Comments on COUNTER RACISM NOW!: Jack Johnson: "Obscuring what happened along the w...

I've got two: fookyoutwit.com and fookyoutwit....

2011-03-09T06:30:36.682-08:00

I've got two: fookyoutwit.com and fookyoutwit.net

I've thought about reviewing the books, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

@J.R. Lamar- Originally I had intended to go throu...

2011-03-09T06:13:16.544-08:00

@J.R. Lamar- Originally I had intended to go through the whole comic book series, pick it apart, and display all of the deception.

After I received a comment from the comic's producer, I decided that I had made my point with the pages that I had already worked with. I have since decided that the comic book is worth less than toilet paper, and therefore needs no more attention from me.

You are more than welcome to set up a blog, continue from where I left off and point out whatever deceptions you see.

The thing is, you seem to only be focusing on the ...

2011-03-08T21:18:45.520-08:00

The thing is, you seem to only be focusing on the non-facts in the book that were "bad," while ignoring all the other ways that the book lied to make Johnson appear more virtuous and almost superheroic than he really was. The book also has him and another Black boxer defeateing two shotgun-armed Klansmen with their bare hands, and has him traveling to TX after a flood and saving a Black woman from getting raped by two White men. Those events didn't happen either.

Incidentally, I just got Vol. 2 today. It's not much better. There's this whole sequence where Jack meets some rich White woman named Dominque where she takes him to her mansion and give him so huge speech about race, and then they have sex and the next day she moves to Europe. I have no idea what the point of that is, but it lasts 48 pages. By contrast, Johnson finally winning the heavyweight title and then his conviction and exile are all sort of rushed through in a few pages.

And then, of course, the book ends with ANOTHER comment comparing Jack's last name "Johnson" to men's penis'.

And Unforgivable Blackness does mention him starting his own club, and inventing a special wrench to use to fix cars, as well as talking about how he was well-read. I think it's a fair and balanced look @ the man.

@J.R. Lamar- Thank You for your comments.The only ...

2011-03-06T08:49:59.053-08:00

@J.R. Lamar- Thank You for your comments.The only commonality that all of the athletes(you mentioned, including Johnson) have, that I am concerned about here, is in their being Victims of Racism (White Supremacy). I am not concerned about comparisons of one victim's behavior to that of another victim (e.g. Rodman vs Ali). This is not about "role models" or "black heroes". The point that I am making here, is that most of the situations in the comic book were outright lies. The writer and producers of the comic book said that it was based on his autobiography called "Jack Johnson is a Dandy".

The comic book implies that Johnson's motivation to be a boxer, came from his mother's physically beating him and forcing him to fight the local "white" boys who bullied him and called him nigger, as a youth, when in fact, none of that ever happened. They made it appear that he was raised in a single parent family, when he was not. They made it appear that a hobo tried to rape him on the train, when that didn't happen. He was an inspiration in the fact that he owned a few businesses, and traveled a lot, which are things that huge numbers of "black" people don't do, but should be doing. He also appeared to have more sense than what most people have been lead to believe he had. I understand that Johnson exaggerated himself in his own book, but if you look carefully you will see that the situations that I addressed, weren't the kind that he exaggerated. I saw the documentary sometime ago, and I do not remember it mentioning the situations that I am addressed here.

I have read this book as well, and I agree that it...

2011-03-05T18:32:03.962-08:00

I have read this book as well, and I agree that it was not a particularly accurate representation of Jack Johnson's life. Although, unlike you, my criticism is that I think it glorifies Johnson too much. I find the man's life and the reaction of society to him to be extremely interesting, but I have no illusions about what kind of man he was. He was self-centered, hedonistic, abusive towards women (most of whom he dealt with were prostitutes), and not particularly concerned with the condition of Black people in general. Original Johnson tries to paint him as a sort of Black hero in many ways, like the dream sequence of him as a Knight in golden army avenging the Black race. That's total fiction.

Make no mistake, the man was unjustly targeted by the White power structure of the time, and his conviction of violating the Mann Act (which wasn't even a law yet @ the time of Johnson's supposed crime) was completely fabricated, but the man himself was no saint. But in modern times people tend to look @ his conviction and compare him to Muhammad Ali. Truth is, Johnson has more common with a Dennis Rodman or Terrell Owens type of athlete. If they had existed during Johnson's time they would have been persecuted for their actions as well.

This is why I have to say that I don't think it's a good idea to take Johnson's autobiography @ his word. He wrote it, so of course he's going to present himself in the best possible light, that's what most folks who write autobiographies do. Biographies happen to be a hobby of mine, over the years I've read dozens of biographies and autobiographies about everyone from Malcolm X to Malcolm Forbes. From Bill Gates to LL Cool J. From Clarence Thomas to Sam Walton. And I can tell you that autobiographies are always sanitized. Of course, the trick with unauthorized biographies is to find one that's not biased, either pro or con, about the subject, which often requires your own self-judgment and learning to read between the lines.

In the case of Jack Johnson, if you want to see what I consider to be a balanced view of his life, in a way that praises his accomplishments while not shying away from his faults, I would recommend checking out the Ken Burns documentary "Unforgivable Blackness."

Yes sir he WAS accusing ME. I was attempting to de...

2009-11-29T15:05:58.687-08:00

Yes sir he WAS accusing ME. I was attempting to demonstrate the hypocrisy in his words. Because "his work" does to Jack Johnson's story, exactly what he was accusing me of doing. You have to read all of my posts that regard "The Original Johnson" comic book series to get it, I suspect.

Just curious SynQ, what is the context of that Hau...

2009-11-29T14:41:45.494-08:00

Just curious SynQ, what is the context of that Haupman quote at the top of this page? Obviously it is hard to tell from such a small snippet, but it actually seems to me as though he were accusing YOU of obscuring his work, and saying that you do him no Justice. Not that he was admitting that he had done the same.

Like I say, real hard to tell from that.