*** ©2024 Daniel Andre Green. NO PORTION OF THIS MAY BE COPIED OR REPUBLISHED WITHOUT THE EXPRESSED WRITTEN CONSENT OF DANIEL ANDRE GREEN***
Yesterday I overheard a young gangsta, use the term “More house nigga and Dr. King in the same sentence. Those who know me know that I believe Martin Luther King was a prophet in the purest sense of the word and that, like Jesus, he was an avatar of God.
Dr. King was a proponent of the divinity of all sentient beings. He is America’s Buddha, America’s Christ. He is our Ghandi.
So whenever I hear anyone disparaging Dr. King as anything less than the principled defender of human rights that he was, I am not going to be silent. Never.
But, when I engaged with the young man I found out that he wasn’t criticizing Dr. King as a house nigga. He was condemning Morehouse College leadership as “More house niggas” for extending an invitation to Joe Biden to be this years commencement speaker at Morehouse’s, Dr. King’s alma mater, May 19th graduation.
What’s more, he used information that I provided him about Joe Biden taking credit for crafting the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act to support his position.
I had to admit that it looks wrong that the educational mother that nurtured Dr. King’s brilliant mind and heart invited Biden to speak to the demographic Biden’s various crime bills have demonized and waged war on the most: young African American males. Of course, Morehouse men aren’t the convicts and unforgiven criminals Biden targeted but that is little consolation.
Biden has never lost an opportunity to profit off of genocidal acts against the poorest people, whether it be convicts and impoverished citizens of America, or Palestinians and their Jewish counterparts whose lives and peace is being wiped out by both the October 7th attacks by Hamas and the Israeli ethnic cleansing response.
All of the above is warmongering, simple and plain and Dr. King, a man who was assassinated for prioritizing human lives and human dignity over politics and profits, would not have approved of Joe Biden, of all people, using his alma mater as a platform to legitimize his octogenarian pursuit of four more years to wreak havoc on our collective existence. God bless his heart, but this country and people who increasingly can’t afford to put inflated-priced food on their table need better options to lead the nation.
Yes, “Politics is compromise” but when politicians divide Black people into good, loyal sheep and scapegoats and then pull out their Black-by-proximity card, their legitimization comes off as blackface.
As a friend of mine reminded me, William L. Clay, Sr., one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, once pointed out that in politics Black people have no permanent enemies or friends; only permanent interest.
So, I get it that the talented tenth support Biden as a way of keeping Kamala Harris in position to further their interest nationwide. Honestly, many are supporting Biden with the hope that he dies in office so that Kamala Harris will become America’s first female president. Either way, her presence in the White House has been, and will continue to be, a boon for the Divine Nine, the good work they do, and all of us who love seeing women fashionably rocking green.
Still, as a servant of God’s compassion and justice, Dr. King wouldn’t have compromised his one love universal value system for political power, just like Jesus and Ghandi didn’t. Like them, he knew that the penalty for this was death and, still, he drank from that cup.
So, while I understand the expedient motivation behind Morehouse’s decisions to bestow this honor on Biden, it kinda underscores the sad reality that the most maligned group of people in America remain divided by the favor of those who transparently use all of them as pawns.
The fact that he has, as Biden constantly reminds us, put more Black women in Black judges robes than any other president, including Barack Obama doesn’t mean much to the interest of Black people when those Black women will be sending more Black men to prison than are going to go to college.
In fact, it adds insult to injury considering that their hands are bound by Biden’s crime bill which punished judges who used their discretion to treat poor defendants like rich defendants, and the anti death penalty reform act that Bill Clinton and Biden signed off on in 1994. This law made it almost impossible for poor defendants to have state convictions reviewed by federal courts due to the countless hidden procedural booby traps designed to strip us of our constitutional rights so that state courts could keep 13th amendment slaves in chains no matter how obviously egregious the constitutional violations are in their cases.
