by clairmont chung
The cargo is not as mobile as before. Some sit and stare, chronically
unemployed, some addicted, some homeless, some exhibiting signs of madness, in
states of despair, in poor health, stateless, all invisible. Take a nighttime walk
through Penn Station, under that other New York arena, Madison Square Garden. Maybe
you will see the future Barclays promises.
Barclays, with no retail banking operations in the United
States, would pay several hundred million to place its name on a building and a
subway station in Brooklyn without any ownership interest transferred to it in
exchange. For a bank with no retail account holders, no street level banks, in
the US, this means more. We know what Jay is trying to leave behind. But is
Barclays trying to leave its role in the slave trade behind. Did Barclays not
finance the slavers and help build their ships that brought Jay’s ancestors
across the Atlantic. Many of those ships were built and outfitted right there
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard: a stone’s throw from Jay-Z’s Marcy Projects childhood home and
Barclays Center.
 |
| Barclays Center moored on Atlantic Avenue (Getty Images) |
The subway train shook me from my half-sleep as we jerked to
a stop. It was as if it wanted to show me something. Then I read in bold
letters on the station’s walls: Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center. At first, I did
not understand what was happening. This was some kind of trick, payback for the
things I said about capitalism. Maybe I had made a mistake and taken the wrong
train. I had never heard of a station by that name in New York or anywhere. The
underground dimness looked familiar. Then the conductor’s cackle announced that
we were on the “2 train to Flatbush”. I relaxed a little, even smiled. This was
no mistake. Then he said the name of the stop, “Barclays Center, Atlantic”. It
felt like a slap so hard that I did not hear the name of the next stop:
Barclays-Bergen. I was fully awake then, but train sick. Imagine, not one
but, two stops in Brooklyn renamed Barclays in 2012. Barclays Bank was now
back, on the Atlantic, naming stops as its debtors did during slavery. Except
now it added other property: A building that looked like a ship and Jay-Z.
 |
| Down below (c) rootsandculture |
I paid little attention to the building of the new
entertainment arena for the Brooklyn Nets. I treat some of these developments
like the presidential elections. They are like trucks rolling down the highway,
or oil tankers at sea, and you get the sense that getting in the way brings
worse and so I follow at a healthy distance. But this required more scrutiny. With
the city’s help, the developer used the powerful legal tool of eminent domain
to clear out residents and businesses for the needed space. A bar I visited
from time to time closed so that the stadium could be built. Barclays Bank paid
the developer, a kind of rental fee, to place its name on the arena: but has no
direct interest in developing the Barclays Center, the Brooklyn Nets basketball
team, that calls it home, or with Jay Z. Even the refurbished and renamed subway
station was paid for by the developer. So Barclays does not actually own the
ship nor does its own Jay-Z, actually.
I can understand one corporation making a deal with another,
but the subway was not owned by a corporation. Is it?[1]
How much did it cost Barclays to change
the name of a subway stop and who received the money?[2]
Who knew downtown Brooklyn was sufficiently blighted for the state’s highest
court to find just that and order private property demolished? As it turns out,
Bruce Ratner, the developer, bore the cost of the naming rights and the $76
million for refurbishing the stop[3].
In exchange for the latter he received the rights to the airspace above his
ship: seriously. The naming rights to the stop is to last the same 20 years as
the lease to name the center. Evidently, Atlantic-Ratner, or Roc- A- Fella[4]-Atlantic
does not have the same bouquet as Atlantic-Barclays.
