This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Another Uncle Tom Identified

                                                                John Hope Bryant

This guy is very rich and is an establishment power player. He has worked with both the Bush and Obama administrations. His schtick is that capitalism solves everything and that this idea must be applied to struggling inner cities.

How did I land on this guy for a blog topic? A link to a headline concerning Twitter prompted me to click on the bait.

I’m ashamed of the way I am on Twitter

Yawn! Twitter is a glorified chat board which allows one to add links, videos, and screenshots. Newspapers and t.v. media like to grab tweets pertaining to current events and present that as news. Pornbots, spambots, political and spy factory operatives, and other miscellaneous paid fakes and useful idiots also love Twitter.

From my perspective, the only good thing about Twitter is to promote one's writings. I am not ashamed of my Twitter experience. There's simply not enough room to express oneself. It is extremely alienating as a hate machine and is the epitome of shallow thinking. The medium is indeed the message and more so when limited to 140 character posts and no guarantee anyone will respond or it tends to be people popping in out of nowhere to waste time or run interference.

Francis Holland thinks Twitter is where the movement is at. He showed his true colors, no pun intended, when he stepped back from critiquing Teach for America. Just because someone is Black does not guarantee they are fighting for Black regular guys. Or even if a Black man is leftier than thou, that is no guarantee they will maintain Gambini-like introspection to keep the wolves out of the hen house.

Obama has been the ultimate Uncle Tom. Margaret Thatcher was the ultimate Aunt Teeeena in regards to women's rights. You'd think people would have learned something from The Wizard of Oz, primarily that oftentimes the emperor is merely lip-servicing the acquisition of new clothes or wtf.

The new boss is the same as the old boss, motherf***ers.

At the bottom of the Twitter article, it says,"This article was written in partnership with Zocalo Public Square."

Part of the medium as conspiracy involves mindless and endless web surfing. Twitter is wonderful for that. We curate our individual experience. We follow the people we respect and trust, for the most part. Look at all the links being thrown around, a seemingly infinite amount to incarnations which in theory can provide us with 80-100 years as who we currently are. But I digress to something not new under the sun. We are both the problem and the solution.


                                         We are all Rachel Dolezal

Donkeytale is correct. Maybe we mailed it in too much with lazy writing and research. Maybe what we produced was purple hazy. You and he and I and them are the walrus.

Uhm, so I googled that thingie place involved with the Twitter dude and ended up on this article:

When Is Rioting the Answer?

Four people wrote short essays. John Hope Bryant caught my eye. Yet, I now see there is an interesting individual described as:
Noche Diaz is freedom fighter who splits his time between Baltimore and New York City. He is currently facing jail time for protesting killings by police.
I don't know about him, but I just spent the morning trying to figure out Bryant. This guy is a fierce believer in capitalism.


An interesting blog has already questioned what is truly up with this Bryant dude.

John Hope Bryant - Allied With "The Problem" Rather Than Forcing "The Problem" To Change In Pursuit Of Better Outcomes

This anonymous blogger seems to be an African American kindred spirit with those of us who speak of a fake left from a whitey-spheric perspective. He has blogged a lot on fieldnegro. Field's big schtick has been his own variation on Malcolm X's concept of the field negro versus house negro. 

                                        Malcolm X - The House Negro and the Field Negro

I haven't read much at that website. The blogger refers to Field Negro as Filled Negro. If interested, plug "site:withintheblackcommunity.blogspot.com/ filled negro" into Google.

I will not throw fieldnegro under the bus, but I can see how he might be what is considered as fake left. He tends to be very focused on the ills of the Republican Party. On the surface he may seem to be Mr. Progressive fighting for social justice, but what if his net effect is to support the Democratic Leadership Council, the heart of fake leftism?

Field is small potatoes compared to Mr. Bryant. It would be punching down to blame fake leftism from the African American angle on a relatively small time blogger. To expose John Hope Bryant would definitely be punching up. That's my perspective.

A space is created for making a difference. In donkeytale's new entry on Greece, he alludes to this idea and that such opportunities are rare. Greece has the opportunity to go hard left, to basically reboot their society on higher values than experiencing hardships for the benefit of fat Greeks and Germans.

Just because someone moves into such a space does not mean they are worthy of such power and the means to shape the social structure. After the 2000 election debacle, a huge space was created to challenge the fairness of U.S. elections. Brett Kimberlin and Brad Friedman moved into that space. It was the right topic dominated by the wrong people.

Deray Mckesson has moved into a space. He is 100% part and parcel of Teach for America. Police brutality and mayhem must be stopped. Again, this is about the right topic with the wrong person propped into leadership.

Anyone can move into the spaces. Social change can be both negative and positive. George Bush and his henchman devised the no child left behind bullshite. Bryant was a part of that administration. He also works with the Obama administration. He is a rich Black man portraying himself as God's gift to the Civil Rights movement.

When Michael Brown was assassinated by Darren Wilson, many of us attempted to move into that space. You have to strike while the iron is hot! This was an opening to put the police mafia on trial by masses of people.

Teach for America moved into the space and so did Bryant.

A Statement for the Family of Michael Brown

Isn't that special? Perhaps if he was a regular guy speaking from the heart, it would have been a special and important piece. The cynic in me says that John Hope Bryant was simply doing his job as a rich Black man with an insatiable appetite for power and influence.

What kind of douchebag would allow David Horowitz to write the introduction to his book?

Leave No Community Behind with introduction by David Horowitz

The medium is truly the conspiracy. How could anyone ever describe Bryant in the same way as Martin Luther King, Jr.? The following was penned by Obama's former spiritual advisor Joshua Dubois:
Bryant speaks like Martin Luther King on an auctioneer’s stand—a frenetic ball of energy and ideas, seamlessly mixing civil rights maxims with financial advice at 100 miles an hour.
 The medium is the message, the conspiracy, and a bottom line acceptance of capitalism.

What kind of decent thinker would ever compare MLK with a capitalist pig cult member?

From The Uncompromising Anti-Capitalism of Martin Luther King Jr.:


Detroit is suffering under extreme economic distress. It appears to have the largest percentage of African Americans living in any one U.S. city. Thus, it is no surprise Bryant sees it as a big space to move in with his pro-capitalism schtick.

Bryant: Raising low credit scores will boost Detroit

His buddy Ryan Mack showed up in the comments
.


Is this the kind of person who sounds like a real activist?


We need to drive such paid fakes out of the activism racket. If the medium pretty much always boils down to capitalism, how can that ever promote positive social change?

From Detroit Doesn't Need Hipsters To Survive, It Needs Black People:
Last month, Thomas Sugrue, the scholar who literally wrote the book on Detroit, traveled to the Motor City to deliver a tough message to business and political leaders. Detroit's comeback, he said, depends on whether the city can improve the lives of working-class African-Americans.
 "Revitalization" is a buzzword in the city, which filed for bankruptcy last year and grapples with widespread blight and high unemployment and poverty rates. In spite of all this, Detroit is often celebrated as a hipster paradise and tourist destination by national media outlets.
But Sugrue said Detroit's recent successes in its downtown area and in Midtown, the city's cultural center, aren't benefiting the majority of residents.
Sugrue is the author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis, published in 1996 and lauded as the seminal work on the rise and fall of Detroit. He's also the David Boies Professor of History and Sociology and director of the Penn Social Science and Policy Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. Growing up on Detroit's northwest side, Sugrue remembers watching his neighborhood change from nearly all white to predominantly African-American. He spoke to The Huffington Post from the Philadelphia airport last week, shortly before an appearance at the annual Detroit Policy Conference (on this year's agenda: revitalizing the city's neighborhoods, diversifying the local economy and promoting a better relationship between the city and its suburbs).
For years, Sugrue pointed out, Detroit's revitalization has largely been limited to improvements in the greater downtown area. "What does a city revitalizing even mean at this point? I'll tell you -- it means, is it appealing to better-off people, tourists and writers," he said. "The signs of a city's success are people sitting in outdoor cafes. It's beautifully landscaped streets. It’s new high-rises going up. It's restaurants."
We now know Atticus Finch was a racist. We should also now know that John Hope Bryant is a capitalist pig making money off of an ability to move into rare spaces meant to be occupied by true thinkers and humanists.

