Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate -- Unlikely Stories

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Date Posted: 11:35:09 03/19/03 Wed
Author: jp
Subject: Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate
In reply to: Jude 's message, "Re: Amiri Baraka and the great Jewish debate" on 21:07:17 03/05/03 Wed

>I totally understand why so many people feel this poem
>of Amiri Baraka's as being racists. I also would like
>to ask the majority have we forgotten this countries
>history?

Sorry this reply took so long, Jude. I just moved, then when I finally replied to your message, the server ate it. I got frustrated and waited another day to respond.

Your question is a little vague. Are you asking if we (I only speak for myself, obviously) have forgotten the way white America enslaved and brutalized black America for almost all of the past 400 years? Are you asking if I have forgotten the genocide of the natives and the oppression of the Mexicans? Certainly not. Baraka certainly has a right to be angry. He /should/ be angry, we should all be angry, not only for the past, but for the crimes this nation currently commits and is about to commit, and the way schoolchildren are taught that nothing is wrong. (I myself got sent to the principal's office for objecting [with screams, I grant you] to my elementary school textbook's footnote that the Cherokee were eventually relocated to Oklahoma.)

The problem is not that Baraka is angry, the problem is that he's telling very specific lies about very specific people. He is accusing specific people of all the crimes in humanity's history. That's not merely inappropriate. It's as twisted a lie as those in the schoolbooks.

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