Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
since when was blindness a good thing?
I know that justice and liberty are distinct, but the previous image of Bush as a vampire reminded me of the powerful Langston Hughes poem:
Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
Many summers ago I was sitting on the porch of the house I was living in at the time, having a conversation with some folks about religion. One of the people there was an African-American Bahai and somehow the conversation turned to the question of why Islam seemed appealing to so many Black Americans. His answer, especially coming from a Bahai, really surprised me. He basically said that a history of oppression gave Black people a unique capacity to recognize the truth when we see it. I would question the narrow racialism implied by both examples, but would still suggest that even if it doesn't provide one with special race-based wisdom or insight, a collective history of oppression will at the very least give a person a low tolerance for bs.
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