*************************************************
If I Was Black
I'd Be Raisin' Hell !


If You Were Black
In Fuckindeed !
If he was black,
then surely he would be raising hell.

Raisin' Hell Like A
Raisin In The Sun
If only he were black

If Only He Were Black
If only he were black

If Only He Were Black
If only he were black

If Only He Were Black
If he were black, indeed

Then Surely He Would Be Raisin' Hell,
Would He Not ?
Indeed he would,
if only he were black

If Only He Were Black
If only he were black,
then surely, most assuredly,
then, most certainly,
assuredly he would be araisin' hell,
would he not ?

Oh ! Most Certainly !
Most certainly he would be raisin' hell,
if only he were black

If Only He Were Black
Yes, indeed. If only he were black !

*****************************************************************************

But, He Wasn't Black, Was He ?
No. He Wasn't.
He Wasn't Black.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't black.

If Fuzzy Wuzzy Wasn't Black,
What Was Fuzzy Wuzzy ?
Fuzzy wuzzy was portly.

Rotund, was he ?
Indeed. Portly. Rotund. Pot-Bellied.

Like A Pig, Then ?
Yes. Yes, that's it.
The very thing.
Fuzzy Wuzzy Wuz Portly, Rotund, Pot-Bellied,
Like A Pig, Indeed.
Like A Pig.
That's the ticket.
Like A Pig.
Just Like A Pig.

Rotund, Portly, and Pot-Bellied, You Say ?
Yes, that's right.
That's what I say.
professor Rotund, huffing and puffing
and bobbing about,
was rotund, portly, and pot-bellied.

Rotund, you say ?
And Huffing And Puffing And Bobbing About, You Say ?
Are You Quite Sure ?
Yes, yes quite.

Well Then Not Quite The Type
To Be Raising Hell, I Should Think.
Yes. Yes, that's quite right.
You should think that.
You should indeed.
Not quite the type to be raising hell.
He wasn't black, you know.

Oh, yes. That's right.
He wasn't black.
Yes, yes, of course.
You said that.
He wasn't black, you said.
Well then,
he certainly couldn't be raising hell
if he wasn't black, could he ?
Can't raise hell if you're not black, you know.
You Have To Be Black To Raise Hell.
Everyone Knows That.
Yes. Yes, of course.
Everyone knows that.
But he WOULD have been raising hell, you know,
if only he were black.
He said so, himself, you know.
He said so himself.

Yes. Yes, of course.
Of Course He Would.
Of Course He Would.
I'm Quite Certain Of It.
Yes, Of Course He Would.
If Only He Were Black.
If only he were black.

*****************************************************************************

What About Our Graduate Student, Then ?
Well, you see,
professor portly and rotund
seemed to overlook
the rather SALIENT (look it up) point
that
Our Graduate Student
WAS Raising Hell
Right Then And There !

REGARDLESS OF HIS COLOR !

So, In Other Words,
Do You Mean To Tell Me
That White Professor Rotund With The Beard
Yelled At Our Graduate Student,
Who Was Writing In The Cafeteria
Like Snoopy On His Doghouse,
Like Sartre On The Seine,
"if i was black
i'd be raising hell !" ?
That's right.
Our Graduate Student
couldn't figure it out at first.
"Why the hell did he yell THAT at me ?",
he wondered.
Our Graduate Student was composing away,
professionally and appropriately
and peacefully.
HE wasn't attacking African Americans.
He was DEFENDING them !
HE wasn't throwing tantrums
like the privileged FAKE,
shallow white women's libber was,
who went around screaming,
"White Men have it coming to them !"
HE wasn't throwing tantrums
like the privileged FAKE
shallow white women's libber
who felt she was entitled
to always be the center of attention,
yelling, "calling a white woman a women's libber
is JUST AS BAD AS calling
a black man the nword !",
because she wanted the white women's lib movement
to get just as much attention
as the civil rights movement.
He was just writing letters,
just like Dr. King did.

Our Graduate Student just shrugged,
and kept on writing his letters.
But, eventually,
as the weeks wore on,
and he encountered endless resistance,
and scorn, and mockery, and threats,
he got mad and fought back.
He mocked them.

In his final Newsletter or two
he picked 'em apart, one by one,
all the usual suspects.
They coulda been characters
right out of MLK's Letter From A Birmingham Jail, -
the silent moderate supporters, the moderate opponents,
the snarling dogs growling and snapping,
waiting to be let loose.
He took 'em on one by one.
"I'm completely right.
She's completely WRONG,"
he reasoned.
"And, all I'm doin' is writin' Newsletters,
and they're mockin' me
and draggin' me up to the president's office,
and havin' students threaten me !?"
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
you !"
He can't remember 'em all.

