posted
In light of the recent success of the film American Gangster, this is a good time to utilize the gangster film genre to better understand the position of African-Americans in the underground economy. There is a historical chronology related to the subjection of African-American men in the mainstream northern economy that dates to the American Civil War.
The film “The Gangs of New York” documents the racial struggles between the “Nativist” and “Immigrant” gangs in Civil War era New York. It also documents the relationship between ethnicity, politics, gangs and employment in the north. One of the largest racial riots in American history took place in Civil War era New York by white Northerners afraid that if Lincoln freed the Slaves, they would compete for jobs with free Whites. The Nativist (Anglo-Saxon) gangs also struggled against Italian and Irish immigrants. One Immigrant gang mentioned in the Gangs of New York was the Forty Thieves.
The Forty Thieves were a real gang and many well known gang figures such as Al Capone came out of this organization. Later, an African-American immigrant woman from the West Indies by the name of “Queenie” ran this gang. Queenie later branched out with her own Harlem based gang and ran the policy (numbers) racket in Harlem with her associate Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy’s later associate was Frank Lucas of American Gangster fame.
Within the context of the Nativist versus the Immigrant gangs in New York, immigrant groups such as Italians sought sanctity through assimilation into “Whiteness”. Italians were often referred to by Anglo’s with the pejorative “Guinea” in reference to their partial African origin. Pejorative aside, the African roots to some Italians is substantiated by the Benin Sickle Cell Variant.
This is the underlying message behind the Godfather chronicle. It is really about an Italian family trying to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon society and move out of the underground economy non-Whites were forced into. Towards the end of Godfather I the Godfather tells his son Michael that he wishes he had more time to achieve this goal. In Godfather II and III Michael, the new Godfather fulfills his father’s wishes with an Anglo wife and “clean” investments in Las Vegas.
While Italians, Jews, Portuguese and other Mediterranean Whites could assimilate and hide their African roots Blacks were never able to do so and were forced to remain in the underground economy much longer.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Awesome movie! Lots of factual stuff was omitted but understood considering human tolerable film time-length.
Posts: 213 | From: New York City, USA | Registered: Sep 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
And, taking advantage of this underground economy, the government in the 70s used certain selected "hustlers" in this network to push the heroin that would destroy a good amount the inner cities and the populations there. The golden triangle in Asia as a source of much of the opium in the late 60s and early 70s was a creation of the CIA (much like the resurgence of Afghanistan's opium harvest after American intervention):
The mid-1960s marked the peak of the European heroin industry, and shortly thereafter it went into a sudden decline. In the early 1960s the Italian government launched a crackdown on the Sicilian Mafia, and in 1967 the Turkish government announced that it would begin phasing out cultivation of opium poppies on the Anatolian plateau in order to deprive Marseille’s heroin laboratories of their most important source of raw material. But, unwilling to abandon their lucrative narcotics racket the Corsican syndicates—and the American Mafia—shifted their sources of supply to Southeast Asia, where surplus opium production and systematic government corruption created an ideal climate for large scale heroin production.
And once again American foreign policy played a role in creating these favorable conditions. During the early 1950s the CIA had backed the formation of a Nationalist Chinese guerilla army in Burma, a group which still controls as much as half of the world's opium supply, and in Laos the CIA created a M eo mercenary army whose commander manufactured heroin for sale to, among others, American GIs in South Vietnam. The State Department provided unconditional support for corrupt governments known to be engaged in the international drug traffic. In late 1969 new heroin laboratories sprang up in the tri-border and where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge, and unprecedented quantities of heroin started flooding into the United States. Nurtured by a seemingly limitless flow of heroin, America's total number of addicts skyrocketed.
The bloody Saigon street fighting of April-May 1955 marked the end of French colonial rule and the beginning of direct American intervention in Vietnam. When the First Indochina war came to an end, the French government had planned to withdraw its forces gradually over a two- or three-year period in order to protect its substantial political and economic interests in southern Vietnam. The armistice concluded at Geneva, Switzerland, in July 1954 called for the French Expeditionary Corps to withdraw into the southern half of Vietnam for two years, until an all-Vietnam referendum determined the nation's political future. Convinced that Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Viet Minh were going to score an overwhelming electoral victory, the French began negotiating a diplomatic understanding with the government in Hanoi.
