003-editorial.indd 5
women — want to get rid of Planned
Parenthood, nor take away workers’
rights for collective bargaining.
All the devastating cuts proposed
by narrow minded Republicans have
a political agenda in mind: to cut the
legs from under the Democratic Party’s
voter base, just as Republicans did
when they falsely smeared acorn and
defunded grassroots organizations two
years ago. The goal, after all, is to
win back the presidency and the Senate
in 2012. It’s all so very transparent,
but it’s also a very well organized effort
to bring political power back to
the overwhelmingly white and aging
Republican Party. As a recent survey
re-confirmed, the top leadership of the
American military establishment, banks
and Wall Street, most corporations,
owners of sports teams, the media,
Hollywood, to mention a few, are all
dominated by old white men. To
maintain this trend is not an option
and I believe Democrats will be swept
back into office with a vengeance in
2012. There is a reason Republicans were
out of power for over 40 years before
they regained it in 1994: they didn’t know
how to govern then and they still don’t
know how to govern. As Malcolm X
once said, “time will tell” whether
right-wing Republicans will succeed, or
not, in convincing Americans that
they know what’s best for the country.
I think they will fail, but on the other
hand, many initially thought Hitler
would fail in Germany and in the end
it took Germany over 50 years to
recover from his mad hubris.
In this new issue of Black Renaissance
Noire, we are proud to publish a
special section on the work of Ishmael
Reed, non-fiction prose by Greg Tate
and Julio Marzán, an interview of the
great musician, David Murray, and
the Turkish poet, Nurduran Duman
(along with a few of her poems), poetry
by Tim Seibles, Janice Harrington, K.
Curtis Lyle, Sheri D. Wilson, Mervyn
Taylor and M. L. Liebler, and visual art
by the inimitable photographer, Adger
Cowans, the Congolese artist, Aimé
Mpané, the French photographer,
Marc Chamaillard, and the Peruvian
artist, Cecilia Paredes.
I must also add that brn are
republishing a photograph of the actress,
Diahann Carroll, by Adger Cowans,
because we mistakenly believed Ms.
Carroll was dead: she is not, so we place
her here amongst the living in the
sequence of Mr. Cowans great work and
apologize for the mistake we made.
We are also sad to report the deaths
of some great artists: the poet, novelist
and philosopher, Édouard Glissant, from
Martinique, the American musician
and saxophonist, James Moody and the
American painter, Ellsworth Ausby.
Again, as always, we hope you enjoy the
issue and we would like to hear from
you, pro or con, about how you think
the journal is progressing. Thank you
for your continued support of our
efforts in the past and we welcome it
in the future. n
BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE
Act, Pell Grants, the Department of
Education, the Head Start Program,
the Community Services Block Grant
Program and the Low-Income Home
Energy Assistance Program; they don’t
want to fund high-speed trains or
rebuild highways and bridges; they
want to end collective bargaining
everywhere for public sector workers,
curb Planned Parenthood, privatize
Social Security, mess with Medicare
and Medicaid as they have already
voted in the Republican-led Congress
to repeal President Obama’s health
care law and the list could go on and
on. But the questions remain: how can
a nation be enlightened without art,
music and literature? Where are the
jobs? All that Republican and Tea Party
activists seem to want to do is cut taxes
for businesses and the wealthy while
investigating and slashing government
programs. They are shortsighted, greedy
and narrow-minded people, who are
indeed against the arts and the humanities.
Their views are stupid, usually pro
war, and they endorse or represent an
economic, social, cultural and political
philosophy that is exactly what Naomi
Klein identified in her enormously
insightful book, The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
published in 2007.
As a nation we have moved
backwards into the dark days of our past.
Conservative citizens called “Birthers”
and some of their Republican
congressional leaders — add to the
growing list Donald Trump, who says
he might run for president — even
doubt President Obama was born an
American citizen and regularly call
him, his wife and children horribly
racist names; they even talk openly of
shooting him! These people live in a
fact-free world, void of compromise,
but full of virulent hatred, and they
haven’t suffered any consequences
for their actions. To say the least, it
is dispiriting to live in a place and
space of such hatred. However, after
saying all of the above, I believe that
the Republican Party led by members
of its Tea Party will be overzealous in
their push to slash and burn budgets
and agendas. The recent protests in
Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana show
that they have misread, yet again, what
white American people — a confused
group, if I may say — really want. I
don’t believe people truly want to scrap
what many on the right call “Obama
Care,” but in fact they do want more
and better health benefits, even a
public option. I don’t believe people
in this country want Republicans to
mess with or cut Medicare and/or
Medicaid or Social Security, but instead
they want these programs to become
stronger; they don’t want to get rid of
the white dominated institutions of the
National Public Radio, the National
Endowment for the Arts, or for the
Humanities either, but would rather
want these programs to be stronger,
and more diverse too. I don’t believe
American people — especially sensible
5
All these changes seem to have come
about in the blink of an eye, but they
were in fact a long-time coming. It is
nevertheless a stunning development
and an almost unbelievable, ominous
change for the worst. If we look closely
at the tran