by Anthony Asadullah Samad_ As the politics of progressivismmes More an examination of aengineering whereby segments osociety seek to establish a social peck-sing orderMm based onachievementof the collec-tive, thepro ress of| ac kAmerica stillrepresents theiil most suspectProposition.While there are more examples ofblack achievement on an individualbasis, there is a decline in wages, jobsand wealth among African Americansin the collective. °Yes, more individual blacks aredoing better, but the race is regress-ing in an era of oprogress. ? No mat-ter how you look at it, whether asindividuals or in the aggregate, theexception is not the rule when itComes to measuring black progress.But how do we know the difference,and how do we know whos contrib-uting to black progress and who's not?ee talk bout Blacks, and blackprogress, as if they are a monolithctioning in America Ts Eurocentricegemonic society, but it Ts just nottrue. Asian communities function asa monolith within the Eurocentric he-gemony: The Jewish community func-tion as a monolith despite the poli-tics of America Ts hegemony. Mono-liths move toward a collective goal,in spite of individual interests, theoutcome of which is progress. TheAfrican American community's pur-suit of individual interests, many ofwhich go against-the interest of theBy Sujette Jones oOn behalf of Wachovia Corpo-ration, I apologize to all Americansand especiallyto African.Americans| -andpebplt, ?Chairmanand chief ex-ecutive G.Kennedy Th-ompson saidafter a studyfound that hiscompany hadthat exploitedSuejette Jonespurchased two banksslaves.According to Darryl Fears, anews staff writer, Wachovia revealedon June 1st that one of the banks putORYcollective, and the absence of a col-lective goal produces little, if any, .rogress. So how is it that we canfave so many Blacks doing well, yethave sary poncr that are not pro-sressing? Largely because we don't rec-tiene we are, and what manyof us do, to counteract progress. Share your thoughts on this storyon the ChicagoDefender.com mes-sage board.A critical part of this odysfunc-tion ? goes to the very notion of selfidentity " how we see ourselves.Many see themselves as contributingbut what are they contributing to, ourProgress, or our regress? Are theytearing down the wall of inequality,or are they helping build the wallhigher making it more difficult for the next generation to achieve equal-ity.y Many African Americans areproducts of their environment, oth-ets are products of their time. Eitherway, they may not be products ofprogress. Progress, particularly com-munity progress, is a product of con-scious behavior on the part of Blackswho understand that personal respectis tied to how others perceive therace. None of us can separate our-selves from the realities of the condi-tions associated with the race. Yet,many of us try to. Others even try toreinforce the realities by exploitingthe situation, meaning using the con-dition of black people Ts suppression_ as a way oto keep it real ? that offers adistortion as to what black poverty,black economic deprivation, blackoppression is really about.These are not oa way of life, ?they are oa product of social circum-stances ? and oa fact of racial hege-mony. ? The goal should be to change,hundreds of slaves to work on rail-roads and another accepted more than100 more as collateral on defaultedloans in the 1800s. Wachovia, one ofthe nation T largest banks, was requiredby the city of Chicago to investigateits [past td: participate in T the redevel-opment of a housing project on thecity Ts South Side.Chicago's law is the result of acampaign by a network of black poli-ticians, lawyers, professors and repa-rations activists who say they wantAmericans to know that slave pur-were often financed with bankloans and insured. Through the mid-1800s, insurance companies oftenpaid claims when slaves escaped, thenthey would place ads in publicationsoffering rewards to bounty hunters totrack them down and bring themback, even if they hadThe Mystery Of TheBy Charles Cinque FulwoodI Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Noth-ing (Open the Door, Ill Get it Myself). ? " James Brown oIn the colonies the truth stoodbut the citizens of the mothercountry preferred it with clothes on. ?~ Jean-Paul Sartre, introduction toFrantz Fanon Ts The Wretched of theEarthI double-dog dare anyone to solvethe mystery of the Negro Conservative.The dictionaries define conser-vatism as othe tendency to maintainthe existing order and to resistchange; ? conservative is ofavorin* preservation of the existing order.Why would an African American,whose historical experience and con-temporary status are largely shaped byracism and discrimination in everyfacet of social, political, and economicintercourse, want to opreserve the ex-isting order ? and oresist change ??0 be clear, I am not referring toAfrican Americans like my parentswho were strict in their values aboutself-respect, work, faith, family, com-munity, discipline, and manners ( oSitdown, Junior, and quit acting a fool. ?)Laziness, or oloafing, ? was close to asin before the Almighty God.Self-help at both the individualand community levels was the goldstandard. So was justice. Since whenare these values oconservative ?? Sincethe right-wing think tanks and mediahine reconfigured its code wordsto obscure racist intentions. Since itupgraded its language and operatitem to give cover to the same olisgraceful practices of disenfranchise-ment. Since old (young, too), en-trenched, Manifest Destiny right-wingers crafted a grand strategy toreturn America to othe good oledays. ? Remember them?As a part of its relentless propa-ganda campaign to demonize Africanticans, the