By Shaka Shakur
Recently the U.S. national news reported that Gary, Indiana ranked number one in the U.S. as the most segregated city in the country. Now the corporate controlled/bourgeois national media will try and make this out to be something bad, and the primary issue, when in fact, it is not the real issue at all. This is an attempt to misdirect Our focus.
For New Afrikan (Black) people in amerika, amerika has always meant/represented for the vast majority of Our people segregation, subjugation and any other kind of “ation” that prevented Us as a people from attaining Our self-determination where We could control the destiny of Our lives and determine the quality of Our lives.
From the time when Our ancestors were first brought to these shores in chains and their labor exploited by white amerika/kapitalism – We have been segregated.
From the times of the Black Codes during reconstruction to the Jim Crow laws to the great migrations from the south to the northern so called promised lands – We have been segregated.
From the times of strange fruit and the terror campaigns of the klan and white city councils that terrorized Our great grandmothers and grandfathers from the south into these northern ghettos & factories – We have been segregated.
And even now when you can eat with white folk, sleep with white folk and work with white folk, We still segregated! While everybody want you to believe that you’re integrated. The issue is not segregation, but colonization.
You see the media wants Us to focus on “race” alone, but the fact of the matter is that We as a people are segregated from, denied access to and locked out of a segregated economy. A system that was created for the benefit of white people on the backs of Our ancestors. A parasitic kapitalist system that exploits and destroys human beings for the accumulation of material wealth.
We are denied access to the resources that will help Us determine the quality of Our own life. That is where the segregation/colonization come in at. Not that it ain’t enough white folks staying in Gary! Why isn’t it an issue for white folks: that it is not enough Black folks staying in Portage, Hobart, Scherville, etc.? Because white folks ain’t denied access to the resources to determine the quality of their lives! Because they are not segregated from the economy!
A basic definition of colonialism is “the domination/enslavement of one people, nation by another people or nation for the sole benefit of the oppressor nation/state.” In this case the european enslaved Our ancestors and Us for the sole purpose of exploiting Our labor, forcing Us to build in which they now benefit from.
Under colonialism the dominated/subjugated people are either prevented from developing their own or controlling their own economic, political and military structure, such is usually controlled and run by the occupying forces.
Colonial domination seizes control of the dominated people’s means of production for the purpose of exploiting the raw resources and labor of the dominated people. In Our case We represents a captured market where We contribute an estimated 300 billion annually to the u.s. economy. Three hundred billion that goes to strengthen the u.s. and not Our communities.
We are a domestically colonized people. The fact that We have Black faces in high places merely represents neo-colonialism (a new and higher stage of colonialism) where a privileged class/elite of the oppressed has been created and used as a buffer to maintain your oppression. Can you scream white supremacy if the person that got his/her foot on your neck looks just like you? Sure you can! Because that person in just an agent of a white supremacist/colonial system carrying out its genocidal policies and directives.
The city of Gary is a colony where the local power structure is primarily controlled by white folks who control the purse strings or by people who opportunistically serve the interest of a colonial system of government. These servants are called neo-colonials, where they lack the power or the will to serve their own peoples interest, but instead work to strengthen and legitimatize the system of domination and exploitation. Those who are good intentioned will either be squeezed out or made ineffectual by the bureaucracy.
For one their are hardly any jobs and when you do work, who do you work for? And when you get your paycheck where do you go to spend it? And what percentage of those dollars do you think goes back into your community? Who own all the grocery stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, drug stores? So in essence you’re giving your hard earned money right back to the same people & system that just worked the hell out of you. So in essence what are you really working for? Is it any different from the plantation system days of old when Our ancestors were provided with rags, salt pork and pig guts and a shack to keep them alive just so they can continue to be worked/exploited? Oh because We can buy “nice” things its a difference? I think not. Ain’t no Black folks making that designer shit, not even Jordan!
Yet where are Our clothing and shoe factories that We own? Where are Our farms that stock Our grocery stores? Where are Our cultural and youth centers, Our institutions that We control that positively impact upon and determine the quality of Our lives or Our children lives, in any predominantly city of color?
