{"id":8639,"date":"2014-09-06T09:53:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-06T16:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/?p=8639"},"modified":"2020-12-16T17:08:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T01:08:46","slug":"the-prophet-of-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/2014\/09\/06\/the-prophet-of-ferguson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Prophet of Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"

…The truth is that this country does not know what to do with its black population now that the blacks are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred like cattle; and they especially do not know what to do with young black men…It is not accidental that the jails and the army and the needle claim so many, but there are still too many prancing about for the public comfort. Americans will, of course, deny, with horror, that they are dreaming of anything like “the final solution” – those Americans, that is, who are likely to be asked: what goes on in the great, vast, private hinterland of the American heart can only be guessed at by how the country goes these days. Some pale, compelling nightmare – an overwhelming collection of private nightmares – is responsible for the irresponsible ferocity of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act<\/a>. Some vindictive terror on the part of the people made possible the Government’s indefensible and obscene performance in Chicago<\/a>. Something has gone violently wrong in a nation when the government dares attempt to muzzle the press – a press already quite supine enough – and to intimidate reporters by the use of the subpoena. Black men have been buried alive in this country more than once – many men now living have seen it with their own eyes; black men and boys are being murdered here today, in cold blood, and with impunity; and it is a very serious matter when the government which is sworn to protect the interests of all American citizens unabashedly allies itself with the enemies of black men. Let us tell it like it is: the rhetoric of a Stennis<\/a>, a Maddox<\/a>, a Wallace<\/a>, historically and actually, has brought death to untold numbers of black people and it was meant to bring death to them. This is absolutely true, no matter who denies it… Now, in the interest of the public peace, it is the Black Panthers who are being murdered in their beds<\/a>, by the dutiful and zealous police. But, for a policeman, all black men, especially young black men, are probably Black Panthers…just as, in a Vietnamese village, the entire population, men, women, children are considered as probable Vietcong<\/a>. In the village, as in the ghetto, those who were not dangerous before the search-and-destroy operation assuredly become so afterward, for the inhabitants of the village, like the inhabitants of the ghetto, realize that they are identified, judged, menaced, murdered, solely because of the color of their skin. This is a curious way of waging a war for peoples’ freedom as it is of maintaining the public peace…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James Baldwin, No Name in the Street<\/em><\/a>, 1972<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…The truth is that this country does not know what to do with its black population now that the blacks are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred like cattle; and they especially do not know what to do with young black men…It is not accidental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[382,918,1229,1238,1241,1240],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-anti-black-racism","tag-book-review","tag-ferguson","tag-james-baldwin","tag-missouri","tag-no-name-in-the-street"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8639"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11285,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions\/11285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racefiles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}