Black People : Molefi Asante’s Insane War on BAR and the Black Radical Tradition

[RAPTOR]

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Molefi Asante, promoter of Systematic Nationalism, poses as the consummate Race Man but is in
practice an agent of white corporate power. In fear of exposure for his backstabbing at Temple
University, Asante has lashed out at the Black Radical Tradition and all its practitioners as “dupes”
of white Marxists – an extraordinary assault on a great Black political legacy.

“He is a madman on a mission: to delegitimize, de-Black, and de-African the Black
Left in the Diaspora and on the Continent.”

We were the subject of a rambling screed posted late last month on the Facebook page of Dr.
Molefi Asante, the liar, charlatan, hustler, and current agent of white corporate power at Temple
University, in Philadelphia. At more than 4,300 words, it was an incoherent mess, beginning with
the insane assertion that the “Black Radical Tradition...at least the public head of it, was the Black
Agenda Report headed by Glen Ford.” Without a hint of sarcasm, Asante, chairman of what he calls
the Department of Africology at Temple, then proceeded to dismiss “the so-called Black Radical
Tradition” as “nothing more than a weak ideological propaganda gallery of Africans trying to
imitate white Marxists.”

Only a loon would describe Black Agenda Report, a seven-year-old publication that barely keeps its
head above water, as the repository of anything so grand in scope as the Black Radical Tradition,
which encompasses much of the political legacy of an entire people. Make no mistake, Asante is a
loon. But he is a madman on a mission: to delegitimize, de-Black, and de-African the Black Left in
the Diaspora and on the Continent. Thus, in his first sentence, he describes the Black Radical
Tradition as a “thin strip of intellectual curiosity” – as if hardly worth confronting. The Black Left is
further diminished by positing BAR, a small weekly magazine of news, commentary and analysis, as
the Black Radical Tradition’s leading manifestation. Asante attempts to make Lilliputians of
everyone, past and present, that does not subscribe to “Systematic Nationalism,” which is not a
tradition or movement, but the title of one of his books.

“Asante is a small peddler of cultural products who sells his Black persona to
predators.”

In furtherance of his commercial and political enterprises, Dr. Asante consistently makes common
cause with white corporate power, which shares his hatred of the Left. (This article will not touch on
Asante’s mentor Ron Karenga’s role in the deaths of Black Panthers Bunchy Carter and John
Huggins, in Los Angeles, in 1969 – although these crimes should never be forgotten.) Asante’s
eager complicity with Temple administrators in terminating Dr. Anthony Monteiro’s contract with
the Department of African American Studies is yet another episode in his jihad against the Black
Left.

It is a wildly asymmetric alliance. Like its corporate educational siblings in major cities around the
country, Temple is both a local real estate developer and a player in global capitalism. Its
relationship to Black and brown Philadelphia, and to the emerging peoples of the planet, is
inherently predatory. Asante is a small peddler of cultural products who sells his Black persona to
predators, to advance their common goal of weakening the influence and cohesion of the Black
resistance. Although Asante and his ilk drape themselves in African garb and mouth super-
nationalist rhetoric, in practice their role is to buttress white corporate power and privilege.Thus, in
his diatribe against the Black Radical Tradition, Asante said:

“Universities reserve the right to choose their faculties; Temple never gave up that right to the
community and was not expected to do so by anyone except those who did not understand the
rules.”

Read more: http://blackagendareport.com/content/molefi-asante’s-insane-war-bar-and-black-radical-tradition

 

[skuderjaymes]

what is this.. the black intellectual form of Beef? I prefer the hip hop version.. least you can bob your head to it..

 

[skuderjaymes]

I don't know RAPTOR .. if I had to make a judgement call.. I would have to say that Molefi Asante has made the stronger argument.


