PIERCING THE SILENCE* ON: THE HATE U GIVE 4 $$$$

Returning to the late 60’s, despite Ali serving as the symbol of the “counterculture,” he was never a revolutionary that could reflect and articulate the wide ranging struggles that were being brought to the fore. While covering Ali’s training in Miami, Robert Lipsyte recounted being there when Ali found out he’d now become eligible to serve in Vietnam in 1966; the draft board had lowered requirements to increase the supply of soldiers.

Lipsyte claims Ali’s first response was, “Why me?” Going on a rant about why the draft board didn’t call up “some poor boys,” considering of how many guns and bombs his taxes paid for; “I buy a lot of bullets, at least three jet bombers a year, and pay the salary of 50,000 fighting men with the money they take from me after my fights,” he said. However, Ali’s most quoted statement to reporters that day was “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong,” which ultimately led to his undoing and certified his place as an enemy of the U.S. establishment.

During his exile from the ring, Ali developed a friendship with the man who now wore the heavyweight belt, Joe Fraizer; on at least 2 occasions, Frazier helped Ali financially and also asked for his help to retain his boxing licence. In 1970, Ali would return to the ring in Atlanta, on account of Georgia’s lack of boxing authority, making light of his competitors; this built up the possibility of an Ali-Fraizer fight. In December, the boxers signed for a record $2.5 million each to fight, considering the magnitude of this fight, it barely required promotion; but that didn’t stop Ali from trying.

Ali’s “promotion” consisted of humiliating a man, who considered him a friend. Ali’s position as the symbol of the “counterculture,” meant Frazier became an unwilling “Great White Hope” by default; but the former heavyweight champion worked hard to canonise Frazier as an errand boy for the white establishment. Ali called Fraizer an “Uncle Tom,” the enslaved title character of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which Uncle Tom refuses to reveal where 2 enslaved women—who had been sexually abused by their master—are hiding, and is beaten to death. Arguably the first bestseller, professor of African-American studies Patricia Turner explains that the impact of the abolitionist message was distorted by minstrel shows which turned Uncle Tom into an old man, “whose English is poor and will sell out any Black man to satisfy white people.” Ali claimed, “98% of my people are for me. They identify with my struggle.. If I win, they win. I lose, they lose. Anybody Black who thinks Frazier can whoop me is an Uncle Tom.” Ali made it harder for Black people to identify on his side by his taunts of Frazier being “too dumb” and “too ugly” to be champion, going as far as to call Frazier “the gorilla;” using every racial stereotype to isolate the fighter.

Photographer John Shearer captured the fighters in the runup to the fight and he felt that Ali underestimated Frazier, “because you can see that Ali had a belly. And this is not all that long before the fight. He just wasn’t in the kind of shape he needed to be in to battle a warrior like Joe Frazier.” Shearer emphasised the discipline Frazier displayed in his training, but also captured Joe Frazier, the R&B act, with his backup singers, The Knockouts; a LIFE magazine article noting “he sings with strength and sincerity.” However, on the night of the fight, Frazier had vengeance on his mind, years later recounting, “This guy was a buddy. I remember looking at him and thinkin', What's wrong with this guy? Has he gone crazy? He called me an Uncle Tom. For a guy who did as much for him as I did, that was cruel. I grew up like the black man—he didn't. I cooked the liquor. I cut the wood. I worked the farm. I lived in the ghetto. Yes, I tommed; when he asked me to help him get a licence, I tommed for him. For him! He betrayed my friendship. He called me stupid. He said I was so ugly that my mother ran and hid when she gave birth to me. I was shocked. I sat down and said to myself, I'm gonna kill him. O.K.? Simple as that. I'm gonna kill him!”

The grand spectacle that became “The Fight”—occupying most of the U.S.’ radios—provided cover for a cab driver, a daycare provider, and 2 professors to break into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, grabbing every file they could carry, hoping they’d found documents that might prove the bureau was illegally spying on and harassing anti-war protesters. The group—known as Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI—immediately found evidence of agents being encouraged to “enhance the paranoia” amongst activists and the surveillance of organisations formed to protect the demands of Black students. Little by little the group sent out documents to newspapers, who began publishing from the 24th of March; the FBI would survive the initial uproar.

On the 17th of June, U.S. President Richard Nixon would present to congress a dire situation in terms of drug abuse in the United States, insisting on further measures being taken in his declaration of a “War on Drugs.” The year prior in October, Nixon had signed into law the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, which included the Controlled Substances Act: creating a classification system of five “schedules,” rating drugs based on their potential for abuse, their applications in medicine, and their likelihood of producing dependence. The “army” of this war would be the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), an agency of the U.S. Justice Department established by the Nixon administration in 1973, responsible for enforcing the country's laws around the trafficking in controlled substances; working with other law enforcement agencies to achieve this. The use of no-knock warrants, which allow police to force their way into a home or business without warning and unannounced, trace their roots back to the Nixon administration; the police tactic led to the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020.

While waiting in a Senate Judiciary Committee office to pick up some documents, in 1972, former NBC reporter Carl Stern passed the time by flipping through the papers released from the FBI burglary. One of the documents had the term “COINTELPRO” handwritten, no one could tell him what it meant so in 1973, he filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. He received just four pages but one of them revealed there were at least 7 COINTELPROs (counterintelligence programs) targeting groups such as the Communist Party, the “New Left,” “White Hate Groups,” “Black Extremists” and the Socialist Workers Party. Stern filed another lawsuit seeking more documents, and in 1974 received 50,000 pages. Beginning in 1956, COINTELPRO was established to neutralise the U.S. communist base, once they were decimated, in the 60’s the attention of the program turned to the vast movements of social change, especially dialling into Black organisations. It’s hard to distinguish between the counterinsurgency programs ran by the U.S. in foreign lands and the domestic COINTELPRO, as all types of surveillance, infiltration, intimidation, coercion, false criminal charges and assassinations befell the activists. The assisination of Chairman of the Black Panther Party, 21-year-old, Fred Hampton in 1969 being assisted by an FBI informant follows a pattern of Black leaders that had been killed, jailed or defamed; by 1968, 80% of COINTELPRO efforts in Black movements were focused on the Black Panther Party.

The militarisation of U.S. police departments proper followed the election of Ronald Reagan as president of the US in 1981, an early “victory” being Congress passing the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act. The act, pushed by Reagan, encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, intelligence, research, weaponry, and other equipment; completely blurring the lines between the military and the police—a significant feature of Apartheid South Africa and the apartheid occupation of Palestine. Reagan followed this by making the “War on Drugs” official by declaring drugs a threat to U.S. national security, through his National Security Decision Directive, and provided for yet more cooperation between local, state, and federal law enforcement. Alongside the draconian laws of the settler-colony police state, Nancy Reagan—the First Lady—attempted to justify the “War on Drugs” by establishing a child-focused anti-drug campaign in 1982.

Credit for the “Just Say No” slogan is often given to the former First Lady but it was actually created in collaboration by the Ad Council—an organisation created by a group of advertising and industry executives in 1942 to provide propaganda for the war effort. Post-World War, it switched its aims to “public service,” pioneering the “public service announcement” (PSA); providing Cold War propaganda on the supposed virtues of capitalism and the “evils” of communism and socialism. Following in the footsteps of “Just Say No,” Daryl Gates—now-LAPD chief of police—introduced the teen substance abuse prevention program, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) in 1983; the program is probably now more recognised for its merchandise, which drug users ironically embraced. D.A.R.E. recruits uniformed police officers to go into schools and warn students about the dangers of drug use, while also encouraging a drug-free life. The problem with these programs is that they’re based on spreading fear rather than information.

In 1984, Congress amended a federal drug law to allow federal law enforcement agencies to retain and use any and all proceeds from asset forfeitures, and to allow state local police agencies to retain up to 80 percent of the assets' value; à la Antoine Fuqua’s 2001 crime film, Training Day. These various elements led to the boom of SWAT teams across the U.S. for the specific purpose of drug raids. On the 17th of June 1986, the Boston Celtics drafted University of Maryland small forward Len Bias with the 2nd pick; 2 days later he died of a drug overdose in a University dormitory with a few teammates. In the midst of the media hysteria around crack cocaine, Bias’ death added further fuel to the fire—despite being a powder cocaine overdose—and contributed to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, signed by Reagan on the 27th of October. This introduced the 100:1 federal sentencing disparity, under which distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries the same 5-year mandatory minimum sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine, while 5,000 grams of powder cocaine and 50 grams of crack both led to 10 years imprisonment.

The U.S. government doubled down on its stance on crack cocaine by passing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which imposed a 5-year mandatory minimum and 20-year maximum sentence for simple possession of 5 grams or more of the drug; simple possession of any amount of powder cocaine or any other drug remained at no more than one year in prison. These laws weren’t based on science but rather on myths built around the crystalized form of the drug being instantly and far more addictive, causing violent behaviour and it was thought that crack destroyed the maternal instincts of mothers, as well as posing unique developmental dangers to the fetus—leading to the coining of the term “crack babies.” These were eugenicist descriptions by a racist and paternalistic society continuing an age-old tradition of claiming the savage is out of control.

