Booker T Washington–Style House Slave and the Line Behind Jay Z's Power Move
(Whose line is it anyway?)

September 12, 2019 | revcom.us

 

from a Revolution Club member

Booker T. Washington is known for proposing—and fighting for, including through the establishment of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities)—a certain way that a recently enslaved and systematically oppressed people could become active members of society and to rise above the muck of the being deemed by birth less than human. He stressed that Black social mobility had to be approached by not messing with the white man's power but by striving to be just like them.

Recently, Jay Z pimped off of Colin Kaepernick's selfless resistance and then threw Kap under the bus when he declared, "We are past kneeling" and was featured in pictures with Roger Goodell, lead commissioner of the NFL. It's a giant power move that required distancing himself from anything too radical for the league – i.e.: athletes using their platform to call out the way this system's police kill Black and Brown people daily, all while portraying them as animal-like “thugs.”

I think Bob Avakian hits the nail on the head:

Modern-day Uncle Toms,
"Respectable Negros,"
Who squawk out poison,
Parrot the lies of powers-that-be,
Package slander as the "truth,"
Never fail to blame the youth –
Oh you boot-licking, wannabe bourgeoisie –
You're: ALL PLAYED OUT!

So, whose line is it anyway? The Black bourgeoisie's!