right-wing has hi-jacked the values o my parents andtheit contemporaries as its exclusiveplaybook. And if othe problem ? withAfrican Americans is rooted in thelack of oconservative values, ? then thatlogically dismisses all of the traditionalk complaints.In the conservative mentality, itmakes sense that after centuries of sla-very and discrimination, affirmativeaction is oreverse discrimination. ? TheVoting Rights Act is opolitical affir-mative action, ? and the plague pn thenation Ts house is not an absence ofvoting tghs, but voter fraud commit-ted by blacks. Fair employment poli-cies are opolitically correct ? straitjack-ets choking the life out of businesses,and Trojan horses for the dreaded omulticulturalism. ? And safety netpolicies represent New Deal social-ism, big aera hand-outs, anda sense of entitlement by people whoare recklessly devoid of opersonal re-sponsibility. ?What is most egregious is thatthe right-wing has recruited a newgeneration of N to communi-. T o eecate its propagan give olegiti-macy to message@Mat otherwisewould be recogni obvious poi-son to the needs andMhterests of Afri-can Americans.The New York Times recentlyreported that the Republican isgrooming a crop of eager Negroublicans to run for governor or theS. Senate in 2006 in Maryland,Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Mi igan,which is a part of a larger scheme totake a chunk of the black vote fromthe trifling Democrats,Deeper still, Bush's faith-basedinitiative has furnished a cash-drivenenticement to a growing network ofblack preachers parroting the oconser-vative ? message, and attacking thecredibility of progressive black lead-ership as well. The package is com-pleted and the bow is tied by the out-of-the-blue appearance of a truck loadof right-wing black media commen-tators, from Armstrong Williams toJoe Watkins. The list is long, and grow-i" If you depend on the visibility ofor progress, the circumstance, notglorify, or reinforce, the circum-stance. That is the difference betweensomeone who is a conscious Black,versus someone who is a Negro whoaccepts the circumstance, or a Ni**awho exploits the circumstance.That takes us to the question,what is the differentiation betweenthe Negro and a Ni**a? The Negfois an American invention wheseby hisorigin is disconnected from his iden-tity, and his new identity is a teflec-tion of the social standing assignedto him by the hegemon, which in thiscase is American society. Not onlydoes the Negro have No past, Bspresent is marginalized in a way thatoffers little ability to change the real-ity of the race. Because the Negro isa product of his socialization, he (andshe) does not willfully try to hurt therace, but their ignorance and theiracceptance of the social constructdoes not allow them, to force mean-change socially accept-able forms of fond aThe Ni**a is an outbirth of thesocial engineering imposed on theAmerican Black, whereby they offerno solutions, and react to socio-eco-nomic conditions in ways that willonly reinforce the most negative per-ceptions of the race. For instance,social engineers know that, irrespec-tive of race, lack of commerce and/or business will produce osurvival ofthe fittest ? conditions whereby peoplewill prey on others to survive. Ni**asinto, and buy into, it as an ex-cuse for not having what others have.Instead of changing the circumstance,they seek to exploit the circumstance.So they rob, steal and kill their ownfor the sake of surviving. Or they takemoney to promote a lifestyle that is OFOREstates. The slaves would be resold.Since 2000, when the first dis-closure law was enacted by the stateof California, similar laws have beenpassed in Los Angeles, Detroit, Phila-delphia and New Orleans. Accordingto one Chicago alderman, other citylawmakers have expressed interest.Disclosure laws in the past have re-quired companies to reveal their tiesto the Holocaust and South Africasformer apartheid government. The al-derman quotes: oAmericans deserveto know that companies they rely onfor mortgages, credit cards and insur-ance supported the slave trade withsimilar loans.We have a history that Ts not be-ing told. We want our history to betol in every book and every school "our true history. ? (Recently, all of theschools in Phi rNegro conservative commentators tomeasure African American publicopinion, you could only conclude thatBlack America had gone oRight. ? Theonly demographic of media commen-tators growing faster than black right-wingers is the surreal saturation ofblonde Eva Brauns.To be frank, Negro conservativeshave always been with us, starting withold Tom on the plantation ( oMassa,we sick? ?). To be Eis some have beenhonest in having a different approachto the road to freedom; Booker T.ington comes to mind. Othershave been charlatans. (I won't call anynames here, you know who they are.)Others have just béen inexplicable;Zora Neale Hurston comes to mind.Pardon me, but it must also be saidthat even though I have not met a blacktson over 40 who didn't omarch witht. Kang, ? I remember the blackreachers and churches that ran awayrom him. I remember scary Negroessaying Dr. King should ojust Oughtahush and go somewhere and sitdown. ?And certainly it is understandablethat blacks embraced the Party of Lin-coln after Emancipation, as theocrats and Dixiectats mounteda campaign of disenfranchisement andterror against African Americans fordecades following the Civil War andinto the early 20th century, includia fierce resistance to tion ananti- i islation,Bren during the sixties ~ and per-haps before " there has always been aschism between those blacks thatmeasured progress and social changeonly the extent to whi wereincluded in