My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 63

Why The Thirty
Two-Year Assault
On Some Black
Male Writers?

62

Where does the thirty
two-year-old assault on
some black male writers,
specifically those
aligned with the Black
Arts Movement begin?

Or the idea that in order to promote
one black writer or a group of black
writers, one has to denounce another
black male writer or a group of black
male writers? In the 1980s, it was
gender vs. gender, in 2014 its generation
against generation. The old colonial
strategy of divide and conquer, which
the British perfected in Ireland after
the invasion of 1171 and later applied
to Africa and the Middle East. Lenin
said that “Ireland was the laboratory
for Colonialism.”

By

ISHMAEL REED

The initial takedown of black male
writers was launched by Gloria Steinem,
a woman who has eight servants and
access to millions of dollars, a woman
who, according to Harriet Fraad,
co-opted a movement that began as
integrated and working class and
handed it over to “educated” and
“privileged” women.1 In a mean spirited
and ignorant attack on black male
writers,2 Steinem depicted Alice Walker
as a victim of black male writers
and quoted Ms. Walker as slamming
Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, Langston
Hughes, James Baldwin, John A.
Williams and Amiri Baraka. Before gay
became the New Black, Ms. Walker
gay baited members of the Black
Panther Party and was answered with a
trenchant op-ed from Elaine Brown.3
Ms. Brown’s message was “blame
racism, not black men.” Ms. Steinem
used her article to assert that Ms.
Walker was “truth telling” about black
males, the kind of group libel that
has been aimed at her ethnic group
since the time of the Romans, because
it would include the incest violator —
‘Mr.’ in The Color Purple, whose
screen portrait, managed by Steven
Speilberg, even offended Ms. Walker.
Incest has been an ancient charge
that the enemies of Jewish people have
used against them. Shunned by
outsiders, they marry their first cousins,
a taboo that is the subject of István
Szabó’s 1999 film, Sunshine.