Notes On Black Politics Vol 1: Morals and Power

What are you prepared to do? ~Jim Malone

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Untouchables. Now unless you've been living under a rock, and totally devoid of any popular culture sense, then you know the premise of this movie as it revolves around Elliot Ness's campaign to capture Al Capone and tell how both sides fight to ensure their agendas reign supreme.

Perhaps, though the most significant line of the movie is when Malone (Connery) tried of Ness (Costner) pontification and moral tirades simply asks "what are you prepared to do".
What are you prepared to do? It's a simple question but one whose answers have a wide range of implications.

You see, as the Prime Minister of a sect of Black Studies here in Chicago, I have come to realize that we are losing because we never really asked ourselves what are we prepared to do. We never asked ourselves how are would we go and what are the wins and loses. I think we got so tied up into moral arguments and doing what's right and honor that we actually handicapped ourselves. I don't think any groups of Black folks at any time really have asked tried to answer this question.

Consider: Did slaves truly know what freedom meant? Did they understand that they now had to create an economy for themselves and set up other social networks to survive? Or was freedom simply to them the ability to come and go, live and love as they pleased?

Consider: Did the civil rights activists consider what happens at integration? Or was it simply the goal to be able to choose where they could take a shit. Did they ponder what integration meant?

Consider: Did the Panthers and other Black Power advocates really understand what revolution was? Did they really think that the power structure wouldn't fight back? Or did they just do what needed to be done?

Consider: Did we at OH do all that we could to protect the Emperor and our institution? Did we consider the implications of our actions? Did we really do everything we should have done? Or did we assume that people would support us because we are right, good and true?

Resolved: We did not do everything we could have done. Like Ness, we were more concerned with doing what is right, than doing what we had to do to win. We were so afraid of being like "them" that we became inept, weak and stagnant. We played fair. They played to win.
And it looks like they did.

Politics and war have nothing to do with right or wrong. Those things depend on ones point of view. No these entities have everything to do with power. One group has it. The other covets it.

What is one willing to do to get it?

This new battle is a test ground for my theory. I believe we have so been oppressed that we can't fathom playing to win. No we need for somebody, some force to help us win: be it god, the moral code of our enemy, the white man, a savior, a leader etc. The other thing is when we do fight it's with the goal of looking good while losing. The church calls that fighting the good fight. We hope that in our "sacrifice", our defeat others rally to the cause: martyrdom I believe it's called.

That's a flawed concept though. I mean people like the underdogs for a time, provided they can pull out a win here and there. But constant defeats, for whatever reason, make you a loser.

Nobody likes a loser.

I am not really interested in fighting the good fight. Those fights, by design, always end in defeat. It can be nothing else. It's based in the Christian ethos, i.e. suffer for the cause.
Naw, I'm interested in fighting to win. Suffering for the cause is over rated.

We need to look at this shit like a chess game. All the pieces matter and nobody except the king are more valuable than the next. We all are expendable. I submit we should have been playing people and situations to our benefit.

The game is about power, not morals. Once you acquire power you can dictate the morals.

Think I'm lying. Ask the Jedi.

They understood Morals; the Sith understood power. The results: one helluva ass kicking.

Put it another way: less Dr. King, more Marlo Stanfield.

Malone, I realize what I am prepared to do.

And that is Straight, No Chaser.
TLT

1-29-2008

2:15pm