My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 68

Well that may be true for college
professors but for the millions of black
people the most painful consequences
of racism are starvation, homelessness,
and death, sterilization, predatory
lenders, the lack of access to nutrition,
and a criminal justice system that
treats them differently from whites.
Institutions headed by white men are
responsible for more pain suffered
by these millions than the personal
behavior of black men. Yes, when it
comes to the ways in which black men
treat black women, the brothers can be
dogs and many pay for it. Of all groups
of American men, black men are those
who are most likely to be murdered by
women!! 12 Next to the behavior of men
in some other American ethnic groups,
black men are amateurs when it comes
to the ill-treatment of women. Moreover,
it was white men who voted to end an
extension of unemployment insurance.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

The interracial conflicts at the
heart of narratives by black male
writers from Frederick Douglass
to Ralph Ellison to Amiri Baraka
did not take center stage. Racism
remained a major concern. But
for these writers, the most painful
consequences of racism were
played out in the most intimate
relationships.

It’s white men who want to eliminate
school lunch programs and food
stamps. Those who have denied
Medicaid to millions of the poor, an
action that will lead to the death of
hundreds of thousands — are white
men. Those who run a criminal
justice system that sends thousands
of black women to prison where they
are subjected to medical malpractice
leading to death and sterilization are
white men.13 Those who run Bank of
America and Wells Fargo which issued
toxic loans to blacks and Hispanics
causing blacks to lose fifty percent of
their wealth are white men. Those who
are attempting to deprive millions of
blacks and Hispanics of the right to
vote are white men. The president who
gained office by scapegoating blacks
reduced housing subsidies by 70% was
a white man — Ronald Reagan.
This policy coincided with the advent
of widespread homelessness.

67

Here’s the pull quote from Norton 3,
Vol.2. written by Cheryl A. Wall (board
of governors Zora Neale Hurston
Professor of English Rutgers University).
She writes of some black women writers:

Maybe those members of the Skip
Machine, The Harvard and Princeton
Talented Tenth, a phrase used by their
leader, W.E.B DuBois, who was cozy
with the Eugenics movement, don’t
care about these facts because the line
promoted by their leader is that the
black poor are poor because of their
personal behavior. You can understand
why institutions as varied as Comcast,
Lions Gate, Broadway, and Columbia
University and other Blue Chip
corporations are eager to invest in black
bogeyman projects and the ousting
of black male writers who have vilified
the one percent since the time of
David Walker. No wonder J.P. Morgan
recently sponsored a show by black
male hater Eve Ensler at the Apollo
theater, a theater that has never sponsored
a play by Amiri Baraka, Ed Bullins
or Aishah Rahman, who isn’t even
mentioned in Kimberley Benston’s
weak section on the Black Arts movement
printed in Norton 3, Vol.2 (maybe
because his real interest is Shakespeare
and black lit for him is kind of like a
hobby). When the late Amiri Baraka
read my comment about the Apollo,
he sent me a note that merely read
“bullseye.” The other charge made by
Ms. Wall is that black male writers
from Douglass have spent all of their
energy on “interracial conflicts” or
as a well known and admirable literary
diva said, “hating whitey.” She says
that she likes books in which a man
compliments a woman about her hair
style. Another diva says she wants her
novels to go down like a “hot fudge
sundae.” Forget about what black male
writers would make of such comments,
but what would Jayne Cortez or
Gwendolyn Brooks say? Did Richard
Wright, Chester Himes and Ralph
Ellison play gender favorites? All about
hating whitey? Unlike feminist novels
in which all of the women are saintly
and all of the men are cads or brutes
or buffoons, some of the harshest
portrayals in novels by black males,
who have been targets of feminist