The Firing of Marc Lamont Hill Raises This Question

Discussion in 'Race, Religion, Science and Politics' started by OckyDub, Dec 19, 2018.

  1. OckyDub

    OckyDub is a Verified MemberOckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
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    Haven't looked at CNN since they fired him.

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    When noted black intellectual Marc Lamont Hill spoke at the UN last month about justice for the Palestinian people, critics like those in the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were quick to condemn him. They said his words implied support for the “one state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which his detractors claimed was an anti-Semitic and even genocidal notion. Just one day after Hill made his comments, CNN responded to the furor by firing Hill from his post as a commentator on the network. Soon thereafter both the president and chair of the board of trustees of Temple University, where Hill teaches, denounced him and his “hate speech.” Civil libertarians were quick to defend Hill and his right to free speech, and supporters of the Palestinians groused about yet another public figure silenced for evidencing sympathy with the Palestinians.

    Yet some of the most insightful criticisms of the way Hill was treated pointed out the controversy’s racial context: Hill’s was just the most recent case in a long history of blacks being publicly excoriated for “daring” to speak out on the great issues of the day in ways that defy white conventions. This was particularly true when discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict in a manner that challenges the carefully circumscribed discourse enforced by strongly pro-Israeli groups like the ADL.

    This has happened before. Indeed, next year, 2019, marks the fortieth anniversary of a similar brouhaha that erupted when another black man very much in the public eye dared to challenge the rigidly pro-Israeli understanding of Americans’ approach to the Middle East: the Andrew Young Affair.

    In August 1979, President Jimmy Carter forced the American ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, to resign following revelations that Young had secretly met once with an official from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in violation of an American pledge to Israel not to deal with the PLO in any way. Young, the highest-ranking black official in the Carter administration, had met the official to advance American policy aims but nonetheless was fired after facing a barrage of hostile public criticism, notably by American Jewish organizations.

    When it was soon revealed that the American ambassador to Austria, a Jewish industrialist from Cleveland named Milton Wolf, also had met several times with PLO officials earlier that year but without similar repercussions, African-Americans exploded in fury and rallied behind Young. Why the double standard, they demanded to know? Some, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Joseph Lowery and Operation PUSH’s Jesse Jackson, quickly announced they would continue Young’s efforts by themselves talking to the PLO. They then separately traveled to Lebanon, met PLO Chair Yasir Arafat, and presented him with their ideas for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lowery and Jackson insisted that black Americans had a legitimate role to play in the formulation of American foreign policy discussions and decisions, just like any other ethnic or religious group in the country. They were not going to be muzzled by a refusal to meet with any particular side in the conflict.

    What happened to both Marc Lamont Hill and Andrew Young speaks volumes about race, foreign policy, and American positions on the Middle East. Both instances hearken back to long-held black complaints that their leadership voices are not welcome, whether in fields of life long dominated by well-educated whites or even in their own Civil Rights organizations. One of the key demands of the Black Power movement in the 1960s in fact was that African-Americans must take charge of their own destinies, their own groups, and formulate their own strategies and tactics for liberation. This was exemplified when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) asked white members to leave the group in 1966, leaving blacks to lead SNCC and whites to go out and organize their own community. Other black forces in the 1960s and 1970s similarly demanded political and cultural autonomy.

    Another way that this black autonomy was expressed during that heady period of time was by asserting blacks’ right to speak out on the great foreign policy issues of the day regardless of whether or not the white establishment approved. Martin Luther King, Jr. accordingly defied his critics by denouncing the Vietnam War in 1967.

    No topic proved more controversial in this regard than the Arab-Israeli conflict. Black Power advocates hailed the various Third World liberation movements underway in the 1960s, and accordingly saw themselves and the Palestinians as kindred peoples of color each fighting against a racialized system of imperialism and domination. Malcolm X visited East Jerusalem in 1959 and Gaza in 1964, and publicly denounced Israel and Zionism. SNCC issued a newsletter article that spoke out forcefully in support of the Palestinian struggle against Israel shortly after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. A few weeks later black militants at the National Conference for New Politics in Chicago arranged for the gathering to issue a statement against Israel.

    Thereafter the floodgates of black pro-Palestinianism opened. Stemming first and foremost from their Black Power internationalism, the increasingly vocal stances in favor of the Palestinians emerging from activists in the Black Panther Party, the Black Arts Movement, even individuals like the boxer Muhammad Ali, also emanated from blacks’ insistence that their voices mattered. They no longer would sit in the back of the foreign policy bus lest they upset their white benefactors and political allies who urged them to stick to speaking about race relations only.

    In the 1970s these attitudes began moving from Black Power radicals into the African-American mainstream. The Congressional Black Caucus and politicians associated with it like Shirley Chisholm and Walter Fauntroy, for example, spoke sympathetically about the Palestinian experience. The National Black Political Assembly in Gary, Indiana issued a statement critical of Israel. In the wake of the Andrew Young Affair, religious groups like the Black Theology Project and the National Black Pastors’ Conference affirmed Palestinian rights, as did secular organizations like TransAfrica. They once again were affirming both the need for a just and peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that included talking to the PLO as well as the right of black Americans to speak publicly about the Middle East, even if such speech angered pro-Israeli forces.

    African-Americans well know the dangers of publicly speaking their minds. Yet many also have felt for decades that the Palestinians, like themselves, are a people of color seeking to be free who deserve black Americans’ public support. This is why blacks from Ferguson, Missouri and West Bank Palestinians visited one another in 2014 and 2015, and tweeted back and forth about how to deal with the guns and tear gas used against them by security forces in their respective homelands. This is why rappers like Method Man, Jasiri X, Boots Riley, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli perform songs about the Palestinians. This is why the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine garnered over 1,100 signatures, including those of groups like the Dream Defenders and Hands Up United, and individuals like Angela Davis and Cornel West. People may be trying to silence Marc Lamont Hill, but the long history of black support for the Palestinians suggests that voices like his will continue to be raised.


    Michael R. Fischbach is professor of history at Randolph-Macon College, and author of the new book Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color (Stanford University Press, 2018).


    This article was originally published at History News Network
     
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  2. Winston Smith

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    Damn, @OckyDub I forgot that your former ATL mayor Andrew Young was in the Carter Administration and the whole resignation thing!

    You see they’re going after Alice Walker, too?

    It would take a much longer thread than this, but it seems like the Black-Jewish thing is heating up again due to Zionist Jews who want to denigrate anybody (including other Jews) who dare criticizes Israel. And it’s not just a race thing, plenty of white people who dared criticized Israel on the Palestinian issue have paid a price, such as former Illinois Republican Paul Findlay who caught hell for this 1980s book (which is one of the first books I read on the issue as an adolescent):

    [​IMG]
    They Dare to Speak Out - Wikipedia

    but black critics are especially lumped in as “anti-semites” as if Andrew Young and Lamont Hill are on a corner wearing bow ties, selling bean pie, and passing out copies of the Protocols of Zion.

    I’ll just refer younger CA squad to the works of Harold Cruse for the black history, and University of Chicago scholar John Mearsheimer on the U.S. policy front:

    [​IMG]
     
  3. OckyDub

    OckyDub is a Verified MemberOckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
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    ACLU Sues Texas AG, Universities Over Law Barring Anti-Israel Boycotts

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    One day after a Texas elementary-school speech pathologist claimed she lost her job after refusing to sign a pro-Israel oath, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed its own lawsuit, claiming the state’s anti-boycott law violates the Constitution by forcing workers to choose between their job and their First Amendment rights.

    The lawsuit, filed Tuesday night in Austin, alleged that current law requiring contractors to certify they will not boycott Israel or Israeli-controlled territories violates the First Amendment. The complaint named as defendants State Attorney General Ken Paxton, two school districts, and two universities.

    “This lawsuit is about our fundamental First Amendment rights,” Edgar Saldivar, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “Our goal is for the courts to declare this law unconstitutional so people do not have to go through political and ideological litmus test just to get a state contract.”
    The four plaintiffs participating in the ACLU’s case—a college student, a freelance writer, a Ph.D candidate at Rice University, and a local radio reporter—said they “all either lost contracting opportunities because they refused to sign the No Boycott of Israel certification or signed the certification at the expense of their First Amendment rights.”

