THIS WEEK ON Like It Is
John Stockwell is a former C.I.A. case officer who worked agency assignments in Africa and Vietnam. He resigned from the C.I.A and wrote a book attacking the agency’s practices. Like It Is presents an encore presentation of “An Insider’s Report on the C.I.A.”

This week on Like It Is: Gil Noble speaks with Charles Barron of NY City Council, Betty Dobson of CEMOTAP along with others on the Educational System of New York City and the human / civil rights violations committed against our children in the name of privatizing the School System all orchestrated and financially facilitated by the NYC Educational self appointed Czar Mayor Bloomberg.

This week on Like it Is Gil Noble speaks with Dr Leonard Jeffries to create a biographical narrative of his life.

Why So Angry Black Man? by Chantel Laurent

Brother Malcolm, the living embodiment of our shining Black Manhood.

“…there’s no sin in being angry. In fact if you’re not angry, there’s something wrong with you.” –Gil Noble

Professor Henry Louis Gates challenged police authority on Thursday, July 16. He was confronted by a policeman in his home who demanded his identification. Though the professor proved his identity to Jim Crowley it was not enough to appease the man. You see, Professor Gates insisted on proof of identity from Policeman Crowley. Apparently, he did not moderate his voice or attitude to suit policeman Crowley. In this culture, anger, if you are a minority is dangerous. If you neglect the well-known code of behavior familiar to most minorities who are stopped by the police, at a minimum you could pay with a night in jail or ultimately with your life.

For the record, there is nothing wrong with being angry. Anger is a basic human right. In a country which bills itself as the “Land of the Free” an American citizen cannot be faulted in believing that they have a right to express justifiable anger.

Frederick Douglass
First Prominent Angry Black Man in America

Truthfully, being a sheep never advanced anyone’s cause.

John Brown was angry.
He was an abolitionist who attempted to start a revolution to free the slaves by raiding Harpers Ferry. He was caught and executed along with his cohorts, but Union soldiers paid him homage by singing “John Brown’s body lies-a-mouldering in the ground…. His soul is marching on” as they marched off to fight the Civil War. That popular battle march inspired Julia Ward to write “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Martin Luther King was angry.
His colleagues called his actions “unwise and untimely.” Reverend King wrote in his “letter from a Birmingham Jail” that they’re concern about the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham failed “to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.”

Ghandi was angry.
It sustained him when he practiced civil disobedience in actively refusing to obey certain laws. Ghandi defied the British policy of prohibiting Indians from collecting or selling salt. In his boldest act of civil disobedience he led a defiant march to the sea at the head of tens of thousands where he picked up a small lump of natural salt–and broke British law ending up jail.

El Hajj Malik Shabazz or Malcolm X was angry.
It gave him the strength to endure the relentless castigation of a media that portrayed him as violent, criminal and racist. And it gave him the courage to face the fact that he would most likely not live to a ripe old age.

Gil Noble, the host and producer of the great New York institution and program “Like It Is” explains why Malcolm had so many powerful enemies and why he was assassinated.

“I realized that I’d been had [believed the media hype]. But when I heard Malcolm’s entire presentation everything fell in line and it was logical. And it made me understand that there’s no sin in being angry. In fact if you’re not angry, there’s something wrong with you.

Why do you think that Malcolm was killed?
I think there were a number of reasons why he was killed. He was a threat to America’s global ambitions. He had done a lot in Africa to awaken the African countries. And let them understand that they should not be victim of the courtship that American businesses were engaged in, the Peacecorps and all of these things. ‘Cause they don’t love you. They want your minerals. If they did… Look what they are doing to us and we’re your brothers and sisters. Look what they’re doing to us in, you know Mississippi and what not. And so many of them began to quote Malcolm on the floor of the United Nations ironically. So I think that is one dimension, that the State Department. And they tried to kill him when he was in Egypt. They tried to poison… they poisoned him, but he had his stomach pumped and he survived.”

Malcolm’s close aide and chief secretary James 67X, also known as Abdullah H. Abdur-Razzaq and James Shabazz was on “Like It Is” (a rebroadcast) this past Sunday with his personal photographer Robert L. Haggins. At one point, after describing the death of Malcolm, he began to weep openly. When Mr. Noble asked him what made him so sad. He said he thought they (Malcolm and his followers) could have made history. He said that he thought that in the United States young Black men are not allowed to grow up and mature. A very profound statement on many levels. Even as it relates to Michael Jackson and the way MJ was hounded, criminalized and ridiculed by the mainstream media.

A grown human being should not have to bow and scrape to an absolute authority figure–that is tyranny. He/she should have the right and privilege to express their justifiable anger if they choose to. After all, isn’t it their right as a Free, Black and 21 American citizen?

On “Countdown” today (07.27.09) the guest host Lawrence O’Donnell explains why the Gates arrest amounted to a false arrest and that “the president’s words were exactly right, it was ‘stupid.’”

UPDATE:

Questions on race aspect of Henry Louis Gates case show subtlety of racism
From an article in the NY Daily News:

“The word “black” comes only in the Cambridge Police Department Incident Report filed by the responding cop, Sgt. James Crowley. He describes in detail arriving at the scene and encountering a woman with a cell phone who identified herself as the caller.

“She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks,” the report states.”

The caller, Lucia Whalen, says through a lawyer that she said nothing to Crowley at the scene beyond, “I’m the one who called.”

She insists she never described the two men by race.

Just as Crowley insists everything in the report is true “or it wouldn’t be there.”

Officer Jim Crowley exaggerated the threat of the situation by citing two black males with backpacks in his police report.