooks.  Well, not so strange. Those white officers saw themselves in Roof. They identified with him, appreciating his overt, violent racism. They felt he was right but had gone just a bit too far. For them, he was but John Brown in reverse. Other white officers wound find little humanity in Floyd or Brooks, though neither had killed anyone. Both were to die an animal’s death. Yet, not a hair was touched on Roof’s head despite his murdering innocent worshippers in a house of God. What Roof had done was legally wrong but philosophically consistent with southern tradition.

Thankfully, the officer who shot Brooks has been charged with murder. This has prompted protests from fellow officers. They claim the officer was justified in killing Brooks; that he followed the training given him. Herein stands the problem. The police officers are likely correct in stating they are thusly trained. This means they have been trained to illegally use deadly force at the leanest provocation. So-called officers of the law have been trained to act outside the law. This means their job is not to enforce justice but to maintain social control over a hard-pressed people. As such, they have acted as a law unto themselves. This impunity is in jeopardy in some cities in America. Thus, the police now bristle and protest not so much against unfair treatment but for being found to be the dreadful henchmen they are.

I have written about the racial situation in America to make you aware of the nation many Nigerians idolize beyond all sense of proportion. One does not have to walk far before encountering someone who wishes Nigeria could be more like America. Yet, I wonder if they actually know what this means in its entirety.  Do they understand the human costs of this aspiration? America is strong and rich. This is what they want and this desire is understandable. But they must also understand that America’s attainments have substantially come at the tip of a sword or the barrel of a gun.

America achieved these things as a gangster would. It stole the land from its owners then killed most of them in the process as if to erase evidence of murder on a genocidal scale. While this racial cleansing was taking place, America stole people from another continent to supply the forced labor that would grow and harvest their cash crops. Slavery was so profitable that, for the period before the civil war, the state of Mississippi had a higher concentration of millionaires than anywhere in America and perhaps the world at that time. Holding to themselves the all of monetary gains earned by the enslaved labor, these owners of other people became some of the richest people alive. Just as the slaves they considered their property were among the poorest alive. For what good sense does it make for your property to own property or have money?

Once America had stabilized internally, it embarked on an imperialistic expedition to conquer other people and their resources. That journey has not ended. Thus, you must have imbibed the mead of fantasy to think Nigeria can mimic America. You cannot effectively put your foot on the neck of another when the largest bully has his foot on yours. In any case, why would you engage in such criminality?

That Nigerians so admire America means you are too willing to permit yourselves to be enticed into believing money and power signify godly blessing. Because, America is both rich and powerful you accept the myths it creates about itself. Yet, if you accept the stories it creates about itself, logic dictates you should accept what it says about you. Ah, this is the dark place your unfounded adoration of America will bring you.

I am a son of America; yet I know its henchmen will kill me if I twitch in an unwanted way at the inappropriate moment. But somehow Nigerians and Africans think America sees you as its equals. If they hate me, they doubly hate you as I am partly of them; you are not. These things you do well to remember when seeking advice on governance and economic progress from the wretched souls that pilfered your continent in the first place. I know my people in the states did not begin to progress until they stopped listening to their former owners and began thinking for themselves. This caused them to redefine the relationship they had with those once their masters. That process of redefinition continues to this very day because former masters begrudgingly put aside the lash.

Just as we deny the physical whip we must abhor the mental lash. Instead of idolizing those who have been unjust, black America is finally learning that the former masters and their henchmen should be made uncomfortable. Black Americans have made all the adjustments and compromises they are bound to make and have tossed in a few more as a sign of goodwill. It is time the master and his beneficiary descendants take full heed of the great sin committed and of the numerous wrongs done during the intervening centuries, decades and years to keep that great sin alive. Africa would do well to understand and adopt a similar process. If not, you will forever hear the clatter of those strong but invisible shackles that keep you from thinking as you should to advance Africa as is its natural right. You can try to eke out a scant life, hoping that the former masters overseas will be so content with the continent’s relative poverty and obsequiousness that they might leave it alone. That decrepit strategy offers no guarantee.

George Floyd was merely hanging with his friends doing nothing more subversive than getting high to momentarily forget their condition. Brooks was drunk, trying to buy a cheap hamburger on his way home for the night. They were still killed as if instigators of a slave revolt. If they are going to strike you down as a rebellious slave regardless of the prosaic circumstance in which they find you, then you might as well act like the rebellious slave they fear.  Might as well stand firm and let fate take its rightful course so that history records you as a full-fledged human being. Happy Juneteenth.

 

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