written by st james valsin

an article from WARTIME 2025: 100 Years of Malcolm X

there’s a song by Bob Marley called “slave driver” where he sings “every time i hear the crack of a whip, my blood runs cold. i remember on the slave ship, how they brutalize our very souls.” this is what we mean when we say cracka. anyone crackin’ that whip to enforce the social, economic, and political system of slavery, is a cracka. and a lot of times it be our own people crackin’ that whip for massa. and these crackas wild. the way they been wildin’ over the past few centuries been called a lot of things – from colonialism to white supremacy to fascism. for us tho, it’s always been that cracka shit. but before we get to these crackas we gotta talk about the predecessor, the creator of all crackas- colonizers. 

Desmond Tutu once said, “When the missionaries came to Afrika, they had the bible and we had the land. They said, ‘let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the bible, and they had the land.” that line would be perfect if not for one important thing missing- them missionaries came with an army. they taught us in school to call them ”pilgrims,” ”pioneers,” and “explorers,” but never to call them “mass murderers,” “enslavers,” or “rapists,” which is exactly what they were. 

before the colonizers came, there was no such thing as race in Afrika. colonizers used warfare, bribery, and trickery to divide and conquer the people into racial and ethnic groups. they created the artificial borders that have led to the conflicts we see today. colonizers love drawing up maps. before colonizers came to Turtle Island (present day north amerikkka), 500 years before the united states even existed, indigenous people had a confederacy of nations practicing democracy under a constitution called the Great Law of Peace. colonizers came and nearly wiped them out. they were damn near driven to extinction by europeans spreading diseases (an early form of biological warfare), massacres, forced displacement, and policies and laws made to destroy cultures.

it’s worth noting there was this one colonizer, Thomas Morton, who wrote a book condemning the treatment of indigenous people. conservative puritans made it the first banned book in amerikkkan history. that white man then decided to ignore the laws of his fellow colonizers and started selling guns to indigenous people. shoulda been for the free but still, a lesson on allyship.

i’ll share another lesson i do with my middle and high school students. i’ll ask em, who knows what the definition of suicide is? every hand in the class will go up. then i’ll ask who knows what the definition of homicide is? and get the same result. final question, who knows what the definition of genocide is? and in a classroom of 20-30 kids, only a couple hands go up, if any. the fact that most school kids know the word for killing yourself and killing another but the idea of killing thousands, the act of killing millions of people, something well documented in this country’s history, is unknown to them, tells you everything you need to know about the amerikkkan education system. 

these colonizers came from a europe in decline. once called the dark ages cuz they was pissin’ and shittin’ in the streets (dirty ass europeans spreading diseases again). europe only survived that era by pillaging the world of its knowledge and resources-

“The African presence is the invisible thread in the tapestry of European history… The so-called ‘Renaissance’ or ‘Enlightenment’ in Europe was made possible by the subjugation of Afrika and the exploitation of its people and resources.” – Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Aimé Césaire teaches us that colonialism is a process that “…dehumanizes both the colonizers and the colonized” but i’d add these colonizers were already lacking the basic standards of humanity-

“Western culture developed out of a very hostile environment. Rocks, snow, ice, long periods when the ground was too hard to be worked, when nothing could be produced from the soil, hunting became too important; accumulating, hoarding, hiding, protecting enough to last through the winter, things falling apart in winter, covetous glances at one’s neighbor’s goods. Would three or four thousand years of that kind of survival influence a culture? Would greed color itself into the total result, in a large way? Hunt, forage, store, hoard, hide, defend, the thing at stake!! Not very conducive to sensitivity, tenderness…”

the revolutionary dragon, George Jackson wrote these words in his book Soledad Brother. he speaks of nature and nurture but not in the competitive way we been taught. it’s not one vs the other but how does the one affect the other, how do they interact with each other to create people and culture. heightening the contradiction of who the fuck you callin’ savage; it’s a dialectical way of thinking. this was the brilliant mind of George Jackson, one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. he taught himself to read while fighting these crackas in the belly of the beast, where that colonizing ass cracka shit is concentrated, so they call em concentration camps in some places. but here we just call em prisons. and those prisons are plantations but we’ll get to that part…