American life BigHouse ?), and those who pushed forstructural change beyond mere inclu-sion.So, the seed of an honest ideo-and strategic disagreement aredeeply Lease ie our history, (Theytell me that Booker T. andWE.B DuBois are still arguing.) Thatis a debate that needs a new summons,nothing more than one of depriva-tion, and use it to degrade women,promote oslanging ? and odealing ? anddestabilizing relationships betweenblack men and women, ot black fami-lies apd black communities,Ni*as are always quick to tellyou what you havent done for them,but cant tell you what they've done to _change themselves, and the destruc-tion is perpetuated until progress isoverwhelmed by regressive behaviors.Ni*as make a conscious decision toUNTOLDdated to teach African-American history)According to a recent article inThe Boston Globe, oCashing in onAmerica Ts racial guilt, ? Wachovia'schairman has admitted its guilt, andvowed to make amends b givingmoney to organizations that pro-mote further awareness of black'his-tory. Reparations to African-Aineri-cans are extraordinarily rare: The$1.8 million award in 1994 to vic-tims of the riot and massacre inRosewood, Florida is one of a few.In that 1923 incident, white au-thorities and citizens killed 26 blackmen, women and children and bur-ied them in a mass grave. About 355black residents were driven fromtheir homes as the communityburned. The U. S. Government hasnever apologized or paid reparationsto the descendants of slaves.PinNegro ConservativeBill Lucy's recent call for a return to oGary ? is right on time, and offers anOpportunity for leadership account-ablity and honest, vigorous debateabout vision, strategy, message, andintegrity.Let the Negro conservativescome to oGary ? and let Ts explore themerits. Let's have an honest discus-sion about 21st century America andthe best strategy for African Ameri-cans. But later for the disingenuousand asinine rhetoric hatched in Re-publican think tanks by white right-wingers. Later for the prophylacyticengage in activities that degrade therace and destroy the community, turn-ing progress for a community into aneat impossible proposition. Ni**asare the biggest detriment to the racetoday " and there are more of themthan you think, because everybody ogotta get theirs. ?Progress will only come aboutwhen there are more Blacks of con-scious positive behavior acting in theinterest of the collective than thereare Negroes, or Ni**as, acting againstthe collective interests of Blacks. Thatshould be the goal for Black America faising conscious Blacks,marginalizing Negroes and eradicat-ing, at all costs, Ni**as. + ;Anthony Asadullah Samad is anational columnist, managing direc-tor of the Urban Issues Fore and ©author of 50 Years After Brown: TheState of Black Equality In America(Kabili Press, 2005). He can bereached atwww.AnthonySamad.com.Recently, however, the U.S. Sen-ate issued an apology for the lynch-ings that occurred in the past. Othergroups such as Japanese Americans,who were forced into camps duringWorld War II, have been more suc-cessful. Swiss banks paid reparationsto Holocaust victims after the bankacknowledged they had acceptedmoney and goods stolen from: Jewsby: Nlazis-during World-War I. o| ACNN/USA Today Gallup pollfh 2002 showed the 9 out fe 10white Americans said the govern-ment should not make cash repara-tions payments, arguing that whiteAmericans are descendants of im-migrants who came to this countryafter the Civil War, and have no con-election to slavery; hence, is oun-thinkable ? to penalize people forsomething their great great-greatgrandfather did to someone else Tsgreat-great great grandfather.ost of other companies otherthan banks are fighting the disclosurelawsuit after investigations found linksto they are Aetna; J.P. MorganChase; Bank of America; Lehman Broth-ers Holdings Inc.; Lloyds of London;American International Group, Inc.; to-bacco makers R.J.Reynolds TobaccoHoldings; Brown &: Williamson To-bacco Corp.; Ligget Group Inc.; the rail-toad firms Union Paci Corp ahdNorfolk Southern Gorp:Why is it important T to pay resti-tution? Historically, the lack of finan-cial capital has been a barrier to blackrogress. It Ts harder for us to get bankfears, and red lining is a vestige ofslavery. It's about them helping us toheal the wounds they historicallycaused.Respectfully submitted bySuejette A. JonesSources: various articles, commentsand research.Ms. Jones is a former Pitt Countyschool teacher, retired - Ed.messaging and absurd role-playing.Lets take the historic baton andsolve the mystery of the Negro con-servative. Is it a legitimate politicalcourse connected to the realities ofAfrican Ametican challenges? Is itmere mathematics of putting ourtroops in both parties and all camps?Is it like simply choosing which teamyou want to play on? Is it just beingtired of sitting on the bench? Is it onlyabout getting paid? Is it what Americareally is, take it or leave it? Is it the T.word? Is it akin to the Stockholm Syn-drome? Do we really want a class ofDuvaliers, Savimbis, and Mobutos inAmerica?Is it possible to be a Negro con-COOPER'S COMMENTARYservative when American conserva-tism is inextricably tied to racism, theobstruction of every single step ofblack progress, and the dichotomoussyndrome of black inferiority andwhite supremacy? Is it a butt-neckitcontradiction? Is it real or is itMemorex? Let's see. To paraphraseyour president, obring it on. ? Meet me in oGary ? and let Ts talk.But come honest; come rel And if ityour motor running, take atom the story about the cherry treeand George Washington, with his wigwearing self.Charles Cinque Fulwood is awriter and communications strategistliving in Washington, DC.