    “All four plaintiffs in this case were put in different situations of having to bargain between obtaining work or satisfying their First Amendment rights,” Saldivar said.

    John Pluecker, a freelance writer and translator, was already working on translating an art essay for the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston when he was confronted with the new anti-boycott rules.

    “Pluecker did not sign the contract. Instead, he crossed out the provision and initialed next to it to indicate his disapproval of that provision in the contract,” the lawsuit explained. “Pluecker then submitted to UH a copy of the contract with the crossed out and initialed No Boycott of Israel certification, indicating he did not agree with this provision.”

    When a museum representative contacted him to sign a new contract, this time without any redactions, Pluecker refused again and “was forced to forgo payment for the translation work he had already begun.”

    “It felt like a line I was not willing to cross,” Pluecker told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I have a long relationship with the University of Houston and while my former colleagues were supportive of my decision to not sign the provision, at the end there was nothing they could do.”

    He added: “I have been vocal about my beliefs regarding this provision for a while but this does affect my livelihood. I don’t know if people were planning to hire me at the university or elsewhere and didn’t because they knew they couldn’t contract me.”

    George Hale, another plaintiff, has been a contract journalist for KETR a radio station broadcasted through Texas A&M University System, since 2016.

    This spring, Hale noticed the new “anti-BDS law clause had showed up in his contact with the NPR northeast Texas member station,” he wrote in a Facebook post about the lawsuit.

    Despite his known political leanings, he signed the certification in order to keep his job and his work on an “ongoing investigative project” that “he did not feel that he could quit midway.”

    “In George’s case, he was put in the unfortunate situation of putting his work above his rights,” Saldivar said.

    The other two plaintiffs are Obinna Dennar, a Ph.D. candidate at Rice University who says she forfeited payment for judging a high-school debate tournament rather than sign the certification; and Zachary Abdelhadi, a student at Texas State University, who also says he had to forgo high-school debate judging opportunities.

    Last year, the same Texas law caused uproar after citizens seeking hurricane relief were first asked to sign an anti-boycott pledge. State officials at the time denied withholding aid if the providing wasn’t signed, and said local authorities simply misinterpreted the new law.

    “The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to boycott, and the government cannot condition hurricane relief or any other public benefit on a commitment to refrain from protected political expression,” Andre Segura, Legal Director of the ACLU in Texas, said in a statement at the time.
    The ACLU’s Tuesday lawsuit double downs on elementary-school speech pathologist Bahia Amawi’s suit this week against Paxton and the school district that ended her contractual job because she would not pledge loyalty to Israel.

    “She had a yearly contract with Pflugerville Independent School District and this year, her contract has new language about not boycotting Israel,” Carolyn Homer, Bahia’s attorney at the Council of American-Islamic Relations, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “She told the school ‘I can’t sign this’ and the school basically said ‘well it’s mandatory so if you can’t sign it, we can’t pay you.”

    Homer said her client, like the ACLU, seeks to strike down the Texas law completely and have the new provision removed from every contract in the state. Over the past year, federal courts have frozen the implementation of similar versions of the law in Arizona and Kansas, citing constitutional concerns brought by the ACLU.

    “Currently 25 states that have a form of this law, but it has taken off in the last 4 years or two and they are being passed by red and blue states,” Homer explained. “America has a lot of political support of Israel.”
     
  4. OckyDub

    OckyDub is a Verified MemberOckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
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  5. machoBLKnerd

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    i dont have anything substantive to say here. i would just love to smash marc. 40 and fine. i love me an intellectual with street cred. #thirsty #myidealnigga #phillystandup
     
    #5 machoBLKnerd, Dec 19, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2018
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  6. Omega Level

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    You see how gay dudes can't have an intelligent political conversation without inserting thirst or sex into it? You should be ashamed of yourself!

    BUT......

    I couldn't agree with you more. :pachah1:

    Everytime I see him and those damn lips, it makes me weak as fuck. My friends wouldn't hear SHIT from me if I got with him. He's definitely got it all to me.
     