He mocked the department chair,
the women's libber's hubby
who bragged about being an alcoholic
even though he hadn't had a drink
in a decade or a quarter century or something,
"john is a very smart man.
john tells everyone he's an alcoholic.
john hasn't had a drink in 10 or 25 years.
'alcoholic. n. a person who drinks
too much alcohol. Oxford, 197whatever.'
'Why, john, do you tell people you're an alcoholic
if you haven't had a drink in 10 or 25 years ?',
I asked.
'Because', john replied,
'It scares the hell out of people !'"
That's the honest truth.
That's exactly what John,
the department chair
and tantrum-throwing women's libber's husband,
said.
That's how crazy people act.

I Agree. You're Absolutely Right.
THAT'S HOW CRAZY PEOPLE ACT !
When You Go Around Trying To SCARE People
By Telling Them That Your BRAIN IS DAMAGED,
and that you are continuously damaging your brain,
Implying That Your BEHAVIOR Might Be
UNPREDICTABLE AND VIOLENT,
And When You Have Long Scraggly Hair
and LOOK LIKE CHARLES MANSON to boot
while you say crazy stuff like that, then
you look like and
you sound like and
you act like
A CRAZY PERSON !
And, you know about the duck test.
That's Right.
According to the duck test,
john was a crazy person, but not our graduate student.
The duck test states that if you
look like a duck and
sound like a duck and
act like a duck,
then you're probably a duck.
When john TRIED TO SCARE PEOPLE
by saying he was an alcoholic,
he sounded like a crazy person.
And looked like a crazy person
with his long, scraggly hair, like Charles Manson.
And he was acting like Charles Manson.
He was acting like a CRAZY PERSON.
So, according to the duck test.
john WAS a crazy person !

Yes, I Can See That.
john, The Department Chair, Was Crazy,
And Our Graduate Student WASN'T
Because Our Graduate Student
Wasn't Saying And Doing Crazy Things
Like john, The Department Chair, Was.
That's Right.
Our Graduate Student
wasn't acting like a duck,
and wasn't acting like a crazy person.

How Was He Acting ?
He was acting like
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
He was just writing letters,
Newsletters.

Who Else Did Our Graduate Student Mock
In Response To Scorn, Mockery, And Threats ?
After 28 years,
he doesn't remember 'em all.

He remembers mocking
another hostile professor in that department
who bragged about having forearms like Popeye
and who flirted with the female students
and once intentionally provoked
the females in the class
by drawing a bikini-body hourglass shape
on the board,
complete with the numbers,
like "36, 24, 36" or something.
Then he said,
"Oh, it's a coke bottle,
and those are the dimensions in millimeters."
When he went after Our Graduate Student,
Our Graduate Student ridiculed him
for his obvious and frequent flirtations
and wrote that his wife
would find him to be "quite ridiculous."
It was WAR,
and THEY had declared it lol.

He remembers making fun of
a powerfully built young intructor
who was his first faculty advisor.
He wasn't so bad really.
He actually supported the notion
of a Men's Liberation Organization.
Our Graduate Student was really poking fun at
the idea of the powerfully built and strong man
who chickened out,
"Tolerance that, in its effect,
is not entirely unlike terror."
That's a Gore Vidal quote.
We'll get to that soon.

Our Graduate Student remembers
taking a pot shot at some student's
remark in some publication.
It was a handful of people he took on
in order to defend himself
and in order to show
what a pathetic, picayune little
joke of a university
that place was
where they cheered
the women's libber's nonsensical
tantrum rantings
and mocked and scorned and threatened him
for writing thoughtful, communicative letters,
like Martin Luther King did.

But the one he remembers the clearest
and that he had put his heart into most
was his
"Apology For Dr SoAndSo"
"Apology For dr thayer,"
I believe it was.
The more he thought about
professor beared portley pig's threat,
"if i was black i'd be raisin' hell",
the more representative and significant
it became to him.
It was THAT PROFESSOR WHO WAS STIRRING UP RACIAL HATRED,
plain and simple,
NOT OUR GRADUATE STUDENT !
Our Graduate Student
was discussing crazy inflammatory statements
made by the tantrum-throwing
white women's libber instructor,
and he was doing it
in a very reserved, sedate, non-inflammatory manner.
He sat down, typed his thoughts onto paper,
encouraged dialogue,
and distributed those Newsletters
to the mailboxes of faculty
and student organizations
(and thereby to student leaders),
so his efforts wouldn't be wasted
on intellectually immature students.
He wasn't standing in the Quad
like Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin
or Mark Rudd or Bill Ayers
screamin' inflammatory lies and bullshit.
He was writing, not screaming,
and communicating mostly with faculty
precisely BECAUSE he'd been through
all that dramatic shit on the campuses
from 1969 to 1971, especially 1969,
when everybody was screaming and yelling
and throwing TANTRUMS
just like his mother did
and just like that
shallow, FAKE women's libber fascist did.

