Music, Slavery, and Systems of Terror

The Great Terrorism (1619-1865)
and the Lesser Terrorism (1865-1965)

The Middle Passage and plantation slavery (as it is usually called) were and remain the defining events in the formation of our African American identity. It does not seem that the horrific traumas of the Middle Passage were deliberately designed as a form of cultural erasure, but that is their most lasting effect. (In his book, Muslims in American History, on pages 78-79, Jerald F. Dirks implies that the brutal humiliations of the Middle Passage were deliberately designed to dehumanize the captives.) The various traumas of the institution called plantation slavery, but I which I prefer to call The Great Terrorism, were, in contrast, scientifically designed to destroy all remnants of a human cultural identity in the victims. The African American that you see when you look in the mirror is a being who was formed and fashioned by your worst enemy. As a human being formed and fashioned by the Gracious and Compassionate Creator, you have no idea who you are. If you think you do, you are sealing yourself off from ever finding out who and what your Divine Master created you to be.

The Civil War (1861-1865) was the coup de grace which completed the transformation of the American society and economy from an aristocratic republic with a primarily agricultural economy based largely on a vast system of terrorism in which the larger plantations were, in fact, concentration camps to a pseudo-democratic government dominated by the corporate capitalists who imported vast numbers of desperate Europeans into a system of industrial plantations (called plants, for short). These people and the vast majority of their descendants were, and still are, slaves. The technical term is employee. An employee is someone or some thing that is used – just as you and I employ a fork to eat with. The struggle of the labor movement was a struggle against terrorism – against the terrorism of privately hired goons or of the militant resources of the government being used to suppress demands for humane working conditions.

The Lingering Terrorism
(1965 and on, and on), and Music

No system of terroristic exploitation can endure without some form of relief for its victims. During the Great Terrorism, the victims were encouraged to entertain themselves with music and drunkenness during their free time. Frederick Douglass wrote about the dislike of the plantation owners for those victims who used their free time for constructive endeavors. The victims were dehumanized; any activity that cultivated their humanity was discouraged, often violently. The more clever plantation owners realized that the best form of domination exerted itself in a kindly fashion.

In modern American life, various forms of popular music and their associated drunken behaviors are our relief from the terroristic exploitation we live under. We live in terror of losing “our jobs”. We live in terror of losing “our homes”. We live in terror of losing “our families”.

What we think of as our job is simply a form of terroristic exploitation. If we do not do what the boss tells us to do, we may be fired. Boss is a Dutch word for master, brought over on the slave ships. Why “fired”? Does this mean shot at? Why such violent language for something of supposedly little consequence? But we do live in fear of it, don’t we? We feel embarrassed and humiliated when we get fired. When we run around looking for another boss – what a system, the slaves begging for slavery! – we are ashamed to admit we were fired. Oh My! The shame of it! Mind you, the Challenger space shuttle exploded because people were doing their jobs and not blowing the whistle on corporate misdeeds. The recent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico happened because people were doing their jobs, instead of defying their corporate masters. This is happening on a global scale and threatens the survival of the entire human species – each of us doing our little job, and living in terror of losing our job, in terror of losing our house, in terror of the wife leaving us, in terror of the government taking our children away. We live under a terroristic regime.

And music is our relief. We do not want music to challenge us. We want music to soothe us. We are convinced that the purpose of music is to make us feel good. Music that causes us to think – serious music – is not what we want. We might think about how the corporation we work for is consuming our individual life, ruining our family life, destroying our community life, and threatening the life of the environment. We might actually feel the pain of our personal loss, the pain of our families and of our communities. We might even feel pain for the millions or billions of human beings whose lives are being trampled under for corporate gain. The coast of Nigeria has become a poisonous oily goo. When the people who live there protest the destruction of their lives, the government kills them. Hush! Hush! We must have easy listening. Ahhh. Niger-what? Oh Man! Listen to this sweet sound. Forget all that stuff.

Actually, your Divine Master has given you a job – and your job is definitely not helping the corporate interests (or their government flunkies) destroy human life and then saying that you couldn’t do anything. There is a lot that we can do, but we live in terror, and don’t want to admit it. Let the music take your mind – and make you unconscious.

A few years ago, I mentioned to my brother what I was teaching my college students. He told me that if I didn’t stop teaching what I was teaching I would lose my job. I believe he was right in cautioning me that I might lose a source of income. But he was wrong in saying that I would lose my job. What is my job? Teaching falsehoods to my students? Certainly not. If the Almighty has blessed me with knowledge, then it would be blasphemous for me not to teach what I’ve learned. I have learned that Western Civilization is a fraudulent concept – an invented idea which is deadly to the mental well-being of African Americans. Should I poison my students, or teach them the truth? Understand this, the State of North Carolina, through one of its universities, hired me to poison my students. This is called my job. If I get fired, people will say “Ohh, you lost your job!” If I poison my students, people will say, “Dr. Knibbs is a professor at the university!” People will not say, “That guy is cooperating with the terrorists,” but that would be the truth.

Listen to some nice music. Forget all that.

7 Shawwaal 1431 / 26 Muharram 1433
September 16, 2010 / December 21, 2011