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247
- Do you think the black man is free today?
Ex-slave Charles Smith: – No, he ain’t never been free.
As America’s oldest citizen, Charles Smith was invited to be guest of
honor at the launch of a moon rocket. He declined because he refused to
believe a man could reach the moon. One morning, in an area near his home
where I still occasionally hitched rides on mule-drawn wagons, I saw, through
the cracks of the shack I’d stayed in, a rocket. But this old man, Cape
Canaveral’s closest neighbor, didn’t notice as the rocket slowly ascended
over his dilapidated shack. He had neither electricity nor a radio to inform
him of this billion-dollar project. Even if he’d been told, he was too
malnourished, too sick to lift his head and watch the rocket.
248
A rat done bit my sister Nell
with whitey on the moon
her face and arms began to swell
and whitey’s on the moon.
I can’t pay no doctor bills
when whitey’s on the moon
ten years from now I will be paying still
while whitey’s on the moon,
You know, the man just upped my rent last night
because whitey’s on the moon.
No hot water, no toilet, no light
’cause whitey’s on the moon.
I wonder why he’s upping me
because whitey’s on the moon?
Well, I was already paying him 50 a week
and now whitey’s on the moon.
Taxes taking my whole damn check,
the junkies making me a nervous wreck,
the price o f food is going up
and if all this crap wasn’t enough,
a rat done bit my sister Nell
with whitey on the moon,
her face and arms began to swell
and whitey’s on the moon.
With all that money I made last year
for whitey on the moon,
how come I don’t got any here?
Hm! whitey’s on the moon...
You know, I just about had my fill
of whitey on the moon,
I think I’ll send these doctor bills
airmail special...
... to whitey on the moon!
249
Six hundred black babies in Chicago died of rat bites and malnutrition
the year a flag was planted on the moon. I stayed with a family in Detroit,
and four of the children were bitten by rats while sleeping. Their weeping
was drowned out by the motorists tearing along the highway right outside the
house.
Trapped in our own system, we whites must drive
superhighways to get from our protected suburbs to our jobs downtown without
being confronted by the rats, misery, and violence in the ghettos. But what
was done to us in childhood to make us repress our natural love for others?
Allowing us to literally drive over them without a thought? What inner wounds
can make us create such an infernal noise in this home for our shared
unhealed pain?
250
Yes, the vagabond wandering on foot below busy
highways will see society quite differently from the motorist inside the
system. Coming up from the South on a late winter night, you’re frightened by
the speed of the traffic. You see it passing on the elevated highways and
realize that your only chance of succeeding is to get up there into all that
speed. You try to climb up the icy slopes but keep slipping back. Your
Southern dream of leaving the “sweltering heat of injustice and oppression”
turns into a nightmare as you realize that the icy slopes don’t lead to
mountains that have been made low or rough places that have been smoothed as
in Dr. King’s dream. Eventually you give up the Sisyphean climb and wander on
foot in the shadow of the dark pillars under the roadways. Though the pillars
seem like the same old Greek plantation pillars already confining you to a
new ghetto, you still have hope. You haven’t yet realized that you’re in the
process of entering a divided world, a ghastly realization of H.G. Wells’ The
Time Machine, populated by two distinct races. The Eloi are creatures of the
light for whom life is a picnic, except at night, when dark subterranean
beings surface to prey on them. The Morlocks, who run all the machinery,
can’t bear light. Neither the Morlocks nor the Eloi are real; they’re aspects
of humanity that their living conditions guided in a certain direction.
As a vagabond, you’ll see this terrifying vision of our unequal
societies today—the forced ghettoization of millions of Southern blacks, who
migrated toward prosperity and hope in the North just as today Muslim
immigrants have been drawn to Europe. You see in different—perhaps more
human—terms than the sociologist. You understand that, for my friends with my
book (right photo), there’s been no upward mobility since I met them 42 years
ago. They’re still stuck in the same shacks (left photo), still locked
generation after generation into a permanent underclass, literally run over
by busy drivers and thundering trucks. The vagabond has the advantage of
standing on the outside and being able to move quickly between different
milieus. These milieus aren’t just numbers and statistics since you can only
survive among the Eloi and Morlocks if, in spite of what the world around you
suggests, you believe they too are human beings.