What feelings were running through
Our Graduate Student's mind and heart
in reaction to professor portley's VEILED THREAT ?
Well, the first reaction is,
"Why doesn't he just TALK TO ME,
or SUBMIT AN ARTICLE to The Newsletter ?
Why the bravado and veiled threat ?"
"Why raise his voice to me
from a distance in the cafeteria
like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin,
instead of sitting next to me and talking "
"Was he insinuating that people
who actually WERE black were,
or should be, mad as hell at me and,
if so, why didn't THEY talk to me
or submit an article to The Newsletter,
as Our Graduate Student was INVITING
ALL MEMBERS of that state university community
to do."
"Was professor portley encouraging and
INCITING black people to get mad as hell at me !?"

So, in sarcastic and scathing and mocking satire,
Our Graduate Student wrote,
"Why Does professor portley Yell That He Would
Raise Hell, If Only He Were Black ?
Because It's Fun To Raise Hell ?
Perhaps What Professor Portley Meant To Say
(inasmuch as his statements were directed to me)
Was That I Would Not Be Raising Hell, If I Were Black.
If That Is The Case,
Then It Appears That professor portley Is Overlooking
The Rather SALIENT (I got that from Roget's Thesaurus) Fact
That I AM RAISING HELL,
Right Here And Now,
REGARDLESS OF MY COLOR!"
I believe it was an inspired response.
It exposed the FAKE, shallow MYTH of professor portley
that all the FAKE white liberals believed too.
It was a convenient MYTH of theirs that you had to be black
to fight for justice.
It let the FAKE white liberals off the hook.
("We don't want to OFFEND the blacks
by fighting FOR them, so we'll respect them
and step back and let them fight for themselves.
We can sit back and stay out of it,
except, of course, to INCITE the blacks.)

Our Graduate Student DEBUNKED their MYTH.
Our Graduate Student is colorblind,
and doesn't judge a person's right
to fight injustice and nonsense
by the color of his skin,
but BY THE CONTENT OF HIS CHARACTER !
"Is professor portley insinuating
that I would not be raising hell
if I were black ?",
Our Graduate Student queried mockingly.
"If This Is The Case,
Then professor portley Seems To Be Overlooking
The Rather SALIENT Fact
That I AM Raising Hell
Right Here And Now
REGARDLESS OF MY COLOR !"

It was simply beautiful, if I do say so myself.
It established Our Graduate Student
as a colorblind fighter for Justice
and professor portley
as an excuse-seeking FAKE white liberal.

"How Wonderful To Know,"
continued Our Graduate Student,
unmercifully trashing, mocking and scorning
the devious, inciteful, treacherous
wimp of a professor
(after all, by this time
Our Graduate Student had been told
that there had been talk of killing him.)
"How Wonderful To Know
That professor portley, too,
Is Willing To Fight Against Injustice.

I, And The Entire Black Populations
of North America and South Africa
Are Given Great Comfort By This Knowledge
And We Will All Sleep Soundly Tonight,
Knowing That professor portley
Would Be Joining Us
In Our Struggle Against Injustice,
That professor portley, too,
Would Be Raising Hell,
If Only He Were Black."

Our Graduate Student
addressed the black members
of the university community
directly
in His Newsletters,
"I'm Not The One Who
Brought Race Into This Discussion.
The Shallow women's libber Did When She Said,
'Calling A white woman a women's libber
IS JUST AS BAD AS
Calling A Black Man The nword.'
That's what she said
and I'm merely responding to it.
I think that what she said
is absurd and completely untrue
and offensive to African Americans.
SHE brought up the racial issue
in that extremely offensive statement
to African Americans.
I am disagreeing with
and challenging that offensive statement.
Of course I'm right
and they are very wrong,
so they resort to name-calling.
When you call an African American man
names, you call him the nword.
When you call a white man names,
you call him a racist.
Don't fall for it.
I know you're too smart for that.
I don't patronize your intelligence
the way the shallow white liberals do.
This is not a black people's issue.
This is basically an argument
between me as a reasonable white centrist
on the one hand
and shallow white liberals on the other.
The unethical shallow white liberals
are trying to bring African Americans
into the argument on their side
against me
without explaining the issue.
I have a lot of good reasons
for thinking that this statement is offensive,
'Calling A white woman a women's libber
IS JUST AS BAD AS
calling a black man the nword.'
But you know what I'd like to know ?
I'd like to know what the nwords
think about it !
I will gladly publish your responses."

I Guess professor portley Slithered Back
Under The Rock He Crawled From Under.
Our Graduate Student
Did Not Yield His Chair In The Cafeteria.
He Continued Writing Letters,
Just Like Dr King.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU, professor bearded portley thayer !
Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker !
I mean, Our Graduate Student
had cut his teeth
on radical campus protests
and urban racial riots
and counter-culture living
and anti-war protest
when he was an impressionable teenager.
He wasn't about to take ANY fucking shit
from the likes of professor portley.
And he didn't.





OK
Very Easily.