well i have been to east st. louis, but it was modern east st louis if i recall, on the missouri side, but as i left the bus station i was almost immediately in the midst, so my destination stop might have been on illinois side of river. that was april 4, 1968, nearing eight p.m., and you know what was happening. while i sympathized tremendously with the frustrations that caused that riot---it was misdirected mainly against themselves. unfortunately there are two types of black uprisings in am. history---one where anger explodes in violence against their own neighborhood and the other where whites attack blacks. if there has ever been an instance of black people marching into white neighborhoods i have not heard of it.
With all due respect, there is no such thing as "modern East St. Louis." I was born in the 60's. When I was there as a young (very young) man in the 1980's it resembled a war zone; I know about war zones.
Pertinent to your remark "if there has ever been an instance of black people marching into white neighborhoods i have not heard of it." You have not "heard of it" for a reason as history is replete with examples of Alkebulanians and Original Americans that, quite literally, handed the European his head. This is purposefully repressed lest we get any ideas. Much better to control the narrative by portraying us as begging and singing We Shall Overcome and talking about "The Dream" than the reality that there have ALWAYS been brothers and sisters who have fought back.
You see, Mr. Taylor, there is a quite purposeful and distinct reason that you have, what you call, the N-ER City (NWord City). It is called "clustering." part of that same process is why, in every city, town and municipality where there is a large contingent of Black People in the United States there are the storied "railroad tracks."
I trust you have the intelligence to put the elements together.
you are right, however there is, however, spillover onto the Missouri side of the river where there is a largely populated black. My wife is from there, born and raised on the Missouri side and she calls it East St. Louis, Missouri. Technically I believe she is from the eastern part of St. Louis. She has two daughters from a previous marriage , one says she lives in East St. Louis, Illinois, the other claims to live in East St. Louis. However, there was some (not to the extent as done) some spillover in 1917, but the newspapers from the time distinguished between black people who lived in St. Louis from those who lived in East St. Louis. If I say I live in Sparks, Nv. that is technically incorrect, I live in the mountains northeast of the unincorporated town of Sun Valley. If we need to take a bus to town we need to walk four miles to Sun Valley and then catch a bus to Reno. However if I get in a car I drive a mile down my driveway and then in exactly two minutes I am in Sparks. People often called locales of a city by particular names and East St Louis Missouri is a colloquial designation, not an actual city. What I meant in my comment is that I am unsure if I was in Eastern St. Louis, Mo. or across the bridge in East St. Louis, Illinois.
As to your second point, you are right again---they have fought back. They fought back when they invaded the panther newspaper office in Oakland, the operative word is fighting back. There were demonstrators who fought back in some locales during the Floyd demonstrations. I think there was an attack on the demonstraters in Chicago. Certainly the Tulsa riot's claim to fame is they fought back. Quite a few of the white attackers were killed in Rosewood I believe. Black people have fought back before, during and after the civil war.The slave revolts, from Stono's to Turner's were really "fighting back". Even the slaughters of whites in African rebellions for independence in Kenya and Belgium were basically actions of fighting back,
My point is, I have no problem with fighting back. I would like to see it every time a black person is attacked or put down, The problem,as you know, is the reprisal for fighting back is often severe. What am I unaware of is blacks marching into white neighborhoods (in this country) and burning down white neighborhoods. I thought the riots after King's death were warranted, but they mainly destroyed and looted businesses in their own neighborhood (most, I;m sure probably white owned. , why didn't they burn down the suburban neighborhoods? Why don't they drag white men out of their homes when they whistle at a white girl? why don't they burn a white church if whites burn a black church> frankly why are black serial killers and mass murderers a rare specimen? Not simply (in my opinion) because whites have cowered them. Frankly I'm waiting for the day of retribution. I'm waiting for the mau-mau uprising in America. I'm waiting for the day the Alkebulians, as you call them, wipe the smugness off the faces of the white supremacist's face.
Too many whites are out and out bullies---which means they are too cowardly to fight back and will flee like they did in the Kenyans and Belgian uprisings, I don't think Black Americans are meek, what I think is that they try to hard to fit in, to be good citizens, to try to earn respect. I don't know if you would agree, if you feel that way, but "third world" people fought as many wars and could be just as kingdom hungry as Europe. But with the possible exception of the Chinese and the Incas, they had a greater awareness and respect for LIfe---all life, the life of the other lifeforms, animate and inanimate. They have more intelligence, frankly , to deal with both the forces of nature and the forces of man. This is generalized naturally, but black people and most so-called third world people respected the world they lived in and both their own communities and their enemies communities. I think Alkebulianian Americans have more respect for this country even though they are not given respect in it. They may not respect much, or any, of the white populace, but they respect the concepts.
