This second in a series of essays continues the excavation of race, ethnicity, class, and the inequities that flow. I have chosen Freddie Kissoon’s daily columns in Kaieteur News as a source of entry points and to remind us of the work still to do. Kissoon’s good-fortune comes partly from bell hooks' direction that we must critique popular culture, partly from Freddie’s own celebrity, and partly his own willingness to critique popular culture. Freddie recently wrote Judas and the Black Messiah: Who is the Guyanese, William O’Neal. In that column he reviewed the film, Judas and the Black Messiah and raised comparisons between the betrayals and assassinations of Walter Rodney, co-founder of the Working Peoples’ Alliance (WPA), in Guyana and that of Fred Hampton in Chicago. Hampton founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. My issue with both, column and film, is that they prioritize individual actions over those of the state. In the process, they ignored the things the ‘Messiah’ said, switched the focus away from the actions of the state, and resurrected some troubling stereotypes of Blackness.
The subtext of these essays is to find a commissioner for Guyana’s, not-yet-existing, human rights commission and in which Freddie expressed interest. I hope to set some guidelines for the commissioner and the level of analysis they should demonstrate. It must be an analysis free from the straightjacket of European dominance; White supremacy, that is so evident in our thinking, reinforced through our education and socialization and evidently now part of our cultural make-up. This is so much so, that we make decisions as if acting on behalf of White Supremacy.
Do not look now. The Messiah hanging on your wall is a White man. You placed it there. Your Pastor gave it to you and called him Jesus. They planted the idea and you/we tended it. Unlike Jesus, Judas has always been Black. He needs no color qualification like 'Black' Judas. But the ‘Messiah’, he needs the ‘qualifier’. A Black Messiah is a departure from the norm; its acceptance requires a ‘qualifier’. For the same reason, the 'First' is the qualifier where, for example, 'First' Black to do 'X' or 'Y'. Because whatever it was had ‘never’ been done before by a Black person. We are to believe. Qualifiers are needed only in a world dominated by white supremacy; It is a kind of penance to the image on our walls.
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| Foreground: Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton Background: LaKeith Stansfield as William O'Neal |
To be featured in the film’s title is no good fortune for the Judas character. It is not an attempt to redeem him. He serves mainly as an object that redirects the narrative away from what the ‘Messiah’ said; that which made the Messiah dangerous, that which made the Messiah, the Messiah. Instead, it is about the William O’Neal character, the Judas, played by LaKeith Stanfield. O'Neal was recruited by the FBI to spy on Hampton and the Panthers.
The film is not about Hampton, anymore than Freddie’s musings are about Rodney. Even worse, little attention is paid to Edgar Hoover's covert FBI war to eliminate radical Black leadership. Similarly, Freddie’s focus is not on what Rodney said but on Freddie’s theories of a possible Judas and not on the real Judases; the co-conspirators that orchestrated the assassination. A whole commission on Rodney’s assassination only touched the surface of what must have been an international conspiracy that required similar forces as those lined up against Hampton, and possibly the same forces.
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| Walter Rodney |
The Bible is, among other things, part of popular culture. Film and stage versions of “Jesus Christ Superstar'' followed the standard stereotype of Jesus, the original White Messiah, on our walls, in white robes with blond hair and blue eyes. The play and the film were huge box-office draws in the 1970s and refurbished the stereotype for that generation. Judas, Jesus’ friend and one time confidant, is played by a man of obvious African descent, an afro’ed Carl Anderson played in both 1970s stage and film versions. One would not characterize Africans who hang white robed Jesuses on their walls as racist. But these choices are rooted in the very same racist theology used to justify the enslavement of Africans and rooted in our popular culture, films, music and more. A commissioner would need to know this and understand that history. And that it does not matter the director or the author, the idea of White superiority is ingrained in our thinking as part of the justification of oppression.
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| Cover art of the Soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar |
William O’Neal was the person recruited by the FBI to betray Hampton. Freddie’s references to Dr. Rodney, the Messiah, and his Judases, have increased since the recent national elections and has explored Rodney’s betrayal by actors within the Working People's Alliance (WPA), the party co-founded by Rodney given their recent collaboration, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), from which the WPA have since resigned. APNU included the Peoples’ National Congress (PNC), the party held responsible for Rodney’s assassination, along with others to form APNU with the purpose of unseating the other ethnic entrepreneurs in the ruling Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP). The PNC, Guyana's governing party at the time of Rodney’s death had more than enough informants in and around the WPA to need a specific William ‘Judas’ O’Neal. At the time informants could be anyone from security personnel in the many uniformed bodies, military, paramilitary, and religious, your co-worker, neighbor or your pastor.
In the Shaka King film and Freddie’s column, the discussion is focused on the Black sellout and not about a dangerous racist system that would permit its law enforcement agents to murder the brilliant Fred Hampton and destroy an organization that posed no real threat to the US government except to raise the consciousness of all people with particular attention to Black people. Freddie doesn't see the global reach of White supremacy in all its forms. Both Hampton and Rodney were forerunners of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was not all they were about, but it is central to understanding them. The reverse is also true.
