A Bombed out crater where buildings used to be
Rethinking American Exceptionalism
The question on the lips of all thoughtful Americans just now, as American flags are lowered for the last time over Iraqi territory and our warriors disembark, is was it worth all the American blood and treasure our nation expended there? How one answers this question depends upon your perspective and values; which are shaped by a multiplicity of factors. Among these none are more influential than class, knowledge of the facts at the time of the invasion, historical memory, ideology, general educational level, race, and whether or not you believe in the dangerous myth of American Exceptionalism.
Of all our misconceptions as a nation, this fervent belief that white Americans have been exceptionally good and just among the peoples of the world has been the most destructive. It is the reason that the majority of Americans can get all choked up reciting the time worn mantra extolling the USA as the one country that has always stood for freedom, justice and equality for everyone. The problem is that it’s not true!
There is much for which Americans can justly take a bow: the first people in the world to found a nation on the universal humanist principle that “all men are created equal,” and produced a constitution that placed power so thoroughly in the hands of the people that 200 years later those who govern must still have the consent of the governed. These are achievements that deserve sustained applause. However when the story stops there it distorts the master narrative so grotesquely the American saga becomes a dangerous self-serving lie!
Alas, this is also a country born in genocide and slavery; its European settlers perpetrated the largest case of land theft in modern history; passed laws that made it legal to sell the children of black parents and violate their wedding bed at will, and the Supreme Court of the land once decreed that “black men have no rights that a white man is bound to respect.”
These pious bible thumping Puritans slaughtered Native Americans and other people of color with impunity; shot workers down it the streets when they attempted to organize; and instituted a legal color caste system based on White Supremacy that spans most of the history of this country; a system based on a master race theory so vicious it served as the blueprint for the Nurnberg Laws the Nazi’s used to arrest and slaughter millions of European Jews!
The ideology that led to genocide by the racial hygenicists in Nazi Germany was deeply rooted in the American Eugenicist movement. This movement, which was based in 19th century Social Darwinist ideas that argued the class and racial hierarchy in society reflected the natural endowments of the population, took root in American society in the early twentieth century. Eugenicist propagated the belief that some groups genes should be reproduced because they improved the quality of the nation’s population, and conversely some genes should not be reproduced because it led to an increase of mentally, physically and morally defective people that weakened the nation.
These ideas were fashionable in the US decades before the rise of Nazism in Germany and were promoted by elite academic institutions such as Stanford University. In 1902 Stanford’s President, David Starr, published a treatise titled “The Blood of a Nation,” which argued that human qualities and deficits such as talent, poverty, criminal behavior, etc. were transmitted through a person’s blood. These ideas were subsidized by the super-rich class Franklin Roosevelt would derisively but accurately label “The economic royalist,” through foundations they set up to fund causes they believed would improve American society.
The main culprits in funding this so-called “race science” were the Rockerfeller, Carnegie and Harriman foundations, and the enlisted professors from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford among others. The ideas promoted by the Eugenicists informed policy makers who instituted racial apartheid; laws preventing marriage or procreation between whites and non-whites, discrimination against non- Tuetonic white ethnics in immigration policy and elswhere; anti-unionism, and forced sterilization.
The Rockefeller Foundation even funded the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s research before he took up his criminal practice at Auswitz, a death camp where European Jews were slaughtered en-mass. And British historian Edwin Black, whose parents were Jewish holocaust survivors, has written a detailed account of how the IBM corporation supplied machines to the Nazi’s that enabled them to carry out the mass murder of Jews with industrial efficiency. See: IBM and the Holocaust.
The ultimate connection of racist American ideology and Practices with the rise of Nazism in Germany lay in the connection between Adolph Hitler and the influential New York Eugenicist Madison Grant. A lawyer and President of the New York Zoological Society and founder of the Bronx Zoo, Grant published a ponderous tome titled “The Passing of the Great Race” in 1917.
