Darryl James
While most of us pretend to be African American, many of us are really Black Anglo Saxons.
James Earl Jones, an icon of the Black Anglo Saxons once mused that there is no Black culture, because culture is shaped by language and our language is English, therefore, our culture can not be anything else.
According to James Baldwin, “The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land. In the case of the Negro, the past was taken from him whether he would or no.”
For many of us, Black History begins in America with our ancestors being brought over in chains from savage lands, delivered mercifully to civilization and Christianity, without which we surely would have perished.
And, even after a quiet admission that slavery could not be continued, inequities continued boundlessly, even extending to the chaining and abuse of our self-image and according self-worth.
Even when we were supposedly free, from the end of slavery to the end of Jim Crow and to the beginning of integration, we were still being captured many times over and lied to about freedom, while accepting the lie of acceptance.
The goal all along has been to fit in, to melt with mainstream society, but many of us have done that so well that we’ve lost our own sense of history and our own sense of culture in favor of a culture that will never accept us.
And even some of us who claim to be Afrocentric know little of that which is intrinsically African.
For example, ask any so-called African American to name three kings or three nations in Africa. Most of us have nothing that shows an intrinsic African understanding. Yet, even Italians who can’t speak Italian know about Italy and Sicily, whether they have been there or not, and many have not.
Hell, many Black Anglo Saxons know about Italy and Sicily, even though they know nothing of Africa as demonstrated by the wretchedly stupid rappers who take names of Italian gangsters with pride.
The point is that even the Black Anglo Saxon who loves the rhetoric of being Afrocentric, has no intention of making a real connection. That’s why we hear talk of how we were once kings and queens, but those same talkers are doing anything but living like the heirs of royal blood.
And, ask them of Africa today, and they believe that the entire continent is rife with AIDS, civil wars and poverty. They accept this dismal view of Africa from American news reports, but have never been to Africa and have never discussed the continent with native Africans.
Many Black Anglo Saxons want to be as quiet and as non-confrontational as possible, which often means exonerating people who commit crimes against our community simply because they have made empty overtures to us as in the case of former President Clinton, or when they are causing damage to our image as in the case of 50 Cents.
Blind and silly Negroes are still running around calling William Jefferson Clinton the first Black president, tacitly ignoring the fact that Black college enrollment began to decline and Black imprisonment began a steep incline during his watch.
And, Black Anglo Saxons are afraid to do what is necessary to garner freedom, which includes chastising our own in order to protect our community. We saw South Africa gain it’s independence with the use of direct and productive tactics, including “Necklacing,” where a tire was foisted around the neck of a sellout, filled with kerosene and set ablaze, ending the life of the sellout and showing the world that the community was unafraid to go to war within and without.
But the Black Anglo Saxon is afraid of real revolution.
When 50 Cents worked with Paramount to assault the inner city Black psyche with him cooning with guns displayed prominently on posters in Black neighborhoods, silly Negroes meekly attacked Paramount and still loved 50, excusing the moron’s poor behavior simply because he is Black.
The community should have gathered around 50 and beat the snot out of his nose, but he gets defended or even lauded as a role model simply because he is making money. And, some of the same Black men and women who refuse to take him to task, rage loudly otherwise about the destruction done by rappers and rap music, forgetting that Russell Simmons, Puff Daddy and Jay-Z have all profited from harming our community even as we laud them for amassing cash from doing such harm.
Entertainers in days gone by ranging from Eartha Kitt, Sidney Poitier and Mohammed Ali placed their careers on the line for what they believed, but today, Black Anglo Saxons are more concerned about the entertainer who makes money.
And, Black Anglo Saxons love their well-paid entertainers so much that when one of us attacks a cooning comedian or buffooning rapper, the Black Anglo Saxons will come to their defense. For example, when I attacked Tyler Perry for dressing up like a woman, diminishing the Black male image, while desecrating the Black female image and Black Anglo Saxons from both sides attacked me, seeing nothing wrong with the destruction of our image.
Politically, we can’t even make decisions that will benefit us as a body. Most of us align ourselves with the Democrats--a party that systematically put Black men out of the house courtesy of the Welfare system and created generations of women who raised Black children alone and then began to blame the fathers for being absent.
On the other hand, the Republican Party has tacitly ignored the blatant racism and classism in its own party to get some of us to return to their side, while doing nothing for any of us.
We have true models to define our next phase of existence. Those models come from our history in America, and our history in Africa.
The African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress PAC) were Black governments, even when they had no true governing party. African Americans have no government and no governing party—the Congressional Black Caucus is toothless and impotent, governing nothing and not even attempting to.
The Black Anglo Saxon wants nothing more than to be embraced by mainstream America, while separating all ties with the Black Americans who are left at the bottom of society by generations of the cream rising to the top and flowing out of the community.
The Black Anglo Saxons first appeared as free slaves who were accepted in some quarters of white society and so began to pretend at assimilation while looking down at the Negroes they believed “chose” to be left behind.
These new Negroes disconnected from their people and even today, pronounce loudly that “I don’t know nothing ‘bout Africa.”
But Black Anglo Saxons perhaps got the biggest boost in membership after integration, when more Negroes than ever before were allowed into the white world, where they could pretend that they were no longer the same as those “lower economic people” left behind in the economically depressed urban areas all across America.
The Black Anglo Saxon has nerve enough to speak for their brethren left behind, claiming that they are economically disadvantaged because they simply “choose not to do better.” None of the bonehead Black Anglo Saxons has ever asked a Black man or woman in midst of economic depression if they truly have decided not to do better, because to speak for them makes it easier to ignore their need.
If a revolution comes from the impoverished and the strong and the young (and history has shown us that this is where revolutions come from), the first group to be eaten alive by such an animal should be the Black Anglo Saxons, who are more destructive than any seething white racist ever could be.
They are damaging us from the inside.
- Darryl James is an award-winning author who is now a filmmaker. His first mini-movie, "Crack," was released in March of 2006. He is currently filming a full length documentary. James’ latest book, "Bridging The Black Gender Gap," is the basis of his lectures and seminars. Previous installments of this column can now be viewed at www.bridgecolumn.com . James can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .