by Colin Hyde
Jeremy “Spoonaz” Spooner, whom most Belizeans consider a sincere brother, posted last week on facebook that “a” media house said that Black Friday in the US has its roots in the sale of African slaves at discounted prices. That post elicited quite a number of responses, most of the responders wondering, like Spoonaz was, which archive that piece of history came from.
On the day the Americans call Black Friday, which follows their Thanksgiving Day, stores in the US have a lot of deals on their products. I have read that the main reason for these deals is to clear the shelves of old stock, to make way for new products for Krismos. You know that “new” and “obsolescence” are foundation stones of the capitalist system.
Stepping away from the day in the crosshairs briefly, this Thanksgiving has been adopted by many Belizeans, maybe because we like to eat turkey and ham, maybe because of our strong BelAm connections, or maybe because of strong tourist influence. You know that Thanksgiving is not too distant from celebrating Columbus. Of course, you are happy for the Plymouth crowd—people are people everywhere, no matter the color of their skins, etcetera, etcetera. But their descendants did some very terrible things.
Now, I think whenever you call out someone, you should list their name, and affix yours. While I don’t like having my name called in the words arena (people who know me will remember that when I initially appeared in print I had pen names), I call names. It’s an obligation when you call out people. When you call names, there is no wondering out there. I want my own mud. I don’t want anyone giving me their mud, and I am not about pinning my mud on anyone. When you call names, the one who is being called out knows immediately that the mud is on them; and with the ball in their court, they can ignore, apologize, or double-down.
Brother Spoonaz, maybe because of being nice, or for whatever reason, delivered on only one part of the deal.
Okay, squaring up the scatter shot, pray, which individual and media house spread such a wild or foolish thing? I wonder if it is that dangerous Hilly at Vibes. It can’t be the great Fonso of Wave, because he is grounded with Tracy. Aam, Love FM, aam, okay, okay, we’ll cut this short: it must be that Krem. I don’t listen to Krem all day every day but, aha, I could see why the majority of minds would turn their eyes there.
The account I’ve settled on for Black Friday is people, ehm, fraudsters skipping out on their bosses the Friday after their Thanksgiving, calling in sick so they have a four-day weekend. It’s a very interesting dynamic, employers and employees. The thing with the Black Friday “myth” is that the slave discount thing is entirely plausible. I don’t like to talk about it too much because I don’t like to get angry, but there was a time, like for 300 sakin years, when our black ancestors in this part of the world were on par with cows, horses, pigs, everything that fit the description of chattel. Our white ancestors did much worse than sell our black ancestors at discounted prices. Look, if my black ancestors had done that to my white ancestors I would feel the same way, angry.
The “myth” could have been started by someone who flat out resented the term, Black Friday. Mutabaruka will tell you that the word “black” has been abused so much that if you didn’t know better, your first thought would run to some stock market crash or massacre when you heard, Black Friday.
White people have white privilege, and it’s part of the package that they put names on things without a thought or care about the impact it has on people who are less powerful in the society. I’m not that thing they call “woke”, far from, but I will tell you that there are some things that are very chaansi. In the US, people pressured/forced the ownership of the NFL team in Washington to change the team’s name from Redskins to Commanders. “Indians” in the US considered the term extremely derogatory, and they don’t like being called Indians either. Some years back, the MLB team in Cleveland which carried that name started going by the name, “Guardians”. Psst, if you didn’t know, an Indian comes from India, not from the plains of North America.
Black Friday might be as benign as black and red ink, but someone who might be offended by it might have come up with a myth, AND I’m saying that that “myth” could have been painfully, excruciatingly true for 300 years! Wa, our Jewish brothers complain about 6 years. No, there’s no real woke in me, but I will tell you there are certain names, terms that have to be put away. Some people might say, well, that’s a good use of “black”—black and red ink; but, again, white people did such a “good” job of blackening “black” that it is best they leave it alone.
I might as well throw this in — the N word; it is not a Belize thing, but we can comment. I think it is silly for Black Americans to reject the N word, yet give their comedians license to use it. Come on, your creative store isn’t so empty you have to continue using that. And I’ll tell you this: if you call yourself N, you can keep your explanations; I can’t support you getting upset with anyone who calls you that. Hey, if you are a he and you want me to call you she, out of respect I’ll call you what you call yourself. But don’t blame me if I think you are in need of counseling, etcetera, etcetera.
Trump makes an Afro hire in his Cabinet
Whew, for a time there it looked like a certain Donald Trump would appoint no, ZERO African-Americans to his Cabinet. The story is that a sizable number of African Americans threw in their vote for him, despite knowing that a not small number of the whites who support him consider people of color as lesser human beings. Ah, voting for a leader is not a single-agenda thing.
In “fairness” to Trump, many of his first appointments were economy-related, and a right-wing government needs no one with African genes to play a part in the capitalist system that the Europeans designed. One outsider in the finance department is Scott Bessent, who for his sexual proclivity belongs in the Biden/Harris camp. One report said the financial markets shot up when they heard of Bessent’s nomination. Hopefully, that’s for love of his acumen.
I am amazed at African and Native Americans who see trickle down as the prize. No black person who hasn’t been totally, completely whitewashed can perform topnotch in that system. There’s an Indian from India in the finance arm of the Trump Cabinet, and that’s a perfect fit. You know the Indians have a caste system, so they are well-used to a society with an extremely wealthy class lording it over the masses. The Indians are coming! There’s a second Indian who was nominated for a big job.
The far-right capitalist system originates in the Old Testament books that Jesus debunked. Years ago, an accountant, noticing that I wasn’t fitting in that well in the system, said to me, “Don’t you know that you have to kiss behind until you can kick it?” And unintelligent, uncivilized me said to him, “I don’t want to kick any blank, and for sure I am not going to kiss it.” That Jesus couldn’t have been a Nordic white. He was no savage capitalist.
Ah, it took a year and a day for Trump and company to find a token. The US president announced that he was nominating former NFL player Scott Turner to be the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As far as my eyes can see, he is the first Afro American to get a big job with this Trump government. Interestingly, Dr. Ben Carson got the same job with Trump in his 2016-2020 government, and likewise he was the first (maybe only) Afro man Trump chose. Intriguingly, Trump’s enemies have a charge against him that he didn’t favor black people living in a New York apartment he owned.
I had surmised that Jimmy Carter was the first US president to choose an Afro American for a prominent job, but that honor belongs to Lyndon Johnson, during his presidency of 1964-1968. Johnson made Robert C. Weaver his, yes, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carter made Patricia R. Harris his, yes, same job, and later also made her Secretary of Health and Human Services. Carter also made Andrew Young the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.