But America's moralistic cold warriors were not quite so flexible. Speaking before the American Legion Convention several weeks after the signing of the Geneva Accords, New York's influential Catholic prelate, Cardinal Spellman, warned that:
"If Geneva and what was agreed upon there means anything at all, it means ... taps for the buried hopes of freedom in Southeast Asia! Taps for the newly betrayed millions of Indochinese who must now learn the awful facts of slavery from their eager Communist masters!"
Rather than surrendering southern Vietnam to the "Red rulers' godless goons," the Eisenhower administration decided to create a new nation where none had existed before. Looking back on America's post-Geneva policies from the vantage point of the mid 1960s, the Pentagon Papers concluded that South Vietnam" was essentially the creation of the United States.
The French had little enthusiasm for this emerging nation and its premier, and so the French had to go. Pressured by American military aid cutbacks and prodded by the Diem regime, the French stepped up their troop withdrawal. By April 1956 the once mighty French Expeditionary Corps had been reduced to less than 5,000 men, and American officers had taken over their jobs as advisers to the Vietnamese army. The Americans criticized the French as hopelessly "colonialist" in their attitudes, and the French officials retorted that the Americans were naive. During this difficult transition period one French official denounced "the meddling Americans who, in their incorrigible guilelessness believed that once the French Army leaves, Vietnamese independence will burst forth for all to see."
But America's fall from innocence was not long in coming. Only seven years later, the U.S. Embassy and the CIA engineered a coup that toppled Diem and left him murdered in the back of an armored personnel carrier. And by 1965 the United States found itself fighting a war that was almost a carbon copy of France’s colonial war. The U.S. Embassy was wearisomely trying, but effectually unable, to manipulate the same clique of corrupt Saigon politicos that had confounded the French in their day. The U.S. Army looked just like the French Expeditionary Corps to most Vietnamese, only instead of Senegalese and Moroccan colonial levies, the U.S. Army was assisted by Thai and South Korean troops. The CIA and the U.S. special forces (the "Green Berets") were assigned to train the very same hilltribe mercenaries that the French MACG (the "Red Berets") had recruited ten years earlier.
Given the striking similarities between the French and American war machines, it is hardly surprising that the broad outlines of "operation X" (Although the French colonial government initiated a program to eliminate opium addiction, the French intelligence and paramilitary agencies took over the opium traffic in order to finance their covert operations during the First Indochina War of 1946-1954.) reemerged after U.S. intervention. As the CIA became involved in Laos in the early 1960s it became aware of the truth of Colonial Trinquier's axiom, "To have the Meo, one must buy their opium." At a time when there was no ground or air transport to and from the mountains of Laos except CIA aircraft, opium continued to flow out of the villages of Laos to transit points such as Long Tieng. There, government forces, this time Vietnamese and Lao instead of French, transportcd narcotics to Saigon, where parties associated with the Vietnamese political leaders were involved in the domestic distribution and arranged for export to Europe through Corsican and CIA syndicates. And just as the French high commissioner had found it politically expedient to overlook the Binh Xuyen's involvement in Saigon's opium trade, the U.S. Embassy, as part of its unqualified support of the Thieu Ky regime, looked the other way when presented with evidence that members of the regime were involved in the GI heroin traffic.
In Laos, CIA clandestine intervention produced changes and upheavals in the narcotics traffic. When political infighting among the Lao elite, coupled with the escalating war in Vietnam, forced the small charter airlines owned by the Corsican syndicates out of the opium business in 1965, the CIA's airline, Air America, began flying Meo opium out of the hills to Long Tieng and Vientiane. CIA cross-border intelligence missions launched Into China from Laos reaped an unexpected dividend in 1962 when the Shan rebel leader who had organized the forays for the agency began financing the Shan nationalist cause; he did so by selling Burmese opium to another CIA protege, Laotian General Phoumi Nosavan. The business alliance between General Phoumi and the Shans opened up a new trading pattern that diverted increasingly significant quantities of Burmese opium from their normal marketplace in Bangkok. By the late 1960s U.S Air Force bombing had further disrupted opium production in Laos by forcing the majority of the Meo opium farmers to become refugees. In response, flourishing Laotian heroin laboratories—which were the major suppliers for the GI users in Vietnam—simply increased their imports of Burmese opium through pre-existing trade relationships.
The importance of these CIA clients in the subsequent growth of the Golden Triangle's heroin trade was revealed inadvertently, by the Agency itself when it leaked a classified report on the Southeast Asian opium traffic to the New York Times. The CIA analysis identified twenty-one opium refineries in the tri-border area where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge and reported that seven were capable of producing 90 to 99 percent pure No. 4 heroin. Of these seven heroin refineries, "The most important are located in the areas around Tachilek, Burma; Ban Houei Sai and Nam Keung in Laos; and Mae Salong in Thailand."
Although the CIA did not see fit to mention it, many of those refineries were located in areas totally controlled by paramilitary groups closely identified with American military operations in the Golden Triangle. Mae Salong was headquarters of the Nationalist Chinese Fifth Army, which had been continuously involved in CIA intelligence and counterinsurgency operations since 1950. According to a former CIA operative who worked in the area for a number of years, the heroin laboratory at Na Kueng was protected by Major Chao La, commander of Yao mercenary troops for the CIA in northwestern Laos. One of the heroin laboratories near Ban Huay Sai reportedly belonged to General Ouane Rattikone, former commander in chief of the Royal Laotian Army—the only army in the world, except for the U.S. army itself, to be entirely financed by the U.S. government. The heroin factories near Tachilek were operated by rebel units from Burma and Shan rebel armies who even now control a large percentage of the narcotics traffic out of Burma. Although few of these Shan groups still have any relation with the CIA, one of the most important chapters in the history of the Shan States' opium trade involves a Shan rebel army under Khun Sa, who is still receiving CIA support, either directly or indirectly.
Other sources have revealed the existence of an important heroin laboratory that operated near Vientiane under the protection of General Ouane Rattikone. And finally, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics had reports that General Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's 'secret army', had been operating a heroin factory at Long Tieng, headquarters for CIA sponsored operations in northern Laos.
In the fertile minds of the geopolitical strategists in the CIA's Special Operations division, potential infiltration routes stretched from the Shan hills of north-eastern Burma, through the rugged Laotian mountains, and then southward into the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. According to one retired CIA operative, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein, Agency personnel were sent to Laos in 1959 to supervise eight Green Beret teams who were then training Meo guerrillas on the Plain of Jars. In 1960 and 1961 the CIA recruited elements of Nationalist Chinese Paramilitary units based in northern Thailand to inf[i]ltrate into China-Burma border areas; they also sent Green Berets into South Vietnam's Central Highlands to organize hilltribe commando units for intelligence and sabotage patrols along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Finally, in 1962 one CIA operative based in northwestern Laos began sending trained Yao and Lahu tribesmen into the heart of China's Yunnan Province to monitor road traffic and tap telephones.
While the U.S. military required half a million troops to fight a conventional war in South Vietnam, the mountain war had needed only a handful of Americans. American paramilitary personnel in Laos tended to serve long tours of duty, some for a decade or more, and had been given an enormous amount of personal power. If the nature of the conventional war in South Vietnam is best analyzed in terms of the faceless bureaucracies that spewed out jargonized policies, the secret war in Laos is most readily understood through the men who fought it.
Frank Lucas and many of the other black Drug Kingpins from that time were being used by the CIA, the Military and other agencies of government, including local law enforcement. This is easily seen in the numbers of these gangsters who are legends because of their battles against the cops, as in the case of Larry Davis, as well as those who have received shortened terms because of the information they provided about this corruption. The movie American Gangster was as much about the complicity of the police in New York's drug trade as it was about Lucas himself. But that is just the local branch of the same international system run by the American government. The other branches were the military and CIA. Frank Lucas did not just go to IndoChina on his own and establish this massive network of opium distribution on his own. It was already there and he was just a local pawn to get the product into the hands of the people.
The underground system of the crime economy has not changed, as the blacks are still at the lowest rungs of this system, filling the jails, filling the body bags and being destroyed from the dope, while the whites and other assimilated Europeans are the cops, the agents, the officers and officials getting paid on both sides, bringing the drugs in on one hand and fighting the scourge of drugs on the other. However, this system is now based upon blacks voluntarily allowing themselves to get caught up in something that is keeping them down, because of fake glorification of the so called American Gangster lifestyle, which American blacks never really led, except as cartoon character King Black caricatures of real white gangsters.
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: In light of the recent success of the film American Gangster, this is a good time to utilize the gangster film genre to better understand the position of African-Americans in the underground economy. There is a historical chronology related to the subjection of African-American men in the mainstream northern economy that dates to the American Civil War.
The film “The Gangs of New York” documents the racial struggles between the “Nativist” and “Immigrant” gangs in Civil War era New York. It also documents the relationship between ethnicity, politics, gangs and employment in the north. One of the largest racial riots in American history took place in Civil War era New York by white Northerners afraid that if Lincoln freed the Slaves, they would compete for jobs with free Whites. The Nativist (Anglo-Saxon) gangs also struggled against Italian and Irish immigrants. One Immigrant gang mentioned in the Gangs of New York was the Forty Thieves.
The Forty Thieves were a real gang and many well known gang figures such as Al Capone came out of this organization. Later, an African-American immigrant woman from the West Indies by the name of “Queenie” ran this gang. Queenie later branched out with her own Harlem based gang and ran the policy (numbers) racket in Harlem with her associate Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy’s later associate was Frank Lucas of American Gangster fame.
Within the context of the Nativist versus the Immigrant gangs in New York, immigrant groups such as Italians sought sanctity through assimilation into “Whiteness”. Italians were often referred to by Anglo’s with the pejorative “Guinea” in reference to their partial African origin. Pejorative aside, the African roots to some Italians is substantiated by the Benin Sickle Cell Variant.
This is the underlying message behind the Godfather chronicle. It is really about an Italian family trying to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon society and move out of the underground economy non-Whites were forced into. Towards the end of Godfather I the Godfather tells his son Michael that he wishes he had more time to achieve this goal. In Godfather II and III Michael, the new Godfather fulfills his father’s wishes with an Anglo wife and “clean” investments in Las Vegas.
While Italians, Jews, Portuguese and other Mediterranean Whites could assimilate and hide their African roots Blacks were never able to do so and were forced to remain in the underground economy much longer.
Wow! Nice short historical survey of gangsters in the U.S. I Appreciate the info, Evergreen! I didn't know about 'Queeny'. Nice cultural assessment also.
I haven't seen the movie yet so please no spoilers!
I will say that Hollywood buzz that this movie might give Denzel his next Oscar, has me peeved that a great black actor can only win an Oscar if he fulfills the roles of white racist stereotypes such as criminality.
Remember his first Oscar. Of course the guy deserved an Oscar, but NOT for 'Training Day' which is definitely not an Oscar-type of movie! Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
This is the underlying message behind the Godfather chronicle. It is really about an Italian family trying to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon society and move out of the underground economy non-Whites were forced into. Towards the end of Godfather I the Godfather tells his son Michael that he wishes he had more time to achieve this goal. In Godfather II and III Michael, the new Godfather fulfills his father’s wishes with an Anglo wife and “clean” investments in Las Vegas.
While Italians, Jews, Portuguese and other Mediterranean Whites could assimilate and hide their African roots Blacks were never able to do so and were forced to remain in the underground economy much longer.
posted
[QUOTE]I will say that Hollywood buzz that this movie might give Denzel his next Oscar, has me peeved that a great black actor can only win an Oscar if he fulfills the roles of white racist stereotypes such as criminality.
Remember his first Oscar. Of course the guy deserved an Oscar, but NOT for 'Training Day' which is definitely not an Oscar-type of movie! [/QUOTE}
Djheuti I noticed that alot of african Americans say that about "Denzel Washington" where Im living.
Posts: 229 | From: Atlanta | Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: In light of the recent success of the film American Gangster, this is a good time to utilize the gangster film genre to better understand the position of African-Americans in the underground economy. There is a historical chronology related to the subjection of African-American men in the mainstream northern economy that dates to the American Civil War.
The film “The Gangs of New York” documents the racial struggles between the “Nativist” and “Immigrant” gangs in Civil War era New York. It also documents the relationship between ethnicity, politics, gangs and employment in the north. One of the largest racial riots in American history took place in Civil War era New York by white Northerners afraid that if Lincoln freed the Slaves, they would compete for jobs with free Whites. The Nativist (Anglo-Saxon) gangs also struggled against Italian and Irish immigrants. One Immigrant gang mentioned in the Gangs of New York was the Forty Thieves.
The Forty Thieves were a real gang and many well known gang figures such as Al Capone came out of this organization. Later, an African-American immigrant woman from the West Indies by the name of “Queenie” ran this gang. Queenie later branched out with her own Harlem based gang and ran the policy (numbers) racket in Harlem with her associate Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy’s later associate was Frank Lucas of American Gangster fame.
Within the context of the Nativist versus the Immigrant gangs in New York, immigrant groups such as Italians sought sanctity through assimilation into “Whiteness”. Italians were often referred to by Anglo’s with the pejorative “Guinea” in reference to their partial African origin. Pejorative aside, the African roots to some Italians is substantiated by the Benin Sickle Cell Variant.
