Br’er Vivek

“If you believe in normalizing hatred towards any ethnic group, towards whites, towards blacks, towards Hispanics, towards Jews, towards Indians, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement,” Vivek said to applause from the crowd. Two reporters from the national media– Pooja Salhotra of the New York Times and Alex Tabit of CNN– conveyed this moment when Vivek Ramaswamy made his plea for tolerance at the Turning Point conference, without mentioning that his presidential bid was based on the old-time Southern strategy, that of wooing white voters by disparaging Blacks. A Black reporter would have pointed to this contradiction, but the corporate media are cooperating with the Trump administration by firing Black reporters and commentators whose presence exists according to them because of D.E.I. The same thing is happening in Hollywood. Award-winning Black film director Marta Cunningham says at the present time she has a better chance of getting a film done in Portugal than in the United States.

Has Vivek Ramaswamy learned? They call us the N-word. They call his people J-word. After some MAGAs insulted him and the Vice President’s wife, Usha Vance, does he still believe that white supremacy doesn’t exist?

During the recent Turning Point USA gathering, the Vice President refused to condemn the growing power of the far right.  He and some New York Republicans are friendly toward the AfD, described as a German Neo Nazi party.

Vivek’s rebuke of the growing influence of anti-Black, anti-Semitic, and anti-South Asian elements in MAGA has earned him plaudits as a crusader against intolerance.

That’s rich because Vivek ran a political campaign based on picking fights with Blacks. He even sympathized with the Nazi who murdered Blacks in Florida. The victims were Angela Michelle Carr, 52, who was shot in her car outside a store, employee A.J. Laguerre, 19, who was shot as he tried to flee, and customer Jerrald Gallion, 29, who was shot as he entered the store. Vivek blamed the murder on “racialized culture” and not white supremacy.

 If that were not enough, he donated $10,000 to the defense fund of Daniel Penny, who sneaked up behind a mentally disturbed Black man, Jordan Neely, and killed him with a rear-neck chokehold. Penny became a national hero and was celebrated by President Trump and J.D. Vance, who told his mother to get lost when she desperately needed help. Penny’s defense fund raised $ 2 million, the same amount received by Kyle Rittenhouse, the vigilante who murdered two Wisconsin demonstrators. Jonathan Ross, the killer of Renee Good, exceeded two million. Kill a Black, a Brown, or a woman, the right will make you rich. Billionaire Bill Ackman is contributing to Ross’s fund.

Vivek said that the celebration of “Juneteenth” was a waste of time. Juneteenth, according to legend, was the date when Texas slaves learned that Blacks had been emancipated in states over which Lincoln didn’t control. The Mexicans who ruled Texas before the invasion were opposed to slavery, and Santa Anna, a villain in school textbooks, found slavery “disgusting,” so who introduced slaves to Texas? How did they get there?

Don Lemon was fired when he challenged Vivek’s claim that the National Rifle Association, which was founded in 1871, had something to do with the emancipation of Blacks. U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) agreed with Lemon and questioned Vivek’s knowledge of Black history. Nevertheless, Vivek bragged that he was responsible for Lemon’s firing at CNN.

In an interview I conducted with Lemon, which was printed in the first issue of Tar Baby, a new magazine published by the Toni Morrison Foundation by her son, the brilliant architect, Ford Morrison, Lemon said CNN executives told their employees to go easy on MAGA because MAGA buys their advertisers’ products, too.

During Vivek’s campaign, he also leaned on some old guys’ tales about Blacks. They’re lazy and don’t want to work. Brookings reports (2020) that more profits were made from slavery than from factories and railroads combined. Blacks don’t like to read? Black Americans have a distinguished literary history. Books and poetry written in the 18th Century are still in print.

Hip Hop is the international language of youth. Vivek knows this. He even used Rap music in his campaign.

There are more Black writers of all ages writing today than at any time in history, despite the Eastern literary establishment limiting this Renaissance to one or two Divas or Divos. If Vivek had read Charles Chesnutt’s novel, The Marrow of Tradition (1901), he would have learned that the NRA had nothing to do with the Emancipation and that, after slavery, the use of Blacks as free labor continued in a different form.

So, where did Vivek’s campaign of Black vilification get him? Not even an ambassadorship. And now he wants to be judged as MLK-lite. Outraged over racism. No, he’s more like Br’er Rabbit, a creature introduced to Joel Chandler Harris by Aunt Crissy, George Terrell, and Old Harbert, slaves on the Turnwald Plantation, where Chandler spent four years. Br’er Rabbit, popularized by Walt Disney, is a trickster who will take any position that will advance his goals. Br’er Vivek will be a bigot one minute and an anti-bigot the next. Denouncing Affirmative Action yet benefiting from it. Calling Juneteenth useless after posting a video celebrating the holiday.

But even I admire how much Mr. Ramaswamy has achieved through hard work, and I understand his belief in the American dream because he’s living it. Were he living in India with his dark skin, he’d be considered an “untouchable.” I wish him luck in his battle with a movement that has apparently been seized by the likes of Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who wants Vivek to return to India, even though he was born in Cincinnati. Because of his Mexican-American father, Fuentes would have been considered a mongrel by Hitler.

Ishmael Reed’s latest play is “The Amanuensis,” about how Joel Chandler Harris and Walt Disney made a fortune by ripping off stories told to Harris by three slaves. Readings of the play will be held Jan.22, 23, 24 at the Firestone Gallery, 40 Great Jones St, New York. Performances at 7 PM, tickets $20.

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