On the 3rd of November 1986, Lebanese publication Ash-Shiraa exposed the sale of arms by the U.S. to Iran, a country under arms embargo and holding U.S. citizens hostage; this would become known as the Iran-Contra Affair. It was revealed that a portion of the funds were diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels of Nicauragua, opening up the elaborate scheming led by CIA director Colby and Vice-president George HW Bush; a CIA agent from the age of 18. Nicaragua was another battleground for the US’s “anti-communist” campaign, and after being barred by senate from funding the Contras, back channels were created to supply the Contras with arms and infrastructure. In 1988, PBS’ investigative documentary program Frontline premiered Guns, Drugs and the CIA, showcasing how the current secret war reflected that of the past in Laos, except this time the country was Nicarauga, the communists were the Sandinistas and the US backed–Contras were partly funded by the cocaine trade. The cocaine money came from collaboration with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who utilised the planes supplied by the U.S. to smuggle cocaine for the Colombian Medellín Cartel, from the Central American country into the U.S.; once again the U.S. government found themselves complicit in drug trade.

The increased prison population reveals the target of sentencing laws: by 1992, 89.7% of all those in state prison on drug possession charges were African-American or Latino and by 1995, 32% of Black men ages 20-29 were in prison, jail, on parole or probation; between 1989 and 1991, Black women had the highest increase in correctional supervision, rising by 78%. The rise in incarceration rates led to an overpopulation of prisons and capitalism responded in its grotesque opportunism; in 1984, the company CoreCivic opened the first private prison. By 1999 there were 14 private prison corporations operating in the U.S., incarcerating 122,871 inmates; because these are for-profit-prisons, a number of cost cutting measures are taken to increase revenue for shareholders, such as rejecting inmates who have severe medical conditions because they are more expensive to house. Looking back at a visit by the D.A.R.E. program to their elementary school, journalist Michael McGrath describes the officers as “simplistic and vague, grouping everything from alcohol to angel dust into one toxic cloud that loomed over our society.”

For the children who’ve lost family members to the “War on Drugs,” these programs are antagonists to the trauma they’ve experienced, presenting their loved ones “as a tawdry assortment of losers and bums;” denying victimhood to those affected by the “War on Drugs” and othering drug-use as a “consequence of collective personal failure in affected communities rather than a public health crisis for millions of Americans.” This is the carceral system’s expertise, ostracising individuals which it deems undesirable from the rest of society; which then has a knock on effect on their loved ones. In an interview on “The Intergenerational Impact of Carceral Punishment,” California community organisers Marcelo Lopez and Alejandra Gutierrez describe this as being “system impacted.” Gutierrez says it is a “broad term that refers to the oppressive impact of many systems and institutions, including poverty.” Lopez explains “there are many different ways people are impacted…the consequences of incarceration are not linear. It’s a branch, and after it touches one person it is going to affect many more as it grows.”

In 1994, while writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition, Dan Baum sought out an interview with Nixon's domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman. Baum began by asking earnest questions, which Ehrlichman promptly waved away, saying “You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black people, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the anti-opium laws that were aimed at Chinese immigrants in the 1870’s or the anti-cannabis laws introduced in the Midwest and Southwest targeted Mexican-Americans and migrants in the 1910’s and 20’s. The quote would be released to the public in 2016, after Ehrlichman had passed, which caused his children to question its belated release but altogether deny their father would say such a thing; his colleagues attributed the statement to his sarcastic humour. And white America laughed along.

From the early days of the U.S. print media sensationalising the violence by enslaved Black men, stoking fears of the “feral brute,” the criminalisation of racialised peoples had evolved where necessary to continue this classification. The introduction of 24-hour news, in 1980, was accompanied by the consistent documentation of police raids on working-class racialised communities, the large numbers of drug arrests in these communities, and the brutalising manner in which they were undertaken, felt justified by the majority of the viewing public. In 1989, Fox launched the show Cops, in which viewers joined real police officers in a sort of ride along as they “did their jobs.” The show was a huge success and provided the police with a positive image, but continued the theme of white officer and Black criminal as the show overrepresented crime committed by racialised peoples, parading them on screens as “thugs.” In the mid 1990’s, following the success of Gangsta rap—pioneered by N.W.A—there was an attempt by rappers to embrace and reclaim the word “thug;” in some ways it can be compared to the reclamation and transformation of the N-word with an “er” as a slur to the N-word with a soft “a” as term of endearment.

Professor Tricia Rose writes, in their book The Hip Hop Wars, “The Thug both represents a product of discriminatory conditions, and embodies behaviours that injure the very communities from which it comes.” The rappers of this era served as a symbol of the violence in the Black Colony’s of the US (aka the ghettos), giving reports on the violence handed to their decaying communities—based on their racial criminalisation—and the violence which they themselves exert to survive under the circumstances. Professor Michael Jeffries writes, in their book Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop, “Trouble is transformed from a source of trauma to a badge of honour that earns thugs the right to be vulnerable, spiritual, and loving, as they simultaneously distance themselves from ‘weak’ men who exhibit the same qualities. Tracing this process begins with confronting nihilism.” Continuing, they write, “Nihilism in rap is therapeutic for poor young people of colour who swim in the postindustrial urban stream of social isolation and self-destruction. The art gives this population a voice, serving as affirmation that they are not alone as they confront their social death on a daily basis. For these reasons, nihilism should be seen as a force ripe with possibility, as those who claim it have nothing left to lose.”