Though these elevated highways symbolize the poor
immigrant’s struggle against an inhuman system, they’re equally
representative of the powerlessness of those who ride them—over increasingly
misanthropic and deserted cities that they, as a result of distorted
priorities, no longer dare navigate on foot. In these barren anxiety-ridden
and seemingly “neutron-bombed” landscapes, a car becomes a necessity. The
reasonable answer, therefore, is to create even more concrete spaghetti and
human sterility, which is why there’s no longer enough money for public
transportation for the poor. At the same time, we go on selfishly destroying
the climate so that further millions of refugees from the south will flee
north and have to be accommodated by our children in
the future. Rather than integrate with our neighbors, we’ll start building
Trump-like walls to keep them out.
254
Though the world can’t afford this unchecked private consumption,
we’re becoming more trapped in a vicious circle. We’re forced into decisions
that, from our concrete horizon, suddenly seem reasonable—such as military
intervention in poor countries for more oil. A small percentage of the world
thus plundered most of the earth’s cheap energy reserves in a single century.
Car radios and TVs bombard us with sweet “Let’s get away from it all”
messages to get us to buy bandages to soothe our aching wounds, making us
blind to our environmental destruction and climate racism. In our evasive
flight, we throw ourselves into ever more contempt for the future of brown
children, both abroad and at home. We insist on our “right” to drive our
children to remote private schools in climate-damaging SUVs (in the US, away
from blacks, and in Europe away from brown children in neighboring schools). The
vicious circle increasingly comes to resemble a flight away from the poverty,
ghettoization, and suffering we’ve created. A chaotic flight drowning in
music and messages about the material means for this flight means creating
the need for more flight—flight away from ourselves and everything we’ve
built up, flight into ourselves, and out into loneliness. Fleeing whites
spend more on a weekend-long ski trip than the underclass in the cities makes
in a week (sometimes in a month). And yet, while we’re oppressors in one
sense, we feel just as ensnared by this system as our victims. And
fundamentally just as unhappy.
For God’s sake,
you’ve got to give more power to the people!
There’s some people up there
hogging everything,
telling lies, giving alibies,
about the people’s money and things.
And if they’re going to throw it away
they might as well give some to me.
They don’t care about the poor,
they have never had misery.
There’s some people who are
starving to death
whom they never knew, but only heard of,
and they never had half enough.
If you don’t have enough to eat,
how can you think of love?
You don’t have time to care
what crimes you’re guilty of
For God’s sake,
why don’t you give more power to the people?
256
The vicious circle of our consumption creates additional artificial
needs. Our behavior is already flooding or drying up the livelihoods for many
of the world’s brown citizens and imposing on them escalating water and sand
wars, driving millions of climate refugees to our shores. True democracy
faces a dilemma when politicians in the First World think only of securing
reelection, and they’re backed by selfish voters who don’t want their
oppressive behavior limited in the name of the greater good. We let these
leaders sweep problems under the rug, selling false hopes to the poor, so
that they don’t demand from us the behavioral changes necessary for our
children’s future. Through cynical racism, we push the problems we face today
onto our children tomorrow. As a consequence, they will likely feel “forced”
in the future into climate-fascist measures—gigantic walls and military
buildup to keep the poor out or, domestically
speaking, blacks and browns down.
While my parents’ generation worshipped American military for freeing
us in WW2, my generation saw the US endlessly install brown dictatorships. My
prejudice lasted up until Clinton’s liberation of Haiti and Kosovo when I
actively “integrated” (embedded) with American military.
