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>( http://youtu.be/dDH9Jq5AWkQ )
>
>Seriously, though… Just some stuff I've had on my mind this
>morning.
>
>So I'm playing some James Brown (as I do everyday) and the
>classic "Funky President (People It's Bad)" comes on… and
>while I'm listening to it and I find myself wondering…
>
>"Why has the Godfather of Soul not been 'adopted' by the Black
>Conservative movement in the way that some other figures such
>as Zora Neale Hurston have been?"
>
>He definitely fits the profile. James Brown was proud of his
>standing a Negro Horatio Alger character and that informed his
>values and ideals as a Black man. If you listen to his
>interviews, speeches and his "sermons" in song, it becomes
>clear that his ideas of Black ascension were staunchly in the
>Booker T. Washingtonian mold. For example, take the
>controversial 1968 track "America is My Home":
>
>http://youtu.be/252TrvSPoJg
and I'll break this down in segments...
First of all your usage of the term Conservative....as it pertains to Black Conservatives.
It's a fairly common error for people to apply the label of conservative to historical events or people simply because those events or people part of, or aligned with the "Republican Party". 9 times out of 10 those claims miss the mark because they leave out the most important contextual item involved in this....
Black Americans who were born and raised in the South after the Marcus Garvey movement and before the Civil Rights Act were very often Republicans. What many people do is go back to that time, use the current alleged definition of "conservatism" and apply it to those people claiming that they embody the conservative ideas as they are defined TODAY. But that completely misses the mark because of the fact that those Black people who were aligned with the Republican party and/or its views did so because during that time it was the DEMOCRATIC PARTY who was standing in the way of Black progress, and Civil Rights. Beyond Abraham Lincoln's emancipation situation, the Republican party had decades of history of being the party that view the rights of Black people as being of value to the country. The so-called Dixie-crat Democrats where the ones who stood in door ways of schools to stop intergration...in fact even into the 70's, one of the most Democratic big cities in one of the most liberal states, Boston, MA you saw riots where people who were Democrats rebelled against intergration...
obviously things changed...the members of the Democratic party who were so against Civil Rights left to go to the Republican party, and those in the Republican party who were for Civil rights went to the Democratic party...... This started to evolve into the 60's up until today where now the Democratic party is for Civil rights, for equal protection under the law and general equality...and the Republican party stands against Civil Rights...the voting rights act...and promotes a representative government that has FEWER participants in the democracy..
All that to say that for a people who were from James Brown's era....born and raised in the South..who went on to become successful in a Capitalistic sense, often were aligned with the Republican party during that time....Simply because they grew up in a time and a place where Democrats where not only trying to keep them down, but trying to kill them.
that's where you see Black so-called Republicans during that era..
but the problem with labeling them as being Conservatives...using today's ideal of conservatism brings up another problem.
It assumes that anyone who was trying to be an entrepenuer...anyone who was dedicated to being an American...anyone who valued education....anyone who would fight for their country.....All of those attributes are exclusively conservative. That is a very common misconception....you even see current Republicans try and claim Dr. Martin Luther King for their own because of his words about judging the content of one's character....
The fact of the matter is that those attributes do not belong to ANY political persuasion.... and to go back in hindsight and try to apply them to people without the appropriate social context moves towards inacuracy...
I mean like wow! That is basically the Black Conservative
>manifesto right there, ain't it? Only thing he left out was
>"racism is mostly a figment of Black people's imagination,"
>but other than that he hit most of the main talking points:
Min. Farrakhan's book Torchlight for America focuses on self-sufficiency....doing for self instead of the government doing for you.... Why isn't that heralded as the ideal for so-called Black Conservatism???
the Black Panther party entering the capital of California with loaded guns to demonstrate their rights to bear arms.......and the changing of laws AFTER that (some of the first modern gun control legislation was prompted by a reaction the Panthers doing this) Why doesn't the NRA view the Black Panthers as patriots for boldly exercising their constitutional rights???
The reason you don't see that is because those things really arent exclusive tennants of so-called conservatism.
Black people doing for themselves....risking their lives to be treated equally under the law....fighting for their country....those things were done out of a survival necessity...not to comply with the tennants of a political party or movement...
