Black Anti-Choicers, the Bane of My Existence

Dr. Alveda King

This past Friday, January 22, 2010 was the 37th Anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which ruled that women have a fundamental right to an abortion. The so-called “pro-life” movement plans several events and protests all over the country on this day and since the anniversary was on a Friday this year, it was an anti-choice extravaganza all weekend from coast to coast! I am staunchly pro-choice, as you may have guessed. In fact I do not even like to refer to the opposing side as “Pro-Life” – they are “Anti-Choice.” If they cared about life, they would care about the life of the woman who actually has to carry and care for the potential life that they have such a boner for…but I digress. There is a particular portion of the “Anti-Choice Movement” that I find all at once peculiar, hilarious and dangerous: Black Anti-Choicers.

The ideology at the heart of this movement is Evangelical Christianity. So, I suppose it should not be surprising that black Christians are particularly vulnerable to anti-choice rhetoric. Like their white counterparts, religious African-Americans will often take anything their pastor says as – pardon the phrase – “gospel”. If Reverend Smith says “abortion will send you to hell”, then as far as they are concerned it will. And likewise on the issue of gay marriage. The black Christian vote that helped elect President Obama is the same black Christian vote that killed gay marriage in California in 2008.

These anti-choicers have a particular race argument that drives me bonkers. They believe that Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations are part of a conspiracy to kill black people. They see abortion as black genocide perpetuated by the white liberal elite in order to reduce our numbers. They often use the following rallying cry: “Abortion is the leading cause of death in the black community!” They also employ incendiary phrases like “womb lynched.” The poster child of this movement is Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Pastoral Associate at an organization called Priests for Life. This organization is headed by a particularly sinister character named Father Frank Pavone (a guy who is on my personal anti-choice shit list). Sigh. Let’s deconstruct this shall we?

Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, is accused of being an advocate for eugenics, the practice of selective breeding. Therefore, anti-abortion blacks believe that the modern day Planned Parenthood organization is akin to the Nazis and is trying to implement selective breeding by making abortion and other forms of birth control available to black women. Historically, eugenicists have a bad reputation because those who were deemed good enough to breed according to them often did not include the poor, the immigrant classes and people of color. Was Ms. Sanger a eugenicist? Yes, she was…but that is not the end of the story.

There are two types of eugenics: positive eugenics and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics encourages those who are deemed genetically advantaged to have more children, while negative eugenics encourages limiting the children of those who are not. Methods used to limit births included abortion, sterilization and other forms of birth control (i.e. contraceptive devices, douches, natural family planning, etc…). But there is an important distinction to be made here. Sanger believed in limiting the children of those whom she thought unfit to be sure (she was a negative eugenicist), but the next logical question to ask is exactly how would those children be limited. In her own words:

“The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics…. We are convinced that racial regeneration, like individual regeneration, must come ‘from within.’ That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without.” Margaret Sanger. The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda. Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5. (Emphasis mine)

“We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother… Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.” Sanger, Birth Control and Racial Betterment. The Birth Control Review, 3(2), 11-12. (Emphasis mine)

Furthermore, unlike many of her eugenicist contemporaries, she vehemently opposed euthanasia as a method of limiting the populations of the “unfit.” Her mission was that women, of all races, nationalities and classes should have the power to determine their reproductive destinies – not men and definitely not the state. If women had this power, the problem of too many sick or unwanted children would solve itself. So what was the driving force behind Sanger? What led her to a life of fighting for the availability of family planning services? Well, maybe it had something to do with  watching her Catholic mother’s health deteriorate after having given birth to 18 children. She died at the age of 40 from tuberculosis and cervical cancer. Sanger was a nurse and cared for her mother in the final years of her life. Or maybe it was because of what she witness while working in a hospital on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1912. The Lower East Side was primarily composed of slums at that time. Sanger witnessed first hand the sickness and death experienced by women as a result of dangerous pregnancies and illegal abortions.

So you see folks…it’s complicated. And because they know that most people won’t dig that far beneath the surface of this bull shit argument put forth by black anti-choicers, many are frightened by it and actually believe Planned Parenthood is trying to slaughter people in their communities. It’s just not true, folks. As George Carlin said: “It’s all bullshit and it’s bad for ‘ya.”

FYI: Martin Luther King Jr. was presented with the Margaret Sanger Award in 1966. This award is presented annually and intended to recognize “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement.” He was unable to attend the ceremony to accept the award, but sent his wife, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, in his place. He later wrote a letter to the president of Planned Parenthood where he expressed how honored and humbled he was to receive this prestigious award: “This award will remain among my most cherished possessions. While I cannot claim to be worthy of such a signal honor, I can assure you that I accept it with deep humility and sincere gratitude.”

Do you think Dr. King would have accepted this award if he thought there was even the slightest chance that the person the award was named for was in favor of black genocide? I don’t think so.

