Walter Mosley is best known for his entertaining Easy Rawlins mysteries, but with his latest title the author decided to turn his sights on heavier stuff. His new book, a non-fiction essay on America and its role in the world, is called What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace.
Mosley is against going to war with Iraq. And for the obvious reasons that have been discussed, cussed and argued on these very boards over the past months. It is not the purpose of this post to revive that discusssion. It is his more profound position that terrorism has been empolyed against Blacks in the past that interested me.
What Next starts with his father’s experience in World War II. Mosley writes that his father, a black man, never thought of himself as a full American citizen until German soldiers began shooting at him with the same vengeance that they targeted white GIs. His father naively thought that the Germans did not have a quarrel with “coloreds”; that he and the Germans had a common enemy.
The author says he had a similar breakthrough about his American identity on Sept. 11, 2001. “When I’m looking out my window and I’m seeing these planes crashing into the World Trade Center, I say, 'Wow – just like my father – these guys are shooting at me.”
In the book and in and interview on NPR’s Morning Edition he describes African-Americans as having a finer sense of justice than white americans “because white americans on the whole have not experienced terrorism as have African Americans”.
His contention is that White America was rightfully outraged and morally indignant over the terrorist acts of September 11th. However, where was that sense of rage and indignation when Blacks were being subjected to “Cross Burnings” in the night, church and school bombings, and being lynched by the hundreds as late as the 1930’s. This is the reason, he contends, that African Americans have a totally different “take” on the impending war with Iraq.
I had never thought of the “Black Experience” in quite those terms. It is always difficult to view the world through another man’s eyes, but I think I see where he’s, “coming from”.
I don’t think that most racial violence is properly thought of as “terrorism” in the sense that it isn’t/wasn’t primarily directed at the state. To me, terrorism has to have as a primary motivation an attempt to influence the policy of a state actor.
A sense of justice is not merely saying “It is wrong if you do this to me.” A sense of justice is saying, “It’s wrong for me to do this to you.” Suffering from a wrong does not necessarily give a person a sense of justice. All to often, it gives them a craving for revenge.
I would say many actions taken against Blacks could be called terrorism. Targetting civilians, etc. Surely some Whites objected, clearly not enough in time.
However, one must take a look at an issue and judge it on it’s merits (or lack thereof). Clouding it with “your ancestors brutalized my ancestors” is beside the point. If you have a beef with Bush because of some supposed racist action he took, that’s one thing. To hold against him actions of others of his race seems like simple racism to me.
Do you have a different word, then, that can be used as a general description of persistent and prolonged acts of violence intended to instill fear in a recognizable group to control their behavior? Horrorism, perhaps?
Any study of the evolution of lynching in the U.S. will demonstrate that it came to be used principally as a weapon to prevent blacks from asserting their rights as citizens–or even pursuing “life, liberty, and happiness” or the possession of property. Numerous blacks who attained some level of prosperity were lynched if it was perceived that they had gotten “uppity.” Then there were the riots that were staged, nearly all by the white community, between 1890 or so and 1943, which frequently focused on destroying the black economy in a community. (Tulsa was the worst, but there were similar actions in Chicago, Springfield, IL, New Orleans, and Detroit (to name some of the larger ones).
Having said that, I will take issue of “African-Americans as having a finer sense of justice than white americans.” I think that they have a finer appreciation of being attacked, but I suspect that justice requires more elements than simply having a target painted on one’s forehead. Certainly, there have been any number of black leaders who followed the footsteps of their predecessors in Tammany Hall or the Chicago wards in looting the treasury when it was available and there was no more black outrage against them than there had been in the Irish or Italian or Polish ethnic communities from whom the earlier ward-heelers had sprung. This certainly does not indicate that blacks have a less finely tuned sense of justice, just that they are human and subject to the same “root for ours” attitude that every other group experiences.
To either encourage the U.S. to stop supporting the Saud regime or to incite the U.S. to take draconian steps that would cause it to earn more enmity in the world, encouraging further terrorist acts until the U.S. finally withdrew from involvement in the Middle East.
I don’t know what the proper word for it would be Tom, perhaps hatred, abuse, mob violence, or something along those lines.
I still see a difference between targeting a racial group and conducting violence to try and stop or change a state’s actions. The dicitonary gives a some what broader definition than the one I had in mind;
I suppose under that reading one could argue that the attempt to prevent blacks from exercising their rights would fall within the ‘societies’ clause, though I guess that depends on how broadly or narrowly you construe society. Would you consider the blacks a seperate society? Perhaps at the time that would be a valid conclusion.
The danger I see in going down this road is that things like the LA riots post Rodney King could be considered ‘terrorism.’ I’m not sure I want to broaden the definition that much. To my mind, terrorism must be primarily political in motivation, and directed at the state.