Conservative ideals by and large are a ex-post facto fallacy...
I'll address the misconception about James Brown's association with the Black power movement in a while...
>
>-America is great as it is, the greatest country in the world
>-Only in America can anybody be anything they want, regardless
>of birth or class
>-Look at me: I came from nothing and I made it!
>-What Black people need to do is stop complaining and making
>excuses, educate themselves, learn to speak proper English,
>work hard, save their money and pay their taxes… and then we
>all can make it
>
>So why then have Conservatives NOT appropriated James Brown?
>
>I have a few theories on this: for one, it probably would have
>been hard to do when he was alive. James was sort of skittish
>about allying himself with political factions after the
>backlash he suffered from his Black and/or progressive
>audience in the 1960s when he was down with H. Hubert Humphrey
>and seemed to indicate support for the Vietnam war, and then
>again in the 1970s when he endorsed the reelection efforts of
>Richard Nixon. The Godfather was much too smart to risk that
>again by getting into bed with the Right.
>
>But more importantly, I think, is the fact that it is very
>difficult convincingly sell James Brown as a conservative icon
>because he and his music are so inextricably associated in the
>public imagination with the radical Black Power movement. This
>is due, of course, to his popular 1968 anthem "Say It Loud
>(I'm Black and I'm Proud)" which was essentially the
>soundtrack of the Black Power and Black Pride movements.
>
>(Add to that, if you will, two records produced by James Brown
>but performed by his sideman Hank Ballard in 1968 and 69:
>"Blackenized" and "How You Gonna Get Respect (When You Haven't
>Cut Your Process Yet)")
>
>Because of this James Brown is often thought of as a
>figurehead of the Black Power movement… But the truth is that
>James Brown did not think much of the Black Power movement. He
>didn't like SNCC. He certainly did not approve of the Black
>Panther Party and did not want to associated with any kind of
>"revolution" (not a literal one, anyway… which is why he named
>his 1971 live album Revolution of the Mind).
>
>To James Brown, the salvation of the Black community lay in
>Black capitalism. Which is why he was always quick to cite his
>ownership of Black radio stations and other businesses as HIS
>definition of "Black Power."
>
>It was well-known in Black Power circles that James was not
>"conscious"… But he wielded an immense power as one of the
>most successful and popular Black entertainers among
>working-class Negroes and the BPM wanted to harness that power
>for their cause. Also, there was a tremendous amount of
>respect for his artistic innovations that created a style of
>music that was aggressively, transcendentally "Black"… But
>they knew that James Brown's mind was not on the same
>wavelength as theirs.
>
>I should also mention that James didn't particularly think
>much of "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)"… He didn't
>like the song much, and he only recorded it (along with the
>Ballard pro-Black anthems) under pressure from Black radicals
>and to appease the Black audience he had alienated with
>"America is my Home." But by 1971, James had put that process
>back in his hair and by 1974 or 75, he had stopped performing
>"Say It Loud" because he didn't really believe in that song.
>As much as James Brown helped score the Black Power movement,
>his own politics were much closer to someone like Larry
>Elder.
>
>***
>While this dichotomy between iconography of James Brown, the
>Black Power SYMBOL and the politics of James Brown the MAN has
>been on mind for a few months, I'll admit that I **really**
>got to thinking about this now partly because of some
>exchanges I had with my perennial rival Warren Coolidge…
>Y'know, when he was going on about how James Brown was like
>the king of Black Power and liberation and how he paved the
>way for real musical rebels like Bob Marley and Fela Kuti and
>did everything they would later do and so on…
>
>I know Coolidge was laying it on thick in an effort to needle
>me, but at the same time, I suspected that he believed some of
>it. Because I know a lot of people do. But I wonder: does it
>matter? If it takes an imaginary James Brown to inspire a
>nation of millions, does it matter that the real one probably
>would not have approved of it?
>
>
>(Been ages since I made a long rambling post… Gentlemen, start
>your Colin Powells! But if you want to seriously discuss this,
>I am game. And believe it or not, I didn't post this to start
>no trouble... so keep the drama in your purse)
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