Black History Month begins in SF

To the SF Bay Times,

Kicking off Black History Month 2006, on the afternoon of February first,
in The City, near the corner of Market and Van Ness,
an angry young man strides by, shouting into his cell phone:
" You lucky I ain' puttin' no slug in ya, n-ggah,
by how you been playin' me! "



Superficially, he looks like the first African-Americans I ever knew personally --
the activists, mostly students, in the civil rights movement down South,
in the early Sixties. But their world-view left room for hope as well as anger.
After centuries of oppression, they believed in themselves,
and so they believed they could challenge America to live up to her own ideals.



And what does this young African-American believe in?
Survival of those men who are most brutal, most selfish, least caring?
Spending much of his life behind bars?
Dying young?



What would Rosa Parks think of him?
Or Coretta Scott King?
Indeed, does his own mother secretly grieve over what her child has become
(while publicly practicing denial)?


Oppression enobles a few,
and debases many.


Yet oppression can help clever opportunists --
such as gangsta rappers,
who romanticize the street thug lifesyle, making it seem semi-heroic,
as if selfishness and ignorance were truly rebellious.
They can laugh all the way to the bank
while putting on a minstrel show about black poverty,
a "coon show" about lack of hope,
a racist caricature of the ghetto and its people.
If a non-black said such things, everyone would denounce her as racist.
But when black rappers demonize young blacks,
well, that's just show biz. Maybe it's even art.

Like the artistic performance of the "Judas goat",
at a slaughter-house,
leading the sheep and cattle toward their fates,
but saving himself.


Welcome to Black History Month.

Queerly yours,
Tortuga Bi LIBERTY,
San Francisco, CA

1 February 2006