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The Peace of ‘the Lamb with the Lion’ (Oh say, can you see?). Happy not Leap Day #BlackenAsiaWithLove
The peace of the Lamb with the Lion (Oh say, can you see?)
There is no peace between the lamb and the lion.
The lion will always feel hunger, and feast, nurture cubs, and prosper on lamb.
This becomes the lion’s nature.
The lion may grow greedy on the ease of his feed.
Wallowing on his back in the sun, him belly full o’ greed.
For the lion, none of this is the slaughter of the lambs.
🎵Them belly full but we HUNgry.
Black people were born into the American caste system hangry!
White people, on the flip side, were granted freedom to feed themselves, and
Gain capital if they agreed to cooperate – actively or passively -with the system of hate.
Many men did, many were coerced with the promises and benefits and power of whiteness.
Hunger and anger easily fester into animality, hell and hate – none of which leads to liberation. If we were determined to be free, merely mastering the masters’ tools could not be our fate. We have had to craft a culture of resistance… based on love. This is the antithesis of the Greed, Anger and Stupidity that fuels hate. In our resistance, we have forged the ‘strength to love’ ourselves, in spite of the ‘birth of the nation’. Humanists of all hues always find a way.
Early that winter after Emmett Till was executed and his Mississippi killers acquitted, the radical Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to continue to go along with riding Jim Crow in Alabama, and in so doing gave Dr. King his final cue. Down one summer from up north, apparently young Till had made some form of pass at a white woman in a shop in town. He crossed Jim Crow, for which he had to be promptly sacrificed.
Apparently, Mamie Till had sent out a powerful signal that summer by leaving the casket open for all to view her son’s dehumanized corpse – an honor killing, quite scripted and business as usual by that point in our nation’s still hopeful nascent democracy. Ms. Till resisted. She’d crossed a line by balling her fist, then pointing her accusing finger squarely at Jim Crow – that’s who’d snatched, brutally tortured, mutilated and murdered her boy. The lions had fed. “Dar he,” Till’s uncle, Moses Wright, said standing in court, pointing to the men who’d dragged the boy from his house, never to be seen alive again. They could no longer cooperate with a corrupt and deadly system.
Reading Rosa Parks’ cue, King rallied his congregation, and
Agitated the local community, and
Called for a boycott,
Not a storming of the state capital, which still sits just a stone’s throw from his church.
Teach-ins, sit-ins, rallies and marches followed.
They called them rioters-n-things just they do today.
Roaring, shouting, chanting, singing: We! Shall! Overcome (period).
They were met with guns and bayonets on bridges,
At schools, white parents mobbed Black children trying to make their way.
Now, Miss Betsy pays for her kids to go to private schools and ignores the public ones.
We were singing the blues for Mister Charlie.
This blues train was a just stop along long revolutionary tracks that have deep underground roots.
We’re talking ‘bout a revolution!
Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King the power and techniques of non-violent civil resistance. By 1959, MLK had assumed the rhetoric and role of Fredrick Douglas, and began
fellowshipping with Dalits while studying how Gandhi-ji had spearheaded a non-violent imperial defeat, which decolonized, yet ultimately, further splintered the sub-continent. Such solidarity still stands between oppressed and progressive peoples everywhere.
King’s call to conscience and action grew…the lambs bellowed out for solidarity.
King’s movement joined hands with people of all races, religions, all faiths, and
They marched arm-n-arm with the humanists among sinners, senators, students and sanitary workers, and
Gave the president the language of emancipation, and
Then Dr. King advocated against war,
Just as poor and Black soldiers were being disproportionately deployed to die on the front line.
They say that’s what got him shot-n-killed to death…
A casualty among many.
There are people around the world today singing “
GAS fuels hate!
This is why we can’t wait!
Progressives peacefully demonstrate to affirm our shared belief in humanism,
In spite our CONstitution’s original ill-fate.
Love is the true heart of patriotism.
Peace is what our actions illustrate.
So, get up and sing your blues today because #BLM:
🎵Get up! Stand-up!/Stand-up for your rights!/Get up! stand up!/Don’t give up the fight! [repeat infinitely]
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the place is Selma
When we look at Selma through the lens of class, we are looking at a tale as old as time, Black criminality in the face of institutional violence. Black people wanting to vote and being told no. To be Black is to be criminal – savage – beast. From slavery to Selma, DuVernay’s film lays it all out for us.
Last month, as part of Freshers’ fortnight, the Students’ Union screened Ava DuVernay’s Selma – based on the true story of that three-month period in 1965, during the Civil Rights Movement before the Voting Rights Act was signed. This was a part of history when Black people were not afforded their basic human rights. Like the vote, being systematically stopped from reaching the polls. And the same sort of voting fraud still happens today.
Following Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (David Oyelowo), the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and this all-star cast (including Common (The Hate U Give) and Tessa Thompson (Creed) in support) we are taken on a journey showing what institutional discrimination does to communities, including the covert racism that made voting harder for a Black person than a White person – the systematic use of legal innovations to strip Black people of their rights, (and dignity).
Since Selma was released in 2014, Ava DuVernay has since made the documentary 13th showing the history behind mass incarceration in American prisons, including slavery and convict leasing. Additionally, she has made the miniseries When They See Us – looking at the story behind the Central Park Five and how the small print (in the US legal system) described in 13th was used to incarcerate these young Black and Hispanic boys.