Negro, Please

A few days ago, the buzz about a book called Game Change began to surface. This book, written by Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York Magazine’s John Heilemann, mentions some comments that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said about then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Apparently the Senator said something like this: Barack Obama is a great candidate because he is “light skinned” and has “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

I was shocked. Absolutely shocked…that Harry Reid correctly assessed a political situation. We democrats weren’t sure that he was capable of such an achievement. It might be the first time this has happened. Reid just might be one of the worst Senate leaders ever. He’s petrified of the conservative Democrats and Traitor Joe Lieberman, he can’t give a press conference to save his life (I have seen reporters struggle to maintain consciousness while hearing his answer to their own question), and he has had a majority since 2006 and hasn’t been able to do dick with it. And we are criticizing him for using the word “negro”?

Basically what he said was that Obama is black enough for the black people, but no so black that he scares the white people. He said what every black person already knows. You have to be fairer that average and speak the Queen’s English, but you have to be able to shift into what Dave Chapelle calls “street vernacular” on cue. I myself have mastered the former, but never could accomplish the latter.

As for his use of the word “negro”, I am less concerned about him sounding like a racist and more concerned about him sounding like a hick running for the town council in Texarkana in 1904.

I have one thing to say to any black person who spends more than 90 seconds thinking or talking about this incident:

Negro, please.

Embarrassing Black Celebrities: Jackson Family Edition

Sigh. I apologize for being a slow on writing this one, but here is goes.

I was at the movies over Thanksgiving weekend. The advertisements that they show before the film are annoying enough, but in addition, I had to sit through a promo for the Jackson Family’s new reality show on A & E, which premiered earlier this month. I must say, I have rarely seen a family that is more content on siphoning as much money and career reinventions as they can off of the one son that has some talent.  Mind you, I do not include Janet Jackson when I talk about this family. She is very talented in her own right and went out of her way in the 80s to distinguish herself and build a career entirely on her own. She relocated to Minneapolis and built an act from the ground up with the help of music producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. No, pals and gals, I am talking about the other Jacksons. That marginally talented, alarmingly parasitic, and financially irresponsible bunch from Gary.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Jacksons, here is a quick summary. Parents Joe and Katherine Jackson had 10 children – Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, LaToya, Marlon, Brandon (he died at birth), Michael, Randy, and Janet. They settled in Gary, Indiana and Joe formed the singing group, The Jackson Five – which included Jackie, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, and Michael – around 1966. The group made their national debut in 1969 and racked up an impressive four #1 singles in 1970. They had a “boy band” following that would have made N’Sync and New Kids on the Block jealous. They even had their own (short lived) variety show. Popularity of the group waned in the mid 70s. In the late 70s Michael Jackson’s solo career started to take off. It was very obvious from the beginning that Michael was the most talented of the five brothers. He had done a few solo albums in the 70s, but it was his solo album, Off the Wall that was his real breakthrough. And the rest is history….He went onto to iconic status, while the rest of his brothers faded into obscurity becoming pathetic has-beens. As you know, Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009. And all of a sudden, there were the Jackson brothers again….and there was his father, Joe, from whom he had been estranged for years.

Papa Jackson did a lot of press in the days following Michael’s death, particularly on June 29, 2009. At a press conference with Al Sharpton (huh?) he referred to Micheal’s success as follows: “We were famous…we were famous all over the world…” What do you mean we, douchebag? I don’t recall ever seeing Joe Jackson do the Moonwalk. I get that he formed the group and apparently drilled the boys in their dance steps relentlessly, but as a parent, taking credit for your child’s accomplishments when that child is in his 50s – it’s just tacky. But the most unbelievable, disgusting, and unconscionable thing of all was the press that Joe Jackson did before that press conference. Earlier that day – to the horror of the public – Joe Jackson had done an interview to promote his latest entertainment project!!! Yes, my friends. Four days after his son’s death he was out plugging his own crap! What. The. Fuck.

As for Jackie, Marlon, Tito and Jermaine, the description on the website of the reality show is as follows:

Behind the headlines lies a captivating family, whose lives have been unwillingly played out before cameras for decades. After 40 years in the business together, Jackie, Jermaine, Tito and Marlon have sold more than 250 million albums worldwide (I’d like to see this number broken down into how many sold when Michael left the group). Now, the brothers allow unprecedented access into their world as they record new material and rehearse for a concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Jackson Five. The Jacksons: A Family Dynasty will chronicle the brothers’ relationships with each other, their parents and their children, while also balancing the demands of their professional commitments and celebrity. (emphasis mine)

First Question: What celebrity? Can you tell me who gave a rat’s ass about the Jackson brothers before Micheal’s death this past summer? OK, fuck that – answer my second question: Who give’s a rat’s ass about them now? All of a sudden, they are “professional entertainers” again – rehearsing and records for their “tour.” Give me a break! Memo to the Jackson brother: You are not famous anymore. Enjoy the memories you have of being famous and get on with your lives – start a charity, invest in real estate or a restaurant, but stay off the damn television for fuck’s sake. This is the worst case of capitalizing off of a dead man that we have seen in a while.  These people are riding the media storm of their brother’s (and son’s) death like a mechanical bull, desperately trying to hang on as long as they can while people are still looking so they can make a buck.

Disgusting, pathetic, and oh so embarrassing.