Remembering W. E. B. Du Bois

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

This was an article in the August 2003 issue of the Monthly Review. It was written in commemoration of Du Bois' death who died in August of 1963 after a long and eventful life. Du Bois tackled issues of imperialism, classism, racism, and socialist issues. Over his long life Du Bois (he was 95 years old when he died) wrote many books, essays, poems, and speeches to support the struggle for human rights and Third World solidarity. While Du Bois made his mistakes, such as supporting Imperial Japan (as Third World liberators) and supporting Stalin his contributions to American society, as well as to the world, far outweighed his mistakes and his writings still resonate with us today despite some of them being written 100 years ago.

Some works by Du Bois:

The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

John Brown (1909)

The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924)

Africa: Its Place in Modern History (1930)

Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935)

Encyclopedia of The Negro: Preparatory Volume with Reference Lists and Reports (1946)

Africa in Battle Against Colonialism, Racialism, Imprialism (1960)

Readers:

David Levering Lewis, editor. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader. New York: Owl Books, 1995.

Eric J. Sundquist. The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the president of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organizing and educational center formed to raise awareness in the USA regarding issues facing the nations and peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

“No nation threatens us. We threaten the world.”

—W.E.B. Du Bois (1958) commenting on the role of the United States internationally.

While we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington, we should as well be commemorating another event. On the eve of the 1963 March on Washington, the life of one of the 20th century’s most brilliant individuals came to an end. W.E.B. Du Bois, scholar, Pan Africanist, political leader, champion of the struggle against white supremacy in the United States, died in Ghana, August 27, 1963.

It is easy to forget about Du Bois since an orchestrated effort has been conducted by the larger society to minimize his contributions and, in fact, to expunge him from our collective memory. Beginning with the Cold War in the late 1940s, the government and the right-wing went out of their way to harass Du Bois, restrict his travel and opportunities, and limit his access to those who wanted to or needed to hear his words.

For us at TransAfrica Forum, the work and life of Du Bois was particularly significant because of his commitment to the struggle against racist discrimination at home as well as against imperialism and colonialism abroad. Du Bois saw no inconsistency in taking up both struggles, usually at the same time. Thus, Du Bois is acknowledged as the “father” of the modern Pan African movement. He was directly involved in organizing and helping to lead the first five Pan African Congresses. He was also one of the leaders, along with the great Paul Robeson, of the Council on African Affairs, a U.S.-based advocacy group on Africa which was, in many ways, a political ancestor of TransAfrica Forum. Du Bois was also a founder of the NAACP, editor of the NAACP’s magazine, Crisis, and author of the monumental and definitive study Black Reconstruction in America.

Du Bois would probably have been heralded by the larger US establishment if he had restricted his criticisms to racial matters in the United States. Du Bois refused to be so constrained. Du Bois’s critique of U.S. society expanded over time to examining the economic roots of racial oppression as well as his expansive analysis of Western colonialism and the U.S. role in propping up colonial empires, allegedly in the name of fighting communism.

Following World War II when the United States came to the aid of various European colonial powers, in some cases reinforcing their domination, in other cases attempting to replace them, Du Bois was one of the courageous few who would not be silenced. Du Bois saw that anti-communism and red-baiting were not aimed at stopping the spread of a totalitarian ideology, but rather were aimed at silencing any and all dissent from policies that advanced corporate interests. For his recognition, the forces of repression came down upon him.

Ultimately Du Bois chose to leave the United States and reside in Ghana. Before his death he began work on an encyclopedia of the African world. He did not live to complete it.

It is not enough for us to honor the memory of Du Bois, though that is itself important. Reminding ourselves, and particularly younger activists and scholars of the renown of such a human being has a value in and of itself. Yet for those who work with and support TransAfrica Forum, and other organizations committed to a democratic foreign policy on the part of the United States, the life and work of Du Bois has an additional value. All too often I hear people suggest that international events are too distant from the realities of the everyday person. Du Bois repudiated such notions, suggesting instead that it is inconceivable that we, African Americans, can fight the good fight here in the United States for social justice in isolation from the fight for what we now call global justice. A system that would ignore the plague of HIV/AIDS as it ravages Africa and the Caribbean; a system that would promote the interests of pharmaceutical corporations over those of the individuals living with HIV/AIDS, can never be expected to discover humanity in its treatment of those of African descent living in the United States.

The reverse is also true. As often as we attempt to illustrate our patriotism through volunteering to support United States wars overseas, and other such adventures, we may achieve awards and note, but it brings us no closer to achieving actual freedom, equality and dignity at home. To the extent to which we stand up for what is right rather than what the establishment deems to be popular, we regain our humanity. If there is no other lesson to learn from the work and life of W.E.B. Du Bois, it is that one simple point.

Image:

exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu

The Lakota Ghost Dance: Ritualized Rebellion Against Colonial Rule

This is an essay I just completed this semester for my Dance 430, Dance History class at San Francisco State University.

Image from Walden3d

I’yehe’! my children — Uhi’yeye’heye’!
I’yehe’! my children — Uhi’yeye’heye’!
I’yehe’! we have rendered them desolate — Eye’ăe’yuhe’yu!
I’yehe’! we have rendered them desolate — Eye’ăe’yuhe’yu!
The whites are crazy — Ahe’yuhe’yu!(1)

—

It was mid-day and Wovoka, the son of Tävibo, lies sick on his bed in his wickiup. Wovoka is considered a great weather man by his people (whom are apart of the Paiute tribe in Mason Valley, in western Nevada), just like his father, who had also been a prophet. As he is laying ill in his bed from a fever the sun is becoming darkened due to a solar eclipse. All over his tribal camp people became distressed and began shooting their guns at the object which was blocking the sun. As the sun darkened Wovoka slipped more and more from consciousness until, all of a sudden, he found himself being taken up into heaven where he spoke with God, who commanded him to preach a gospel of peace, to live justly in the world, and to bring a new dance to his people. The year was 1889 and the day was January 1st (this day would latter be called by the Paiute people “the day the sun died”(2)), this was the day that the Ghost Dance was born and the day that Wovoka stated that he became God’s prophet to the Native American peoples. Soon Native Americans (and whites) from all over the United States began to come to Mason Valley to hear Wovoka speak,(3) word also got out to the Dakotas, the tribal lands of the Lakota, and the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Reservation decided to send an elder, Good Thunder, as well as four or five others, to see this Wovoka themselves and to here his message. After being satisfied and returning to their reservation the Lakota decided to send more delegates, this time from three agencies instead of just Pine Ridge, back to western Nevada, among them was Good Thunder, Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and others.(4)

The simple message of Wovoka intrigued the Lakota (as it had others) especially because of their present day situation which was very much looking bleak (to say the least). The medicine man Short Bull, during a trip between Valentine in Nebraska and the Rosebud Reservation (east of the Pine Ridge Reservation), heard the words of Wovoka through the reading of a letter that Wovoka had wrote:

I, Jack Wilson [Wovoka’s white name], love you all...When you get home you must make a dance to continue for five days...You must all dance in the same way...Do not tell the white people about this. Jesus is now upon the earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are all alive again. I do not know when they will be here; maybe this fall or in the spring...Do not refuse to work for the whites, and do not make any trouble with them until you leave them.(5)

Soon, Short Bull would became one of the Lakota leaders of the new religion preached by Wovoka.(6)

The Ghost Dance religion’s underlying principles (with beliefs varying from tribe to tribe) was that one day every single Native American, living and dead, would become reunited with a regenerated earth and would live a life without disease, death, and sorrow.(7) Short Bull and Kicking Bear emerged as charismatic leaders of the new religion for the Lakota and spoke prophecies, based on the prophecies of Wovoka, that by the spring of 1891 the Native American messiah would come down and destroy the white man and bring the buffalo back to the earth. Dominic J. Capeci, Jr. and Jack C. Knight state that, “This would happen, it was believed, because whites had proven themselves a faithless race causing God to turn his wrath against them.” Due to the coming apocalypse (hastened by large dances, that would go on for days, as commanded by Wovoka) the Lakota decided to remove all of the trappings of white culture that had been thrust upon them by the white colonial powers (the government and the settlers), to be civil (even towards whites) and practice a life of good will (which Wovoka commanded), and to perform the dances, which would demonstrate their faith in their own inviolability.(8)

The dance in question was called “dance in a circle” by the Paiute, the Kiowa called it the “dance with clasped hands,” and the Lakota called it the “spirit dance.”(9) For the Lakota (and others) the Ghost Dance was danced in a circle by either small or very large groups of people for days. Ethnologist Warren K. Moorehead, who visited the Pine Ridge Reservation during the peak of the Ghost Dance “fever,” described one encounter with the dance:

The largest camp of dancers was located upon Wounded Knee Creek under the charge of Chiefs No Water, Short Bull and Little Wound...A pole or sapling some thirty-five feet in height was erected...built near the dance ground were several...sweat houses, separate structures being provided for women...A priest...called aloud to those who wished to participate...several hundred men and women crowed up and, grasping hands, formed a circle fully two hundred feet in diameter...the priests began a prayer to the Great Spirit...”Great Wakan Tanka: We are ready to begin the dance as you have commanded us...we beg that you give us back our old hinting grounds, and our game...transport such of the dancers...to the Spirit Land far away and let them see their dead relatives...the priests began a doleful chang, which is taken up by the assembled multitude and loudly sung over and over again. The circle moves toward the left. For the first half hour the motion is short step...After the space of half an hour...“Weep for your sins” commands the high priest. They moan and cry, rolling upon the ground, apparently in great agony. Some of the more desperate ones crowd up to the sapling...Others cut their arms...The scene is most impressive. Surely the [Lakota] are serious in their grief...A new song is struck up...the dancing becomes fast and furious. The men and women leap backward and forward. They seem possessed of the spirit of demons...the priests are extremely active. They run from one excited dancer to another, gently compelling them to lie prone upon the earth...The scene of a Ghost Dance at night makes a vivid impression upon the mind. The music in its strange wild key rings in the ears for days, while one can never forget the reeling figures, the earnest, expressive faces.(10)

Why had the Ghost Dance caught on in such as big way? In November of 1890 around 40% of the Lakota at Pine Ridge Reservation and 30% at the Rosebud Reservation had taken up the religion of the Ghost Dance.(11) The answer lies in the colonial policies of the United States government and the history of repression that had fallen upon the Lakota in the decades culminating before the Ghost Dance revival. Essentially what the Ghost Dance was, was a “ritualized resistance as a means of repelling colonial rule” taken up by the Lakota to protest and fight back against the U. S. government and the white settlers who were legally (by U. S. standards), and illegally (even by U. S. standards), encroaching on their reservation lands.(12)

In 1868, leaders of the Lakota agreed to sign the Ft. Laramie Treaty which forfeited most of their hunting grounds in exchange to never be disturbed in by any outsider while they live on the “Great Sioux Reservation.” Yet this treaty had taken away hunting, as well as sacred, grounds that originally had been theirs according to the original reservation treaty of 1858 (which gave them their entire western half of South Dakota). Yet once gold was found in the sacred Black Hills the U. S. government moved quickly to take it away from them. Again, their lands were encroached upon and the Lakota were forced to sign a treaty breaking up the “Great Sioux Reservation” into six smaller reservations divided into three distinct land masses, all separate from each other (classic divide and conquer), further humiliating the Lakota and subjugating them to further colonial rule.(13) Instead of living like they had, as hunter-gatherings with the freedom to move about the land, they were forced, like prisoners of war, to stay in one area which further lead them to take up crop growing (in an area unsuitable to grow crops), cattle ranging, and as well as receiving ration handouts from the government.(14) In 1887 the Dawes Act also allowed the purchase of Lakota lands. Senator Henry L. Dawes, from Massachusetts, argued in 1890 for the cutting of further rations to the Lakota, this despite food shortages resulting in the near extinction of the buffalo by white settlers (which lead to massive starvation in the winter of 1889). Dawes stated that “the best way to treat the Indian was to starve him into self-support. ‘Root, hog, or die...Next year you are only to have so much, and you must supplement it by the labor of your own hands.’”(15)