Reclaiming the Black Radical Tradition or How Glen Ford Betrayed the BRT

Molefi Kete Asante

I was walking through the mornes in Martinique between Gros Morne and Saint Jospeh with Garcin Malsa erstwhile mayor of the town of St. Joseph, member of the Conseil General and leader of the Reparations Movement of Martinique during the third week of May 2014 when I first thought about the thin strip of intellectual curiosity called the Black Radical Tradition. I had received an email that confirmed that Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report had just published another attempt to smear my name and good reputation. As an Afrocentrist I have been attuned to most of the movements in the African community for many years, written about them, participated in several, and started a few myself. The concentration on keeping up with the 80-year old Malsa, a great specimen of a human being, and scores of other marchers down and up the hills of middle Martinique at the edge of the night with the drums and a full moon beckoning the marchers to higher levels of sensitivity to what our ancestors experienced sharpened my analysis of what goes for the so-called Black Radical Tradition in the United States. It became clear to me that the head of it, at least the public edge of it, was the Black Agenda Report edited by Glen Ford.
I do not know Glen Ford personally although I have occasionally recommended that someone read something or the other that he had written. Recent events have convinced me that he is neither a journalist of goodwill nor an African person of good faith. I contend after reading the Black Agenda Report that it is nothing more than an excuse for the so-called Black Radical Tradition. In effect, it is nothing more than a weak ideological propaganda gallery of Africans trying to imitate white Marxists. It is as if the aim of the Black Agenda Report is to advance an agenda contrary to the legitimate interests of African American people. In fact, I contend that the Black Agenda Report has subverted the interests of the black community in an effort to demonstrate that it can attack black people who are Afrocentric, Pan African, and self-determining. Character massacres, blatant untruths, and diatribe masquerading as serious discourse represent BAR’s attacks on Systematic Nationalism.
I have read Glen Ford’s words with an eye toward seeing what was behind his scurrilous character assassination and name-calling directed at those with whom he dislikes or disagrees. And, of course, what I have gathered is that Ford’s words say more about him than they do his targets. He is full of venom. Ford has brought this trouble upon himself. He is the one who made the exaggerated elevation of the Monteiro personnel situation BAR’s most accentuated story of the year. The designation of the Monteiro case demonstrates Ford’s personal commitment to Monteiro not to the facts in the case. Moreover, I am not sure by what criteria Ford calls Tony Monteiro a Du Boisian scholar or a tenured professor when he is neither.
What is this tradition called Black Radical Tradition that BAR appears to support? It is merely a “black” version of the white Radical Tradition that whites simply call the Radical Tradition. Any black version of anything white is problematic and those who do not know that have already betrayed the black community’s interests. The so-called Black Radical Tradition has sought to usurp the demands, concerns, and intellectual direction followed by our ancestors. Much like the extreme right-wingers, these extreme left-wingers are rooting for white theorists and philosophers, just a different group of white leaders. They are both pathetic examples of blacks seeking to find salvation from external sources. Ronald Hall and I dealt with the black conservatives in Rooming in the Master’s House and now it is time for me to look more deeply at the extreme black left. My position is that no intellectual or political group or person has immunity from debate and criticism. However, the proper response to criticism is not the infantile leftism of name-calling or malicious character assassination, but a response informed by reflection and facts. Therefore, I engage in this discourse with the idea of elevating a conversation but also in order to draw bolder distinctions between two ideological strands in the African American community.