Well, except that I would see that riot, (and all its predecessors moving back to Detroit '67 and Watts '65) as simple rage (often stupid rage) boiling over without direction. There was some targeting of (for example) Korean or Arabic shopkeepers during the L.A. riot, but the riot was not incited for the purpose of driving out any group of people and much of it was self-injurious. It was simply undirected anger. (This distinguishes self-destructive riots of Detroit '67, Watts '65, or L.A. '92 (along with Newark and Gary and Cleveland-Hough, and several others in the late '60s) from the Detroit riot of 1943 in which the express purpose was to prevent blacks from moving into government housing near white housing or Tulsa 1921 where the black economic section of town was deliberately firebombed by outsiders.)
I’ve kind of thought the same thing- except about being a woman. After 9/11, a lot of people were talking about how much the world has changed now that they don’t feel safe in America. But I’ve never felt safe- at least not at night or not if I’m alone or not if I’m in any number of situations where I might end up a rape victim. I’ve always lived with knowing that when I go out, I could be subjected to an act of violence that is designed to strip me of my dignity and ultimately serves to control my actions by regulating what jobs I get, what I do for fun, what I wear etc.
I know thats a bit extreme, but thats what I felt. It shouldn’t really be that shocking that not every group has enjoyed feeling safe and free in America.
This reminds me of Cornell West’s controversial argument that 9-11 “niggerized” all Americans.
A slight digression, but I have read several accounts on black American soldiers in World War II initially feeling that the Germans would not regard them as ‘enemies’, only the white soldiers - and many had a difficult time in seeing them as a particular “enemy”.
Wasn’t it well known in America what Nazi German doctrine thought of black people?..that they were probably closer to the great apes than human beings. Of course that was probably just a step below what many American segregationists thought of them…so maybe it hardly registered. Perhaps the media and propaganda machine during WWII would rather not bring up the specifics of Nazi racial dosctine in America, lest it invite any comparisons between Jim Crow and the Nuremburg laws.
Perhaps the Germans even broadcasted such propaganda - as they did to peoples in colonial possessions that their war was against their “master” and they could win freedom. I think in retrospect, most black soldiers came to appreciate what they were fighting for, and that impacted them when they returned home - but initially, there didn’t seem to be strong anti-nazi feelings in the black units from what I have read.
I agree with you that the events are distinguishable, my point is that if the definition of ‘terrorism’ is too broad, it ceases to be a useful term. ** even sven’s** response illustrates the point I think. Fear of being raped =! terrorism. Street crime =! terrorism.
Having a “finer sense of justice” is going over the top, but as a black woman, I can say that blacks generally reacted to 9/11 differently than whites.
I think the reason goes beyond the whole “been there, done that” kind of thing. A large segment of the black population doesn’t place primary emphasis on their identity as Americans because race still takes precedence over nationality over here. So when Americans are being attacked, many black people don’t interpret that as meaning “we are being attacked”. They see it as “they are being attacked”. I’ll go one step further and suggest that this perception occurs at least to some degree to every person who subconsciously or consciously doesn’t feel fully American.
Post 9/11, when security was upped everywhere and the profiling of Arabs was debated endlessly on the airwaves, a lot of blacks felt resentful that racial profiling suddenly became bad and wrong and worthy of being protested with petitions and rallies. Racial profiling of blacks has been going on for centuries now, so the concept is hardly new. And yet it seems that when another group gets the same kind of scrutiny that blacks have received since forever, people suddenly start evoking the name of Patrick Henry and waving the constitution around. All of this is fine, don’t get me wrong, but it kind of harkens back to Elvis Presley and Eminem, with non-blacks becoming overnight sensations by doing the same kind of stuff that blacks have been doing for years. It’s not that Elvis and Eminem don’t have talent, it’s just that they aren’t doing anything new. The same thing with the racial profiling of Arabs.
If Bush and company pull a rabbit they’ve been hiding out of a hat and we get the majority of moderates in the Mideast to swing around to support (or accept) U.S. policies, the WTC/Pentagon attack will be more like Pearl Harbor.
If we continue to alienate everyone in the Mideast, we could see:
a popular uprising overthrowing the Saud family (meaning we will lose the political support of Saudi Arabia) (or the fear of such an uprising causing the Saud family to begin to move toward totalitariansim, which would also hurt our relations in the region);
al Qaeda begin recruiting terrorists from outside the current core of Wahabbist Islamists;
Egypt and Jordan and a few other countries start disassociating themselves from the U.S. (making support for Israel more difficult);
new assertions of power by Syria (backed by France and Russia) destabilizing the region;
and any number of other responses.
(And if Bush decides to wage war on Iran–which has been slowly inching toward a democratic republic–to replace its government with one more U.S. puppet, al Qaeda will have won.)
At this point, I would not declare who has won or lost. Barring a change in U.S. policy, however, it would appear that al Qaeda’s attack on U.S. soil has been at least an initial victory for them.