By Shaka Barak
President/CEO: The Marcus Garvey Institute
P.O. Box 1723, Oak Park, Il. 60304
shakabarak1@yahoo.com
There was a television special documentary that premiered in 2008 on the History channel called “Life After People.” The show that has scientist speculating how life might exist without humans has developed into a 10 part television series. It shows what life would be like on earth if humans were not here to be the care takers of the global city infrastructures. I take this as an opportunity to flip the script and ask my Black brothers and sisters, what would life be like without White people and we became the care takers? If whites were to all disappear like Blacks did in the play, “The Day of Absence,” written by the Black man Douglass Turner Ward (bn. May 5, 1930) and first performed in 1965, how would Blacks left to their own devices go about maintaining the infrastructures of communications, transportation, education and economy.
In this satirical play by Ward (co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company), Blacks in this small Southern town were primarily the domestics, ie chauffeurs and house maids, that mysteriously disappeared. Black actors in Whiteface and blond wigs bemoaned this loss of their disappeared former employees. If Whites who on the other hand as the dominant group, were to suddenly disappear, what would Blacks do? How would we feed, cloth and house ourselves under this huge responsibility that some of us have even imagined favorably? What would Blacks do if over 90% of the airline pilots and plane manufacturers were gone; 90% of the engineers that build and operate the trains were gone; 90% of the ship captains and builders were gone; 90% of the bank presidents and banks were gone; 90% of the scientist, engineers, architects and doctors were gone; 90% of the police and military officers were gone? Faced with this disappearance that many Black authors have labeled the care-takers of the institutions of White supremacy, could Blacks put together their own system of survival before conditions would totally overwhelm us? If we came together to organize a centralized government in order to prevent mob rule and violence would it be secular or religious? Would we be able to collaborate to maintain the electric grid, dams, nuclear plants, water purification plants and prevent the United States 10,000 nuclear war heads from getting into the wrong hands? Could we do this when we consider that Blacks unlike other ethnic groups have no strong communities but are spread all over America with 50% in the Southern states and 50% in the Northern states, and unlike Black Wall Street that existed at the turn of the last century, Blacks are pretty much doing their own thing?
Eddie Faye Gates in her book ‘Riot On Greenwood, The Total Destruction of Black Wall Street, published in 2003, she wrote,” “Chapter 3 covers the seventy-five year conspiracy to cover up the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Information will be provided to show how city, county, and state officials deliberately destroyed documents, newspaper articles, military records, and other vital materials pertaining to the riot.” Prior to May 31-June 1, 1921 is when the “race massacre” occurred Blacks had united and built this 4 ½ square mile, 11,000 populated community, so prosperous from Black doing business with each other, that when Booker T. Washington visited it and referred to it as a “Negro Wall Street”. A united community can use the “grape vine to get the word out of impending danger or positive announcements. But, what would happen if 90% of the U.S. 13,000 radio broadcast stations and 2000 television broadcast stations closed and the Internet shut down? What group of Blacks would maintain the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), monitor the Voyager probes and fix the Hubble Space Telescope when needed?
Is it fair to ask the question, especially during this period of global economic disaster, could Blacks be expected to manage their own affairs let alone those of the United States Government. How could we do this during a much more serious crisis and yet not be able develop a strong and determined collective will today, during a period when the systems we live under have not completely crumbled? In the play the ‘Day of Absence’ whites pleaded for their “Negras” to return to their jobs as domestics. How hard would Blacks beg and pray for White people to return when 90% of the grocery stores would be closed and the trucks that bring the food to the stores from the farms and the ports stopped rolling? How would Blacks survive any natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina that had thousands stuck on roof tops, sleeping in stadiums and living as refugees?. How would we feel knowing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wont be late, because FEMA will never leave to show up in the first place? In fact we could never call 911 or any other emergency number for a White knight, from the white house, to ride in on a white horse because we wouldn’t even get a dial tone. What would happen to our children and our elders the weakest members of our race when the street lights go out? Could even a powerful man like President Barack Obama run a government if 90% of the people he depends on to run his 1,366,000 armed forces personnel and keep the United States 38,538,000 weapons under lock and key disappeared? How long would it take before another strong race like the Asians in China with its 2.8 million or India with its 1.3 million armed personnel step into the void and really turn this dream into a nightmare?
The question I hope to arouse is will we ever stop depending on Whites and begin to at least talk about what it means to control our own destiny as a race regardless as to who else is around to helps us or not?
People, especially Whites, will never in the foreseeable future disappear, but on the other hand the crisis that Blacks face are on-going and leading some to fear their possible extinction/extermination. I’m not the first or the last to ask these hard questions. The late Dr. John Henry Clark (b. Jan. 15, 1915, d. July 16, 1998) wrote a pamphlet in 1990, “Can African People Save Themselves?” He ends it with these words, “And from the vantage point of our Africanity, we can give the world a new definition of freedom and responsibility. If this is our mission, it is also the legacy that we can leave for our children and other children still unborn.”
When we ask the hard questions of what will this generation of Blacks leave for future generations, we do so with a belief that out of the pain of slavery and colonialism we must and will be free and have a free and prosperous progeny. Striving to exist does not mean you have to hate others. Certainly Whites have produced men like John Brown (b. May 9, 1800 d. December 2, 1859) abolitionist and liberator of enslaved Blacks. William Loyd Garrison (b. Dec.10, 1805-d. May 24, 1879) abolitionist and editor that inspired other abolitionist, is another example of Whites who fought for Blacks. There are many examples of one being depending on the others for mutual benefit. Charles Darwin whose birth (February 12, 1809 d. April 19, 1882) 200 years ago this year and whose book, “On the Origin of Species” is celebrated for its 150 anniversary (24th November 1859) of publication this year on page 62 wrote, “I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.”
The best example of racial leadership of mass movements the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey (b. August 17th 1887 d. June 10th 1940), founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, wrote in the book, ‘Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey’, (pub. 1923) page 8, “Lagging behind in the van of civilization will not prove our higher abilities. Being subservient to the will and caprice of progressive races will not prove anything superior in us. Being satisfied to drink of the dregs from the cup of human progress will not demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist alongside of others but when of our own initiative we strike out to build industries governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a race prove to our Creator and to man in general that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping our own destiny.” In conclusion, if Black people are to survive without totally depending on White people, it will be because they rose up a leadership that cared about their future generations and were willing to make the sacrifices today to provide for them tomorrow by any means necessary.