Somewhere I had read that Jay Z owned an interest in a
basketball team. I never really followed Jay Z’s career, he came much after hip
hop’s originators, and I stopped following Pro basketball some years ago, after
watching a Nets versus Knicks game at the Continental Arena in Jersey. The four
tickets included valet parking and cost close to eight hundred dollars. It was
a gift and did not include the twelve dollar beer. The game was a sham. In my
view the athletes under-performed some deliberately. I had seen better games at
the summer tournaments at Rucker in Harlem and Wingate in Brooklyn. It seemed
more like worker action, a go –slow, against the owners. That was the only way
I could justify that, but attending another NBA game, even for free, was out of
the question. So, the New Jersey Nets moving to Brooklyn was background noise
to me. But a ship named Barclays in the middle of downtown Brooklyn, with Jay-Z
as the launching act, required a closer.
 |
| Barclays flagship under construction (c) Nelson Brakerman NY Daily News |
Unlike Barclays, in the US, Jay Z has never been far from media
cameras and our consciousness. He laid-down great beats, added serious flow
with clever lyrics and created major influence. But his subject matter, though creatively
delivered, remained mired in the brag and boast genre and without the promise
of conscious music early Hip Hop offered through KRS 1 and others. Wikipedia
says Jay-Z’s interest in the Nets basketball team is about one-fifteenth of one
percent and that he paid 4.5 million for it. It isn't that Jay-Z needed another
ten, or even twenty, percent return on this investment. He has a huge public
persona, and a bank account to match, separate and apart from the Nets. It certainly
was not intended to give Jay any control over the operation. His minute ownership
interest combined with the use of the Barclays’ name in exchange for a payment,
and with no ownership interest, is proof
that it is a publicity stunt for all the players but more so for Barclays and
Jay Z: both of whom owned little else in the deal.
Jay-Z’s interest may be microscopic but hardly invisible. It’s
the convergence of diverse backgrounds in the interest of making more money. But
it reflected something worse: a return to a time when Barclays financed the
trade of human cargo whose entrepreneurs sought the help of some local chiefs
to execute its plan. Once that cargo reached its destination, it was resold and
branded. Today, Barclays, unwilling to slink quietly into the past, instead,
pays a rent -$400 million over 20 years- for its name to sit on the building
and on letterheads and foreheads like a reminder: a bold brand. It has denied
any involvement in the slave trade. But to now join its name, Barclays, to
Atlantic is beyond bold.
Barclays’ history in the slave trade dates back to 1690. It
has defended itself against these accusations by pointing out that there is no
documentary, no paper, evidence of its involvement in the human trade. But we ought to compare the trade in captives
to today’s drug trade. Many have no direct involvement, but enjoy its benefits.
The slave trade was the drug trade of that day. Huge investments made huge
profits and banks in Europe and America made millions investing directly or
indirectly in the trade of human cargo. The test should not be whether there is
any documentary evidence of involvement, there is, but whether there is any
documentary evidence of repudiation at the time. Where none can be provided, we
can safely conclude banks and other financiers were involved in the trade and
that Barclays was one of them.
Moreover, one of our preeminent historians, Eric Williams,
in his Capitalism and Slavery,[5]
squarely placed banks and Barclays at the table of human flesh. Its most famous
officer, David Barclay, even owned a plantation in Jamaica.[6]
His father is said to have owned one of the fanciest mansions in London reputed
to have hosted royalty. Williams
painstakingly described the importance of banks in the trade of human cargo.
Little has changed since.
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| Penn Station home to a growing population (c) Niko |
HSBC recently paid US $ 1.9 Billion in penalties and fines
to the US Department of Justice for its admitted role in laundering drug money
from Mexican and Colombian drug cartels. Banks in Mexico would load up raw cash
and deliver to HSBC. Banks do not exist singularly. They operate as a cartel themselves:
loaning money to each other at rates they themselves set. One example is the
LIBOR which is an interest rate for banks to loan to other banks and set by a group
of London based bankers which includes Barclays. So, whatever money HSBC used
from the drug cartels would be of no value to it if it could not sell and share
that money with its fellow bankers at rates set by Barclays and its friends in
London. Even we indirectly used that money as loans and other credit purchases
we now find difficult to repay. The sub-prime mortgage scam that targeted people
of African descent was largely financed from this money. Those loan rates too depended on that LIBOR
rate. And the high rates we paid generated exorbitant profits off the low rates
set by Barclays and friends in London. Even a fraction of a percentage point
could generate millions, daily. So, much like HSBC, most other banks were
involved directly or indirectly in laundering drug money and the sub-prime mortgage scam. Not so long ago, Barclays and its friends depended on the trade
in captured Africans to sustain themselves. The formula still works.
