Tuesday, April 17, 2007

since when was blindness a good thing?

I know that justice and liberty are distinct, but the previous image of Bush as a vampire reminded me of the powerful Langston Hughes poem:

blind justice

Justice

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.


Many summers ago I was sitting on the porch of the house I was living in at the time, having a conversation with some folks about religion. One of the people there was an African-American Bahai and somehow the conversation turned to the question of why Islam seemed appealing to so many Black Americans. His answer, especially coming from a Bahai, really surprised me. He basically said that a history of oppression gave Black people a unique capacity to recognize the truth when we see it. I would question the narrow racialism implied by both examples, but would still suggest that even if it doesn't provide one with special race-based wisdom or insight, a collective history of oppression will at the very least give a person a low tolerance for bs.

3 comments:

sondjata said...

"He basically said that a history of oppression gave Black people a unique capacity to recognize the truth when we see it."

I'll decline the temptation to critique THAT comment.

On a throw away comment, since
"Lady justice" was based on Maat (scale and all). Those portraits are yet another sign of the whitewash of African culture.

sondjata said...

And, yeah, the above is truth a large number of black people appear to be unable to "recognize".

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