"Civility": Just Another Word For "Business As Usual"???

Well…another year in my life has passed (I am now officially 42 years old as of nine minutes ago); hopefully there will be much less personal drama than there was last year..though with the expectation of the upcoming hurricane season and all the kerfluffle of an midterm election year, especially with this two-scandal a day administration, I’m not betting on a quiet year by any means.

Anyways…I do have some possible good news…there is a chance that I might get some major Internet run this coming week. Here’s some background to fill in the blanks:

1) Ishmael Reed (a long time Black columnist) writes up a nice article in CounterPunch on the many ways in which the media establishment uses Black journalists to sell a agenda that is most harmful to regular Black folk (and others as well, of course).

2) One of the journalists mentioned in the essay gets all in a hissy fit and uses the pages of the National Association of Black Journalists forum (actually a Yahoo! group that’s closed off from the public…suckas) to vent her spleen at Reed for his apparent sins;

3) Then, The Black Commentator (that glorious kick-more-ass-than-the-law-should-allow Black progressive journal) reprints and republishes Reed’s original article at their website, which further angers said journalist, who then….

4) Writes up a rejoinder (which BC decides to post for their latest edition) accusing BC and, by thinly veiled implication, Black Leftists in particular, of destroying “civility” by attacking other Black journalists too roughly.

Now, once I got a whiff of Michel Martin’s piece (she’s the journalist, BTW), it reminded me of an old essay out of an old column that queer socialist/ex-gay male porn actor Thomas Scott Tucker (of the Open Letter Online website) in which he opined beautifully about the limits of “civility” as a tool of squelching radical critique of our society. I really do wish that I could recollect where the essay is or whether it is online; but suffice it to say that Tucker saw like very few Leftist could how the push towards “civility” in debate can be as useful to the present rulers of bipartisan reaction as it could be a positive token to respect and decency.

In any case, I had Scott Tucker in mind when I wrote the following response to Martin’s piece and forwarded it to the BC editors, Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon….and there is a chance that it may get published as an column for their next issue, which goes out on Thursday. Whether it does or it doesn’t means less to me than the fact that it is appreciated, and I will share it with you here just so that you can see what I felt…and in case Bruce Dixon does some creative editing. (Just kidding, Bruce..do what you have to.

Here’s the original email that I sent to BC this evening (forwarded also to Kelley over at Bitch Lab for her comments; she actually got me going on this by referrencing Ms. Martin at her blog today):

From: Anthony J. Kennerson
Date: 05/06/06 20:09:28
To: publisher at blackcommentator dot com
Subject: “Civility….Or Business As Usual???” A Black Leftist Responds to Michel Martin

It was with a great deal of interest that I read Michel Martin’s article
in the May 4th issue of Black Commentator titled “Open Letter From A Black
Journalist” criticizing BC (and by extension, the progressive daily news
journal CounterPunch) publishing Ishmael Reed’s article, “How The Media Uses
Blacks to Chastize: The Colored Mixed Doubles”. Not that I am particularly a
noted fan of Mr. Reed or that I agree wholeheartedly with all of his views
as a eclectic Black liberal/Leftist, but there were a lot of legitimate
points in his article about how the establishment media uses not a few Black
voices to undercut and undermine what is known as the “Black Consensus”,
which is decisively and decidedly to the Left of the usual political
spectrum allowed in mainstream media discourse.

First off…I find it quite interesting that Ms. Martin accuses Mr. Reed
(and by extension, CounterPunch and Black Commentator) of lack of “civility”
and feels the need to write the editors of BC to call them out…but she can
t find the time to post her other critique of Reed’s article in a public
forum for feedback and response. (Ms. Martin cites a response she gave to
the National Association of Black Journalists forum; but that site turns out
to be a Yahoo! group that is closed in accessibility to journalists only..
and thus inaccessible to those of us in the public.)

For someone who feels the need to throw accusations at individuals on the
Left (and in her email that was published in BC, she specifically aimed her
guns at Reed for his presumed assumptions “that black officials (presumably
of the left since I’ve see no similar protectiveness of those on the right)
are somehow beyond questioning (or chastising for that matter”), Ms. Martin
seems to miss the basic point of Reed’s article: that the establishment
media (whether liberal or conservative) is not afraid of using Black people
as a ruse to sell a political agenda that is decisively harmful to the
majority of Black people. The examples that he gave (Vernon Robinson’s
Congressional run in North Carolina as Jesse Helms’ long lost Steppin
Fetchit grandson; John McWhorter and Shelby Steele from the “End of Racism”
neo-conservative Right; and even the occasional liberal voice like Clarence
Page and Bob Herbert) are only just a few of the many ways in which genuine
progressive Black thought is marginalized and distorted…and voices that
support the dominant conservative-to-Far-Right political spectrum are
reenforced.

Perhaps the real issue that Ms. Martin has with Reed and BC is that she was
called out directly by him for her not-so-fawning coverage of the saga of
Representative Cynthia McKinney (GA – 4th Dist.), who has the unmitigated
gall to actually represent her poor and working class constituents in her
Atlanta district as a principled progressive, and who is one of the few
representatives who dares to challenge the frontal assault of the Right and
Center on average Black people directly….and who also had the unmitigated
hubris to defend herself against an overzealous security guard who just
couldn’t keep his hands off her while going to work. (And I won’t even go
into McKinney’s hair style choices at that time, since I’m sure that even Ms.
Martin are aware of the vile racist epithets that were slung at
Congresswoman McKinney by right-wingers at that time. Nothing that Ishmael
Reed wrote on that article could even begin to approximate Neal Boortz’s
“ghetto slut” smack..and those was the more printable insults.) I’m not
saying that McKinney is above accountability; but the perspective of having
a publically active progressive Black woman put down due to her choice in
hair style (not to mention her political positions) might have more than a
bit to do with why she is supported so firmly amongst average Black folk…and it is more than proper to point out how establishment media programs were selling the dominant party line of McKinney being nutty, almost slutty, and a dangerous
ultra-radical Black Leftist that should be shunned by any moderate-thinking
Black politician.

Nor am I that impressed by Ms. Martin’s attempt to explain away and dismiss
popular Black anger at media voices who use their newly gained power in the
establishment media for personal self-promotion at the expense of the “Black
Consensus”. According to her, that’s just the usual media obsession with
gadflies who think “outside the box”; she directly quotes John McCain and
Chuck Hagel as prominent examples on the conservative Republican side as
examples of how internal critics get more attention. There’s one small
problem with that analogy, though: Hagel and McCain, for all their
criticisms of the Bush presidency on some occasions, remain firmly and
strongly within the dominant right-wing consensus; and have no plans to
break away at any rate. Indeed, McCain is currently attempting to repudiate
much of his old “maverick” image and suck up to the very same Far Right
resources that killed his earlier 2000 Presidential campaign…considering
that all that remains of the Republican “base” is the fundamentalists and
the former “Dixiecrats”, it is more of a Realpolitik move than anything
philosophical.

But it is Ms. Martin’s clarion call for BC to be more “civil” which
fascinates me most; it is as if she thinks that only Black Leftists are the
ones that are poisoning the political debate by not “respecting” their
critics enough and resorting to name-calling and “dozens-playing”. It’s as
if she thinks that if we on the (Black) Left simply played nice and only
used right and proper language and played by Maquis of Queensbury rules and
treated the Right and the Establishment Center as people who played fair and
square, then all the issues affecting Black folk would be resolved rather
quickly. Well, Ms. Martin, I really hate to burst your bubble, but that won
t be happening anytime soon.

For starters….you are aware, ma’am, that if anything, the mass collective
attitude of the Right is not getting any more civil…in fact, quite the
opposite; feeling the fruits of a successful takeover of the political
system through unbridled control of the main political institutions
(including both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court),
they have simply become that much more aggressive in their tactics of
driving Black folk back to their antebellum status. Not even the
diminishing popularity of their leadership and the demonstrated failures of
their policies has driven them in any way towards the goal of mutual respect
and mutual consent. Rather, it has simply intensified and concentrated
their anger at and fear of losing their assumed privileges as White people..
and they have directed their anger in much more direct language and actions.
Just go over to sites like FreeRepublic.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com,
FrontPageMag.com, and a few other “conservative” sites and blogs, and you
will feel the full fury of White scorn towards Blacks who fail to know their
“place”..and those are the more genteel, upper-class sites. Attempting
civility” in the face of people like them is sorta like negotiating with
people who use cattle prods and biting dogs on you….not too successful,
and potentially fatal. Respect towards others means nothing if that respect
is not returned in kind, and no self-respecting Black person should ever
give those who would enslave or kill him anything other than the utmost
resistance. Given this inequality, “civility” becomes reduced to nothing
more than the same old business as usual of average Blacks getting shafted.

Now, I’m no supporter of cursing in public or of any mother beating her
child in public; and I would agree to a point that our society overall has
lost a real sense of civility in our lives….but rather than aim my guns at
the historical victims and the powerless; I’d much prefer to attack the real
roots of such incivility: the political and economic and cultural
institutions which continue to support and enforce the maldistribution of
resources to benefit the few at the expense of the many….and the racist
(and also sexist, and sex-negative, and classist, and heterosexist, and
anti-enviromental) attitudes all too popular that are used to reenforce such
inequality. That is the main focus and objective of sites like CounterPunch
and BC, and what makes them so radical. Obviously, as a woman of the
establishment, you choose a different tack. That is your right and your
perogative, of course..but please be a bit more honest about your goals and
not attempt to degrade those of us who choose a more radical critique of our
society as lacking “civility”. Rudeness and crudity may not be genteel, but
it beats being subjugated; and even Martin Luther King and Gandhi had to
protect themselves against violence and injustice. The old saying remains
the same: No justice…no peace.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to express my views…and they are
strictly just that…my own.

Sincerely,

A bit long, perhaps…but it got my point across, didn’t it. I’ll just let you decide on that one.

Peaceout….