Who controls the funding for Our schools? Who determine what Our children should learn or the quality of their text books? Do you?
Is the issue segregation or the fact we’ve been prevented from not only seizing control over a system that Jew can make work in the best interest of the residents of Gary? We have been prevented from organizing and building a more humane and an alternative system. Nevertheless that is what We must do.
We must critique, expose and challenge the local system and its puppets. We have to challenge the laws and policies of city hall that don’t address Our collective needs. We have to stop sitting on Our butts crying and complaining and instead begin to mobilize and organize in Our communities to demand that people not only be more accountable to Our communities, but that Our communities be given greater control over how funds are spent, guidelines & policies are developed. And We Ourselves must be more accountable to Our communities and Our children. Especially you so called men that are beating their chest, but won’t take any responsibility. What kind of men are We when We are raping, molesting and beating Our sisters? When We are terrorizing Our own communities and allowing these kids to terrorize Our people, Our elders and We won’t lift a finger?
We have to demand that the issues of housing, health care, child care, jobs and the lack thereof be addressed. How many of you know who “your” alderman or womyn is? People you got to get involved! Don’t come talking to Us about no segregation when Our children are dying and killing each other like flies, when Our communities look like warzones and yet the city can make it safe for Donald Trump casinos. My mother can’t walk to the drug store at night for fear of being raped or robbed, but kapitalist parasites like Trump can invade the ghettos with casinos and millions while throwing crumbs back into Our faces. We need skilled jobs!
Brothers & Sisters We have to fight for what We want. Scott King (mayor of Gary) ain’t no great white hope. We have to learn to depend on Ourselves and We have to learn to start holding people accountable that proclaim to represent Our interest, especially Our own traitors who get into these positions of false power and get so caught up in these lavish lifestyles and material possession, they can’t see Our babies dying & starving on the evening news or being sent into these maximum security prisons by the thousands. We are not trying to hear nothing about no integration being the solution to Our problems. We want some reparations, some allocation of the money that have been stolen from Us for centuries. Let’s talk about that!
Until We begin to Ourselves, raise Our consciousness as to how and what is controlling Our lives and surroundings. Until We begin to put Our petty differences and jealousies to the side and begin to organize amongst Ourselves, in Our communities, in Our schools and churches, to take some control over Our lives and communities; Until we stop depending on other people other than Ourselves or looking for some great white hope to save all Our problems – Our communities shall remain subjugated war torn impoverished disaster areas. Drugs, krime and reactionary violence shall continue to plague Our communities.
Nobody can give you your freedom, your dignity, your self-respect. Those things must be fought for and taken. The mere striving for college degrees in hopes of working for some U.S. company is not enough. What is IBM, GE and the like doing for Our communities? Not a damn thing! The system intentionally locks the majority of us out because it furthers the govt. genocidal program of systematically destroying Us or manipulation Us into destroying Ourselves as a ignorance/mentacide. Its no coincidence that We represent the highest of everything that can be detrimental to a people. That we have the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate, that so many of Our sistas die from breast cancer or that We have some infant mortality rates higher than 3rd world countries like Haiti. That more New Africans are going to prison than anyone and are staying the longest.
We don’t own any gun factories. We ain’t manufacturing no AK-47s, TEC-9s, or M-16s but yet they flood out communities. You don’t see heads rolling at the CIA do you for pushing cocaine, but let you get caught with a $10 rock and you got a mandatory 5 years coming! Where is the Red Cross? Where are the humanitarian relief, peacekeepers? Talking bout what the hell going on in Bosnia We got a Bosnia right here!
Brothers & Sisters if We don’t wake up and take actions it’s going to late. Think about Our children. Your nieces & nephews. If We don’t put a stop to this sh— what is it going to be like for the in another 10 or 20 years? What is going to be left?
Are We so deep in denial that We think all of these white militias and white right wing paramilitary groups are organizing for nothing? If they were to attack Us, who are you gonna call? The govt., the police?
Whatever you believe become a part of the solution instead of remaining a part of the problem.
Re-Build!
Originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of the Black Fist newspaper.