What got to me in rewatching Selma is how important the racial thinking that (mostly) came out colonialism / slavery is in how we think about race today. The fact discrimination only became a crime in the UK in 1965 (with the Race Relations Act), and the idea we still endorsed blackface minstrelsy until the late 1970s. BBC television still had blackface as entertainment until 1978. However, slavery was outlawed in the USA in 1865 but the slave-owning class won the war on race, as Blacks continued to be treated like slaves even though they weren’t – from convict leasing to Jim Crow Laws.
One hundred years after the end of the American Civil War, like-racism (from slave days) continued. The Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965 and Jim Crow Laws were abolished as well, but those ideologies are what built America from the days of slavery, in both the North and the South. Seldom is it acknowledged that slavery existed in some northern states too.
We don’t talk about slave codes in places like Virginia, where it was stated within the law that if an altercation occurred between slave and master, and the slave died, it would not be a felony. In the slave codes for Virginia of the 1660s, it states within the laws that it was legal to kill a Black person. This was systematic use of the law to deny Black people their rights. Whether this was Virginia 1660 or Virginia 1960, not a lot had changed.
(Selma, Paramount Pictures, Pathé, and Harpo Films)
When Rosa Parkes sat down, she stood up to the establishment and unjust laws. And before Rosa Parkes, we had Collette Colvin. Moreover, when Black people boycotted the buses, they almost bankrupted the bus companies. They were seen as a nuisance. People thought they should stay in line. This old tale of Black resistance against White authority can be traced back to master, mistress, stately homes, cotton, cane and king sugar.
From the get-go, Ava DuVernay is at your throat, with her depiction of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. This film was not made to score political points but it’s a film that tells it how it is, with vivid imagery of attack dogs, tear gas and police on horseback. Very much like the Klu Klux Klan killing defenseless people on the basis of race. Brutal. From Sandra Bland to Treyvon Martin, those stories of police brutality still ring true today. The history of disdain from Black communities to the police in Britain and America is one we’ve all heard, and it’s one that I think is in-part at least responsible for the lack people of colour joining up.
Why would Black, Asian and ethnic minority members of our society want to join an institution that has a historic pattern of discrimination? Why would they want to join an institution that talks about recruiting more BAME people, but still treats the ones they have already abominably?
Despite being a British viewer, there are many things I took away from this film, especially the subjectivity of the law. How White people in authority expect people of colour to be objective in the face of racism. The recent Naga Munchetty debacle with the BBC comes to mind. “You’ve got one big issue,” states LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) to King (Oyelowo). “I’ve got one hundred and one.” For most of the film, he does not appear to be taking the Black vote seriously, until it directly impacts him and what he’s trying to do.
Tim Roth as Governor Wallace (Alabama) is brilliant – spewing hate, hate and more hate with such venom. You hate him from the second his face appears on screen, and his scenes with Dylan Baker’s J. Edgar Hoover are brilliant. There is no love for Wallace. He is a White supremacist and director Ava DuVernay makes sure we know that. However, it got me asking questions about how we depict White supremacists in Britain. Mainly, with statues dotted around the country, including Parliament Square!
Is Selma a controversial film or is it simply no-nonsense and very American? It talks about things people feel uncomfortable talking about. In Britain, that includes anything remotely sounding like race, racism, colonialism or its role in Slavery. But critique Churchill or Nelson in anyway and you’re the enemy? But it does a great job recreating moments like Bloody Sunday, as state troops and local police let rip on the marchers.
“The whole nation was sickened by the pictures of that wild melee.”
Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo)
From tear gas to men on horses with whips, it was riddled with symbolism, as well as truly fantastic cinematography, sound mixing and musical score. Oprah (one of the producers) was great in her role, and David Oyelowo is one of the most underrated actors working today, and a testament to an alternative image of Black men on screen. Whilst my grandparents’ generation had Harry Belafonte (Carmen Jones) and Sidney Poitier (To Sir, with Love), this current generation of Black people have David Oyelowo.
This film is rough when it needs to be but delicate when it needs to be. It’s engaging, emotional, and leaves a lump in your throat right up to and through the credits. It’s also very funny – “that White boy can hit” says Dr King after being decked by a racist local. All the speeches, all the symbols, all the nods to America’s history of slavery and oppression – it’s intertwined with how the US is today – Trump’s Twitter tantrums and all that jazz.
(Selma, Pathé, Paramount Pictures and Harpo Films)
“We must march! We must stand up! […] it is unacceptable that they use their power and keep us voiceless.”
Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (David Oyelowo)
Ava lingers on faces (especially eyes) in scenarios of extreme violence longer than what is humanly comfortable, much alike to Kathryn Bigelow with Detroit and what Steve McQueen did with Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in 12 Years a Slave. From cinematography to acting, music, and sound, I have no complaints. And at moments, it was like documentary.
And nearly everyday, I’m hearing people say the system is broken; is it broken, or was it built this way, fit for purpose – for the use and upliftment of a White, male, patriarchal, able-bodied, hetero-normative society?
Bibliography
Dorsey, Bruce. “Virginian Slave Laws, 1660s”. History 41. n.p. n.d. Online. Access: 19th October, 2019.
Fryer, Peter and Gary Young et al. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. London: Pluto Press, 2018. Print.
“Moral Mission.” Black and British: A Forgotten History, written by David Olusoga, directed by Naomi Austin, BBC, 2016.
Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. London: Pan Books, 2017. Print.
Selma. Dir. Ava DuVernay. Pathé, Paramount. 2014, Netflix.
n.d. “Slavery and the Law in Virginia”. history.org. n.p. n.d. Online. Access: 19th October, 2019.
n.d. “Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline”. shsu.edu. n.p. n.d. Online. Access: 19th October, 2019.
Thoughts from the criminology team 