  7. Winston Smith

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    God Damn y’all, stay focused!!

    ... buuuuuuuuut if we going with that grad degree celebrity thirst, I’ll still take Hill Harper...
     
  8. Omega Level

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    Hill Harper, yeah he aight. But that Marc L. Hill tho....:whew:

    Not to mention, it something about him that seems like his sex game would be RIGHT! :banderas:

    I don't know what it is, but from my experience the more intellectual seemingly clean cut conservative type dudes always were the biggest freaks behind closed doors.
     
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  9. Winston Smith

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    Us bookish bros get a lot of practice in when we’re alone ...
    :bronbad:
     
  10. Ishmal

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    This is just an extension of the politics of respectability. As long as people of color in our thoughts, speech, beliefs, and actions are not offensive to White folks, we can be embraced. However, if our truth is disruptive to their reality, then we are a threat.

    I understand the need for the creation of Israel, however the execution of its creation was horrible. These conflicts are (in my Malcolm X voice) their chickens coming home to roost.
     
  11. Cyrus-Brooks

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    CNN is scared to death of the pro-Israel lobby. Marc Lamont Hill's remarks threatened their bottom line so they quickly fired him. Israel's political arm in the United States will smear anyone who criticizes and or questions the actions as "anti-Semitic." CNN would've faced massive blowback from advertisers and the politicians(on both the left and right) who are bought and paid for by the Israeli government. The easiest thing for them to do was dump him like cum stained prom dress.
     
  12. SB3

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    Things just haven't been the same between us since I saw him hosting the Basketball Wives reunion...
     
  13. machoBLKnerd

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    to know him is to know he LOVES reality tv and pop culture and often says he doesn't see his engagement with these things in conflict with his much headier interests. #iknowhim #theboyismine

     
    #13 machoBLKnerd, Dec 25, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2018
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  14. SB3

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    Nope. Sorry. I'm perfectly fine w him being a fan of reality tv debauchery, but I don't wana see him hosting/involved. But hey, that's your man, so if yall like it...
     
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  15. Winston Smith

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    Yeah, I’m generally more a fan of scholars who take the Carl Sagan/David Attenborough “bring intelligent things to the general audience” approach than the Neil DeGrasse Tyson “we need to mix our stuff in with popular garbage culture” approach.

    But we like what we like. I can go from reading the Harvard Business Review to watching Bobs Burgers in 0 - 60 mph so I can’t judge Hill in that respect.
     
  16. SB3

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    Yea, I'm all for everyone knowing how to lighten up and laugh every once in a while. I just think there's a difference between being a fan and aligning yourself with certain things professionally, esp for ppl in certain professions...
     
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  17. Winston Smith

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    People have been always been mixing high profession and low culture. An old example from the 60s: Melvin Belli, was a famous attorney who represented Jack Ruby, the man who assassinated JFK’s killer, Oswald. Even while he was doing law he was side gigging tv/movie roles. One of his more well known gigs at the time, playing an evil ghost on Star Trek who convinced children to kill their parents (still the creepiest episode of the original series imho though resident Trekker @Cyrus-Brooks might disagree)
     
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  18. Lancer

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    I like the combination. I like a dude who is an intellectual and can be down with the BB wives or popular culture. I have always had a crush on Marc however it got to new levels, when he hosted a Huffpost Halloween show with Drag queens Lady Bunny and I think Sharon Needles. He was so comfortable around them, laughing his eyes out like he was one of the gurls. I was like 'Woah! A masculine black man this comfortable around Drag queens!?!' I was impressed.
     
  19. SB3

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    Again, I hear yall. I'm NOT anti 'slumming it' at times. I'm not side eyeing an intellectual for being 'down to earth' and enjoying reality TV. My issue is w the chosen slum. People like to lump all black reality shows together, but Basketball Wives literally translates to 'negative' in Swahili. It's bullying in Louboutins. I just wish Mr. Hill, being one of the few young black men w his platform, wasn't professionally aligning himself w a show like that. Trust me, him being comfortable around drag queens is a lot less shocking than him hosting Bball Wives.
     
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