PART II
III.
“Jump back . . . Jim Crow . . ..”
The reactionary quest of Redemption for its pound of flesh, to experience fulfillment and regain its former status, is/was the never satisfied hunger of the white obesity, in freshly pressed white cloth. The thirst became the slaughter of a people.
“There’s more nigraws in that lake than fish.”
“The devil’s punchbowl.”
I am involuntarily hurled back to Tchula Mississippi. Pardon, Misispi. It’s 1981. I am driving a 1978 4 door Fiat, with pistol under the driver’s seat and a fifth of whiskey on the passenger seat. Highway 20 straight to Meridian and Simpson county. Then to Jackson and Tchula. The heart of the delta. We meet at the office of the United League the last incarnation of the Union Leagues of the Civil War era.
IV.
The laboring classes are always driven into unity.
Actually, a section – specifically the fighting sector of an exploited and oppressed class – is driven into unity under the pain of death. Working class unity does not mean uniting a mysterious class, that is already united based on their material relations in reproduction of social life. Unite the class mean unite the fighting section of the proletariat in motion.
Proletariat.
The original sin of the plantation South was slavery, so it is said. Such is master’s narrative. The Evil of the plantation South was never slavery.
It was capitalist slavery.
Slavery as an institution first appeared thousands of years ago, producing use-values for the slave mode of production. Here is the original sin that converted earth women into Eve. Slavery of antiquity bore the stamp of necessity and grew out of enslavement as the means to incorporate fresh blood and fresh genetics into one’s gene pool. Southern slavery was very different and a blasphemy.
Southern slavery was evil and birthed the blues.
Ain’t I blue . . .
Ain’t I blue . . .
Ain’t these tears in my eyes telling you?
V.
Then there is Rachel. Who has the eyes and mouth of Olivia Pope, played by Kerry Washington, from the television series “Scandal.”
Rachel can never become Olivia Pope although she plays the role of Olivia – lost and turned out – continuously raped as her meaning of existence. It is this scene where master stands on the steps, in white, one is given a sense of his obesity and privilege. Master demands more than a pound of flesh. Master demands silence from Belle. He takes from Rachel.
Rachel’s commodity, the exchange value of her labor-power has been purchased all at one time. The wage slave receives the bitter paycheck. Rachel receives the bitter.
In Knight’s evolving humanity which is nurtured by Olivia’s . . . pardon, Rachel’s, essence there is a scene where they enter the bedroom and Rachel is hurled back into the traumatic pain that is part of the architecture of her wetware and psyche shaped by the permanent rape.
“A flake of snow within a storm,
A new way waiting to be born,
In a word in need of change.
She gives love with purity.
Feeling minds with hopeful schemes and
Her freedom makes us free.”
Black Orchid
Stevie Wonder
One can write over and onto the architecture of the minds software/wetware . . . but never really erase the darkest night. It is the light of Rachel that transforms Knight.
Then Cookie cried.
Then Bobby
. . . we cried.
Last night.
Me and my woman.
We cried.
…
“Until all is said and done,
In a twinkling I’ll be gone.
Well, excuse me
I have so much more to do. “
Flower Power
Stevie Wonder.
