Playwright, poet and activist Amiri Baraka dies at 79
Jan 9 (Reuters) - Amiri Baraka, a controversial playwright, poet and activist who set a new path for fellow African-American artists by bringing militancy and verve to works about race in America, died on Thursday at age 79 at a hospital in his native New Jersey, a representative said.
Baraka had been in failing health and passed away at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, surrounded by family, said his booking agent Celeste Bateman.
Baraka had associated with Beat Generation poets in the 1950s and he published his first collection of poems in 1961. In 1964, he won fame in some circles, notoriety in others and an Obie award for his explosive play "Dutchman."
In the play, a white woman sexually teases and taunts a black man named Clay on a subway, they clash venomously and he speaks of seething anger at whites. The work ends with the woman stabbing Clay in the heart, then eyeing another black rider.
The New York Times, in a 2007 review of a new production of the play, called it the "singular cultural emblem" of the black separatist movement in the United States.
more: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/usa-amiribaraka-idINL2N0KJ2KM20140110
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More from his works....
◾In an article entitled "Confessions of a former Anti-Semite," Bakara wrote: "I…constructed some metaphysical premises that Jews had stolen Black secrets and then said that Hitler disliked Jews because he could smell the contact with Black on them." He cites his previous writings: "What/Father Moses gave them, and lifted them off their hands. A Magic/Charm. A black toe sewn in their throats." He wrote, "I got the extermination blues, jew-boys," meaning Jews should be killed for the exploitation of blacks. "So come for the rent, jewboys/or come ask me for a book, or/sit in the courts handing down your judgements still I got something for you, gonna give it to my brothers, so they'll know what your whole story is, then one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother/gonna put it on you all at once."
"The movement among middle-class Jews to become straightup Americans, shedding their 'Jewishness' represents a progressive trend among Jews…. But in the process of 'shedding their Jewishness' middle-class Jews have adopted the same backward ideas of American racism."
"The vaunted Jewish support of black civil rights organizations…was in order to use them."
-- "Confessions of a former Anti-Semite," The Village Voice, December 17, 1980
◾A collection of Baraka's essays contained numerous derogatory references to Jews. Some examples included a person being "jew-slick," to "jeworiented revolutionaries," to "cohen edited negro history," and to "new zionist conspiracies."
-- Raise, Race, Rays, Raze, a vintage collection of the essays of Amiri Baraka since 1965, Vintage Books, February 1972.
◾"Now let us face these realities: a nigger wants to put down the Zionist and the Zionists control the radio, the television, the movies, the education, the intellectual life of the United States, the morality of the United States-Judeo-Christian ethics. The minute you condemn them publicly, you die. They will declare a war on you forever."
"What is so weird is that certain peoples always get niggers to fight harder for them than they fight for niggers. For instance, the radicals, the Jewish radicals have bloods willing to die to see Jews get political power (and that's not an anti-Semitic statement, I think it's a very congratulatory statement)."
-- Introduction to a documentary of the first modern Pan-African Congress, Atlanta, September 1970.
More: http://archive.adl.org/anti_semitism/baraka_words.html#.UtJUptTna70
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"I am not saying 'Let the State fuck its faggots,' only that no fag go unfucked, for purely impersonal reasons.” from Hagel
" "Most American white men are trained to be fags, their faces are weak and blank... that red flush, those silk blue faggot eyes.” from Home
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"The average… [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.” from Home