258
In Norfolk, VA, one of the biggest ports in the world for warships,
this starving woman tried to get to a hospital because she was experiencing
chest pains, but she had no money for an ambulance. Every morning she sees
warships being built through her grimy windows. Lacking TV—she has no
electricity—her only entertainment is to watch an aircraft carrier —a vessel
that burns more energy in one minute (267 gallons) than her oil lamp would
use in one year (12 gallons).
As Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial
complex:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
259
Statesmen are trying to see who’s got
the power to kill the most.
When they are tired of power
the world is going to be a ghost.
They know we’re not satified
the way they scream and holler.
They give us a promise
and throw in a few more dollars.
There’s no price for happiness,
there’s no price for love.
Up goes the price of living
and you’re right back where you were.
Now we’re going to get on up
and get some more of it.
For God’s sake, give more power to the people...
261
We say that our outcasts throw their garbage into the backyard because
in the South they were used to throwing it out the kitchen window to the pigs
or goats. I’ve come to see it as an impotent protest
against a system that insists on preserving poverty while producing
goods at such a rate that it takes the best brains to think up ways to sell
them and the worst criminals to dump the toxic waste.
Under democratic welfare capitalism, it’s our duty as voters to
constantly adjust free-market forces to ensure fair distribution and avoid
crises. Yet our system has never been good at providing work for all. We
therefore have to dump the surplus—luxury goods for
the upper class, toxic waste and arms leveled against the lower class—in our
“backyards,” that is, in Third World countries.
Backyard dumping for profit has become such an
essential element of our system that without the biggest waste disposal
agency of them all, the Pentagon, domestic unemployment would be noticeably
higher. Although twice as many jobs could be created for the same dollars by
investing in social welfare, the environment, and the climate, it’s the
nature of the system to thwart planning an economy that produces human rather
than material (deadly) goods. Without our intervention, the system thereby
creates a frame of mind that forces us to “backyard dump” both our domestic
ghettos and poor countries overseas.
263
Disposable society has thrown away the best in me.
It’s thrown away sincerity,
the keystone of integrity.
Disposable to throw away,
buy something new another day.
There is nothing made that’s made to stay.
Planned absolescence will make you pay:
paper plates, cardboard skates, plastic silverware,
automobiles with disposable wheels,
wigs instead of hair, that’s how it is.
Disposable the way you love,
not exactly what you’re thinking of.
Dispose of me when you are through
for fear that I’ll dispose of you.
Disposable your closest friend,
you’re supposed to love right to the end.
Your rigid mind won’t let you bend.
You’re further gone than you pretend...
264
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247
Jeg: Tror
du, at de sorte er frie i dag?
Eks-slave Charles Smith: – Nej, de har aldrig været frie.
Charles Smith, som hævdede at være USA’s ældste borger, blev inviteret som
æresgæst til affyringen af en måneraket, men han afslog, da han nægtede at
tro på, at et menneske kunne nå månen. Tæt ved hans hjem, i et område hvor
jeg stadig fik lifts med muldyrtrukne vogne, så jeg en morgen affyringen af
en raket gennem sprækkerne i den shack, jeg boede i. Men denne gamle mand,
Cape Canaverals nærmeste nabo, opdagede slet ikke,
at raketten langsomt steg op over hans frønnede shack. Han havde ingen
elektricitet og radio, som kunne fortælle ham, hvornår dette milliardprojekt
røg i luften. Og hvis han havde fået det at vide, var han alligevel for syg
af underernæring til at løfte hovedet og se raketten.
248
A rat done bit my sister
Nell
with whitey on the
moon
her face and arms
began to swell
and whitey’s
on the moon.
I can’t pay no doctor
bills
when whitey’s on the moon
ten years from now I
will be paying still
while whitey’s on the moon,
You know, the man just
upped my rent last night
because whitey’s on the moon.
No hot water, no
toilet, no light
’cause whitey’s on the moon.
I wonder why he’s
upping me
because whitey’s on the moon?
Well, I was already
paying him 50 a week
and now whitey’s on the moon.
