PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness (2003) ISSN: 1094-2254 Editorial: “The Damned Issue”

Greg Thomas

Because the issue is about being damned. It’s devoted to Elaine Brown’s tour-de-force, The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). What is it about? “Our Wretched in Consequence of Neo-Slavery!” Let this special issue of PROUD FLESH, just our second, be about resistance to damnation and more.

Recently, there was this lyric I could not get out of my head for the longest. It came from “Queen Bitch” & Styles P, off Lil’ Kim’s La Bella Mafia (New York: Big Entertainment/Queen Bee/Atlantic Records, 2003). While “Big Momma” says in “The Jump Off,” “We the best/Still there’s room for improvement/Our presence is felt like the Black Panther movement,” “Get in Touch with Us” goes:

I use ta dream of this
But now I got tha money and tha house
And tha shit seem meaningless
If tha grind don’t ever stop
Then my mind won’t ever stop
Nine won’t ever stop
They say, “You too violent”
. say, “You too silent”
You scared to represent
I’ma make tha news column.

Styles ends by rhyming:

This is Holiday and Lil’ Kim
Bust ya guns
Sell ya crack
Puff ya weed
Drink a little gin.

This verse makes me think of two things. The first is George Jackson’s urge to transform the Black “criminal mentality” into a “revolutionary mentality,” beyond bourgeois mentalities, white and Negro. The second involves another Black Panther. They say, “You too violent.” I say, “You too silent.” That’s what I couldn’t get out of my head. As the “silent” forces that loudly condemn Black youth in one breath and casually condone white state violence in the next are roundly condemned by Elaine Brown, a hardcore lyricist herself from back in the day. Deal with “The Abandonment,” Chapter 12 of Condemnation! These days, when real radicalism is completely out of fashion, and the best some can do is Skip Gates & Cornel West for a $40,000 collabo that ain’t nowhere near “hot,” we get in touch with Ms. Brown.

Who was once Chairman of the Black Panther Party. Who chronicled her rise from the streets of Philly in A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Anchor Books, 1992). Who, as a singer and songwriter, dropped two potent LPs when still a Panther in 1971 and ’73. Who today sits on the board of The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. Who helped found of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice, now that the “convict-lease system” has been reinvented as the “prison-industrial complex,” or “neo-slavery” simple and plain. Who presides over Fields of Flowers, Inc., a non-profit corporation committed to building a Panther-like school for poor Black children in “ATL,” what some call “Black Mecca” but what she’s called “a bastion of Black [bourgeois] shame.”

Me, I was waiting for Elaine Brown’s new book when it first came out last year; and yet I was still floored by how phenomenal it was, is. I’ve bought four or five copies for friends. Hardcover copies. $28.50 a pop copies. This was a first, for me! I gave one to Sylvia Wynter, powerhouse intellectual critic, who read it without delay and said: “No one’s written a book like this in a looong time.” However long it’s been, it’s been far too long for sure. So PROUD FLESH offers this special issue. Why? The Condemnation of Little B is historic; we want everyone to read it; and thus far even its few, sympathetic readings don’t seem to get it, really.

So, now, what do we do about being damned by this status quo?

© 2003 Africa Resource Center, Inc.