Much is made of the involvement of Africans in Africa in the
capture and sale of their own people. Some of this I find unfair. Not enough
attention is paid to where and whom originated the idea of a slave trade to the
Americas, nor much written about African resistance to the trade. The Africans
that benefited probably demanded silence and as a sign of unity. Yet, the
suffering is well documented. Similarly, Africans today, the descendants of
those captives now involved in the drug trade receive little of the benefits
that accrue to the banks that launder the proceeds from the trade. On the
contrary, they suffer all the pain beginning with surveillance, constitutional
violations, and imprisonment: mass incarceration. Then the money they do borrow
comes at unsustainable rates of interest. Jay-Z’s role is to legitimize all of
that. But the idea is Barclays’. This system of crony capitalism does not
permit the captive to own the plantation. It seeks to put the name of the most
commercially successful hip hop personality on a product bought on misery and
suffering, ultimately a losing proposition, yet seeking youthful and cultural
relevance.
 |
| 1862 Capt. Nathaniel Gordon hanged in NYC for piracy: the illegal importation of Africans . The importation of Africans was banned in 1807. Gordon used Brooklyn Navy Yard to outfit his ships |
Now, I thought long and hard about writing this article.
Some would argue not long or hard enough. I wanted to avoid sounding like a
spoiled crab, jealous of the success of another African: angry that I am not
sitting at the table with Jay-Z, political heavies, Barclays and company. Often,
it is only after the very corporate power structure rejects us that we find the
radical-self and the politicization needed to understand what we are
experiencing. After we have done everything they asked and still are not
allowed at the table, often only then we suddenly see the table for what it is:
the last supper.
In reality, you are only permitted at the table when you
demonstrate you know nothing. For example, some fall-out followed Dr. Cornel
West’s remarks about Jay-Z’s minute ownership interest in the Nets. Most of it
attacked West as that self-hating Thomas seemingly bent on destroying and
attacking the African community’s recent symbols of success. Some went even
further and called West’s comments racist. West had called on Jay-Z to reveal his
true relationship with the Nets. Yet others decry the reason African descended
people attack each other when we are supposed to be uniting in common defense. Too
often, this is code for ‘shut up’.
This is not an attack on Jay-Z nor is it an attempt to
defend Dr. West. He is well equipped to do so himself. But I think this
willingness to advocate for West’s silence whenever the object of his critique is
of African descent is a very dangerous position. It tells us that all is not
well and the merger of Barclays and Jay Z is not one of equality. It is one of
the major foundations of dictatorial behavior, which permits the abuse of the
rights of Africans in the name of some kind of nationalism. Silence is supposedly
justified when the intended object of critique is of African descent: and in
the name of unity. This can’t be acceptable. There is a long history of public debates
among Africans throughout history on the issues; Du Bois and Garvey, Du Bois
and Washington come to mind. Whatever the respective positions, the positions
must be aired and debated. The alternative is the kind of shackles that remain
on our minds: and increasingly around our bodies. The notion of unity is too
often abused into meaning silence: a silence that is too often a license to do
the same things we all agree are wrong when done by others.
We know Jay was a petty hustler running cocaine from Harlem
to his block in Brooklyn. Then he expanded to places along the I-95. He told us
this. It’s not a secret. We never held his past dealings against him. We
understand the forces that drive many to the underground economies. He called
his album and himself the American Gangster. He was inspired, he said, by the
film of the same name and starring Denzel. In one iconic turn, the American
gangster had suddenly turned black: of African descent. A documentary series followed,
of the same name, which featured only gangsters of African descent. The people
who came and pushed out the Native peoples, by force, seized and renamed the
land, enslaved them and others, brought African people to build a system that
is beginning to feed on itself, are no longer the American gangsters. The ones
they enslaved are now the gangsters. We are supposed to remain silent, because
Jay-Z is ‘successful’. And now, the system builders have engaged Jay-Z to
reinforce that message.