The so-called Black Radical Tradition is neither radical nor traditional. It is black only to the degree that some black people have determined that white Marxist theorists and their black followers have the answers to the conditions of African people in the United States. I am afraid that they are wrong; we know that the white theorists do not have the answers for themselves and any group calling itself Black Radical Tradition that follows in step with such a misguided ideology are asking to be abandoned by the masses of our people. How can you have answers to African problems in America by asserting so confidently that class is more important in decision-making in this country than racial animus? Donald Sterling and his kind demonstrate each day and hundreds of thousands of times a day that race trumps class in the American mind. Also, how can you underestimate the extent of black self-hatred as a result of the doctrine of white racial domination and how can you attempt to excuse the extreme black left for its role in such confusion?
Here is the thing. What is clear is that neither Glen Ford nor the Marxist left can monopolize a claim to the Black radical tradition. Nor can they define it in a limited way to exclude Garvey and Malcolm and Karenga. If someone disagrees with them on serious political matters or ethical principles or personnel decisions or practice, they are quick to strike with character assassination. Actually they are not immune from bad ideas that are definitely not in the interests of African people.
The problem is that these extreme Marxists ideologues by whatever nomenclature they care to use from time to time have lost all organic relationship with the black community. They are mostly academic and ivory tower prognosticators whose intellectual patriarchy is Karl Marx. So what they must do to suggest a nominal link to the black community is to announce that Pan Africanists and Afrocentrists concentrate too much on culture, history, and identity; this nominal link does not work because the people know that their condition in this country is related to white privilege, racist ideology, behavioral racism, and economic deprivation in all sectors of the society.
Since the Black Agenda Report represents the leading edge of the so-called Black Radical Tradition and Glen Ford, as editor, is its best-known commentator it is necessary to isolate its real agenda. The best way to examine any one’s agenda is to see what work they have done. I am always willing to advance my work as a way that you might know me in my various capacities. My work speaks for me and I believe that the Black Agenda Report’s works speak for it. Articles on immigration, healthcare, police brutality, and Mumia Abu Jamal have attracted progressives and non-progressives alike. Some of these reports demonstrate real clear vision about what ought to be reported. But unfortunately, many of the articles have been in poor taste, abusive, disrespectful of black people. Why can’t you question arguments and policies without name-calling?
This speaks clearly to a character issue with BAR. It has lost and will continue to lose with conscious African Americans unless it changes, and I do not see it changing so long as Glen Ford is editor. I say this because I wrote a thoughtful letter to Glen Ford when he first reported on the Monteiro Affair at Temple. He had willfully attacked me for no apparent reason except that I refused to intervene in a personnel case where the person had neither legal nor ethical grounds upon which to stand. Malcolm X said it best, “Never try to defend the indefensible.” Glen Ford never responded to that letter. Nevertheless, he continued to write the most outlandish things about me, calling me names that my right wing critics, white or black, had never called me. What was wrong with my narrative that he could attack? Nothing. He did not read my memoir, he did not know my work in Zimbabwe, he did not know my creation of programs for educating our people, and he was totally unfamiliar with the way universities operate; it was obvious to me that his agenda was not an African agenda. If anything, it was a subversive attempt on the part of blacks to sell out the true agenda of liberation for something handed down from white Marxists. Glen Ford saw an opportunity, as Marxists like to do, to use an incident as a propaganda tool.
What is revealed, or unveiled in BAR’s petty name-calling in my case, is a “black” Marxist propagandistic instrument that is both anemic and corrupt. Without any original thought and any knowledge or ability to assess my work, the BAR has promoted a distorted and warped portrayal of me, further undermining the so-called Black Radical Tradition. There is something wrong when you cannot address my arguments, but you can call me an “Afrocentric ******” or you speak of my “dashiki” as a negative or you call me a “rat” or a “red-baiter.” These statements are nonsensical and comical and BAR saying them does not make them true; however, the ineptitude of the editor of BAR is clearly seen in the fact that he cannot demonstrate any of these derogatory notions as arguments of fact. Ford accused me of red-baiting because I criticized what I see as an overdependence on white Marxists by Monteiro’s campaign against me. So was it red-baiting when Malcolm X said some black communist intellectuals permitted themselves to be used “in a way that wasn’t really beneficial to the overall Afro-American struggle (Malcolm, By Any Means Necessary, 1970:180)? But it is not red-baiting to call a leftist a leftist, a Marxist a Marxist, and a communist a communist, especially when they themselves self-identify as such. Furthermore, Ford’s use of the word “McCarthyism” in reference to my identifying the white leftists at the Monteiro rally is diversionary and dishonest. If there is anything negatively “red” in the conversation, it is the “red herring” of “McCarthyism” and the use of the term “red-baiting” Ford flashed to divert attention from the weakness of his arguments. I have come to expect such attacks by those who have no reasons for their assaults; they go for the smear and name-calling and character massacres.
However, the BAR’s ad hominem attacks on me have not fed my ego to the point that I think that the obscene and vile things that are said are about me alone. They are an affront to the only real and historical radical tradition in the African American community. It is a deliberate attack on the Systematic Nationalist tradition.

Full Article @ https://www.facebook.com/molefikete.asante.9?fref=nf

 

[jamesfrmphilly]

the failure of black people to be able to get along....divide and conquer

 

[skuderjaymes]

the failure of black people to be able to get along....divide and conquer

are you saying that every time in your life that you didn't get along with another person of African descent, it was "divide and conquer"? Can there be no substantive disagreements between black people?