The Ghost Dance was born out of this misery, the Lakota, a once proud warrior society that roamed free on the Great Plains, were now reduced to obeying the whim of the U. S. government and the white settlers; they also faced starvation and loss of land (one of the greatest blows of this was the loss of the sacred Black Hills). The Ghost Dance was a repudiation of everything the white man and the U. S. government stood for and was the basis for the resistance to the colonial powers. The hope of the Ghost Dance for the Lakota was that the white man would be destroyed and that the buffalo (and the hunting grounds) would return to the earth for the Lakota and other Native Americans to enjoy. In response to the ever looming and encroaching presence of white culture, participants in Ghost Dance circles (in the Lakota reservations) were forbidden to bring anything associated with white culture into the dance, only traditional Lakota clothing and artifacts were allowed (this despite the fact that Wovoka would wear white man’s clothing). Capeci and Knight state that “[t]he antiwhite bias of the Ghost Dance was important. The reservation spectacle of once-proud [Lakota] warriors humbling themselves before officials by wearing store-bought” white clothing was seared into the minds of the Lakota and “the act of shedding these cloths” was a “liberating gesture. For some, western dress also foretold the violent end to be suffered by the white race, as the Messiah would” use western dress to distinguish between who to kill and who to allow to survive.(16)

While violence and rebellion against the white settlers and the government was not preached in the Ghost Dance (all though it had been used before by the Lakota, as the Battle of Little Big Horn has shown us) the Lakota were willing to use force to protect their dances from reservation police, government agents and military, as well as white settlers. Violent resistance to protect their sacred traditions had been uncommon during reservation period (in fact, some of their traditions had been banned by the government).(17) Yet for the Ghost Dance, the Lakota were willing to die, and indeed, go to war. Although the Lakota were still tempered by the fact of past defeats and constantly having their land being encroached by white settlers.

Despite the promise for renewal, and re-energizing the Lakota in their fight against their oppressors, the Ghost Dance ended in tragedy at the Massacre of Wounded Knee where over 150 men, women, and children were killed (fleeing) by the Seventh Calvary. Not even this non-violent (though potentially violent in certain aspects) religion was allowed by the colonial masters. Where the Lakota saw hope in the Ghost Dance whites saw a threat. The actions at Wounded Knee, states Scott L. Pratt, were seen by whites and the government as “a necessary, even humanitarian, response because it brought a quick end to a ‘craze’ that was good for neither whites nor” Native Americans.(18)

Due to the "theological eclecticism" of the Lakota and the fact that the Lakota were a traditional warrior society their “interpretation of the Ghost Dance was more militant than Wovoka’s teachings.”(19) The Lakota believed that their ritualized rebellion against the government and white settlers would evolved into a military victory and restore the Lakota and other Natives back to their original state in a new world. It gave the Lakota a source of pride and revitalized their spirits as a nation as well as meeting the needs of the Lakota warriors, who had been feeling the sting of defeat by the white man for years. The Lakota “adapted traditional rituals to redress the wrongs done to them. In this way they waged war long before any bullets had been fired or lives lost.”(20) The Lakota wouldn’t have a revolt this large (ritualized or armed) until February of 1973, when around 200 members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over Wounded Knee by force and declared it the “Independent Oglala Sioux Nation” and told the government they would not leave until they had addressed the grievances of tribal leaders, an investigation into the treatment of Native Americans in America, and a review of all treaties signed by the government.

