BOYCOTT MENTALITY

Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories –Cabral

Boycotting is a form of dissent which is visible and immediate. It appears to bring instant results for those without power. But does boycotting work? Is it the only means of dissent for African people? Is marching and singing in 2019 the most progressive form of being heard? Where is our economic muscle when all we do is boycott Peter while still spending with Paul? You will notice other groups like BDS do not only go and boycott. Boycotting is the attention grabber to push deeper, well thought out politics. You will notice the Zionists of America (like AIPAC ) do not even bother so much with boycotting: They have a lobby. Mess with them and your show gets pulled. Mess with them, as Angela Davis ¹⁾The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has cancelled its annual gala at which iconic African American scholar and activist Angela Davis was to receive a prestigious human rights award. https://palestina-komitee.nl/?p=6642found out, means no awards for you. They are silent and effective globally. Now go and ask African people who are supposed to be all about change if they know what what lobbying is. Amazing that the most powerful form of protesting and advocating ones cause is unknown to the people who should be climbing all over the thing. However, the African mindset in 2019 is for instant results, especially those that are loud and hot and compatible with what CNN considers hot news.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of it’s many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will– Frederick Douglass

Every 5 minutes some Black person is shouting boycott this and that. And very little of it is organized. And it is so overdone it has lost all of its power. So what happened to the boycott of H&M for their monkey shirt? What has become of the boycott of Ryanair? I promise you they are back to packing black butts on seats like never before. These temporary actions betray a deep flaw within the African mentality and that is a love for what seems to be instantaneous solutions. Lobbying is far less glamours and takes far more organization, clear goals, and acumen to accomplish, yet the results are far more productive.

Can you really hurt White people by refusing to buy their stuff? Only power can hurt power and too much has been said about “black buying power” it has no true power because it cannot organize itself. Especially in America, USA, and South Africa. We are not China. China can give the finger to Apple but do you know why? Because China has Huawei. Japan could give the middle finger to USA because Japan has Yamaha, Korea has Samsung. Back to us. When you want to boycott the white economy do you think something will go out of business? For one 1/2 of those talking cannot live without those White shoes made in South Asia. And you have no alternatives. What are you going to do boycott Uncle Bens rice and buy? The Nigerian option? There is no African option! You are going to skip H&M and start buying #Ocacia

While boycott sends a message, it is only symbolic,  on a long enough timeline you will die, they will live. Wells Fargo is not going out of business because of Black People. American Airlines and BA are not going out of business either. Cell C, Vodacom, none of them. Ikea is 100% safe from anything you do. All those designer labels got contracts with Rihanna and Beyonce so they not going to get boycotted. The big box stores– no problem. But you need to eat! I have another suggestion #buyblack

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BOYCOTT GUCCI

Spike Lee said we should boycott Gucci and Prada until they hire more black designers. Sorry Spike and Ebony but don’t you think it is time for African people to not worry about who is hiring us and to simply support our own clothing brands. We need to look at this entire boycott mentality for what it is in 2019. Are we so incapable that we still need to be hired? Here is a solution, as opposed to Spike and Ebony adding press for Gucci and Prada why not just say support Ocacia? That would mean something. But then Spike is their darling, their proof of equality in Hollywood.  So, Spike is already part of the problem. And Spike has another problem it is called EGO. He wants attention or to be seen as a current conscious force representing African Americans. Let us call up Spike and ask him to wear some Ocacia clothes to promote an African owned brand since he is so concerned with African representation in fashion.  You take a close look at any Spike Lee set and see his own hiring practices. ²⁾While Spike Lee does hire African Americans, it is still odd to see him on his production website, wearing a Nike shirt and surrounded by Whites and Asians. Are there no African American tee shirt brands that he could wear? And this is not to take away from his work, but when you put up these things as an issue be **** sure you are not part of the problem. The same goes for people like Quincy Jones who surrounds himself with Whiteness and then on the odd occasion, when he is receiving a “black”award from some sellout Negro organization, has some pro-black rhetoric for the occasion.

They will boycott the Oscars when they stop winning them.

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THE PROBLEM

When you live in the master’s house and you burn it down, just know that you also make yourself homeless — Alik Shahadah

The problem with the African American struggle is the same exact thing that is wrong with how grassroots people protest in South Africa. They still need to Toyi-toyi  to get the attention of the White owned news. Long ago we got attention by locking hands and singing we shall overcome–that was then. Are these methods of dissent still applicable in our complex and globalized societies? Have we looked at the contemporary trends and seriously reviewed how we affect change?  Boycotting with marching is dead, especially dead when not done in tandem with more progressive forms of resistance like lobbying. The truth is that we like it loud and are being betrayed into these easy methods.

Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods, or tactics, or strategy– Malcolm X

Now Malcolm made it clear not to disagree over methods of struggle. But we must still evaluate, as a conscious community, the effectiveness and merit of any method used for liberation. And as per Malcolm this is where we in Nairobi have a problem because we certainly have no central objectives. What is Spike Lee’s objective with his issue with Gucci? What is the objective of the people complaining about H&M? All of them want a better cage. In simple terms that is all they want. A better position within the White world. Spike wants greater recognition of African contributions to cinema. This is a totally different objective from this page. The African Holocaust society does not want us better integrated into white wealth, to be dots in their hegemony. We want total African independence. We do not want Marvel to make another Black Panther film or for Harvard to hire more Afrocentrics. We want our OWN HARVARD, our own Marvel company, out own Gucci (aka Ocacia). Our own cinema, our own distribution. We do not want to be hired, we want to own. African Americans or Africans in America. We want the latter. And this is where all the confusion is happening. Why is this so strange? Because most of us are so mentally gone we think what is theirs is also ours. Yet Muslims in America set up their own banks, their own institutions of validation. Their own societies. Not these proxy organizations which need to look to the Zionist ADL before taking a vote.

 

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TERMINAL

So Gucci hires more African Americans–and now what? Hollywood gives more people of color awards– and then what? US senate recognizes the contributions of African Americans– and now what? Are we out of the cage of White supremacy now? Are we economically liberated like Garvey wanted? Are we independent like NOI wanted?

We often hear Jewish people complain about antisemitism but that is something deeply linked to the security of Israel on an international level. It is not some shallow complaint that is terminal. Our cries are only to relieve immediate concerns.  So, with us we have Police Brutality and then that is it. We do not have anything running underneath that struggle. Even the layman understanding of reparations is terminal. Let us get money… full stop. Most have nothing in the conversation about our economic independence. For most it is a quick fix to getting something tangible. You start talking about institutional repair (re 500 Years Later) and people start to lose interest.

Just because Civil Rights is law does not mean we all divide– Meshell Ndegeocello

So police brutality is a visible easy to market, and an eye-catching concern that is the poster child for injustice in America. It defines us like Civil Rights defined our parent generation, but as soon as they stop shooting us that is it–the end. How many things underneath this police brutality issue are attached to it so that when the world looks at this, we use it to discuss a whole plethora of issues. We see the BDS running a lobbying wing, a petition wing to bring justice for the Palestinians against Israel apartheid. Look at how that campaign is set up and see if  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a terminal campaign. It is an iceberg. That is just the tip of it. Deep in under the water are all kinds of complex political moves to establish something long term for the Palestinian people. Yet we only want more jobs from whites– and then what? Where is all of this complaining going? Is the move for ending police brutality somehow connected to deeper issues, for example low education in our communities? Is the issue of unemployment in South Africa tied to some campaign for more skills? No! All these things are terminal. We only know to want and ask for things within our myopic site. Yet Gandhi used a clothing crisis to get the British out of India.

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DEEPER ISSUES

Why are African Americans and Africans in the main not able, like everyone else, to profit from Black Friday and as such have to boycott it? Because if you could profit from it you would not give a care about boycotting. You would say “on black Friday let us only buy Black”. Do we have no black to buy from or are we so sick we do not even see other African owned businesses as alternatives. This is what enslaves people like Spike Lee. He is looking to Whites to hire us, as opposed to simply skipping them and as opposed to advertising Nike, just wear Ocacia.  Is it a sin to support a company owned by Africans? Make African businesses rich for once. Is this not what Nkrumah and Garvey wanted? Even in South Africa, everyone in the townships are running around wearing Uzzi and Redbat while none of these companies are owned by us Africans. But they will empty out their FNB bank accounts to buy these labels while their children on the farm goes hungry.

And while we are on this topic, let us also include why voting does not work for us: with or without an African face in the White house. Voting works really well for the Jews, yet what percentage of the American population do they constitute? We are 14%, yet cannot get any sort of power while holding 14% of the vote. It is the same reason why we are always victims of globalization and capitalism, because we have not set ourselves up (through economics and unity) to be in a position to capitalize on these opportunities. Because we have nothing set up to capture the money coming in, White NGOs make millions out of Africa. So, they can come in and set up their own factories to make the blankets needed to help with malaria. We have no way of capturing anything. If we had real power in industry we would never in a million years need to boycott anything, or cuss and curse Hollywood for not giving us more Oscars. Like Indians and Turks, Chinese and Arabs we would have our own Hollywood.

 

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