28 comments:

donkeytale said...

Hecklers greet O'Malley and Sanders shouting "Black Lives Matter"

Bernie will need to win this demographic to have any sort of chance. He will need to do more.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/18/martin-omalley-bernie-sanders-interrupted-hecklers-phoenix

Tokyo Shemp said...

That's a great article. I think Bernie did well, though obviously he was a bit feisty. O'Malley did an oopsies, the one Hillary did, by saying all lives matters. Of course all lives matter. That's clear cut stupidity on their part.

Meanwhile Bernie knocked it out of the park, from reading the article. He said the criminal justice system is out of control and that our economic system needs to be fixed.

The Counterpunch article I linked to was a bit nutty. The guy ended up endorsing Jim Webb. His reasoning is that by chance Bernie strikes lightning, "They" will stop him. Whatever that means.

I'll have to vet Counterpunch better. They usually seem top notch.

Tokyo Shemp said...

O'Malley is the tool who appointed Triple F, the BK judge.

Tokyo Shemp said...

We should keep an eye on how Bernie does for polling. I think he is going to get another boost. Hillary's problem is she has to open her mouth. Bernie's problem is he can't do it alone.

donkeytale said...

O'Malley's running makes no sense. Bernie needs to shore up support. His rhetoric alone won't get there. Hillary's huge advantage is decades of organising among black and hispanic constituencies by her and Bill. That sort of institutoonal support is hard to overcome no matter how regular guy you are. In many ways those groups are more conservative than the white fake left contingent that is his natural base of support.

But that is Sanders' task. He will need to play some inside beisbol to get that done. It isn't apparent yet that he has those skills. But he won't to be able ride a magic pony into the white house.

Bet on it.

Counterpunch is hit or miss. I don't read there often. I picked up on some schtick support for medium/conspiracy. A. Cockburn was pretty good back in the day, a real leftist. He's dead or retired and the new generation runs the place now. Three stars. Mainly I hate their advertisemnt at the top of the site

donkeytale said...

I must say, I think I said it before, the "Uncle Tom" schtick is reserved for the black man's usage and attribution of other black men.

As comfortablly housed/fed white guys we have zero credibility passing judgment on minourity members ways of survival in a brutal world. It is presumptuous and somewhat racist imho.

How about he's a "neocon sell-out" or a "paid fake?"

Those work just as well.

Besides, my understanding of "Uncle Tom" is that he is someone who grovels for crumbs on the table of the white man from a position of distinct inferiority, a status in which he is happy to live as long as whitey loves him and takes care of him.

Say what you will about this guy, and believe me he seems despicable from a number of perspectives, especially the use of tired business consultant cliches (which I abhor when anyone uses them), but he is not coming from a place of inferiority.

He seems to have gotten over from what I read here.

donkeytale said...

"'Uncle Tom' is for Blacks who are complicit with the white man.

With all due respect, I have a lot of issues with that statement.

Barry Gordy was an Uncle Tom? Muhammad Ali? Nelson Mandela? By your definition of course Charles Barkley is a Tom. Ditto Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.

I think you can only mean every black man who makes his bones working within the dominant white power structure.

This means the many, many black men who have ever been financially successful are Uncle Toms? You are asking alot from black men, dude. "All races are equal" means there should be no special derogatory racial slur category for blacks who succeed within the system

I mean, Bernie Sanders is complicit with the white power structure.

Bernie is a charter member of the power structure, US Senate, from one of the whitest states in America.

What does that make him?

donkeytale said...

I'm done. No worrries just some soul foof for thot

Tokyo Shemp said...

Bernie is anti-Patriot Act. There really isn't a choice. This feels like two Western Conference teams going at it and you know the winner will win it all. Like Red Sox-Yankees 2004. You knew the west had no chance.

It's Bernie versus Hillary. Let the polls number become a magical revelation. I believe Hillary is losing some Black votes due to her gaffe. Bernie seems to read my comments and implement my ideas. I said he needs to get votes that never vote.

Hillary has her base, correct. But there is also an I hate Hillary base too. Bernie is raking in money despite refusing the big corporate/lobbyist payouts. It will take a lot of grassroots movement for him to become a legitimate contender. But he's keeping it close. There's plenty of time and shit can happen in debates.