—
The whole world is coming,
A nation is coming, a nation is coming,
The Eagle has brought the message to the tribe.
The father says so, the father says so.
Over the whole earth they are coming.
The buffalo are coming, the buffalo are coming,
The Crow has brought the message to the tribe,
The father says so, the father says so.(22)
—

Endnotes

1. James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1965), 221. This is a Ghost Dance song of the Arapaho tribe, Mooney (who wrote this in 1892-1893) states that, “In this song the father tells his children of the desolation, in consequence of their folly and injustice, that would come upon the whites when they will be left alone upon the old world, while the Indians will be taken up to the new earth to live in happiness forever.” (Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion, 222).
2. William S. E. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 2.
3. Alice Beck Kehoe, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization (Fort Worth, Chicago,
San Francisco, Philadelphia: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1989), 5, 35.
4. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, 6, 9-10.
5. Ibid., 9.
6. Ibid., 8.
7. Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion, 19.
8. Dominic J. Capeci, Jr. and Jack C. Knight, “Reactions to Colonialism: The North American
Ghost Dance and East African Maji-Maji Rebellions,” Historian 52, no. 4 (Aug. 1990): 584-602,
Academic Search Premier, http://0-web.ebscohost.com.
9. Kehoe, The Ghost Dance, 8.
10. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, 36-39.
11. Capeci and Knight, “Reactions to Colonialism.”
12. Ibid.
13. Kehoe, The Ghost Dance, 15-16; Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, 11.
14. Kehoe, The Ghost Dance, 16.
15. Coleman, Voices of Wounded Knee, 18.
16. Capeci and Knight, “Reactions to Colonialism.”
17. Ibid.
18. Pratt, Scott L. “Wounded Knee and the Prospect of Pluralism.” Journal of Speculative
Philosophy 19, no. 2 (2005): 154.
Endnotes
19. Capeci and Knight, “Reactions to Colonialism.”
20. Ibid.
21. Encyclopedia Britannica (2006), “Wounded Knee,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online,
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9077525 (accessed November 16, 2006).
22. Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion, 307. This is a Ghost Dance song of the Lakota. Mooney sums up the aspect of this song quite nicely by stating, “This fine song summarizes the whole hope of the Ghost dance—the return of the buffalo and the departed dead, the message being brought to the people by the sacred birds, the Eagle and the Crow. The eagle known as wañ’bali is the war eagle, from which feathers are procured for war bonnets.” (Mooney, ibid., 307).

The Groot Krokodil Will Bite No More

By Joseph Gregory

This was an article that I read in the Sowetan but originally appeared (in a fuller version) in the New York Times on Wednesday Nov. 1.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

PW Botha, who died on Tuesday at the age of 90 at his home in George, struggled vainly to preserve apartheid rule in a tide of domestic racial violence and global condemnation.

Botha was a son of a well-to-do Afrikaner farm family who dropped out of university to work for the right-wing National Party. He gained a reputation as the “Great Crocodile” for his ability to charm, outwit and crush his opponents.

In 1978 Botha became prime minister and proceeded to engineer the creation of a new constitution: one that limited reform of apartheid policies and paved the way for him to become president in 1984.

Though the constitution allowed Asians and coloureds to be represented in a white-controlled parliament, it continued to exclude the black majority.

Some apartheid laws, like a prohibition on mixed marriages and a requirement that blacks carry special passes, were relaxed. But the measures only fuelled the anger of apartheid’s opponents.

Holding out the promise that apartheid would eventually be dismantled, he opened negotiations with Nelson Mandela. The talks went nowhere and Mandela remained confined.

