The attempt to suppress Black culture will fail. Again!

Willie Horton was a Black rapist whose reputation was used to defeat presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1980. The late Roger Ailes (former president of Fox News) vowed to make Horton Dukakis’s running mate. The current anti-woke hysteria that has even gripped the intelligentsia is little more than Willie Horton in a cap and gown and a political version of Reefer Madness. For example, when writer William Melvin Kelley used the term “woke” in The New York Times on May 20, 1962, he meant the inability of outsiders to keep pace with the idioms created by jazz musicians. By the time outsiders understood an expression like “Can you dig it?” the jazz musicians had moved on to new expressions. The right has twisted Kelley’s definition, so the concept has been distorted and used to own the libs.

The old demagogues were brutal in their attacks on Black Americans. Every other sentence in their stump speeches included the N-word. The new demagogues, however, might be Harvard graduates. They treat Critical Race Theory as though it’s taught in elementary schools. An indication that Blacks are viewed as the leaders of woke, Critical Race Theory, and DEI, which stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, came when Coleman Hughes, a Black conservative-in-training, said that DEI was created to make whites feel guilty. He had to be reminded that DEI also refers to women and members of the LGBT and disabled communities.

One of the first actions of the Trump Administration’s Secretary of Defense was to fire Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., a Black Air Force general, then serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because, according to Hegseth, he had secured his job due to DEI. Hegseth, who already has a reputation for incompetence, clings to the old canard that Blacks are incompetent and if they advance in the military, it’s because of Affirmative Action or DEI. With this idea, the secretary reveals his ignorance of the Black military experience. Hegseth should read John A. Williams’ book, Captain Blackman, which chronicles this history.

Blacks have shown their valor in every war from the Revolutionary War, where 5,000 served, some of whom were returned to slavery for their efforts, to perpetual wars taking place abroad. If it were not for Black sailors, George Washington, who sold slaves in exchange for rum, and raffled off slave children to pay his debts, would have been captured by the British and executed.

Some 180,000 Black soldiers fought in the Civil War despite an order from the Confederate government that they be shot on sight, leading to the atrocity of the war when Confederate soldiers under the command of General Nathan Forrest massacred Black soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, even after they’d surrendered.

Black soldiers were honored by the French with the Croix de Guerre, and many were also awarded the French Legion of Honor for their service in The Great War.

They were honored by the Italians for their service in World War II. They participated in the battle in Italy that is regarded as the turning point of the war. When a massive German assault was launched on this windswept mountain village in December 1944, a scant two platoons of American infantrymen were dug in here. Their own commanding officers expected them to throw down their guns and run. But for 20 critical hours, the tiny complement of 70 GIs — all of them Black, from the U.S. Army’s segregated 92nd Infantry Division — held out against an offensive that might have changed the course of World War II.

Richard Prince, whose daily publication Journal-isms keeps tabs on the status of minority journalists, reports that during the two world wars, Black journalists were met with government resistance when they sought information about the situation of Black soldiers and their heroism.

Lamont Steptoe, a poet, was an officer in Vietnam. He said he was not only a target of white racists, but also of Black soldiers who resented his position. Harry Belafonte told me that not only did Black soldiers have to fight the enemy, but white racist soldiers as well.

Every Black soldier whom I have known suffered or suffers from PTSD after serving in Vietnam, one of the most horrible wars in history.

The current administration desires to eliminate Black soldiers’ record of service as well as Black studies. This is part of a Republican strategy to win millions of white votes is to pick fights with Blacks and Hispanics.

Those who know better behave as though Black Studies have seized the university curriculum. They should take a look at six university catalogs at random. Comedian Bill Maher certainly should. He and they will find that Western Civilization, a term that views European countries as a monolith, still dominates course content. These white studies propose that whites created all the great ideas of humanity, which might come as a surprise to William Shakespeare, who was influenced by a Black playwright, Terence, a slave. He said that the best way to prevent a slave from running away is to treat him well. The Muslims gave us Algebra. Though these Muslims have white skin in American textbooks, I’ve seen paintings in Spain where they have Black skin.

So, the constant hectoring against the American university for DEI curriculum and alleged anti-Semitism on campus, under the orders of a president who recently referred to bankers as “Shylocks,” has led to Columbia University’s capitulation to Donald Trump’s demand that the school place Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies departments into “academic receivership” for five years. The president has an excuse to deprive them of funds. This anti-intellectual attitude is why, when hostages were seized in the U.S. Embassy in 1979, none of the Embassy personnel had command of Persian, the language of their captors.

How is Black culture viewed in the rest of the world, though?

Hip hop is the international music of young people. President Trump knows this. For him, owning the Blacks, like restoring the names of Confederate generals on public buildings and military sites, or refusing to say no to the request that he pardon the killer of George Floyd, is merely part of a marketing strategy on his part. It appeals to the kind of deplorables whom H.L. Mencken made fun of. Sixteen rappers endorsed Trump to their everlasting disgrace, and at one time, he partied with the likes of Luther Campbell.

It is predicted that 3 million Africans will die by the end of the year because the administration ended all United States Agency for International (USAID) projects. Trump’s domestic policies might cause the deaths of thousands in the United States, including those of his supporters. But they won’t mind because they are members of a cult, and cult members will make any sacrifices, even drink poisoned Kool-Aid if requested by their leader. I was one of the first to identify Trump’s voters as a cult.

Unlike hip hop, jazz struggles at home but draws colossal interest abroad. When Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers visited Japan, they received the kind of reception that the Beatles received upon their arrival in New York. According to Gerald Jackson, a leading Black painter who curated a historic exhibit featuring 16 women painters, Black painting is experiencing a resurgence. Recently, as if to validate his observation, I attended an exhibit honoring the legacy of choreographer Alvin Ailey, where paintings, sculptures, and photographs by Black artists were on display at the Whitney Museum in New York and Kara Walker’s show Fortuna and the immortality (machine) at MOMA in San Francisco. Both shows were well attended.

Less noticed in the United States is the appeal of Black American literature worldwide.

I’ve attended European conferences where delegates from India, Europe, and the United States gathered to present papers on Black American literature. I’ve visited universities in China where scores of scholars have been assigned to study Black literature. I visited the Langston Hughes club in Kyoto, named for the great Black American author who visited Japan in the 1940s. Black literature is taught at European universities, including the University of Rome, which was founded before Europeans arrived in North America. I attended a Black literature class at Heidelberg University. And for those Americans who feel some connection to Roman civilization, the Romans admired African art and didn’t consider it woke.

Every clumsy attempt in the past to erase Black culture has failed. Be it ragtime, bebop, jazz, Black dance, or Black drumming. Recently, the Proud Boys, a right-wing group, were facing off against demonstrators. A man began playing jazz on a tuba, and members of both groups started dancing.

Most American professors are unaware that narratives written by Black authors in the 19th century are still in print. If whites wrote them, they’d be considered classics. Members of the Republican Party and some academics look silly to academics, scholars, and intellectuals in the rest of the world when they comment about books they haven’t read. And how long can this party survive banning books by Black and Hispanic authors, and continuing to run different versions of the Willie Horton campaign? I predicted that the Willie Horton campaign would harm President George Bush and Lee Atwater, because malice backfires, a lesson one finds in the world’s storytelling traditions and proverbs.

Governor Ron DeSantis said Florida was the place where Woke would die. His presidential campaign died instead.

Glenn Youngkin campaigned against Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Morrison was a Nobel Prize winner. There he was, recently hurriedly exiting an appearance because of a crowd booing him.

And what did her son, Ford Morrison, publisher of a new magazine called Tar Baby, say about Youngkin’s insult of a book he hadn’t read? As a result of his condemnation, sales of her book have soared.

The campaign against Black culture will fail. Consumers in capitalist countries are against the state dictating what they should read or listen to. They like variety, which is why the Republican Party, though riding high now, is headed for extinction.