Rather than sit back quietly, and enjoy the illegal gains,
the largesse from illegal actions, past and present, benefiting from public
ignorance, Barclays decided to engage with Jay-Z: to recapture its name and continue
its practice. But then again, its history should explain its reasoning. In its
most recent dabbling debacle Barclays is charged with influencing the setting of
LIBOR. Robert Reich, Former Secretary of Labor under US President Clinton,
called it Wall Street’s ultimate scandal and scandal of scandals[7].
He estimates the money lost, as a result, at 5 to 6 Trillion. This dwarfs the 3
Trillion of our money used between Presidents Bush and Obama to bail failing
banks and businesses. When we combine the two scams, we get an idea of what has
happened to poor communities and particularly African American communities. Understand,
the failure was as a result of mortgages targeting Africans disproportionately among
other working class communities. The low interest rates cooked-up in London
gave the mistaken view of liquidity upon which the sub-prime mortgages were
made; albeit with inflated rates of interest. The LIBOR is based in London but
its effects are global and its members have redrawn, with indelible ink, the
old triad of the trade in people: London, the Americas, and Africans at home
and now abroad.
In the US, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently offered
a deal to Barclays without any trial or official finding of wrongdoing: that if
it paid 169 million dollars and signed a document that it was involved in
wrongdoing then the matter of its involvement in the LIBOR scandal would be considered
over. This is the same Department of Justice in collaboration with the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), that, for much less, deported 400,000 people from
the US in 2010 and again in 2011 and 2012.[8]
After disbursing more funds to local
police departments through its Secure Communities program (SCom), together these
Departments share the spoils of actual bodies off the top, for deportation. Detainees
are held mostly in private prisons at exorbitant rents and then repatriated to
countries south. The stops and frisks by the New York Police Department is part
of that national policy and targets young African men. Do you see the turn
around? The triad of Europe, Africa and the Americas has been turned on its
head but the result is the same. They are returning African descendants home
where possible, and destroying the homes and wealth of those remaining in the
US, but the money stays among the wealth class in Europe and America. We are
not supposed to say anything because they and Jay Z are now friends. We are
left scrambling for the crumbs from that table.
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| Optimistic OWS protester (c) rootsandculture |
They no longer need to move the people to labor camps, they
move them out of the labor statistics, they don’t even exist anymore, and instead
they indebt the people, the survivors, descendants of captive labor, with
unsustainable mortgages way above the value of their modest houses. The result
is increased poverty, homelessness and despair. The African American community
includes people from all over the diaspora. Foreclosures as a result of the sub-prime debacle affect 2.5 times more African homeowners than European Americans[9]. It is estimated that between 72 and $93
billion of African American wealth was lost as a result of the sub-prime scam: a
significant percent of total wealth since home ownership forms a larger
percentage of African American wealth than of Whites. This figure does not
include the cost of deferred small business development using home equity, or
deferred educations, lost retirement plans, neglected health and related debt
management. This will eventually run into several trillion.
The Department of Justice and has treated Barclays in much
the same way it treats thousands of its detainees: offered a deal. Barclays also
paid $200 million in fines to the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission, and £59.5 million to the Financial Services Authority. The
difference is that for Barclays it’s a slap on the wrist, for us it’s our
lives. If you are deportable, and sometimes even if not, you are asked to sign a
non-contestation agreement, saying that the allegations are true and that you
would prefer to be returned home. Sometimes this comes after serving time for a
crime at the state or federal level. Sometimes the defendant would avoid jail
by admitting wrongdoing without a trial: like Barclays did here. Barclays went
further and offered to tell what it knows about the involvement of other banks.
The reward is an arena and a subway station or two.
Banks are what they are; a cash-vac. HSBC admitted to money
laundering. They are part of a system that denies any ties to organised crime
and decries any attempt to associate them with money laundering. Barclays has
not yet been accused of laundering drug money. But it’s like their refusal to
admit involvement in the slave trade: not to be taken seriously. You may not
have kidnapped a tribeswoman from Dahomey[10],
placed her on a ship and sold her in Barbados. But the money derived from that
trade was placed in your banks. In fact, you loaned that same money to other entrepreneurs
engaged in the trade. Like HSBC, you need to admit your role.