Taxes taking my whole damn check,
the junkies making me
a nervous wreck,
the price o f food is going up
and if all this crap wasn’t enough,
a rat done bit my
sister Nell
with whitey on the
moon,
her face and arms
began to swell
and whitey’s
on the moon.
With all that money I
made last year
for whitey on the
moon,
how come I don’t got any here?
Hm! whitey’s
on the moon...
You know, I just about
had my fill
of whitey on the moon,
I think I’ll send
these doctor bills
airmail special...
... to whitey on the
moon!
249
I Chicago døde 600 sorte spædbørn af rottebid og underernæring det år,
et flag blev plantet på månen. I Detroit boede jeg hos en familie, hvor fire
af børnene var blevet bidt af rotter, mens de sov. Deres gråd blev kun
overdøvet af bilisterne, der racede forbi på motorvejen lige
uden for huset.
Fanget i vort eget system må vi hvide jage ad superveje for trygt at nå fra
sikre forstæder til arbejdet i centrum uden at blive konfronteret med
rotterne, nøden og volden i ghettoerne. Men hvad blev der
gjort ved os i barndommen for at få os til at undertrykke vores naturlige
kærlighed til andre? Så vi bogstaveligt talt kan køre over dem uden at tænke
på dem? Hvilke indre sår kan få os til at skabe en så infernalsk larm i dette
hjem for vores fælles uhelede smerte
250
Jo, som det kan
høres, vil vagabonden, der vandrer til fods under de travle motorveje, se
samfundet på en ganske anden måde end bilisten inden for systemet. Når man
kommer op fra Syden en sen vinteraften, bliver man skræmt over trafikkens hastighed.
Man ser den passere forbi hen over sig på de forhøjede motorveje og indser,
at den eneste chance, man har for at klare sig, er at komme op i al den
bedøvende fart. Man prøver at klatre op ad de isdækkede skråninger, men
bliver ved med at glide ned. Drømmen, man havde fra Syden, om at forlade ”uretfærdighedens
og undertrykkelsens ulidelige hede” bliver til et mareridt, efterhånden som
det går op for en, at de tilisede skråninger ikke fører til ”dale, der er
udjævnet og bjerge, der er fladet ud” som i Kings drøm.
Til sidst opgiver man sin Sisyfosopstigning og vandrer til fods
i skyggen af de mørke søjler under vejbanerne. Selv
om søjlerne virker som de samme gamle græske plantagesøjler, der allerede
indespærrer en i en ny ghetto, har man stadig håb. Det er endnu ikke gået op for en,
at man er i færd med at træde ind i en delt verden, som er en uhyggelig
virkeliggørelse af H.G. Wells ”Tidsmaskinen”, af
to forskellige racer.
Eloiderne er lysets væsner, for hvem tilværelsen er en leg undtagen om natten,
mørkets underjordiske væsener dukker op for at jage dem.
Morlokkerne
lever under jorden, driver maskineriet og tåler ikke lys. Hverken morlokker
eller eloider er virkelige mennesker, men blot sider af mennesket, som
deres levevilkår har styret i en bestemt retning.
Som vagabond vil man se denne skræmmende vision af vores ulige samfund i dag – den tvungne ghettoisering af millioner
af sorte fra sydstaterne, som vandrede mod velstand og håb i nord, ligesom
muslimske indvandrere i dag er blevet tiltrukket af Europa. Du ser anderledes
- måske mere menneskeligt - end sociologen. Du
forstår, at for mine venner med min bog (billedet til højre) har der ikke
været nogen opadgående mobilitet, siden jeg mødte dem for 42 år siden. De
sidder stadig fast i de samme hytter (venstre billede), er stadig generation
efter generation låst fast i en permanent underklasse, der bogstaveligt talt
bliver kørt over af travle bilister og tordnende lastbiler
Vagabonden har den fordel, at han står udenfor og kan bevæge sig hurtigt mellem
forskellige miljøer. Disse miljøer er ikke kun tal og statistikker, da man
kun kan overleve blandt eloider
og morlokker, hvis man, på trods af hvad verden omkring
en antyder, magter
at tro på at mennesket er deres virkelige identitet.