Bernie, man, I wouldn't be so cynical about him. He's as close as we'll ever get to a smart, sincere politician who believes in masses of people. He cares. He bleeds leftier than thou blood.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Okay, maybe Bryant is the most epic of useful idiots. He probably actually believes he is a modern day M.L.K. Jr.. Fair enough. But I'm not budging on Clarence Thomas.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Then again, this dude is right smack dab placing himself in the civil rights movement, yet is doing the opposite of making it better. Kerching.

Tokyo Shemp said...

oops, the National League. I think it was the cardinals and I also think it was Colorado for patsy National League loser to the incredible Red Sox in 2007. I believe the Red Sox now own eight world series titles. /evillaugh

Tokyo Shemp said...

Or Triple F worked for O'Malley. There's a connection there. Fake lefts. Those are your dinos, the ones who scorn Snowden and wish Black people weren't "thugs," though now they have to find a new racist code word. I'm not saying racism doesn't matter. Black lives matter precisely for the topic of the criminal justice system and cops brutalising, terrorising, and railroading them.

I know you meant well. There could be young adults reading this. We don't want them too paranoid or calling just anyone Uncle Tom.

I never lied about being White. I am not Bob Marley to confuse and obfuscate my whiteness. I mentioned Ireland and Boston. It's kind of obvious.

Maybe we should call Black cops Kapos.

Tokyo Shemp said...

The leftier-than-thou Black blogger wrote "John Hope Bryant - Allied With "The Problem" Rather Than Forcing "The Problem" To Change In Pursuit Of Better Outcomes." I'm just the messenger.

Tokyo Shemp said...

dude, download ad blocker plus. It's free and gets rid of all ads.

donkeytale said...

The thread that connects these "Uncle Toms" that we list is that all are educated and/or successful in society. As such, they are by definition complicit with the white power structure.

You are pointing out what Bernie believes, and by the way so do I, Karl Marx and Fairleft, that the basic problem is class struggle not racism which is a symptom of class struggle and used to divide the working class.

But in the real world there is more messiness and contradiction for which the leftier than thou perhaps allows consideration. For instance, Bernie's base of support is ironically more among the educated white middle class liberals not the white rednecks, the latinos or the black underclass, all of whom tend to be more conservative-minded as voting blocs.

These blocs are famously attracted to the GOP in the case of whites and the Clintons (Bill in the 90s and Hill this time --so far) among blacks. Obama won the black vote understandably on racial identification and hopey/changey but did not win the latino or redneck vote against Hill.

This is the "voting against their self interest" conundrum that has helped propel the GOP since Reagan among working class whites and it is based on resentment, jealousy and nihilism.

donkeytale said...

One can hardly blame the underclasses for their plight or for their inability to act in their own self interest. This is why there is the Marxist notion of the revolutionary vanguard. The most oppressed are generally the least educated/most exploited and therefore must be led out of the wilderness for their own benefit. This, too, is elitist.

I wasn't making judgments against Ali, Barkley, MLK, Sanders et al, I was using them simply as an analogy to illustrate my disagreement with your use of "Uncle Tom". I don't believe Bryant or the above referenced are Uncle Toms at all even as all are complicit with the white power structure.

There is a lot of nuance in all these examples. Mandela gained the assent of the white power structure to end apartheid. His early violent resistance (which led to life imprisonment) and the ongoing threat after his release was the catalyst, however apartheid was effectively self-regulated out of existence by the white power government.

MLK and the civil rights begged and pleaded with the Kennedys (leaders of the white power structure) for help for he knew that the movement was doomed without the complicity of white federal power to overcome racism. Interestlungly, it was the redneck who followed JFK, and the liberal hegemony of the times largely amplified by the JFK assassination and LBjs overwhelming election win that gave him cover to do what Kennedy would or could not do himself.

Malcolm X, nobody's Uncle Tom, was also a member of the Nation of Islam, an arch-conservative movement. The Malcolm that we all revere is actually the radicalised Malcolm after he broke free from the N of I and who acknowledged that the way forward was not segregationist but integrationist. Pointedly, he was murdered by the N o I for becoming a traitor. To them he was an Uncle Tom.