The most prominent and influential “thug” rapper was Tupac Shakur (son of Afeni), the rapper tattooing the phrase “THUG LIFE” across their midsection. Tupac explained that the phrase was an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F**** Everybody, meaning what you feed us as seeds, grows and blows up in your face.” From a family of Black Panthers, the rapper continued in the tradition of revolutionary language, for him “THUG LIFE” was a new Black Power, having an understanding that just by virtue of his so-called “race,” he was criminalised and hated. He vocalised this during his speech at the 1993 Indiana Black Expo, saying, “‘Cause these white folks see us as thugs, I don’t care what y’all think. I don’t care if you think you a lawyer, If you a man, If you an African-American. If you whatever the f*** you think you are. We thugs and [N-word’s] to these mother********;” ending their speech saying, “So all I'm saying the closer is that we got to be united under whatever, whatever, don’t let shit hold us apart. I don’t care if you from Cali, New York or whatever you are a Blood, a Crip or a thug or a student or a scholar whatever. Don't let shit hold us back no more. We got to unite by any means necessary and we got to fight!”

In identifying himself with the “thugs” of the U.S., Shakur was identifying himself with the lumpenproletariat—a marxist term referring to the lower class, unorganised masses with revolutionary potential, eg. prostitutes, gangsters, petty criminals, chronic unemployed or unemployables. Tupac was attempting to politicise the depoliticised lumpenproletariat—a goal that had been set out by the Black Panthers—but at a time when alternative politics had severely been defanged. “THUG LIFE” carried on the objectives of the Panthers, and Shakur received mentorship from members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, but used the vernacular of hip-hop to reach the masses. Tupac travelled across the U.S. meeting with gang leaders on this mission to organise them for revolutionary action and reduce the violence within the community. A philosophy was developed by Shakur, his mentors and gang leaders for the “thugs” to live by, known as the “Code of THUG LIFE”—designed to politicise gang members and ready them for armed rebellion to oppose racist and economic oppression. This activism gives us an understanding why the U.S. government surveilled the rapper and has been associated with his murder in 1996; he died at age 25.

The commerciality of the “thug” image led to the watering down of Tupac’s message but this was accompanied by the overall commercialisation of hip-hop. Today the majority of the genre can be described as a marketing arm for capitalism, in some cases, there is a clear disdain directed at the black peasantry as the artist creates separation (see: ICYTWAT - Pray4him), embracing their new found status amongst the elite through the infamous phrase of “Black Excellence.” In 1968, Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class—a documentary film written by William Branch and shot, directed and edited by William Greaves—explored the limitations and the precariousness of the economic standing of the burgeoning Black white-collar class; filmed against the backdrop of the racial revolts and assisination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Atlanta is an American city where a visible Black capitalist class continued to develop and, as a piece on Hood Communist explains, a “wakandaism is applied” to the city; the Black bourgeoisie is shown as an example of upward mobility being possible. However, Black capitalism is capitalism, meaning it requires the labour of the working class and is in conflict with the goal of Black Liberation: freedom for ALL Black people. This hasn’t stopped members of the Black elite from taking on aesthetics of Black Liberation, the likes of Jay Z co-opting Black Liberation as “Black Excellence.” In 2022, Jay Z claimed victimhood in a Twitter Spaces, using the NOI term “tricknology” to describe people's categorisation of him as a capitalist—a word he claimed had just been “invented” to persecute the emergent Black elite. YouTube Video Essayist F.D Signifier released The REAL Faces of Black Conservatism, diving into The Distraction, associated with the likes of Louis Farrakhan (leader of the NOI), Dr. Umar Johnson and other non-substantive “radicals;” The Double Agent, associated with the now disgraced Bill Cosby and those that peddle the lie that the lack of respectability politics amongst African-Americans being their downfall; and The Black Capitalist, associated with none other than Jay Z and the black bourgeoisie (and black petite bourgeoisie) that offer white subsidiarity within capitalism as salvation.

The word “thug” still has its place within hip-hop’s lexicon, however U.S. mainstream media’s use of the word began to feel even more like a slur; in 2017, NFL player Richard Sherman felt the word had become an “accepted way of calling somebody the N-word.” Political writerJamelle Bouie agreed And it’s hard not to when considering the words spoken about teenager Trayvon Martin following his murder in 2012. Right-wing political commentator Geraldo Rivera (who? Goraldo from Back at the Barnyard) would blame the teenager wearing a hoodie For his killing at the hands of George Zimmerman; when facing backlash for the comments, Rivera doubled down, saying, “you dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug…I stand by that.”