Selv om disse hævede motorveje symboliserer den fattige
immigranters kamp mod et umenneskeligt system, er de lige så repræsentative
for magtesløsheden hos dem, der kører på dem - over stadig mere misantropiske
og øde byer, som de som følge af forvrængede prioriteringer ikke længere tør
navigere til fods i. I disse golde, angstfyldte og tilsyneladende
"neutronbombede" landskaber bliver bilen en dødelig nødvendighed. Det
fornuftige svar er derfor at skabe endnu mere betonspaghetti og menneskelig
sterilitet, hvorfor der ikke længere er penge nok til offentlig transport for
de fattige. Samtidig fortsætter vi egoistisk med at ødelægge klimaet, så
yderligere millioner af flygtninge fra syd vil flygte nordpå og skal
indkvarteres af vores børn i fremtiden. I stedet for at integrere os med
vores naboer, begynder vi at bygge Trump-lignende mure for at holde dem ude.
254
Selv om verden ikke har råd til dette ukontrollerede privatforbrug, bliver vi
mere og mere fanget i en ond cirkel. Vi tvinges til beslutninger, der fra
vores konkrete horisont pludselig virker fornuftige - som f.eks. militær
intervention i fattige lande for at få mere olie. En lille procentdel af
verden har således plyndret det meste af jordens billige energireserver på et
enkelt århundrede. Bilradioer og tv'er bombarderer os med søde "Lad os
komme væk fra det hele"-budskaber for at få os
til at købe bandager til at lindre vores ømme sår, hvilket gør os blinde for
vores miljøødelæggelse og klimaracisme. I vores destruktive,
undvigende ansvarsflugt kaster vi os ud i stadig større foragt for brune
børns fremtid – både ude og hjemme. Vi insisterer på
vores "ret" til at køre vores børn til fjerntliggende privatskoler
i klimaskadelige – i USA væk fra de sorte og i Danmark væk fra de brune
børn i naboskolen. Den onde cirkel får mere og mere karakter af flugt væk fra
fattigdommen, udstødelsen og lidelsen, vi har skabt. En kaotisk flugt, der
drukner i musik og budskaber om midler til denne flugt, midler som skaber
behov for mere flugt, flugt bort fra os selv og alt, vi har bygget op, flugt
ind i os selv og ud i ensomheden. Flygtende hvide bruger
mere på en weekendlang skitur end underklassen, vi
efterlader i storbyen, kan tjene på en uge (nogle
gange på en måned). Men selv om vi i én forstand er undertrykkere, føler
vi os lige så fanget af dette system som vores ofre, og er i
bund og grund lige så ulykkelige.
For God’s sake,
you’ve got to give more power to the
people!
There’s some people up there hogging everything,
telling lies, giving alibies,
about the people’s money and things.
And if they’re going to throw it away
they might as well give some to me.
They don’t care about the poor,
they have never had misery.
There’s some people who are starving to death
whom they never knew, but only heard of,
and they never had half enough.
If you don’t have enough to eat,
how can you think of love?
You don’t have time to care
what crimes you’re guilty of
For God’s sake,
why
don’t you give more power to the people?
256
Vort
forbrugs onde cirkel skaber yderligere kunstige behov. Vores adfærd
oversvømmer eller udtørrer allerede i dag levebrødet for mange af verdens brune
medborgere og påtvinger dem eskalerende vand- og sandkrige, der driver
millioner af klimaflygtninge mod vore kyster. Det
sande demokrati står over for et dilemma, når politikere i den rige verden
kun tænker på at sikre genvalg, og bakkes op af egoistiske vælgere, der ikke
ønsker, at deres undertrykkende adfærd begrænses i det almene vels navn. Vi
lader disse ”ledere” feje problemerne ind under gulvtæppet ved at sælge varm luft til
ulandene, så de ikke kræver af os de
adfærdsændringer, der er nødvendige for vores børns fremtid. Gennem
kynisk racisme skubber vi de problemer, vi står over for i dag, over på vores
børn i morgen. Vi berøver
også dem enhver empati og anstændighedsfølelse, når de ad åre som konsekvens
vil føle sig ”tvunget” ud i voldsomme klimafascistiske tiltag med gigantiske
mure og militær opbygning for at holde de fattige ude eller
– vore hjemlige sorte/brune – nede.