Some suggest it might have something to with the Judean-Christian concept of "dominion", I don't know. What I do know, that besides the wealth they sought from colonization, they had ravaged the resources in Europe and they couldn't have continued living on the continent and that goes back further to the the early mideastern and Egyptian cultures. But kings in Africa, and for the most part in the Americas, the Pacific, the Indian subcontinent, and southeast Asia did not destroy their own resources of life in order to fight their wars. The Japanese pretty much isolated themselves but continually battled each other but lived simply within the means they needed to support themselves until overcrowding due to lack of migration simply forced them to expand and begin to migrate.
The "european" mindset, as you sometimes say, is about respecting nothing of importance. It doesn't matter if you have no food tomorrow as long as you have food today, you can steal your neighbors food tomorrow. Not respecting their environment, not respecting their opponents, they lack respect for themselves, they become fearful and unwholesome and write books like The Selfish Gene. Hobbes wrote people are my nature savage and so they treat people savagely, they assume (again Hobbes) they alone have the ability to civilize, and my very point is they were the most barbaric. Barbaric in the sense they never really developed a culture and so when they encountered cultured civilizations they attempted to tear them down, they had no ability to recognize civilization so they thought they were civilized.
However you are some fifteen years younger than me, I believe, and you may believe the whites want you to sing "We Shall Overcome" but they beat in heads for doing so. You are also right that there have been instances where "Alkebulanians and Original Americans quite literally handed the European his head". It is covered, it's called crime. Crime in America (and I believe you wrote an article on this) means black crime.
You are also right in your overall theory that whites will not ever willingly stop disrespecting others. But my theory is whites (european descendents) lack respect for themselves and so they damn well don't want blacks, or any other nations in the world to have respect for themselves unless they become pet lapdogs or develop and mimic their culture. Motown was the perfect example. There is a hell of a lot of difference between Dinah and Doris but not much in Diana Ross' Motown years and Petula Clark. Some people called it "soul" music, but the artists at Motown felt constrained, sure the Temptations sold more records in the 60's than Sam & Dave, but Dion & Belmonts had more soul than the Temps.
Dinah and Sam Moore created culture, Doris Day and Bing Crosby had pretty voices and no culture. William Still wrote the greatest American symphony, Scott Joplin the greatest opera, and Ralph Ellison is unequaled in America literature, perhaps only Dostoevsky could be the same. Malcolm X the greatest orator for freedom and Patrick Henry the greatest orator of self-centeredness.
America couldn't build its industries without blacks laboring in the fields, who though enslaved , hung on their self-respect; America couldn't find its voice without the music of the black man but he had to sleep with fleas and still offered to the white man who listened the music of respect through oppression. Yes the Europeans composed some passionate symphonies, but they were only to while away time while lords pursued ladies into bedrooms and the music never entered into consciousness, it was unrespected except as a means to while away the time.
All people feel a pride in their own heritage, for instance, you in Alkebulania, but your average european has no culture to be proud of, he has no respect for himself and so his only aim is to deny respect to others and to define himself as a color rather than as an identity.
So no, I do not believe Alkebulanians have attacked white Americans, but they have fought back. Maybe not enough. I'm waiting for the wholesale slaughter of the white people in America. But it will not be in the same league as the abuse the whites have lavished on the blacks in this country senselessly attempting to deny to the blacks the respect those whites don't have for themselves. But if it occurs, it will be fighting back out of necessity.
There is much to both unpack and elucidate upon with respect to your remarks. I concur with them almost entirely and intend to revisit them.
I am currently (at 0200 hrs. PST) in final edit on a couple of columns. One of which, ironically, involves slave ships on which there were many a rebellion. Your comments are inspiring and I thank you.
well thank you, i guess. the long ramble was rather an emotional rant that kind of got out of hand without a lot of fact checking but is definitely what i feel. while everything I write is emotionally, normally I try to check references and sound rational. Mostly I have found in my adult life that I think white people have leaders who treat them as if they are dumb and so they think I'm really dumb---including my birth family and the white part of my married family. But thank you.
I suppose you know who Andrea Lewis, she was a black radio personality in SF and later columnist for the Progressive. But by then she and I had gone our separate ways, although I followed her as much as I could. But I met her at 18. It was she I was meeting in '68 in St Louis or East I don't actually remember. We never had a physical relationship except that night when I finally made it to her hotel, and then it was just wrapping ourselves tightly in each other' s arms. But I remember that night telling her that I hated all white people. She said if I did I was doomed because I was not black and I would never be able to understand the belittlement of black Americans. I may be aware, she told me, of black injustice, but I could never feel the injustice that is perpetrated upon them. She was right, but I didn't want to believe her. For seventeen years she was my anchor, my lifeline, and whatever sanity I had. After I was "escorted" from the dem convention in '84 (she had been a delegate from another state) we met for the last time. I told her I had no more hope I was never opening my mouth again on anything, the world was going to hell and it deserved to go to hell until it could overthrow the yoke of its oppression. I left that night and went to live in a commune. I expected to stay forever but was forced to leave five months later---not by the commune but because I became deathly ill. But my mother took me in and I never went back because I felt I needed to pay my mother back for the medical expenses she had occurred. I took contract jobs doing whatever I could for a year until she was paid off. But I never spoke of my despair for 38 years. I mean there were incidences. I picked up a hitchhiker who started spouting klan doctrine and I pulled over and literally pushed him out of the cab of the truck. But I kept my mouth shut for so long because I'd been told I was too stupid by whites for too long and Andrea was right, the blacks don't need me to tell them they've been oppressed by the whites. I kept quiet but I read a lot. And I grew angrier. I guess Jan 6 alarmed me into wanting to say my piece again. Not necessarily because of what happened but I told Andrea it would happen back in '84 that eventually Americans would simply stop the pretense of "equality" and openly admit they had never been about freedom for anyone but the few. I relate to the anger you feel if not the oppression and I still cling to a probably false romanticism that if we cut off the head there might be a chance to heal.
I still see no historical evidence that merely overthrowing a government can accomplish anything if done violently, but I am beginning to think it has to happen. But if there is hope for salvation of this land it needs to be done by those who know they are being oppressed and not those too dumb to be led into doing their leaders' bid and continue the oppression. But I don't want a chaotic inter-racial massacre (in reality there is little likelihood of a successful conclusion) but I don't have to tell you that there continues to be the same massacre perpetuated by ignorance upon culture that has been going on since Europeans invaded this continent. I want, I dream, I romanticize of somehow people finding the will and courage to find self-respect by respecting the other. Not the golden rule, but the rule of cultures that can be harmonious. It's naive.
Thank you for this post Kenneth. I was unaware of this atrocity in St. Louis. It is so indicative of the "white superiority" entrenched in our society.
I have been to both East St. Louis and Alton, Illinois. I saw things there I wish I could forget.
But, as certain people rightfully say: NEVER FORGET.
well i have been to east st. louis, but it was modern east st louis if i recall, on the missouri side, but as i left the bus station i was almost immediately in the midst, so my destination stop might have been on illinois side of river. that was april 4, 1968, nearing eight p.m., and you know what was happening. while i sympathized tremendously with the frustrations that caused that riot---it was misdirected mainly against themselves. unfortunately there are two types of black uprisings in am. history---one where anger explodes in violence against their own neighborhood and the other where whites attack blacks. if there has ever been an instance of black people marching into white neighborhoods i have not heard of it.
With all due respect, there is no such thing as "modern East St. Louis." I was born in the 60's. When I was there as a young (very young) man in the 1980's it resembled a war zone; I know about war zones.
Pertinent to your remark "if there has ever been an instance of black people marching into white neighborhoods i have not heard of it." You have not "heard of it" for a reason as history is replete with examples of Alkebulanians and Original Americans that, quite literally, handed the European his head. This is purposefully repressed lest we get any ideas. Much better to control the narrative by portraying us as begging and singing We Shall Overcome and talking about "The Dream" than the reality that there have ALWAYS been brothers and sisters who have fought back.
You see, Mr. Taylor, there is a quite purposeful and distinct reason that you have, what you call, the N-ER City (NWord City). It is called "clustering." part of that same process is why, in every city, town and municipality where there is a large contingent of Black People in the United States there are the storied "railroad tracks."
I trust you have the intelligence to put the elements together.
you are right, however there is, however, spillover onto the Missouri side of the river where there is a largely populated black. My wife is from there, born and raised on the Missouri side and she calls it East St. Louis, Missouri. Technically I believe she is from the eastern part of St. Louis. She has two daughters from a previous marriage , one says she lives in East St. Louis, Illinois, the other claims to live in East St. Louis. However, there was some (not to the extent as done) some spillover in 1917, but the newspapers from the time distinguished between black people who lived in St. Louis from those who lived in East St. Louis. If I say I live in Sparks, Nv. that is technically incorrect, I live in the mountains northeast of the unincorporated town of Sun Valley. If we need to take a bus to town we need to walk four miles to Sun Valley and then catch a bus to Reno. However if I get in a car I drive a mile down my driveway and then in exactly two minutes I am in Sparks. People often called locales of a city by particular names and East St Louis Missouri is a colloquial designation, not an actual city. What I meant in my comment is that I am unsure if I was in Eastern St. Louis, Mo. or across the bridge in East St. Louis, Illinois.