MLK was a socialist. He was also a Republican. He was not of the black underclass but a middle class who inherited his prestige from his father and grandfather. In a sense he was the son of black privilege.

The article on Bryant by the blogger nowhere accuses him of being a Tom. It criticises his methods but seems to acknowledge that he is for real, if misguided in his desire to help heblack underclass.

I take it that you have picked up on this Uncle Tom schtick partly from the Charleston incident where the black protestor tried to interrupt Don Lemon newscast by calling him an Uncle Tom.

Lemon, like many of the "Toms" you mention has criticised black under culture for not reforming, such as the children for willfully remaining uneducated (because education after all is complicit with the white power structure). Of course, the black underclass resents those blacks who succeed and that is why they use the label.

The redneck parallel with Uncle Tom is not quite accurate either. The only parallel here is that it is a racial pejorative term but how it applies is exactly opposite.

The redneck is the white version of the black underclass, not the "Uncle Tom". The white "fake leftist" is more like a white Uncle Tom.

donkeytale said...

Also interesting, the same angry, black underclassmen who interrupted Lemon's chatter are also precisely same cohort who interrupted O'Malley/Sanders chatter at Netroots.

I am not cynical about Sanders, just as I am not cynical about Tsipras or Obama. Real power comes with real challenges and limits, unless you have overwhelming majourities like LBJ in the 1960s.

Sander's challenge is to win voters from the latino and black Dem constituencies.

Also possible that those who heckled yesterday were Clinton plants.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Thanks for the comments. I will read them.

I try to re-read my Twitter page every once in a while to look for errors. On Twitter I linked to this John Hope Bryant video. At that point, I was still curious who the F this dude is.

"John Hope Bryant - How the Poor Can Save Capitalism"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjLCjfN3Cc4

I don't simply decide on a target and then start tossing truth darts at them. This quote in particular got my blood boiling. From that lecture he gave:

He called Frederick Douglass "the Colin Powell of that day, maybe times ten, no disrespect to Colin Powell."

What kind of jackass would ever say such a thing. He also said this:

"People talk about a minimum wage. I don't want a government mandated middle class."

This isn't some great guy saving African American lives by teaching them how to raise their credit scores and balance individual budgets. This is about tapping into a market.

donkeytale said...

I agree with you here. This is more explicative and meaningful when you point out specifics rather than simply label him a Tom.

He is fair game,better game as a free market conservative.

Obama is an interesting character in this debate, given his unique upbringing in non-black hawaii by white grandparents. He is an African American more by choice of wife then he is by nature.

His father was an African intellectual. He has zero African American roots. One can say the same I believe for Colin Powell who is Jamaican.

You can see this most clearly when obama speaks to black people and affects that corny fake black dialect.

Or when he tried to sing Amazing Grace at the funeral in Charleston. Wow. he was so off-key as any white person might be trying to find the proper notes in the traditional African American hymn.....that was written by a very white English guy.....In all, though a moving eulogy.

donkeytale said...

And of course, I understand the shock value of Uncle Tom as clickbait.

In the end, it is all about the ratings.

Well-done Mrs. Worcestershire.

You have returned interesting thread work to our schtick.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Your points are legitimate. The meta surrounding my use of the phrase "Uncle Tom" seems important.

Maybe the phrase I was really looking for was "Magic Negro."

But then again, you are correct this is very tricky, nuanced ground. There is also let's call it the Rachel Dolezal Connundrum: We are white, not Black, no matter how infatuated or sincere we are in regards to Black culture and their interaction with the dominant capitalist system created by and for whites.

I do get it. I understand why my use of the phrase Uncle Tom may be viewed as racist.

I will be much more careful in the future if it ever moves me to use the phrase again. I don't think I've called anyone a magical negro. I do recall googling the phrase and reflecting on it.

I saw Don Lemon being heckled in real time as an Uncle Tom. I tweeted on it and/or wrote a comment here. I think that's what you are referring to or you noticed some media coverage on that. Mediaite usually covers such an esoteric topic.

I tweeted Don Lemon in similar fashion. I don't remember if I called him Uncle Tom.

I thank you for confronting me on this or confront is perhaps the wrong word.