Nina Simone said “an artist’s duty is to reflect the times” and the artist that reflected my childhood, my generation’s time, more than anyone else was ‘Pac. i was first introduced to George Jackson by the music of Tupac Shakur, one the realest to ever live. unlike a lot of other rappers, then and now, he didn’t just rap about street life, drugs, and guns; his lyrics also had a hyperfocus on police and prisons. we called him the realest not just for his music, but cuz when he saw a couple crackas beatin’ on a Black man he pulled out his gun and shot em both. most of us ain’t know it back then but he was just following the revolutionary legacy of his Black Panther lineage. his mom, Afeni Shakur, was part of the Panther 21, a group of Black Panthers that were targeted, set-up, arrested, and falsely prosecuted by the alphabet boys (nypd and fbi; what we now know to be cointelpro); his stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, was a member of the Black Liberation Army and a political prisoner for 37 years; his godmother and step-aunt, Mutulu’s sister, was the legendary revolutionary Assata Shakur; and his godfathers Jamal Joseph and Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt. considering what ‘Pac did when he saw a couple crackas beating on a Black man, i wonder what he woulda done if he saw what was happening to George Floyd… but i digress… on the intro to “Hold Ya Head” he name drops a couple political prisoners. among them was George Jackson who wrote- 

“For a young black growing up in the ghetto, the first rebellion is always crime.” 

when i first read that line, my entire childhood started to make sense. even tho George and i got five decades between us, his life and words hit home. even if they are unaware of it, crime is an act of rebellion. crime is when the people rebel against the economic oppression of high unemployment, low wages, and cracka ass bosses. it’s rebellion against the rent being too damn high, housing discrimination, and gentrification pushing us into ghettos and projects. and fa damn sho it’s rebellion against these crooked ass laws enforced by these runaway slave catchin’ crooked ass police. runnin from the police was such a sport, such a common pastime in the hood that it’s the title of the only song 2Pac and the Notorious BIG ever recorded together. but of course these corporate crackas stopped the song from ever being released. unfortunately, all of us ain’t always make it when runnin’ from the police. some got caught up. like a couple homies i grew up with, George was arrested at the age of 18 for armed robbery. we had 10-20-life laws. they put posters up in schools and parks as a constant reminder. decades prior they sentenced George to an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. that’s that cracka shit right there. so back to these colonizin’ ass crackas…

these colonizers ain’t know nothin’ bout the land they stole so with a gun and a crack of the whip they enslaved millions of Afrikans and shipped em to the amerikkkas to work the land. this where they act like our history started but we know that’s some bullshit. this just the colonizer transitioning to cracka status cuz wasn’t nothin’ left to colonize. now they had to cash in on the investment, now they gotta capitalize, cuz that whole settler-colonial shit was just business. the mayflower was funded by corporations. now, onto the next phase of the business plan- slavery. 

a slave, by the colonizer’s definition, is a person who’s forced to work and is considered to be another person’s property. let’s break that down-

being forced to work, the exploitation of labor, is the foundation of this liberal democracy. the more than 400 years of slavery have been well documented but you know we ain’t make it easy for em. some strapped up like Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and John Brown clappin’ back at these crackas. Frederick Douglass who said “The relation of master and slave is one of violence—it is a war of the strong against the weak…” was ready to scrap with any cracka anytime anywhere and taught himself to read when a book in Afrikan hands was considered contraband. and we zoes in 1804 showed these crackas just how far we’ll go if you push us. Dessaline gave the order to kill every white man, woman, and child on the island and they did just that (they wanna call that a genocide but we’ll disrespectfully diasagree cuz this was a fight to be free. and a few polish colonizers was spared cuz they wasn’t with the slave shit. they defected from the crackas to fight alongside the Afrikans and Tainos). crackas running from the Haitian revolution found themselves in the us and spread news of the successful slave revolts happening not too far away. for this reason, crackas wrote the 2nd amendment. fears of slave rebellions and indigenous resistance had these crackas shook. especially considering the Haitian revolution officially began on August 21, 1791 and just a few months later on December 15, 1791 the united states ratified the 2nd amendment. the right to bear arms was written so crackas could keep their property in check. 

so about that part… another person’s property, huh? they really thought they could own a whole damn human being. again, these crackas wild. anyways, personal property and ownership as we know it today is that cracka shit, a european concept- 

“starting in the colonial era, private land ownership was a major attraction to european migrants (colonizers) who tried to escape feudalism in europe and sought freehold ownership in north amerikkka. private property was viewed as a means to secure political and economic freedom. therefore, private property symbolizes the political and ideological beliefs upon which the united states is founded, and strong constitutional protection of private property was deemed necessary.” – lincoln institute of land policy

“…personal property developed within english common law, classifying land and structures as real property and movable items as personal property, or chattels.”– uc berkeley law

in other words, our modern understanding of personal property was the legal basis for chattel slavery. makes sense why only wealthy white male crackas was allowed to own property and only those that owned property could vote in amerikkka. we call this a plutocracy; not a democracy. property tax is that cracka shit. same property tax that ensures poor kids go to poor schools; same property tax that gave us the three-fifths compromise transforming “…negroes into subjects of property,” and that same 3/5ths shit is what gave us the electoral college we use to elect the president. now we got a wannabe king of crackas for president in a country that fought a so-called revolutionary war to end the rule of british kings.