Here was the classic statement of the case that the blond Teutonic master race is the source of all great civilizations. The arguments in this book were virtually cut and pasted in Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kempt, his recounting of racial history is all based on Grant’s pseudo-scientific thesis. While this is obvious from a reading of the two texts, historian Jonathan Spiro discovered a letter from Der Fuerer while sifting through Grant’s papers in which Hitler declared: “Your book is my bible!” See: Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant
Hitler’s Mentor
A Passionate Racist
The evil system of legal racial oppression in America, that was the incubator of these racist theories, spanned a couple of centuries. It was finally ended only 47 years ago by the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, which was only supported by many in the white power elite when it became clear that the Russians were using the black American freedom struggle as propaganda.
The Russians designed propaganda employing images of black children being vicious beaten by policemen because they wanted to get a drink of water at a lunch counter, to dissuade the emerging nations of Africa and Asia from allying with the US led NATO block – which was largely composed of their former colonial masters – and show them that white Americans were no different.
Hence the Afro-American struggle for basic human rights was an international embarrassment that exposed white Americans as hypocrites who routinely betrayed the values they seek to preach to the rest of the world, and our nation’s economic inequality has become just as potent an argument against US values.
As Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said in his recent speech at the Reagan Library – a curious mix of fact and fiction – “America’s role and significance in the world is defined, first and foremost, by who we are at home. It is defined by how we conduct ourselves with each other. It is defined by how we deal with our own problems. It is determined in large measure by how we set an example for the world… one of the most powerful forms of foreign policy is the example we set.”
However clueless Christie is divorced from reality like all right-wing ideologues who hoist the banner of American Exceptionalism. Hence he didn’t really understand that his statement was an indictment and not the celebration of American values he intended it to be. His confusion of fact and fiction was nowhere better demonstrated than in the claim that “Unfortunately, through our own domestic political conduct of late, we have failed to live up to our own tradition of exceptionalism.” Could he really believe that this is a recent problem?
The sad fact is that our history demonstrates the USA has a split personality; the contradiction between the professed ideals of the nation and the exercise of power by the white elite –which I consider the major theme of our history – is the essence of schizophrenia. It comes as no news that Americans are shamefully ignorant of our history; yet it is shocking to see such ignorance or denial – which has taken the form of a dangerous self-deception – expressed before the world press by a man who is touted as the best Republican prospect for the presidency. The failure to accept who we really are, a nation with high ideals and tragic flaws, has led much of America’s leadership to believe that our perfection, our Exceptionalism, gives us the right to invade other countries and effect “regime change.”
What must change however is the self-righteous arrogance with which Americans exercise power in the world. To his credit Christie clearly understands this, although he will have his work cut out trying to convince the rest of his party. He observes: “The United States must also become more discriminating in what we try to accomplish abroad. We certainly cannot force others to adopt our principles through coercion. Local realities count; we cannot have forced makeovers of other societies in our image. We need to limit ourselves overseas to what is in our national interest so that we can rebuild the foundations of American power here at home…”
If this does not become the accepted view of American leaders and the general public, the Iraq debacle will really have been all for naught and we shall soon be at war with Iran. I can already hear the sabers rattling! This would be a catastrophe that could fatally wound our political economy, promote protracted conflict at home, and end American prominence in the world.
For the true believers it is impossible to accept that this bloody three trillion dollar assault on an unoffending nation, was a criminal mistake. That this ten year conflict resulting in the destruction of tens of thousands of American lives…through death and devastating life altering injuries to their minds and bodies – overwhelmingly from the working poor and unemployed – may well result in a worse situation than they found; that America’s cure was worse than the disease.
But as the bombs go off in Bagdad, a sure sign that the Sunnis and Shiites have resumed their murderous 18 hundred year old conflict over some esoteric theological disagreement, which renders each side apostates in the eyes of the other, it will be hard to escape the conclusion the American invasion has made the lives of most Iraqis worse. and our position in the Middle east more perilous.
None of the Republican candidates for president dare admit that the Iraq War was a tragic fiasco, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s, unleashing antagonistic religious conflicts which insure the killing will continue long after American forces are gone, and expanding the influence of their fellow Shiites in Iran.
Instead the princes and powers of the Grand Obstructionist Party escape into flights of fantasy of the sort that we are hearing from Senator John “Insane in the Brain” McCain, and echoed in the hysterical rhetoric of his hawkish right-wing cohorts. Most of these dunderheads defer to Senator McCain because, it spite of their tough talk they have never served in the armed forces…never placed themselves in harm’s way. Yet they are the first to call for the deployment of American troops everywhere in the world, and seem to have never heard of an opportunity to invade some country they could refuse.
McCain says President Obama’s decision to end the 10 year old war in Iraq is an act of political opportunism; that we should stay there until we can leave with honor in victory. The careful observer can see the glint of madness in his eyes, as he puffs up like a blow fish while spouting murderous madness that bears no relationship to reality.
McCain’s vision and judgment is hopelessly blurred by the fact that he has never recovered from his experience in Vietnam, where he not only witnessed the retreat of the “invincible” American military juggernaut, defeated by a peasant army who labeled themselves the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, but he loathes the fact that his high tech jet was shot down, captured, and then told when and where to shit, shave and shower by little brown Asian warriors whom he still calls “gooks!”
We are fortunate indeed that Barack Obama was elected President of the USA; had McCain won the election we would already be at war with Iran and probably Pakistan too, and instead of withdrawing American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan we would be widening that war in search of an illusory “victory” no one can define. we Although this entire debacle is arguably the worst diplomatic disaster in American history, the leading Republican candidate for President is surrounding himself with foreign policy advisers who were the architects of Bush’s Iraq war policy!
It’s long past time for us to get out of Iraq, and Afghanistan too! Yet Republican candidates are vying with each other to be the first to bomb Iran, and the severe sanctions against that country contained in the new military authorization bill could force Iran into taking actions that could lead to war, in fact all the signs suggest that as I write we are blundering into war with Iran.
If anything is clear in all this, it is that we must struggle to keep the warmongers of the “Grand Obstructionist Party” out of the Oval Office and the leadership of Congress. That is the most urgent lesson of the Iraq War. And as to the question of American Exceptionalism, we would do well to consider this observation by the great 20th century Irish writer George Bernard Shaw: “America is the only country in the history of the world to go from barbarism to decadence without ever passing through civilization.” If you believe that institutionalized racial oppression and a recurrent tendency to invade other countries barbaric…Shaw has a point.
Shaw: Playwright and Fabian Socialist
Was he Right?
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Playthell Benjamin
Harlem, New york
December 30, 2011
“Fighting Fire with a Feather”
Posted in Cultural Matters, Guest Commentators, Playthell on politics with tags Delta Blues Festival, Ed Brown, Ed Brown Dies, H. Rap Brown, SNCC, Voting Rights on December 20, 2011 by playthellBrother Ed Brown
SNCC Comrades Commune together 50 years later
Remembering Ed Brown: Pan-African Soldier
“His devotion, eloquence and generosity of spirit has ennobled and adorned the movement in our time. Because of his quiet self-confidence and humility he never sought publicity but thousands, especially poor folk, here and on the Continent have had their lives vastly improved by Ed’s effectiveness and compassion. He is truly one of the great un-sung heroes of our generation. We shall not soon see his like again.”[Ekwueme Michael Thelwell]
Eddie Charles Brown, Jr., a great-souled human being committed to fighting the oppression of all people from Mississippi to South Africa, died at his home on November 23, 2011. In political circles, Ed was respected for his enduring commitment to our people. As a consequence of his tireless devotion to, and success in advancing the culture and economic progress of poor black folk, Ed Brown was widely recognized as among the most incorruptible, responsible, resourceful and effective of the activist leaders of the Movement. As his SNCC colleagues said of him, “More than most, Ed’s life embodies and exemplifies to a remarkable degree, the principle of undying love for our people both here and in the Motherland.”
Although the consummate organizer and political activist, in matters of the aesthetics of black musical culture and the southern oral tradition, Ed had the soul of a poet and the eloquence of a griot. Similarly, his great sensitivity to African cultures is reflected in the quality of the extraordinary collection of traditional African religious art, which he and his wife Valinda have painstakingly gathered over many years.
A year prior to his passing Ed gave his Shahada (acceptance of Islam) to his younger brother the Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown) to whom Ed’s observable devotion, loyalty and commitment was widely seen as an unconditional and admirable example of brotherly love. The janaza (last rites) for Ed were held November 24, 2011 at the West End Community Mosque in Atlanta, Georgia.
Freedom fighter: Imam Jamil Al Amin
Ed Remained Devoted to his Brother
A native of Louisiana, Ed was born, on August 19, 1941 to Thelma Warren and Eddie Charles Brown, Sr. in New Orleans and raised in Baton Rouge. Ed’s historical efforts to fight segregation and all forms of oppression as well as to empower Black people started in 1960 as young student at Louisiana’s Southern University. He and 16 other classmates confronted the University and staged a sit-in protesting the racial segregation prevalent in Louisiana at the time.
After he and the others were arrested, expelled and banned from enrolling in any university in Louisiana, Ed began the ongoing struggle for justice, which would define his entire life. This expulsion led Ed to Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1961, where he landed on the front line of the Civil Rights Movement. As a leader and organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) he fought to win constitutional rights for Blacks and all disenfranchised people.
During SNCC’s historic Mississippi Summer project of 1964 he was project director in embattled Holmes County, the heart of the Delta. Ed always proclaimed that he was “fighting fire with a feather,” but he knew he would prevail because he often ironically said, he was protected by “asbestos gloves.”
SNCC attracted the best and brighest
Inspiring Young People of concience like Bob Dylan
And Wise Elders Too
The Great American writer James Balwin hangin with SNCC workers
A Life of Service
As will be seen from the details which follow, in a busy and active life, Ed never held a job not directly concerned with human advancement. Highly regarded for a selfless incorruptibility in white political and philanthropic circles, Ed bridged the gap between both communities and was able to direct very significant financial resources into poor black communities.
The three abiding concerns guiding his professional life here and in Africa can be seen to have been: democratic political liberation, economic empowerment and the celebration and enhancement of our peoples’ cultures. By virtue of Ed’s efforts in these areas a great many thousands of people have had their lives significantly improved.
Among fellow workers, he is remembered for his uncommon diplomatic skill, personal charm and political tact. Kalamu Ya Salaam who served with him on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Commission recalls, “What I most remember is that the respect he commanded coupled with a delightful sense of humor and tact enabled him to soothe the most outrageous egos, resolve conflicts and bring apparently irreconcilable warring factions harmoniously back together.”
As a staffer at the Citizen’s Crusade Against Poverty in Washington, D.C., in 1965, Ed developed information networks among community-based organizations to support anti-poverty legislation. In 1967, he organized efforts to improve the political and economic conditions of Blacks in the Mississippi Delta as the Executive Director and founder of the Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE) and The Delta Foundation in Greenville, Mississippi.
At MACE, he developed community-based enterprises producing Fine Vines blue jeans and establishing catfish farms in the Delta. In 1974, Ed raised funds and helped organize the Sixth Pan African Congress held at the University of Tanzania at Dar-es-Salaam’s Nkrumah Hall with delegates representing 52 independent states and/or liberation movements in Africa, the Caribbean and other people of African descent.
As Executive Director of the New Orleans Area Development Project in 1976, Ed organized advocacy groups to work for reform by organizing communities to fight police brutality and creating parent-teacher committees for education reform. Ed went on to serve as President and CEO of the Southern Agriculture Corporation in the 1980s where
he worked to organize and gain capital funding for small Black southern farmers. In the 1990s as Executive Director of the Voter Education Project in Atlanta, Ed continued his tireless efforts to register Blacks and poor people to vote and to fight legislation restricting poor and disenfranchised people of all color from voting.
