Two Fools: Ignore Them and Get On with the Struggle

Published in Issue 245 of The Black Commentator on September 20, 2007
Republished in iZania on September 22, 2007

By Larry Pinkney

There is an adage, which says, “When a person argues with a fool you see two fools.” In this context, both the Democratic and Republican parties have repeatedly and collectively demonstrated that neither of them deserve the political support of Black Americans and other people of color in this nation.

The barbaric and ongoing occupation and US war of aggression in Iraq, based upon lies, hypocrisy, and this nation’s insatiable greed, continues unabated, while the majority of Black, Red, and Brown peoples inside America suffer enormous economic deprivation and racial disparity. Collectively, white America continues to demonstrate an amazing denial of reality and an incredible form of insanity, matched only by its bombastic arrogance and mockery of justice and democracy, both internally and externally.

Perhaps, the time has arrived for Black America, collectively and seriously, to assert itself with a view toward building and forming a viable national political party. One of its primary objectives would be to bring into being, economic, social, cultural justice and parity in America. The Democratic and Republican parties, i.e. the “two fools,” have made it abundantly clear that the interests of Black, Red, and Brown peoples are of absolutely no substantive or real consequence to them.

Whether or not Black America and / or other people of color choose to move in the direction of political independence from the foxes and wolves of the Democratic and Republican parties, it is clearly time at least to inform the national discourse with the pros and cons of this possibility. Perhaps it is time to think outside the confines of the box in which white America would have us believe we must be confined.

One thing is certain: for Black Americans to expect the Democratic and Republican parties of white America seriously to address and eliminate the ongoing and growing systemic injustices of racial, social, and economic disparities, would be akin to asking the bloated fox, “Who ate the chickens?” The Democratic and Republican parties are unwilling and unable to seriously address the aforementioned systemic injustices.

It is intrinsically unsound for Black Americans, and our Brown and Red brothers and sisters to continue blindly down our present path to cultural, economic, and social oblivion. Of course white America (liberals and conservatives alike), including the Democratic and Republican parties, will assuredly continue to employ every conceivable tactic to divide, politically, Black people from each other and from other people of color.

Nevertheless, the time has come at least to think outside the box, and consider the possibility of a different, more just and equitable America. A well-organized party, politically independent from the Democratic and Republican parties might bring about this change. It’s time to cease running on an endlessly spinning wheel, like a caged hamster, going nowhere. It is time to de-colonize our minds.

Keeping it real demands that we politically conscious Black people, and our allies, consider all viable possibilities as we carry on in this continuing struggle.

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)