258
I Norfolk, VA, en af verdens største havne for krigsskibe, forsøgte
denne sultende kvinde at komme på hospitalet, fordi hun havde smerter i
brystet, men hun havde ingen penge til en ambulance. Hver morgen ser hun
gennem sine tilsmudsede
vinduer krigsskibe blive bygget lige udenfor. Hun har ikke noget fjernsyn -
hun har ingen elektricitet - og hendes eneste underholdning er at se et
hangarskib - et fartøj, der brænder mere energi på et minut (267 gallons) end
hendes olielampe ville bruge på et år (12 gallons).
Som
Eisenhower advarede om det militærindustrielle kompleks:
Hvert våben, der fremstilles, hvert krigsskib, der søsættes, hver
raket, der affyres, er i sidste ende et tyveri fra dem, der sulter og ikke
får mad, fra dem, der fryser og ikke får tøj på.
259
Statesmen are trying to
see who’s got
the power to kill the
most.
When they are tired of
power
the world is going to
be a ghost.
They know we’re not
satisfied
the way they scream
and holler.
They give us a promise
and throw in a few
more dollars.
There’s no price for happiness,
there’s no price for
love.
Up goes the price of
living
and you’re right back
where you were.
Now we’re going to get
on up
and get some more of
it.
For God’s sake, give more power to the
people...
261
Vi siger, at
vore udstødte smider deres affald ud i baggården, fordi de i Syden var vant
til at smide det ud af køkkenvinduet til grisene eller gederne. Jeg er selv
kommet til at se det som en magtesløs protest mod et system, som insisterer
på at opretholde fattigdom og marginalisering, mens det producerer varer i et
sådant omfang, at det kræver de bedste hjerner til at finde på måder at sælge
dem på, og de værste kriminelle til at dumpe det giftige affald.
Vores held til at leve under
den demokratiske velfærdskapitalisme gør det til vores ret og pligt som
vælgere konstant at justere de frie markedskræfter for at sikre en retfærdig
fordeling og undgå kriser. Alligevel har vores system aldrig været godt til
at skaffe arbejde til alle. Vi er derfor nødt til at dumpe overskudsproduktionen
- luksusvarer til overklassen, giftigt affald og skrot samt våben mod
underklassen - i vores "baggårde", dvs. i tredjeverdenslande
Baggårdsdumping med henblik på
profit er blevet et så væsentligt element i vores system, at uden det største
affaldsbortskaffelsesagentur af dem alle, Pentagon, ville den indenlandske
arbejdsløshed være markant højere. Selv om der kunne skabes dobbelt så mange
arbejdspladser for de samme dollars ved at investere i social velfærd, miljø
og klima, ligger det i systemets natur at modarbejde planlægningen af en
økonomi, der producerer menneskelige frem for materielle (dødbringende)
goder. Uden vores indgriben skaber systemet derved en tankegang, der tvinger
os til at "dumpe" både vores hjemlige ghettoer og de fattige lande.
263
Disposable society has thrown away the
best in me.
It’s thrown away sincerity,
the keystone of integrity.
Disposable to throw away,
buy something new another day.
There is nothing made that’s made to
stay.
Planned obsolescence will make you pay:
paper plates, cardboard skates, plastic
silverware,
automobiles with disposable wheels,
wigs instead of hair, that’s how it is.
Disposable the way you love,
not exactly what you’re thinking of.
Dispose of me when you are through
for fear that I’ll dispose of you.
Disposable your closest friend,
you’re supposed to love right to the
end.
Your rigid mind won’t let you bend.
You’re further gone than you pretend...
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