Amiri Baraka
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Amiri Baraka (born LeRoi Jones October 7, 1934) is an American intellectual and countercultural figure. He moved to New York's Greenwich Village in the late-1950s. His work is often cited in postmodern contexts by for example Deleuze an Guattari.
Controversy
In 1965, Baraka wrote: "Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank. … The average ofay [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.",
Amiri Baraka was New Jersey’s Poet Laureate at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He wrote a poem titled "Somebody Blew Up America" about the event. The poem was controversial and highly critical of the American government. The poem also contains lines claiming Israel's involvement in an alleged 9/11 conspiracy:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day Why did Sharon stay away?
[...]
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion And cracking they sides at the notion
While the claims made in those lines were not original to Baraka, the source material upon which he relied (in particular, the stories of the 4,000 Israeli workers and the canceled trip by Ariel Sharon) has been largely discredited. Despite the debunking, Baraka currently stands by the claims made in the poem, which many critics consider to be representative of New Antisemitism, though Baraka and his defenders prefer to define his position as Anti-Zionism.
After publishing this poem Governor Jim McGreevey tried to remove Baraka from the post, only to discover that there was no legal way to do so. So he then abolished the NJ Poet Laureate title, Baraka no longer holds the position as Poet Laureate in New Jersey.
