Interesting.

I prefer to focus on how our personal feelings about 'Toms' 'crackers' etc are manifested in our strategies to alleviate, reduce, eliminate and develop alternatives for the problems that affect our peoples.

One thing about |Malcolm X that you''ll ntice is that when he was interviewed on the various talk and radio shows, many of them with very confrontational hosts, his personal feelings about the hosts never becameTHE issue. Any public appearance became an opportunity to educate and advance the cause of our people, to inform any blacks or whites who were tuned in.

Being it was on FOX, I'm quite sure that the host represents the views of that station. It appears that Malik Shabazz knew that also. So strategically, why was he there. To say F--- you? As Sonia Sanchez once wrote in one of her poems..."Uh huh...but how does that free US?" Once you go on that show you elevate that show. You establish the legitimacy of the show. If you are on that show to show your contempt for the host (for whatever reason) then prepare to do that. If you are on that show to advance the cause of our people...then be prepared to do that.

Agree with you enemy if he acknowledges a point that you agree with and then co-opt the point by pointing to a strategy that your enemy, if he/she really believes what they are saying, should also agree with.

A bigoted commentator once applauded the Million Man March for its call for Black men to be faithful husbands and providers. Rather than sounding the 'cracker' out as a 'voice forthe right wing'the Nation of Islam representative thanked him and remarked how so many of these husbands were ex-cons and how they would apprecitate it this bigot would begin to support the un-equal sentencing and lack of rehabilitation present in the American justice system.

You either expose hypocrisy or your advance your cause.

So I'm questioning the intent of the above post.

Malik Shabazz and his crew errored by judging and convicting and condemning these people in public (something strategically the NAACP Legal Fund has been fighting against for years). He then went on a TV program, hosted by someone opposed to you to defend his error.

The host may be a right-wing racist but the points RAISED on her show were not. And anyone in that same situation should be prepared to separate their personal antipathy towards a person and their committment for a cause.

Instead Malik Shabazz showed himself to be the stereotypical 'negro' showcased in the play NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY "Black means being LOUD.....and WRONG".

There is a friend of mine in Philadelphia who has just finished a film called "NO!". It's a documentary about the silence of Black Men concerning rape in the African-American community. It particularly affects me because several friends were in the documentary who were raped and I never knew it. As soon as I find the site I'll recommend the documentary. There is a discussion between Black men in the documentary with this main point for those blaming the lack of respect for black women on slavery. African-American women can't and won't wait for Black men to deal with white men before we stop raping them. (I include myself in the incusive 'we')

In the Oprah show yesterday. the students from Spelman (predominately African-American female university in Atlanta) made a point about accountability.

During the height of the crack crisis we made a big point of blaming the suppliers (the supposed CIA, the Columbians, and other shadowy forces) for allowing drugs into the black community and 'causing us to become addicts". So, except for some yeoman community initiatives, our militants railed against the those who supplied the drugs and not those who used it.

And now, when a crew of black youths (I won't say poor and deprived because many are not such as Tupac) SUPPLY the world with the most depraved lyrics perpetuating the negative images of their people we now demand that the USERS must be held culpable and not the SUPPLIERS.

Both positions assume a weak, helpless, slave-like African-American community with no values or mores or structuresto create an environment of accountability and internal fortitude to resist.

So who cares whether whites buy hip-hop or are the major users of cocaine? What type of community are we trying to build? One that fools itself that itis strong because no one attacks us?

I believe that if we get out of this "I AM A WAR-REE-YUR" complex (where we need to use our penlight to find some enemies) and get back to the business of nation-building we can more readily stay on point about what is important and who or what is not.