Monday, June 1, 2020

Why did Frederick Douglass believe the opposite of Charlamagne tha God?

On today's Rush show, he played a very interesting exchange he conducted with the hosts of the Breakfast Club. Its very interesting as well as very instructive. The one thing that stuck out to me more than anything else, was that during the exchange Charlamagne tha God used the phrase "the mechanism of white supremacy" four distinct times. He even elaborated on what exactly that meant to him:
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: Yeah, and, you know, I don’t disagree with you, and that’s why I’m not letting nobody politicize black pain and tell us this is one person’s fault just because they are trying to win an election in November. This is America’s fault — and the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, segregation, slavery, all of those things are and have been the proverbial knee on the back of black folks’ neck. And ’til somebody’s willing to dismantle the mechanism of white supremacy, nothin’ is gonna change.

Now this is interesting. Here's the item list, which I will number: (1) the War on Drugs, (2) mass incarceration, (3) segregation, (4) slavery. Contrast this with Frederick Douglass, who wrote that the constitution when "interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT".

Normally, when phrases of this sort are used you don't even get a meaning of what the person using it is talking about. Here, you do, and it's a very interesting thing to note the disconnect. Does that mean that Charlamagne tha God is guilty of misinterpreting the constitution? Maybe. But the use of that specific phrase "the mechanism of white supremacy" four times, tells us a lot about the role of historical revisionism by academics in what people think of history. I actually have more to say about this, but that will have to wait for a future date. Sorry to leave anybody hanging.