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November 14,
2006<img src="cid:6.2.5.6.2.20061114120144.04d87ad0@freedomarchives.org.1" width=146 height=104 alt="[]">
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<a href="http://voxunion.com">VOXUNION MEDIA</a><br>
Dr. King’s Continuing Assassination(s)<br>
Jared A. Ball<br>
<br>
<br>
The
picture which ran yesterday on the front page of the online edition of
the Washington Post (11/13/06) said it all. It was a semiotic
display for the ages. Reverend Jesse Jackson consoling the
inconsolable Andrew Young at the recent dedication of the King
memorial. The embrace of two men whose careers have been tied first
to the coat-tails of the real, living, revolutionary Dr. King and then to
the falsely constructed image of a “dreamer” whose authentic politics
have been suppressed beneath the weight of propped up fraudulent
replacements. To this must be added that the photographed embrace
took place at a memorial whose final construction will rest between
monuments to Lincoln and Jefferson two men who did nothing for Black
emancipation yet whose own reconstructed images are those of liberators
(for example and details see Leronne Bennett’s <i>Forced Into
Glory</i>). The image of Jackson and Young embracing is, however,
best read as a semiotic exercise or a deconstruction of its
meaning. It fully demonstrates the existence of a societal need to
memorialize a constructed meaning of King while destroying the real
legacy of the man. The photograph and its prominent placement in
one of the nation’s leading newspapers – before even reading a story that
is actual anti-history – carries its own significance as we are
confronted (assaulted) with images which represent a continuing
assassination of King and his replacement with acceptable (i.e.
fraudulent) “leadership” (at least somewhat properly explained in Norman
Kelley’s <i>The Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black
Politics</i>). The image of the embrace, the location of the
memorial, the very <i>fact</i> of the memorial are all symbols of the
kind of devolution of radicalism that has marked this post-assassination
era.<br>
<br>
Each
year we at Voxunion attempt to remind our audience of this continued
devolution. Each year we undertake the challenge of unearthing the
“real” King, what he said, what his goals were, why he was killed and by
whom. We attempt to bring attention to this post-King backward
slide as partially detailed in the last two annual reports from
<a href="http://www.faireconomy.org">United For a Fair Economy (UFE)</a>,
those titled <i>State of the Dream</i>. These studies highlight how
King’s dream has become what he himself once described as a
“nightmare.” They demonstrate the Black American continued
devolution in key areas such as healthcare, wealth, education, housing
and incarceration. And they help explain the need and mission of
re-imaging or image-reconstruction. The image-making that Malcolm X
had long ago described as an American “science” has all but made
recognition of this devolving reality impossible. This week’s
events here in Washington, DC continue to prove that point true.
Essential are semiotic readings of this kind of imagery used as weaponry
against, in this case, Black American struggle. In her brilliant
book <i>Methodology of the Oppressed</i> Chela Sandoval brings clarity to
this point. She notes the example of a seminal semiotician Roland
Barthes and, in particular, his deconstruction of a 1956 image of a young
African boy in French military regalia standing in full salute. The
Washington Post picture of Jackson and Young needs to be read in
precisely the same manner. As Sandoval explains, in part quoting
Barthes, “‘there is no better answer’ to white French citizens nervous
about the moral benefits of conquest and colonization than the ‘zeal’
that emanates from this image of the young soldier as he serves his
‘oppressors.’” Here too the same. The image of Jackson and
Young serves our oppressors by continuing to reassure white (and Black)
America of the ultimate moral benefit to enslavement, Reconstruction, Jim
Crow, repression of Black struggle, imprisonment or forced exile of
radical activists, continuing police brutality and gross inequalities in
wealth. The weeping survivors of that struggle are shown to very
publicly remind today’s world of its improvement sad only over the
absence of the man who is said to have brought us here but <i>not</i>
over the absence of the equality the precise struggle for which the man
had to be killed.<br>
<br>
Jackson and Young both continue to have <i>post</i>-King careers which
consist of decidedly <i>anti</i>-King political maneuvering. This
includes, but is certainly not limited to, support for imperialists
(Young’s work for the Bush family and Wal-Mart), the reduction of
anti-capitalist challenges which included calls to redistribute wealth,
abolish inhumane living conditions, and the establishment of a national
minimum income into coercing contracts for a handful of Black firms
(Jackson’s Wall Street Project), and both have abandoned the kinds of
mass organizing and permanent demonstrations designed to make impossible
the normal order of business. Instead the two have opted for empty
rhetoric, camera-chasing and blatant support of corporate (white)
supremacy. Their societal function has never been more vividly
displayed. The Washington Post, in serving its own societal
function, has yet again unmasked their own. Just as Sandoval
illustrates Barthes’ notion that “image now represents an ideology” one
in support of “colonial empire” we can see how the Post uses the image of
Jackson and Young to support an imperial ideology of American “progress”
or societal “advances” since the time of King. The image, as
Sandoval describes, comes to “function as the constructed ‘artifact’ of a
particular social force.” In this case that “social force” is one
of masking the continued need for King’s biting analytical critiques of
capitalism, militarism, white supremacy and the fakery of white
liberalism. King’s legend, being too large to omit entirely, must
now be reconstructed. The paradox of course, in the words of Fanon,
is that King’s image, and those of the fraudulent replacements,
“testifies against” the man himself and against the communities he once
struggled to liberate.<br>
<br>
<br>
<a href="http://voxunion.com/MLK_In_His_Own_Words.pdf">To help facilitate
a greater understanding of King we offer the following PDF of his own
often omitted statements/views available to anyone for
download</a>. <br>
<br>
Dr. Jared A. Ball is an assistant professor of communication studies at
Morgan State University. He is editor of the Words, Beats and Life
Journal of Hip-Hop and Global Culture and is also the founder and creator
of <i>FreeMix Radio: The Original Mixtape Radio Show</i>, a rap music
mixtape committed to the practice of underground emancipatory
journalism. He and his work can be found online at
<a href="http://voxunion.com">VOXUNION.COM</a>.<br><br>
<br><br>
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