From the 1990s through 2006, Ed took his “asbestos gloves” to nations outside the United States. As a senior consultant to the National Democratic Institute, Ed designed and implemented civic and voter education programs to prepare for national elections in Ethiopia, Namibia, Zambia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. He was especially involved in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa which resulted in the freeing of Nelson Mandela. As an international election observer for The Jimmy Carter Center, Ed worked in Ghana, Zambia and The Dominican Republic.
As a human rights activist in corporate board rooms, Ed served on the World Council of Churches and Emergency Fund for Southern Africa raising funds for humanitarian relief; at the Center for National Security Studies monitoring American defense policies and budgets; and with the American Friends Service Committee, U.S. Department of Agriculture Citizens Advisory Committee Equal Opportunity and Atlanta Council for International Cooperation. He also consulted with the Asian Council of Churches and participated in the Consultation of Minority Peoples of Japan in Tokyo.
In addition to his international work during this time, from 1994 until 2003, Ed moved into the arena of municipal and city planning as southeastern marketing director for Sidney B. Bowne Engineering. He served as the strategic planner developing relationships between the company and city and state officials in the company’s negotiation and establishment of Geography Information Systems. He worked on transition teams for the mayors of Macon and Albany, Georgia, in 2003 as a consultant with ABC Management where he evaluated and recommended management of staff for city departments and developed strategic plans for incoming mayoral administrations.
Ed developed an early appreciation and love of art while studying at Howard University under Professor Sterling Brown. He became especially interested in the history of African art and cultures. During his later journeys throughout the continent, he began collecting African sculptures and masks which he and his wife, Valinda, expanded with African and African-American art. Ed became a co-owner of Boston’s Harris/Brown Art Gallery, which exhibited major African-American artists. He is widely known for furthering dialogue regarding the importance of nurturing artists of African-American and African descent.
Professor Sterling Brown: Poet and Literary Scholar
Mentor to Ed Brown and Tony Morrison
As a board member of the High Museum of Art, he was especially proud of being instrumental in helping to establish the annual David Driskell Young Artist Award. He also served on the board of the Atlanta Photography Group where he chaired the Youth Education Program and as chairman of the Funding Committee of the Academy Theater. Ed’s many years of advocating the ascension of African-American artists has resulted in their inclusion in successful exhibitions at various art venues.
Ed’s love and dedication to Black culture embraced music of all kind. He established and promoted the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival while at MACE. He especially enjoyed jazz and gospel and he and his wife made annual pilgrimages to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. But Ed’s most enjoyable times at his home with Valinda were preparing deliciously wonderful New Orleans cuisines and sharing those absolutely satisfying meals with friends and family who prized the opportunity to get a cup of Ed’s Gumbo.
Ed was a master New Orleans Chef, who was admired deliciously for his seafood, duck, or pheasant gumbos, and quail in rich brown sauce, and turtle soup with sherry and crawfish bisque and fried catfish and spinach shrimp dressing and sweet potato pone. His demonstrations of affection for food and sharing led to his wife’s publication of a loving cookbook. Ed was an elaborate storyteller, so with each meal came colorful adventures with Ed Brown.
Keeping a Great Tradition Alive
Ed was a passionate historian of African culture and he accumulated a large library of African history. He spent many rewarding years studying Yoruba culture. During the 1970s with an extended stay in Nigeria, following an elaborate ritual that included him running alongside camels with a net over his head, Ed was initiated into the ruling Ogboni Society of Yoruba manhood.
Ed Brown is survived by his loving wife, Valinda; three sons, Michael Johnson, Kevin George and Keith George; two sisters, Pat Brown Leak (Alex) and Cheryl Brown Hill (Donald); brothers Jamil Al-Amin (Karima) and Lance Brown (Pat); grandchildren Alexis Johnson, Aliyah Johnson, Tyler Johnson, Kristin George, Christopher George, Brandon George and nieces, nephews, cousins and a host of other family and friends.
Ancestral Spirits
The Art Ed Loved
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BY: Professor Michael Thelwell
Pelham Massachusetts
December 2011