It’s been reported that neighborhood entrepreneurs have
welcomed the Barclays Center in anticipation of the development it would
initiate. These entrepreneurs would not have read any of the current science on
this phenomenon and moreover cannot point to any example to explain and support
their enthusiasms. The fact is that Atlantic City, as an example, the resort
with gambling, has done nothing for the Atlantic City proper. Just a few short
blocks from the casinos and you are face to face with the old depressed
Atlantic City. This is the same misguided enthusiasm of trickle-down economics.
The spate of casinos on Indian lands has done nothing for the Indians. On and
on big-business thinks building a cash cow in a depressed area lifts the area.
The opposite is true. It simply sucks value from the neighborhood while sending
the real estate prices and rents up and beyond the reach of current residents.
The jobs offered are not career builders but simply the unskilled labor that big-business
has always craved. You don’t need an education for those.
Similarly, Brooklyn, ravaged by recession and the mortgage
scam, has lost more people than any other American city. Ratner claimed the
presence of urban blight as the basis for his eminent domain claim. Many groups
came out in protest, but some seem to have been quieted with more promises.
Others have continued with protest. But this borough is just a shell of itself.
At no time was this more evident than in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. And
even as I write, there are still people without homes, without lights, without
jobs, and sufficient food and all because of the city's inability to deal with
the disaster. The insurance companies all caught in the ongoing subprime and
LIBOR debacle are slow to respond. The hidden story is how the wealthiest city
in the world is incapable of handling a disaster that some Caribbean islands
experience on a regular basis. The result would be more applicants to that
parallel underground economy.
Jay-Z seems unaware of the forces that drove him and others to
that economy, away from the path his friend President Obama took, and instead
towards the enterprise of cocaine and crack sales. The other path is one of
formal education and a promised, steady, good job at a good university, bank,
or similar institution or even the presidency: success. Though we can now touch
it, it is actually further away. It now seems conflated into one confused mess.
Jay-Z like many around the country around the world, denied a competitive
education, used his innate business skills to develop and expand his empire.
But seems to forget the forces that drove him, the reasons why he entered that
underground economy in the first instance. As he described in the 1990s,
Blame Reagan for making me to into
a monster
Blame Oliver
North and Iran-Contra
I ran contraband that they sponsored
Before this rhymin' stuff we was in concert.[11]
His are not words of protest. Instead, now we are asked to
cheer his eventual entry into the 1 percent albeit with the same suspects:
still in concert with those who continue to sell and profit off his people.
 |
| @ 40/40/ Club, NYC (Rolling Stone |
In the recently concluded presidential elections, even the
debates intended to educate the voter about their choice became obfuscated into
some competition as if in high school. Like gladiators the candidates matched
strengths in a ring where neither seemed aware they are trapped and where the
winner is determined by a voice on high from a flickering image. But like the coliseums
of old, in the arena, you are only the winner for so long. There is no loyalty:
not that that ever made anything better. Soon the winners turn will come from
somewhere, younger, stronger and better looking. The weak questions from the
press, the people’s representatives in this process, reflect a similar
high-schoolish understanding of power and with no follow-up questions allowed,
one is left wondering whether that is the best this country can do. Don’t get me wrong African history longs for
figures of power and poise. There is no more cheered example than President
Obama. But this longing for, and paucity of, figures have left us silent. It
seems to have actually restructured and restricted our power. We can’t even ask
a sensible question: even of Jay Z.
We seem to see none of this because we are so invested in
the image of who we might be. Euros and Afros alike, but Afros, way more so,
imprinted and inundated with racial hatred and oppression, seek any glimmer of
redemption and so we debate on who won instead of the issues. Obama is it. But
the things on the menu for discussion are not about the high percentage of
prisoners and higher percentage of African descended ones, LIBOR, subprime
loans, global warming and their relation. And by extension, why was Jay-Z
involved in selling, whites, white lady, kane, roc: one time street names for
cocaine and its derivatives. How come immigration is about who is coming and
not who is going out?
Only in America,
and its peculiar sense of freedom, can someone boast about the ways in which
they broke the law, the amount of cocaine they sold, and become rich on those
boasts. It is conceivable that had Jay- Z directed his talents at math or
science he could have contributed something really important to our society.
Maybe he would have risen to the top at Barclays, or created his own, and changed
it for the better by admitting past wrongdoings and plotting a course of
reparations and social responsibility. Perhaps that is still in his future,
For now, he is part
owner of a team housed under the Barclays brand. But that was not his only
achievement. He is primed for much more. He was able to send for, and have the President
of the United States meet him at his house: the 40/40 club. Now, that is power:
royalty. The President came to visit; and to collect the $4 million
contribution Jay Z raised among his equally dazzling friends. One is left to
wonder, who is guesting on whose production? Who is hype man for whom? So when the
President sat down with Jay-Z we can only guess about the conversation topics.
It would not be about stop and frisk. Had it been exercised with the same
intensity when Jay-Z was a street hustler, he may have been in a different
place. It would not be about mass incarceration and deportation, not even about
the 99%, or the rudiments and origin of hip hop. Perhaps it would be about their
African descended children and which financial instruments offered by which
bank would best protect them from want, hunger, poverty, poor healthcare,
police brutality, and unreasonable stops and searches.
Only their children
would be able to afford tickets to anything at the Barclays Center. Even the
subway fare has increased, its fourth increase in the last five years, and the
tolls to enter New York are at an unbelievable $13.00. So those Nets fans from
Jersey will have to add $50 to their tickets prices and that is just for tolls,
parking and gas. Soon those within the city will be unable to leave, unless
it’s permanently. Those outside will have to remain so. All this in a city that
saw its income disparity outstrip national numbers and lost 23,000
manufacturing jobs in the last decade[12]. Perhaps
all this is to cover the real cost of the tax breaks and subsidies given to the
Barclays Center development. New York City Transit’s man on the deal, Joseph
Lhota, has mayoral ambitions. Perhaps to oversee the promises made to Mr.
Ratner. While the city’s current mayor exhibits national ambitions.
In 2011 New York police
made 684,300 stops and frisks[13] many
just blocks from Jay-Z’s 40/40 club’s second location in the Barclays Center.
While in Brownsville, East New York, Crown Heights, Red Hook, and the ‘Bush’
unemployment is rampant and infant mortality on par with underdeveloped countries[14].
More than likely Jay-Z would be kicked to the curb like Reverend Jeremiah Wright
should he include in his rhymes anything about reparations or the revolt of
African descendants: Jay-Z unchained. Past drug sales is fine. But any rhyme
of resistance is unlikely because Jay Z has made his past quite clear and his
politics clearer: he cannot even understand the need for Occupy Wall Street: as
he was reported to have quipped after a reluctant visit to the Liberty Plaza
Park home of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
As if not enough,
his empire of style and music boasts some derivative of the name Rockefeller:
more accurately, Rocawear and Roc-A-Fella. The Rockefeller name just happens to
be one of the central names in banking, investment and government history. You
can’t wear that name and understand the 99% rhetoric. Still not satisfied, the
Rockefeller name graces that law that continues to send our young men to jail
in those ever increasing and disproportionate numbers. The Rockefeller drug
laws are also referred to as the three strikes rule, where mostly African
Americans are sent to prison for as much as twenty five years for as little as three
non-violent offenses. In most cases the three offenses if treated individually
would not result in any jail time. But together, its Rockefeller time, it’s a
kind of death. And of course there was Attica[15]. This
is what we are living under. Yet we run around with these symbols on our chests.
After prison, these young men and women, the deportees, are
returned to what have essentially become Bantustans: a throwback to the apartheid
era. Some of the communities are right here in the US as Ishmael Reed declared
them internal colonies.[16]
Gentrification is the new colonization. When viewed together, gentrification,
internal colonization, stop and frisk and deportation, then add, unemployment,
low wages and high subway fares a picture should emerge: of a divided Brooklyn.
The minimum wage employees at the Barclays Center would have to work an hour to
pay the subway fare to and from work. As for tickets, even Jay-Z implicitly
acknowledged the situation by awarding free tickets to some lucky Brooklynites for
his opening concert at the Barclays Center.
Of course, some of these Bantustans are actual countries in Latin
America, the Caribbean and Africa with no access to power, no access to Markets,
and no access to jobs. The few jobs available include making Rocawear and similar
celebrity brands.[17] Even
when they work, they are unable to set the price for the things they produce or
their labor and instead live on the largesse of the developed world and its
agencies: hush money to governments. The governments are often placed there
with the help of the US and its allies. They live on landmasses named by others
and speak an official language not native to that landmass. While the US
continues in open support of another famous Bantustan that has corralled brown
people into an unsustainable and barren landmass and politicos make the support
of Israel part of their campaign platform.
We are left to contemplate its only redeemable argument:
that under Romney things would be worse. This has silenced us: we the people
who waged war against slavery; waged war for the right to vote, raised our
voices against all injustice, at home and abroad, are now asked to be silent. This
is the height of selfishness and self-indulgence. Because what it means is that
they are unable to identify their world, care little about others in the rest
of the world, and those not in their world, but misguidedly do what they feel
is best for ‘me’.
There was a time
when the sight of an armed man on a horse caused real fear: fear of capture and
return. Even now, flashing police lights and presence generate a similar fear
in those who have been there: while we wear outfits, with a man on a galloping
horse, and with a stick in his hand, emblazoned on our chests, as a symbol of
our successful enterprise. Jay-Z’s cohorts, not to be outdone, rent their
images to clothing, and vodkas and champagnes with strange names.
It's unfortunate that our own self-interest is used against us, under the guise of unity, and blinds us to atrocities committed in our
name and to us. It is not a problem peculiar to African Americans. All groups are vulnerable. Communists, Marxists, democrats, tea
partyers, even capitalists: all are vulnerable and it takes real courage to
resist. This transcends and includes race, ethnicity, nationality and religion.
You can’t criticize the group. You’ll be branded a traitor or worse: a hater. Despite
the daily atrocities meted out to the Palestinian people, many Jews remain,
quiet, if not supportive. Some in the African community see this example as a
model of the kind of unity needed. Now, with President Obama's resounding support
of America's foremost ally, all Americans are drawn into tacit support. More
peculiar is the silence from African descendants whom history has judged
harshly: given that peculiar history. The majority of humans seem incapable of
adhering to that overused tenet ‘do unto others’.
It’s either that I am blind and cannot see that finger on a
dark hand beckoning me towards freedom or that I am right. If I am right, then
that sets off a series of realizations that end badly for us all. We simply
don't seem to have the capacity for the kind of fight true equality demands. I’d
rather be wrong. I have my doubts. Instead we band together in groups seeking
an advantage like some game of basketball or maybe Survivor; the larger the
better. Those standing, or sitting on benches, bent over machines and screens
should be feeling that new pain all over their backs, feet and eyes. We fight
for spots in the factory knowing a step down leads to the bowels of Madison
Square Garden.
 |
| Protest outside Barclays Center (c)S.Platt getty images |
Jay visited and performed across Africa. In his role as
humanitarian, he joined the UN in a project to bring Africa’s water woes to
world attention and was reportedly en-stooled as a Chief in Kwara State, Nigeria.
The state named a street after him. We should take this as his understanding of
the dynamics of power and not an opportunity to exchange trinkets. His lyrics
in Oh My God suggests he was crowned
King with,
I got crowned King down in Africa
Down in Nigeria do you have any idea.
Down in Nigeria do you have any idea.
Whatever the title, we should all take note of the old
alliance. It is now full circle: Barclays, Atlantic, and an African Chief.