At the same time, Botha, who first achieved prominence as minister of defence, gave the police and military unprecedented power.

Mr. Botha used the climate of the cold war to justify his actions. He portrayed a growing Marxist threat in southern Africa and warned that Communists had infiltrated the anti-apartheid movement at home. South Africa, he said, was engaged in a “total war” and must develop a “total strategy” to fight the battle.

His government repressed dissent, encouraged rivalries among different tribes and ethnic groups, and tried to destabilise neighbouring countries opposed to the system of white rule.

As opposition to apartheid spread, Botha’s room for manoeuvre shrank.

“He was caught in a bind between wanting to show the international community that he was not inflexible, and not wishing to appear weak within his own country,” the journalist Allister Sparks wrote in his book Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Road to Change.

In 1985, Botha was supposed to announce a giant step away from apartheid but his proposals, which offered blacks the vote under a legislative system that gave them no real power, disillusioned South Africa’s few remaining friends in the world.

Botha was re-elected in 1987. Two years later, as opposition to his intransigent style grew within his own party, he suffered a stroke and resigned.

He was succeeded by FW de Klerk, who legalised opposition parties, freed Mandela and other political prisoners, and made the agreements that eventually brought apartheid down.

Pieter Willem Botha was born on January 12 1916 in the Orange Free State.

Raised in the traditions of the Bible and the gun, Botha learned to ride and shoot and to embrace the embattled self-image of the Afrikaner.

“I grew up on a farm where I came to know black people very well,” Botha told Joseph Lelyveld in an interview for his book Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White.

“I played with them, I worked with them. I was taught by my father to be strict with them, but just.”

In 1943 Botha married Anna Elizabeth (Elize) Rossouw, who died in 1977. They had five children. He married Barbara Robertson in 1998.

In the 1948 general election, Botha won a seat in parliament.

His rise through the government ranks coincided with the country’s deepening isolation.

In 1974, the UN took away South Africa’s seat in the General Assembly. Three years later, debate over trade sanctions reached a fever pitch.

But the disciples of apartheid hung tough. As defence minister, Botha increased military spending, conducted a clandestine weapons trade and pushed for the development of nuclear weapons.

In the early 1980s, his government launched military strikes on insurgent groups in neighbouring countries and carried out a programme of assassinating anti-apartheid activists.

In 1985, the government announced an indefinite state of emergency. In 1986, Archbishop Desmond Tutu addressed the UN and urged further sanctions.

Botha grew defiant. But even within the Botha government, pressure was growing for negotiations with the ANC. Clandestine overtures were made to Mandela, who had been in prison since 1963.

In March 1989, Mandela offered to negotiate a political settlement. Botha, who had had a stroke that January, met Mandela on July 5 1989. The encounter turned out to be little more than a courtesy call.

Botha’s days in office were numbered. Increasingly ill-tempered and authoritarian, he remained reluctant to move on with reform.

In February 1989 he renounced his position as NP leader while keeping the presidency. That August, at a cabinet meeting, his successor as party leader, FWdeKlerk, suggested that he step down. That night, in an angry, rambling broadcast, he resigned.

Under De Klerk, apartheid unraveled. In 1990, Mandela was freed and the ANC was unbanned. In April 1994, the first multiracial election was held and Mandela became president.

Apartheid was finished. Its brutality was exposed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Botha derided the commission as a witch hunt.

After failing to attend a hearing in Cape Town on December 19 1997, he was found guilty of contempt of court, fined and sentenced to a suspended 12-month prison term. The conviction was overturned on appeal.

“I have nothing to apologize for,” he said. ‘’I will never ask for amnesty. Not now, not tomorrow, not after tomorrow.”

White Supremacy and World Wide Evangelism: A Call to Fellow American Christians

This blog is actually an article I wrote for a Christian magazine about world wide evangelism called The Global Correspondent. The editor of the magazine goes to my church, and since I'm a journalism major he wanted me to write some articles for the magazine. But ultimately he rejected the article after reading it (wow big surprise).

"‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much as child of hell as yourselves...For you...have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others’"
-Matthew 23:15,23

Ever since the landing of the first settlers and their Black slaves America has been defined and separated by race with WASPs (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants) at the top of the food chain, absorbing all the wealth and benefits of this country while people of color have always been at the bottom suffering the oppression of white people and having had their labor exploited by the white elite class. Consequently Christianity, and the Lord’s Christian church, has been effected by this white oppression and the doctrine that "everything white is right." This white doctrine of supremacy has perverted the true nature of Christianity and in turn, this has effected its mission of world wide evangelism. Instead of the elitist spreading of our Lord’s word by evangelists who hold a view that mainstream American culture is the end all in history and is vastly superior to any native culture it encounters we need a new way of spreading our Lord’s word that actually reflects the teachings that Jesus taught us when he was walking on this earth.

Firstly, we need to look at the message of Jesus. More than anything Jesus preached against wealth and the ruling Phariseetic and Sadduceetic elite and preached for the downtrodden and the oppressed. In Mk 10:25 Jesus said that, "‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.’" At the same time Jesus spent his time with those who were mostly poor and exploited such as the blind, lame, and prostitutes and others who were reviled by Jewish society, such as the tax collectors. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus stated, "Blessed are you who are poor...hungry...when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you...But woe to you who are rich." (Lk 6:20-22, 25). Jesus shows as that our true Christian mission is to fight with, and for those, who are meek, poor, and oppressed. Isaiah implores us to wash ourselves clean and to "cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow." (Isa 1:16-17). In order to be true Christians we must help those who are oppressed in society and we must tackle the evils of our day and fight with the oppressed against today’s "neo-Pharisees" and to not align ourselves, or to use the language of, the "neo-Pharisees," i.e. the ruling class of our society.

Yet this form of Christianity, that I have just stated above, is practically a foreign concept to most of us in the United States, even though it is based on Biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus Christ. This mainly has to do with the perversion of Christianity by white America and the white ruling class. Whites justified their oppression of Blacks and other people of color in this nation by shaping Christianity to fit their own psychological needs, their views of society, in which they were in a position of power because God favored them. Part of this can be seen in the 19th century in where Protestant preachers talked about the value of the free market system and how they were of Godly principles while the working class and people of color were exploited by the capitalist class. W. E. B. Du Bois, the great Black American intellectual of the early 20th century, stated that this white Christianity "became organized in social clubs where well-bred people met in luxurious churches and gave alms to the poor...On Sunday they listened to sermons," about the blessed poor, to do good, and turn the other check yet, "listen and acted as though they had read, and in very truth they ought to have read–‘Might is right’...’Kill your enemies or be killed’; ‘Make profits by any methods...’" This form of Christianity, distorted by white supremacist theology, shows the utter "hypocrisy(!)" of the people who practice it. This is not the true Jesus, the white skinned, blond haired Jesus of white people is but another form of oppression, as a 1st century Syrian-Egyptian western Semitic Jew Jesus was far from being white. Yet with the distortion of Christianity to fit the oppressive needs of white society came a distortion of our Lord and savior as a white male, instead of the person of color he truly was, and is, and since God identifies with the oppressed and takes up their identity any God who is depicted as white is not God, for truly God is a God of color, of dark skin, since those in America and around the world who are truly oppressed are people of color.

This corruption of Christianity and of Jesus is taken onto the stage of world wide evangelism since most of those who "cross sea and land" to make converts are normally American, and those in America who normally make those trips are ones who practice some form of conservative Christianity perverted by white America (i.e., the ruling class). When we, as world wide evangelists (and white people and/or those who subscribe to this form of Christianity) encounter other cultures in the developing (i.e. the so called "Third") world we tend to view these cultures, whether subconsciously or consciously, as "inferior" to our "blessed" American culture and when we preach to them the Gospel we preach it through an elitist perspective with images of a white Jesus whom in reality, is not really our true God of salvation because the true God of salvation identifies with those whom are oppressed since Jesus, in Matt 25:45, states, "‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me." So for every oppression that is hurled upon those whom have been continually oppressed in our society and throughout the world we do unto Jesus Christ, and being that the people whom are most oppressed in this world by those who hold power are of color, so to is Jesus Christ, or Lord and God, a person of color identifying with the oppressed. So the very fact that we preach a white Jesus and a white theology to mainly people of color oversees means that were are fulfilling our own self-made prophesies of becoming "neo-Pharisees." We are taking the side of the oppressors and perpetuating our internal white supremacy onto a people whom we are turning into Christians " twice as much as children of hell as" ourselves. We are saying to them that their culture is inferior to ours, their skin color (if we the evangelizers are white) is inferior to that the dominant race of America and the West, and that they are inferior people.

At the same time we are preaching this Gospel of white supremacy to people oversees we are also following in the footsteps of U.S. corporate and cultural interests. Many of the countries that we evangelize in are developing nations that are, essentially, clients to institutions of the West such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and American and European corporate interests. As we bring the Holy Bible into these countries we are often followed by, or following, these Western corporate and cultural interests. More often then not these interests serve the bottom line and not the interests of the natives within those countries, this can be seen in a place such as the Congo which U.S. corporate mining companies mine minerals for the use of cell phones, yet these corporate interests align themselves with dictatorial war lords, whom massacre their own people, in order to keep these mines "safe" and open for U.S. corporate interests and profits. As we preach this Gospel of white supremacy and preach about a white Jesus we also justify the greedy interests of the corporate elite of the West (i.e. the dominant region in the world today, the region also dominated by the white elite) and we don’t side with the oppressed. We cannot justify the defense of U.S. corporations while preaching the Gospel without, in turn, becoming the "hypocrites" that Jesus was preaching against. "You cannot serve God and wealth." (Lk 16:13).

In order to truly evangelize the Word of God we must rectify these problems, contradictions, and hypocrisies which are deep seated in this culture of white supremacy that have perverted the true nature of Christianity. We must realize that the Christianity that we mostly preach today is a religion that has been perverted by white elites in order to justify their own actions and thoughts. The white Jesus and the theology that surrounds it is not the true God of the world and every time we preach the white Jesus to people of color oversees we alienate them and tell them that their culture is inferior to that of our American culture. We have to recognize the radical message that Christ preached to us, that the poor and the oppressed are indeed the true blessed children of God for God is on their side. When we bring our own cultural baggage to people around the world we are just perpetuating the very thing that Jesus Christ was against, hypocritical theology. We must recognize this true Christianity over that of the "neo-Phariseetic" Christianity. We must recognize the white privilege/hypocrisy that pervades our theological thoughts and attack it in order to make ourselves better evangelizes of God’s word. In order to do this we must deny the white supremacy that permeates through our Christian doctrine and ourselves, since, as Jesus told us, "‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’" (Mk 8:34). When we evangelize we must deny this foreign white Jesus and put the native culture of the people to whom we are evangelizing to above our own dominant American culture, because it is only through one’s native culture, and a critical understanding of God’s word, that people one can find the true liberation in Christ. In the Congo (an example I used above) this would mean worshiping a Black and oppressed African Jesus and spreading God’s word to others through the Holy Bible and through social action against American and European institutions that rape and pillage that country. In order to fully spread and evangelize the true Gospel of Christ not only must we teach and preach about the true Jesus Christ but we also must fight against the diabolical forces that try to dominant people of color, and oppressed people of all races, all over the world, by fighting white supremacy, jingoism, racism, and elite corporate interests. Once all of this is recognized we can truly evangelize on truth about the true God, the true Jesus, and the true Gospel to all peoples around the globe.