This is the underlying message behind the Godfather chronicle. It is really about an Italian family trying to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon society and move out of the underground economy non-Whites were forced into. Towards the end of Godfather I the Godfather tells his son Michael that he wishes he had more time to achieve this goal. In Godfather II and III Michael, the new Godfather fulfills his father’s wishes with an Anglo wife and “clean” investments in Las Vegas.
While Italians, Jews, Portuguese and other Mediterranean Whites could assimilate and hide their African roots Blacks were never able to do so and were forced to remain in the underground economy much longer.
Wow! Nice short historical survey of gangsters in the U.S. I Appreciate the info, Evergreen! I didn't know about 'Queeny'. Nice cultural assessment also.
I haven't seen the movie yet so please no spoilers!
I will say that Hollywood buzz that this movie might give Denzel his next Oscar, has me peeved that a great black actor can only win an Oscar if he fulfills the roles of white racist stereotypes such as criminality.
Remember his first Oscar. Of course the guy deserved an Oscar, but NOT for 'Training Day' which is definitely not an Oscar-type of movie!
Can't be worse than 3-6 Mafia winning an Oscar for "it's hard out here for a pimp". Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
This is the underlying message behind the Godfather chronicle. It is really about an Italian family trying to assimilate into Anglo-Saxon society and move out of the underground economy non-Whites were forced into. Towards the end of Godfather I the Godfather tells his son Michael that he wishes he had more time to achieve this goal. In Godfather II and III Michael, the new Godfather fulfills his father’s wishes with an Anglo wife and “clean” investments in Las Vegas.
While Italians, Jews, Portuguese and other Mediterranean Whites could assimilate and hide their African roots Blacks were never able to do so and were forced to remain in the underground economy much longer.
Quite observant.
Evergreen Writes:
In the Godfather you will also note that "Germanic" looking Tom Hagen served as the legitimate arm of the Corleone family business.
Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:I will say that Hollywood buzz that this movie might give Denzel his next Oscar, has me peeved that a great black actor can only win an Oscar if he fulfills the roles of white racist stereotypes such as criminality.
Remember his first Oscar. Of course the guy deserved an Oscar, but NOT for 'Training Day' which is definitely not an Oscar-type of movie!
Djheuti I noticed that alot of african Americans say that about "Denzel Washington" where Im living.
Here's the definition from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary(9th Ed.):
i) A native or inhabitant of Africa.
ii)A person of immediate or remote African ancestry; esp: negro .
But again one must be aware that all thes concepts are from European sources--hence Eurocentric.
I guess it all boils down to real events like this:
A friend who is African American related this event: He was in Nairobi on a conference a few years ago and happened to begin conversing with a Kenyan vendor somewhere. The Kenyan asked my friend--"where are you from"? My friend answered "Chicago". The Kenyan--I assume he pondered the answer for a few moments--then said "Never heard of that tribe".
No doubt, the Kenyan(Kenya is large country with a population of some 35 million people), perhaps not knowing much about world geography, thought that "chicago" was the name of an ethnic group in Kenya.
Of course, the issue here has to do with definition--and the interplay of geography and phenotype that yields different answers from different people.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm sure the Kenyan was being quite facetious. The American's accent certainly let a lot on.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I am just relating what I was told. But there are many people in Africa who would not know to distinguish a black South African speaking English from a black American speaking English from a Senegalese speaking English.
Note that black American accents are generally different from white American accents and that the vast majority of Americans who visit Africa are white.
Furthermore, when black Americans visit Africa they usually do so in tour groups--so I would imagine a single black American exploring an unfamiliar place on his own could easily get some inquiring questions. It's like Nigerians I know who get mistaken for black Americans when they travel to Japan. There's also the case of a journalist friend from Sierra Leone who reports for the BBC in West Africa who when protesting at the treatment he[and a colleague]were receiving in a Zimbabwe restaurant was called a "complaining American" by the white restaurant owner.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I thought we were talking about Kenyans recognizing English accents. In my dealings with east and south Africans who speak English as the language of their primary education, none of them ever mistook one ethny for another because of the non-lingual "additives" employed while speaking in English (sighs, tsk tsk, etc.).
I'm not sorry to say I don't consider colonialist descendents to be actually be Kenyan, Zimbabean, etc. When I say Kenyan I mean an Agikuyu, Luo, Masai, or so on.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I saw the movie. It was a pretty good mob movie as well as documentary. Although it wasn't quite as good as classics like 'The Godfather' or 'Scarface'. And you're right, they did leave out alot of important stuff on the story of Frank Lucas.
Posts: 26252 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic