Thanks to Baltimore’s Reality Speaks and Pleasant Hope Baptist Church for hosting this conversation. The full video will be coming soon from the good folks at Reality Speaks but here are excerpted audio clips which include the initial remarks by both Drs. Ray Winbush and Jared Ball followed by their responses to questions and comments from the audience.
No way you listened to my presentation and can come away with i am “misinformed.” Nope. Not at all. No Black leader of note has ever pointed to the African diaspora or Latino/a immigrants as problems. None. Name them. Show me one. Just one. ADOS work on buying power is work they take from me stripped of my broader analysis because they are conservatives with no working or demonstrable knowledge of Black radical traditions, histories, politics or movements. None. No one here has tried to undermine anything. Quite the opposite. It is ADOS who look to undermine all existing radical traditions to support their red, white and blue and MAGA politics. Again, AODS supporters, as evidenced in this very comment, have no detail, reference, citations, nothing specific about what was said here that you detail as being wrong. All we get are empty claims and name calling. I leave the comment up as proof of my point. And when i invited Sandy Darity to take this argument to an academic journal he ignored me. No ADOS supporter can go to print and defend their nonsensical claims against pan-africanism or Black political history.
April 13, 2019
Hello Jared,
I listened to that great show this week that you put together as a response to ADOS. It was one of the best presentations that I have heard on the current controversy. Ray Winbush’s book on reparations is one of the best collections about the Reparations movement. I picked it up a few years ago at an event in New York City. That Winbush and the leadership of N’COBRA are not invited on the mainstream media to introduce the reparations discussion is proof that MSNBC and others do not want a genuine discussion about this issue. They are just teasers as a calypso singer reminds us. All it is, with Carnell and company included, is another masquerade where a few people talk, but end up saying nothing because they bring no clarity to any of the relevant issues.
What we have to understand is that the sudden ascendency of ADOS is JUST part of a vicious war to distort every issue as it relates to our history and culture. Carnell and others are mere race decoys along the road to freedom like so many distractions in the past decades. They talk black empowerment, but are marching to the right. As you probably know, there are many others coming with other hustles, especially as the global crisis of capitalism deepens.
I had anticipated that the political fallout of 911 would move many spokespersons in the Black community to the right and I was correct. Ironically, 911 occurred just a few days after the 2001 U.N. Conference on Reparations in Durban, South Africa concluded. I wonder what ADOS’s position is regarding the resolutions that were passed at the 2001 U.N. Conference on Reparation’s.
Let me add an interesting note with respect to African American history and how some people in China interpret it. Over ten years ago, I was teaching in Beijing and a colleague visited my home. After looking through some of my books, he asked me to explain the context of a picture of a lynching victim. The black and white picture depicted the charred corpse of a Black man chained to a piece of wood with a smiling and cheering white mob in the background. The question that the Chinese teacher asked me was what theater of war did this crime take place?
Through his eyes such crimes of savagery and barbarism could only take place within a war zone. After all, his historical consciousness has been impacted by the Japanese invasion and occupation of China (1931-1945). His grandfather was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army and his family still had some old broadswords from that era. During this period, the Japanese engaged in a brutal campaign to crush any and all resistance to their occupation.
For example, during the Japanese invasion of Nanjing, the army slaughtered over 200,000 Chinese civilians within a two month period. There are pictures of piles corpses that were as tall as lamp posts. My examination of Japanese war crimes in China made me understand the ideology of white nationalism in a much broader context. It also taught me not to be naïve about the ruthless nature of power regardless of race, creed or nationality.
The Japanese intended to destroy the British Empire with their surprise attack on Singapore in 1941 and then march west towards India. At that time, the slogan of the Japanese was “Asia for the Asians.” However, during this campaign to purge British, French, and Dutch imperialists from Asia, the Japanese committed war crimes against the native people across Southeast Asia. For example, pregnant Chinese women were bayoneted, forcing the fetus to be expelled where upon soldiers either crushed it with their boots or used it as a football. White Americans and Europeans did similar things to Black people for centuries.
When I told the Chinese teacher that the picture was of civilian life during a period where America was not formally at war with a foreign enemy, I realized that African Americans were considered to be and treated as domestic enemies. The declaration of war, however, was not official. But looking at the question more deeply, it taught me that the violence and terrorism that has been inflicted upon African American civilians has been normalized to the point where such categories are meaningless and do not truly explain what has happened to us as a people. We were murdered before, during and after all of America’s wars, which means we are considered to be permanent enemies.
Perhaps the absurd situation of Black soldiers guarding German prisoners of war during World War II captures this more than anything else. Here, the Black soldiers, allegedly fighting for democracy, had to travel in segregated train carriages, while the German prisoners did not. The German prisoners of war received better treatment and food than the Black soldiers escorting them through the South.
My point is that it is only when we connect the dots to broader international issues and currents can we truly understand the impact of our history. Its like how can you teach the Civil War without the impact of the Haitian Revolution? What Carnell and others seek to do is to confuse people for their own personal ends.
Why would a Black journalist advocate against internationalism when the world is becoming smaller and regional integration is occurring across the continent? For example, look at the proposed East African Federation, which intends to create a political union amongst the states of Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. Currently, these six nations are working on a constitution to create a new Federal state of East Africa. This is the direction that Cheikh Anta Diop had already written about in his book Black Africa first published in the 1970s. Regional political and economic integration is a crucial step within Pan Africanism. Pan Africanism is not dead! Rather many people’s minds are dead to the idea of Pan Africanism and its great possibilities.
You keep on struggling and don’t let the compradors or any others discourage you from exposing the truth. As John Henrik Clarke reminded me once that we have to get use to disappointments. The point that he made is that we cannot let these disappointments stop us from our goals or objectives. At the time, I did not fully appreciate what he meant, but now that I am older and have experienced so much in life, it was one of the most important things that he said to me.
Finally, until our community takes our balls back –and without apology– all we will ever have to point to as victories are round-robin discussions and costume balls. As Chairman Mao reminds us, “A revolution is not a dinner party.”
Keep on fighting, Jared!
After all, if there is no struggle, there is no progress!
We find our freedom –even in the darkest of hours– on the path of resistance.
Christopher Williams
ADOS is an isolationist identity movement driven by American Nativism. Ms. Carnell is on the board of directors of the Progressives for Immigration Reform. PFIR is a front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform which was founded by white nationalist John Tanton. That’s why ADOS is anti-Afrikan immigration. That’s their assignment within the broader Nativist movement. Reparations is just bait to hook people into their movement. Most of the people following ADOS have no idea that they’ve been roped into American Nativism. They simply repeat ADOS’ emotional and xenophobic propaganda, blaming Afrikan immigrants, as if they are responsible for 400 years of white supremacist imposed of Black powerlessness. Furthermore, if we look at the incident with Rev. Mark Thompson in Newark, we can see how internecine conflict can become a paradise for agent provocateurs, just like the 1960s/70s, and probably with the same results.
I’m embarrassed for ever being so gullible. I let Yvette suck me in with a moral appeal. Thank you for alerting me to this.
Like y’all said follow the money. If we cut off the diaspora the powers that oppress us will be the ones who help us.
Reading vs. studying…..yes……
Yes. The message, historical import and directions has been sabotaged by the rant, ravings and embracing an uninformed hysteria. The correction is needed without diminishing the passion.
Dr Ball I always always support your work and I try to turn others on (with varying amounts of success). This is an issue to me of the streets and y’all are approaching it from the position of an educator. The folks on the streets are starving and ADOS is selling the same hope snake oil that Dr Buzzard sold in his elixirs 100 years ago. A man once said ‘I can’t get into this Pan African thing if I’m hustling trying to make a dollar to feed myself’. ADOS is speaking to him. They are offering him a check and he is allowed to dream, just as the lottery does. 2 more years will go by just as the last 2 went with black folks clutching their pearls over the Russiagate scandal and the hope that Trump could be removed as assured to them by Auntie Maxine. That same guy will find himself in the same boat when they can’t deliver after the elections and that’s when this ADOS thing will crumble. We just have to wait this out and unfortunately they may help in re-electing Trump. Side note; in one of Tone Moore’s tweets he was proud that they had 30000 viewers and once they had close to 100000. Across the country that is not enuf people to move the needle. Now ask those 30-100000 people how much money are they willing to put up to lobby or to come out to rally and protest and I’m sure that number drops tremendously. This is just a twitter Facebook organization. Just think of who are the most prominent black people today? Ilhan Omar and Nipsey Hustle. Neither could be considered ADOS. Does the ADOS movement want to reject them? Continue doing your fine work and don’t get distracted. Peace
Excellent conversation, and I so agree with Dr. Ball that this is a wake-up call for pan-Africanists and African Internationalists to intensify our grassroots efforts.