Eric Williams recounted a story involving the role of rum in
the trade of humans. Rum was valuable cargo and often used to ply African chiefs,
middle-persons, in negotiating price. Having already received his
payment in gold coins, a ‘negro trader’ was invited aboard a ship and feted by
its captain. He awoke from his drunkenness the next day to find himself branded
and chained with the rest of his human goods.[18]
More than likely he survived and made it to the new world. He was not the only
one. Like Barclays and the other banks, these chiefs are engaged in similar
practices. Are we to be accused of participating in this trade from West
Europe, to West Africa, to West Indies and to the world? They are not done
selling. You are sold a different image of yourself. It’s a different kind of
crack: fame and fortune. The whole thing must go.
Just say no. Just say
something.
[1]
Metropolitan Transit Authority operates almost all the trains, toll bridges and
tunnels within, and connecting to, the city of New York. It is described as a
public benefit corporation: a quasi-corporation operated for our benefit with
support from government, fares, tolls and property taxes. The real estate
fiasco precipitated by the subprime crisis led to reduced tax contributions and
increased deficits.
[2]
Wikipedia states that, “In June 2009,
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sold the naming
rights of the station complex to Forest City Ratner for 20 years
at $200,000 per year”. Forest City Ratner is the developer of Barclays
Center and headed by Bruce Ratner. The sale did not prevent the seemingly
annual rise in subways fares a few short months after the center opened.
[3] Jason
Sheftell, First
Look at the $76 million Barclays Center Subway Station, New York Daily News (September 14, 2012)
[4]
Jay-Z formed the independent label Roc-A-Fella Records in 1995 with former
Partners Damon Dash and Kareem Biggs
[5]
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, (Chapel
Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1944) p.48
[6]
Ibid, p.101. It appears Unity Valley Pen in St. Anns and its 30 captured
Africans came under Barclay control through unpaid debts. At the time of the
emancipation John Barclay had died and his executor, David Barclay, was of
advanced age. All but 2 of the Africans were brought to Philadelphia, USA and
trained in various trades.
[8]
From the Departments of Homeland Security website, “ Between fiscal years 2008
and 2011, ICE removed more convicted criminal aliens from our country than ever
before, with the number of convicted criminals that ICE removed from the United
States increasing by 89 percent, while the number of non-criminals removed
dropped by 29 percent.” How is it Barclays and HSBC never get deported are they
not convicted criminals too.
[10]
An African kingdom centered near present-day Republic of Benin and a major
source of captured Africans for labor in the Americas.
[11]
Blue Magic, Roc- A- Fella Records
[12]
Joel kotkin, The
Hollow Boom Of Brooklyn: Behind Veneer Of Gentrification, Life Gets Worse For
Many,
Forbes,
(September 2012)
[13]
Sean Gardiner, Stops
and Frisks Hit Record High in 2011 , Wall
Street Journal, (February 14, 2012)
[14]
Jay-Z’s Bedford Stuyvesant, a stone’s throw from Barclays Center boasts an
infant mortality rate of 14 deaths per 1000 births. In the Caribbean, Jamaica
is at 14.3, Antigua is about the same and Barbados about 11.5. Guyana needs an
investigation at 35 deaths. By comparison national US numbers are 7.2 deaths.
These numbers are sourced from the CIA Factbook.
See also , Mundi,
and, Jennifer Steinhauer, High
Infant Mortality Rates In Brooklyn Mystify Experts, NY Times, a 2000 study but shows the lack of improvement over the
past decade. Mario Sims, Tammy L. Sims, and Marino A. Bruce, Urban
Poverty and Infant Mortality Rate Disparities, Journal of the National Medical Association, 2007
April; 99(4): 349–356.
[15]
In 1971 New York State Governor, Nelson D. Rockefeller launched an attack to
retake Attica Correctional Facility, from protesting prisoners, and in the
process killed 39 people including 10 guards and civilian employees.
[17]
In 2003 a major report showed that both P. Diddy’s Sean John lines and Rocawear
were using sweatshop labor in Honduras where conditions and pay were slavelike.
See Jonathan Cunningham, Sweatshop Labour in Hip-Hop Apparel, Word
Magazine, Reprinted News and Press(July,
2005)
[18] Capitalism and Slavery, p 123.
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