Our western education would not permit an alternate view without serious self examination and an examination of that notion of western civilization. Instead, we must ask who are the real authors of his murder, when did the betrayals begin. It was J. Edgar Hoover, and his FBI, whose plan was to eliminate unapologetic Black leadership like Hampton. Like Rodney, Hampton was betrayed by his own government: both men were denied their right to life, liberty and free speech. Those kinds of conspiracies cannot happen without ‘inside’ assistance. But those inside are managed by a larger commission that would convert any resource into a weapon against the target. Sometimes that resource is close to the target like a best friend or a family member. An alternative narrative is missing from our stories. We love the betrayal stories. We are unable to see that in telling that story we absolve the real gangsters. But moreover, we trivialize and distort the efforts and value of our heroes.
As an example of this affliction, the story of Cuffy, Guyana’s national hero and a leader in the Berbice Revolution of 1763, is still told today as a story of betrayal and loss, rather than one of bravery, transformation and triumph. It is about Cuffy’s Lieutenants challenging his authority and weakening the resistance. It is a story told to us by others and that we repeat. It was a tremendous achievement to unseat the Dutch power, if temporarily, and to permanently damage the institution of slavery. Betrayal by lieutenants is really a small part, if a part at all. Betrayal is normal in life and particularly in war. It happens everyday at the office. We write love songs about it. Cuffy faced a naval world power. Cuffy had no navy in what was a naval battle in large part. What the revolutionaries achieved have not been fully excavated from the overburden of betrayals. We learn internal conflicts resulted in the suppression of the revolution and not the collective efforts of several European powers acting in concert against what was a serious threat to the whole idea of White supremacy.
More recently, on September 15, 2021, and closer to Freddie’s home, Orin Boston was shot and killed by a Special Weapons and Tactics team (SWAT) attached to the Guyana Police Force. According to reports, Boston was asleep in bed when shot: as was his wife and 2 children who survived the nighttime attack. These facts are remarkably similar to the 1968 FBI assassination of Fred Hampton in Chicago. There have been numerous others in Guyana, in the USA and everywhere in between, before and since 1968. The outcry is usually about the brutality of the local police. Rarely these incidents are reported as part of a global devaluation of Black Lives. The inability to see its universality is as a result of our indoctrination by a culture of White Supremacy, sometimes called western civilization. Jesus is the same all over the globe. Popular music is the same all over the globe.
‘Westerns’, for example, as a once popular film genre, dehumanized Indigenous peoples and justified European annexation of the land. This is western ‘civilization’. There are no Black people in those films either. It is as if slavery never existed in America and Africans did not move west and participate on that frontier. That too is an attempted ‘Whitewash’ that has continued even today. That could only be the product of White supremacy. We know how deeply these images influence our psyche.
Our musicians in Dancehall and Hip Hop have adopted names of gun-slinging cowboys and gangsters made famous in Hollywood: names like Josey Wales, Lone Ranger, Dillinger and Louis Lepke. It seemed so normal when as children we shot each other with play-guns and shouted ‘you dead!’. The Indigenous were featured in some of these stories, but only as obstacles to progress. The Jesus syndrome is important because it prioritizes European ideas and elevates its messengers over local thought. Today, NGOs decide policy more so than the people who vote.
These policing methods have not worked. Crime appears on the rise again. Gangs and violence, including the police gang, democrats and republicans, have ravaged the cities of US colonies on the mainland like South side Chicago and East Los Angeles as well as those abroad like Georgetown, Lagos, Port of Spain, Port au Prince. While those charged with reducing crime commit crimes of their own and with deadly effects as well.
There are allies from all ethnic persuasions fighting and wishing the end of ethnic inequalities.and there have been victories. But no treaty is yet in sight. Jesus Christ Superstar still draws a crowds today. Jesus has not yet returned.
But Judas is often in the crowd. On November 29th, 2021, James Beeks, a Black man, was arraigned in Wisconsin federal court for acts allegedly committed during the 'riot' at the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 in Wash. DC. The stated goal of that mob was to summarily hang Former Vice-President Pence and prevent the certification of Joe Biden as President. Beeks has since been fired from his job in the principal role of Judas in a travel theatre company production of "Jesus Christ Superstar". He is a member of the Oath Keepers. And told the judge he is beyond the reach of her's or any Court. That was until the judge said that since he was beyond her reach, she probably could not release him on bail. Seems Judas has switched sides from the radical left of Jesus, Hampton and Rodney. And now is on the radical right. He just can't be trusted. Could it be Judas is the FBI, undercover. Where is the FBI when you need them? On Tv? Reports alleged police officers were part of the riot. People were killed that day. Several others were injured. |
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| Crowd outside Capitol bldg, on Jan. 6th, 2021 |
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