As to your second point, you are right again---they have fought back. They fought back when they invaded the panther newspaper office in Oakland, the operative word is fighting back. There were demonstrators who fought back in some locales during the Floyd demonstrations. I think there was an attack on the demonstraters in Chicago. Certainly the Tulsa riot's claim to fame is they fought back. Quite a few of the white attackers were killed in Rosewood I believe. Black people have fought back before, during and after the civil war.The slave revolts, from Stono's to Turner's were really "fighting back". Even the slaughters of whites in African rebellions for independence in Kenya and Belgium were basically actions of fighting back,
My point is, I have no problem with fighting back. I would like to see it every time a black person is attacked or put down, The problem,as you know, is the reprisal for fighting back is often severe. What am I unaware of is blacks marching into white neighborhoods (in this country) and burning down white neighborhoods. I thought the riots after King's death were warranted, but they mainly destroyed and looted businesses in their own neighborhood (most, I;m sure probably white owned. , why didn't they burn down the suburban neighborhoods? Why don't they drag white men out of their homes when they whistle at a white girl? why don't they burn a white church if whites burn a black church> frankly why are black serial killers and mass murderers a rare specimen? Not simply (in my opinion) because whites have cowered them. Frankly I'm waiting for the day of retribution. I'm waiting for the mau-mau uprising in America. I'm waiting for the day the Alkebulians, as you call them, wipe the smugness off the faces of the white supremacist's face.
Too many whites are out and out bullies---which means they are too cowardly to fight back and will flee like they did in the Kenyans and Belgian uprisings, I don't think Black Americans are meek, what I think is that they try to hard to fit in, to be good citizens, to try to earn respect. I don't know if you would agree, if you feel that way, but "third world" people fought as many wars and could be just as kingdom hungry as Europe. But with the possible exception of the Chinese and the Incas, they had a greater awareness and respect for LIfe---all life, the life of the other lifeforms, animate and inanimate. They have more intelligence, frankly , to deal with both the forces of nature and the forces of man. This is generalized naturally, but black people and most so-called third world people respected the world they lived in and both their own communities and their enemies communities. I think Alkebulianian Americans have more respect for this country even though they are not given respect in it. They may not respect much, or any, of the white populace, but they respect the concepts.
Some suggest it might have something to with the Judean-Christian concept of "dominion", I don't know. What I do know, that besides the wealth they sought from colonization, they had ravaged the resources in Europe and they couldn't have continued living on the continent and that goes back further to the the early mideastern and Egyptian cultures. But kings in Africa, and for the most part in the Americas, the Pacific, the Indian subcontinent, and southeast Asia did not destroy their own resources of life in order to fight their wars. The Japanese pretty much isolated themselves but continually battled each other but lived simply within the means they needed to support themselves until overcrowding due to lack of migration simply forced them to expand and begin to migrate.
The "european" mindset, as you sometimes say, is about respecting nothing of importance. It doesn't matter if you have no food tomorrow as long as you have food today, you can steal your neighbors food tomorrow. Not respecting their environment, not respecting their opponents, they lack respect for themselves, they become fearful and unwholesome and write books like The Selfish Gene. Hobbes wrote people are my nature savage and so they treat people savagely, they assume (again Hobbes) they alone have the ability to civilize, and my very point is they were the most barbaric. Barbaric in the sense they never really developed a culture and so when they encountered cultured civilizations they attempted to tear them down, they had no ability to recognize civilization so they thought they were civilized.
However you are some fifteen years younger than me, I believe, and you may believe the whites want you to sing "We Shall Overcome" but they beat in heads for doing so. You are also right that there have been instances where "Alkebulanians and Original Americans quite literally handed the European his head". It is covered, it's called crime. Crime in America (and I believe you wrote an article on this) means black crime.
You are also right in your overall theory that whites will not ever willingly stop disrespecting others. But my theory is whites (european descendents) lack respect for themselves and so they damn well don't want blacks, or any other nations in the world to have respect for themselves unless they become pet lapdogs or develop and mimic their culture. Motown was the perfect example. There is a hell of a lot of difference between Dinah and Doris but not much in Diana Ross' Motown years and Petula Clark. Some people called it "soul" music, but the artists at Motown felt constrained, sure the Temptations sold more records in the 60's than Sam & Dave, but Dion & Belmonts had more soul than the Temps.
Dinah and Sam Moore created culture, Doris Day and Bing Crosby had pretty voices and no culture. William Still wrote the greatest American symphony, Scott Joplin the greatest opera, and Ralph Ellison is unequaled in America literature, perhaps only Dostoevsky could be the same. Malcolm X the greatest orator for freedom and Patrick Henry the greatest orator of self-centeredness.
America couldn't build its industries without blacks laboring in the fields, who though enslaved , hung on their self-respect; America couldn't find its voice without the music of the black man but he had to sleep with fleas and still offered to the white man who listened the music of respect through oppression. Yes the Europeans composed some passionate symphonies, but they were only to while away time while lords pursued ladies into bedrooms and the music never entered into consciousness, it was unrespected except as a means to while away the time.
All people feel a pride in their own heritage, for instance, you in Alkebulania, but your average european has no culture to be proud of, he has no respect for himself and so his only aim is to deny respect to others and to define himself as a color rather than as an identity.
So no, I do not believe Alkebulanians have attacked white Americans, but they have fought back. Maybe not enough. I'm waiting for the wholesale slaughter of the white people in America. But it will not be in the same league as the abuse the whites have lavished on the blacks in this country senselessly attempting to deny to the blacks the respect those whites don't have for themselves. But if it occurs, it will be fighting back out of necessity.
There is much to both unpack and elucidate upon with respect to your remarks. I concur with them almost entirely and intend to revisit them.
I am currently (at 0200 hrs. PST) in final edit on a couple of columns. One of which, ironically, involves slave ships on which there were many a rebellion. Your comments are inspiring and I thank you.
well thank you, i guess. the long ramble was rather an emotional rant that kind of got out of hand without a lot of fact checking but is definitely what i feel. while everything I write is emotionally, normally I try to check references and sound rational. Mostly I have found in my adult life that I think white people have leaders who treat them as if they are dumb and so they think I'm really dumb---including my birth family and the white part of my married family. But thank you.
I suppose you know who Andrea Lewis, she was a black radio personality in SF and later columnist for the Progressive. But by then she and I had gone our separate ways, although I followed her as much as I could. But I met her at 18. It was she I was meeting in '68 in St Louis or East I don't actually remember. We never had a physical relationship except that night when I finally made it to her hotel, and then it was just wrapping ourselves tightly in each other' s arms. But I remember that night telling her that I hated all white people. She said if I did I was doomed because I was not black and I would never be able to understand the belittlement of black Americans. I may be aware, she told me, of black injustice, but I could never feel the injustice that is perpetrated upon them. She was right, but I didn't want to believe her. For seventeen years she was my anchor, my lifeline, and whatever sanity I had. After I was "escorted" from the dem convention in '84 (she had been a delegate from another state) we met for the last time. I told her I had no more hope I was never opening my mouth again on anything, the world was going to hell and it deserved to go to hell until it could overthrow the yoke of its oppression. I left that night and went to live in a commune. I expected to stay forever but was forced to leave five months later---not by the commune but because I became deathly ill. But my mother took me in and I never went back because I felt I needed to pay my mother back for the medical expenses she had occurred. I took contract jobs doing whatever I could for a year until she was paid off. But I never spoke of my despair for 38 years. I mean there were incidences. I picked up a hitchhiker who started spouting klan doctrine and I pulled over and literally pushed him out of the cab of the truck. But I kept my mouth shut for so long because I'd been told I was too stupid by whites for too long and Andrea was right, the blacks don't need me to tell them they've been oppressed by the whites. I kept quiet but I read a lot. And I grew angrier. I guess Jan 6 alarmed me into wanting to say my piece again. Not necessarily because of what happened but I told Andrea it would happen back in '84 that eventually Americans would simply stop the pretense of "equality" and openly admit they had never been about freedom for anyone but the few. I relate to the anger you feel if not the oppression and I still cling to a probably false romanticism that if we cut off the head there might be a chance to heal.
I still see no historical evidence that merely overthrowing a government can accomplish anything if done violently, but I am beginning to think it has to happen. But if there is hope for salvation of this land it needs to be done by those who know they are being oppressed and not those too dumb to be led into doing their leaders' bid and continue the oppression. But I don't want a chaotic inter-racial massacre (in reality there is little likelihood of a successful conclusion) but I don't have to tell you that there continues to be the same massacre perpetuated by ignorance upon culture that has been going on since Europeans invaded this continent. I want, I dream, I romanticize of somehow people finding the will and courage to find self-respect by respecting the other. Not the golden rule, but the rule of cultures that can be harmonious. It's naive.
Thank you for this post Kenneth. I was unaware of this atrocity in St. Louis. It is so indicative of the "white superiority" entrenched in our society.