I admit, when Biden won the last time and gave his speech, I was touched.
I sat here in prison surrounded by convicts and officers of all sorts and I cried. I was so touched. But, then again I’m the type that cries while watching romantic comedies and American Idol…AND I DON’T GIVE A DAMN WHO KNOWS IT!
But, when I discovered the way that James Jordan’s death and my false arrest was weaponized by Biden, Bill Clinton, Jesse Helms and others to pass the 1994 Crime Bill I was forced to look at the way our feelings and sentiments have been used to provide a blackface hood pass to politicians for too long.
What made me support Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign back in the day when I was a teenager with no political conscience whatsoever? The memory of Bill on The Arsenio Hall show playing the sax while wearing Black sunglasses.
As a kid in the Washington Park projects in Laurinburg, NC. who lived and breathed hip hop with jazz samples it was cool to see this charismatic white man playing the sax like Kenny G. If Arsenio embraced him that was enough for me and, apparently many others of voting age who didn’t know that Bill Clinton would push the laws through that would become the blueprint for the prison industrial complex and the war on drugs that seemed to only target people with melanin in their skins.
Now that I know that Joe Biden told Congress in 1993 that “It doesn’t matter whether or not they were deprived as youth; it doesn’t matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to be socialized into the fabric of society, it does not matter whether or not they are the victims of society… We have predators on our streets, and society has in fact, because of its neglect, created that. It does not not mean because we created them that we forgive them or do not take them out of society
They are beyond the pale, many of THOSE PEOPLE, beyond the pale………(Thursday, November 18, 1993) Senator Joe Biden
(See 139 Congressional Record S15975-01)
When you read this congressional record you’ll find striking similarities between the language Biden and others used to pass these multi-billion dollar crime bills that profited from putting millions of people in society victimized by policies that turned once good neighborhoods to drug war zones which forced many to use violence to survive.
Like it or not, if you have to fight government created gangs everyday to get to school, to chill at the local rec and to use limited resources sooner or later you either pay homage to them since they run your hood, or you use violence to get your respect because you see that it’s working for them very well. Not to mention every other form of government, including the people that created every nation.
Many people getting locked up for that type of violence aren’t criminals; they are freedom fighters fighting to be free from government sanctioned oppression by gangs used to destabilize our neighborhoods, drop the property value, and force us out so that the corporate interest that pass these laws and support these programs that grow violence can buy the property just by paying the taxes off. They daily contend with the type of terrorism that Hamas, working in conjunction with some in the Israeli government that wants war, inflicted on the Jewish people.
If Biden thinks its okay for Netenyahu to genocide over 40,000 people, that isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that African-American people and organizations aren’t standing in solidarity beside the college kids who are protesting this genocide in college campuses across America.
What should be surprising is that African-Americans are expected to show slavish devotion to people who ascended to power off of dehumanizing rhetoric and policies that has put more African – Americans in chains than the old form of slavery ever did because these people, like Biden, elevate a few African Americans at the expense of the majority.
I’m not condemning Biden as a person, we all live and learn. His own son is KINDA being prosecuted for the same crimes Biden demonized us for, calling us baggy pants wearing pariahs.
Of course, the Biden’s privilege, earned off of tricking us, has provided them the type of due process protections we never get, even when we are innocent by law and fact.
My point? Make politicians earn your loyalty by withdrawing all support from them when they break their promises to you and when they use you.
Our main obstacle to voting isn’t having to show photo IDs to vote.
IT’S THAT THE INCENTIVES TO VOTE AREN’T STRONG ENOUGH TO CONVINCE MANY PEOPLE TO TAKE THE TIME TO GET A PHOTO ID.
A candidate being Black isn’t enough of an incentive for reasonable voters when the policies they promote result in the same ends as the most racist agendas ever devised.
It’s up to us to stop niggarish ploys by making them fail.
It’s way past time for us to stop them from playing us like dumb niggêrs.
NOW.
