Rudolph Lewis Comments on His Comments Regarding How To Stop The Killings


Mr. Lewis moderates the literary website Chickenbones.com




rudolph lewis wrote:

Marvin, I am going through a lot of changes in perspectives and thinking. My readings daily have some impact or influence on how I view the world and my own thinking and responses. Of course, there is some continuity, but there is development and adaptation as well. There are lots of things going on among our own thinkers and leaders that I don't fully grasp or support, that don't make full sense to me, like reparations or Ban the N-Word or Pan Africanism. They don't correspond or engage the dire realities before us.

So often we talk pass each other because we have our own ideological or doctrinal mindsets -- our different ways of being BLACK. But for me more study and more and more critical thinking and more and more reexamination remain necessary. We need more appreciation, more criticism, and more concluding from available evidence, and probably less theorizing. And we need more and more ways of presenting our findings, our appreciations, our criticisms.

But progress is slow. Still those of us in a situation to do the necessary work must do it whether others are paying attention or not, and find ways to preserve that as others catch up. I am reading a book on Alexander Crummell now that's over 15 years old and its changing how I view the past, the 19th century and the relationship to the thinking now. But I was not ready for the book 15 years ago, and if I were I did not take the time to read it for there were other things that needed to happen.

So I appreciate your coming back on my response. Today I might agree with what I wrote then but I probably would not write or respond the same way as then. You should check to see how I responded to your Farrakhan call. I was very disappointed with that and was inclined not to publish it at all. For I think that view is wrongheaded and not what we should be talking about at all and I was ready to suppress that kind of thinking. But it's kind of historic and so I published it. But I separated myself from that kind of thinking for it will take us nowhere.

My thinking is that Rev. Mr. F should have threatened to encourage people not to vote, that is, threatened the Democratic Party. But the guy has made so many deals, so many doctrinaire statements he no longer knows how to think on his toes. He loves the sound of his own voice. He's too comfortable, too self-satisfied. And we should give up that kind of thinking and support for those kinds of leaders. -- Rudy

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Dr. M Replies to Rudy:

Rudy, yes, I remember Alex Crummell as a brilliant thinker and writer of the 19th century. As per yourself, of course we change but truth remains the same--we need only get into the flow and flow. And as per Farrakhan, let us not confuse the messenger with the message--I see no reason why the concept of a nation of North American Africans cannot or will not become a reality--imagine the insanity yet reality of an Askennazi Jewish nation in the midst of the middle east, or the attempted process of making Iraq a nation. We can create whatever our hearts desire. Or, we can continue treading water until we drown. m