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Literally My Master's Thesis

from Fame Swoll by The Michael Character

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lyrics

Amiri Baraka in Cuba
‘All these young guys down here, they took power, they just did it, guns in hand’
Robert F. Williams in his big straw hat
Came to see the land where racism was falling back
A ripe 25, a riper 36 both embraced radical politics
Wouldn’t get their heads beat in
Rejected unilateral non-violence
Both took to the black revolution:
A Third World people colonized by the Red, White, and Blue
Which Harold Cruse and John Henrik Clarke thought too
But with a more robust theorization
They were way more impressed with Castro’s land reform
Than his proclamations of eradicating racial discrimination
But all four took a nod from Frantz Fanon
And saw black freedom as a decolonizing process, partially thanks to Cuba
(But only partially thanks to Cuba!)
Fast forward to 1967
Honorary Prime Minister of the BPP (Black Panther Party for Self Defense)
And former SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) chairman
Stokely Carmichael called for Black Power
In a book of the same name that posited how
The state built an internal colony
Which precluded the achievement of substantive racial equality
Meanwhile Baraka promoted black arts
Cultural self-determination
To cultivate a counterhegemonic identity to precede the black political nation
Casa de las Americas and ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos) in Cuba did the same thing
It’d be hard to draw a causal link
But the similarities are more compelling than you’d think
But over the years it became very clear that socialist reforms had not unmade
Cuba’s racial oppression
But the general consensus among the top brass was to say “No Way!”
Thus pushing (American) black radical activists away from the Castro regime in significant numbers
Baraka and Angela Davis stayed
But (Robert F.) Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and (Stokely) Carmichael went the other way
But all told this whole generation of thinkers shared some critical paradigms
Black Third World identity
The internal colony
(Black) Nationalism
And state violence

credits

from Fame Swoll, released October 6, 2017

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The Michael Character Boston, Massachusetts

It's political music, whatever. Based in Boston, MA. Absolutely willing to drive very far to play for you and five of your vaguely alternative friends in your combination kitchen/laundry room. Hit me up. I'm fully serious.

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