Boston Magazine & the HEAD NIGGER IN CHARGE

May of 1998 was a good month for Ole Uncle Tom. First, Ward Connerly collected his buttered biscuit. College enrollments among Blacks and Latinos have sharply declined by as much as 50% in California. The White-funded Connerly proudly asserted that this was good news. Then Reggie White, a large affable Black man who makes millions knocking down other large Black men, was finally asked what was on his mind. “Black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down…” He wasn’t finished: “You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure.” Julian Bond, the new president of the NAACP (more accurately the H-N-I-C-P), runs to the Anti-Defamation League to tell on ol’ Farrakhan, even before addressing Black people about his solutions to any of their chronic problems. Duty called, we suppose.

Now, Henry Louis Gates, the epitome of a house negro, is ACCURATELY identified as the Head Negro in Charge (HNIC) by the white editor of Boston Magazine. All the other negroes at the other Boston plantations who have variously vied for the coveted title, bluster at the nearest microphone, giving a magazine that no one reads (like Gates’s books) unprecedented advertisement and visibility.

Not that Gates is actually in charge of anything, mind you. His actual power is limited to grading term papers, not affecting significant and lasting change in the condition of Black folks. In fact, one of the prerequisites of the title is that he makes ABSOLUTELY NO DEMANDS on Massa or his power structure. Gates’s solution-less public prattling will be well-funded and publicized during his term as long as this rule is maintained. The Boston Magazine article itself, which amounts to nauseating adoration of Gates’s tokenism, is simply one of those payoffs the media bestows on the HNIC between testimonial chicken dinners. But this was no contest. Gates won the title hands down literally. He hasn’t lifted a hand to advance any Black agenda, but instead dutifully ratifies the white agenda for Blacks.

The phenomenon is not new. The HNIC has always played a crucial role in American Black history. He was always the most trusted of the slaves often a favored light-skinned child of the master himself. He could be counted on to tell Massa of any violation of the harsh slave law by any of the other slaves. He’d be called upon to monitor the captives for any talk of escape or insurrection. He was a spy and an irredeemably brainwashed enemy of his own people. He became so valuable to the plantation master that he would even be loaned to other plantations to investigate disaffection in their slave quarters. He was loved by the white man, who let Ole Tom wear his own cast off clothes. Tom’s children would get training in the carpentry and masonry and maybe get the opportunity to learn to read if it served Massa, of course.

The Black man in the field hated Ole Tom. They knew he was in a position to lead an uprising but instead chose to follow a wicked oppressor. Even white folks knew that if there was a slave revolt (and they always suspected one was imminent), Ole Tom’s head would roll first. Massa protected his investment, for he knew Tom was the only buffer zone between him and justice.

In those times the issues were much clearer. Everyone knew that the plantation was owned by Massa, that Ole Tom’s clothes were really Massa’s, and that the hierarchy was directly correlated to skin shade. Massa’s a little smarter now. He stands behind and funds Ole Tom’s “organizations”; he stands behind the camera when Tom addresses the field negroes; he makes Tom an honorary white man.

So here we are in 1998, embroiled in our own Uncle Tommy-gate, fightin’ over Ole Henry Gates. Boston Magazine editor should apologize but not to Black folks. He has opened a can of worms here by exposing the fact that the HNIC does indeed exist even though it is never openly discussed in polite company. To acknowledge the existence of this buffer class of deluded house slaves, is to acknowledge the existence of a behind-the-scenes white Massa. Boston Magazine needs to apologize to Massa for shining the light on this pernicious HNIC appointment process that has crippled the progress of Black people while putting a few Toms in the spotlight. Thanks to Boston Magazine, Massa now knows that very soon that same light is going to expose him and we know it too.

But if you want to know what the answer is to the HNIC controversy, it’s really very easy. Replace the word “Negro” with “Jew” in the H-N-I-C equation and see what you get. These same negro defenders of Boston Magazine would be screamin’ like hound dogs at the indignity their Jewish brethren have suffered at the hands of the “anti-Semitic” Boston Magazine. Abe Foxman would issue a special “anti-Semitism bulletin” (his H-J-I-C status at the ADL depends on it), and CBS, NBC and ABC would satellite in their live reports for the 6:00 news. Needless to say, the shell-shocked editor would have, by now, been deported to face trial in Israel, and Julian Bond would have held a candlelight vigil in the name of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney.

[Read Dr. Tony Martin’s article : “HNIC Gets No Respect“]