Dr Nathan Hare Comments on Mama's Bones
Re:White supremacy recovery as a family affair

Dr.M:

It’s better than nothing but staying within the family does not reach out and connect beyond the solitary family unit. Family meetings like we used to have in the good old days are certainly recommended and helpful for their own sake, as is family therapy; and maybe if the families could get it together it would be easier to move to another stage and connect the dots, the families. Right now I’m afraid we’re a race of disconnected and shattered dots, a polka dot people.

In my last days at Howard I often spoke of “polka dot power.” Then at San Francisco State I came up with “polka dot studies” to describe the courses being hastily set up by the white departmental chairs to augment against the black autonomy demanded by the BSU as well as courses set up by blacks without a black perspective (something like the contemporary “afrocentric,” centered there but not the there).
Doc



From: Marvin X [mailto:mrvnx@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 8:38 AM
To: Nathan Hare
Subject: RE: Mama's Bones



Well, Doc, we fight over the crumbs--James Sweeney calls it the "crummification theory." But I do believe revolution is a family affair--if and when we clean up our families the revolution will be won. People have been asking is it okay to set up a group with family members so they can recover from white supremacy. m

Nathan Hare wrote regarding Mama's Bones:

Poignant, Dr. M. That’s the same way they took Papa.

Doc



From: Marvin X



Mama's Bones



They want Mama's bones

no flesh no blood

just bones

dry

empty bones

they will be happy then

sucking her bones

wouldn't wash her feet

give her something to eat

just her bones was all

they cried aloud

went to court

over her bones

didn't have time for Mama's love

her tender touch

tales of the old south

her mourning over husband long gone

still maybe she loved him

she gave him four children, after all

why wouldn't she still love him

think of him

wonder why he let white supremacy

drown him in drink

but her bones remain

and so they scramble over them

fighting like mad dogs

when the bones are dry

no meat

no blood.

--m