It's lazy thinking and writing to rely on such phrases to prove points. It would be the same to go after the Spy Factory by simply calling them Hal Turner without actual content.

donkeytale said...

"Magic Negro"

Love that one.

Tokyo Shemp said...

At first I thought huh, a Clinton operative possibly showed up to heckle Bernie and O'Malley? Yes, perhaps. It could be the Hillary people trying to counteract her unforced faux pas error that all lives matter.

There is a Karl Rove/Atwater element and the Democrats certainly have done some divide and conquer of their own. (See Souljah, Sister)

I haven't read it yet, but I retweeted an article which covers Elizabeth Warren saying Americans are more progressive than Washington.

Things can happen quickly. No one probably expected Gorbachev to show up with glasnost and perestroika. The days of candidates glossing over police brutality and racism are over. Bernie handled it well, imho, though he might want to keep an eye on his excited amygdala.

The other guy O'Malley totally wet his pants.

The media seems to want to make all these fringe guys part of the discussion, like O'Malley and Webb. There's something about Bernie contending that rattles the medium. I await the new poll numbers. I do think Bernie needs to win those first two primaries or at least New Hampshire which borders his home state. If he can't win New Hampshire, then it doesn't seem he has any chance at all. But I await the poll numbers and the debates.

Hillary is like that Seattle Mariner team that won 118 or wtf regular season games. Or sadly enough the Patriots who came one game away from perfection. It's not about who looks the best and is most popular during the process. It is about winning the big enchilada.

We shall see.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Iowa is a caucus. Maybe I should proof-read more and not simply toss up stuff that will either be corrected in the future or add to the pile that makes me look like an idiot.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I googled Mrs. Worcestershire sauce or wtf. That's a new one to me.

I used to watch those stupid talk shows - Sally Jesse, Geraldo, Springer until showers no longer cleaned me off afterwards... hmmm, Montel, I admit it.

But as with soap operas, I kicked that habit.

Maybe I am a little bit like a Morton Downey Jr. version of leftier than thouism.

Perhaps click bait is the wrong phrase. I tend to back up my outrageous headlines with solid, info-taining, non-paid, non-pro writings.

I am trying to create a dictatorship of the cult, an interim period in which the medium is seized from the bad guys until a future date when the people, masses of regular guys take over the dictatorship of the medium, then somewhere down that road there will be second nature utopianism.

donkeytale said...

I think Bernie has an excellent shot at both Iowa and NH.

Both electorates skew liberal and white. Where Bernie will have to prove it up is in the more heavily ethnic precincts with large delegate blocs like California, Texas and yes, NY.

He definitely answered the hecklers well, however this is not the same as organising and delivering votes from the minourity blocs. This is nuts and bolts electioneering. Not saying he doesn't have what it takes to pull this off but he's starting from a deficit.

And Obama had the most effective ground game in herstory. He won caucus states handily, even in states like Nevada which the em Party is heavily latino (and thus favoured Clinton).

Hillary has inherited much of that apparatus where she was woeful last time.

Bernie now has much of the demographic (young, urban professional whites) that Obama had last time. He may also siphon off some of Hill's technical campaign and online support which also consists of mostly young, computer savvy white educated types.

It will be fascinating. And I am definitely rooting for the Bern.

Warren suffers from many of the same whiteyspheric issues and seems to udnerstand that she had no shot. She also isn't as experienced in electoral politics. Doubtful she could have won Senate in many states outside of Massachusetts. She also doesn't have Bernie's retail political skills. Hoepfully, she is taking notes and learning for when she has a more realistic shot down the road.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Warren is 66. She definitely has some years ahead where she can run. Not everyone needs to be the savior candidate. Ted Kennedy was never president because of Chappaquiddick, but he was still one of the most powerful and dare I say effective senators of all time.

I am just grateful Warren got the seat. I could do with a little bit less of John Kerry. He's the Don Zimmer of presidential politics.

If Dukakis could win the nomination, I'm sure so can Bern "fricken enough already of this hogwash" Sanders.

This is just one vote, but here's an African American sweetie who is 100% committed to ushering in the Sanders administration.

https://twitter.com/Libertea2012/status/622788628578570240