this king of crackas, donald trump, is a chip off the old colonizin’ block. he inherited a real estate empire from his kkk daddy; got to be president the first go round even tho he lost the popular vote cuz he won that same racist ass electoral college we was talkin bout. this country never been a real democracy. some would say it was during reconstruction when Black folks got the right to vote but that would be sexist cuz women couldn’t vote during that period. ain’t been a single time in this country when everyone born here had unrestricted access to the voting booth. so how can we call this a democracy? then when the cracka king lost his bid for re-election, he sent a mob of armed crackas by the thousands to kill elected officials while they was certifying the votes. 

in the words of Malcolm, this was “…the chicken comin’ home to roost.” after organizing countless coups and coup attempts round the world, the united states done finally did a coup on itself. these. crackas. wild. and they let him get away with it. like all the colonizin’ ass crackas that came before him, he will never be held accountable for his actions- braggin’ bout sexually assaulting women, hanging out with pedophiles, inciting an insurrection, all with no fear of consequence. this goes beyond privilege and entitlement. this that cracka shit. it’s sociopathic. 

generation after generation of mass murderers and rapists who go to sleep at night thinking they did a great service to the world with all their conquering and colonizing. of course we gon end up with a president donald trump after all that. of course we gon end up with a country where a piece of every dollar we make and spend goes to funding genocides in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo. obama had ya’ll believing racism was over while he bombed Black people round the world. us military presence in Afrika more than doubled under the first black president and to this day he’s deported more people than any other president in history. obama was the height of neoliberalism. now in hindsight we can say after pulling that race card a trump card had to be the next play. the cracka king mighta finally woke some people up tho. trump’s second term got academics and liberal news talkin’ bout “the rise of fascism” but George Jackson been told us more than fifty years ago to settle our quarrels cuz “fascism is already here.” so what’s this fascism everybody keeps talkin’ bout like it’s somethin’ new? oh, it’s just that cracka shit again. let’s make it plain tho-

the word fascism comes from the term fasces, a roman symbol representing authority and the power to punish. today this same symbol is on display behind the podium in the us house of representatives btw. it became the name of the far-right wing italian party after the first world war. the textbook definition of fascism is a far-right (conservative), ultranationalist (extreme belief in the superiority of their own nation) political ideology characterized by authoritarianism (enforcement of strict obedience to authority), centralized autocracy/plutocracy (a system of government where a single person or a small group holds absolute power), militarism (the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively) and the suppression of individual rights and democratic government in favor of the perceived needs of the nation or race. and that cracka mussolini, the leader of the italian fascist party, who tried and failed to colonize Ethiopia, explicitly linked fascism with corporatism.

by that definition, the european settler colonial project (colonizers) and the amerikkan system of plantation slavery (crackas) was fascism. today, it’s the police state and prison industrial complex. it’s that “everybody can be a brand, everything can be a product, you gotta sell yourself” bullshit. this is why George Jackson said-

“We will never have a complete definition of fascism, because it is in constant motion, showing a new face to fit any particular set of problems that arise to threaten the predominance of the traditionalist, capitalist ruling class. But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define it in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be ‘reform.’ We can make our definition more precise by adding the word ‘economic’… ‘economic reform’ comes very close to a working definition of fascist motive forces.” – Blood in My Eye

the 13th amendment is a great example of fascism in the guise of economic reform. it completely changed the way amerikkka did business but it didn’t do away with the social (racism), economic (capitalism), and political (electoral college) system of slavery. it simply reformed them. we celebrate Juneteenth cuz lincoln ain’t free shit. Black people freed themselves. other side of that coin is the constitution ain’t abolish the plantation, it just replaced it with prisons. went from chattel slavery to wage slavery; from plantation owners to executives and shareholders; overseers to security and prison guards; runaway slave catchers to police and ice. this is reform, the oppositional force to revolution. reform, a literal return to form. 

like donald trump, he is amerikkka’s return to form. when they talk about book bans in public schools and libraries across the country, we remember the book bans that happened during settler colonialism, on slave plantations, and in the prison system from its inception to this day. when they get to redrawing districts to suppress the Black vote and building walls to militarize an imaginary border, we remember the scramble for Afrika and how colonizers love drawing up maps. when king cracka has a press conference to announce the militarization of cities with majority Black populations, we remember the 2nd amendment and crackas forming militias in fear of slave rebellions; we remember the MOVE bombing in Philly; the military response to the Ferguson uprising; Tulsa, Rosewood, and so many others. when ice gets to snatching people off the streets, we think of kkk trading their hoods for badges and police snatching us off the block. when they perfected this prison shit so well they can build a concentration camp in the middle of nowhere seemingly overnight and give em cute lil nicknames like alligator alley and deportation depot… we go, oh yea, that’s that cracka shit. and the ancestors done been told us how to deal with these crackas.