A Telecom woman with a heavy British accent connects me through to Inder Goldfinger, one of the rappers from De>Tri>Mental; "do you accept a conference call, Mr Chan, from Mr Goldfinger?". Twenty minutes later, her voice interrupts our conversation, in the middle of a heated discussion of the pros, cons, and the necessity or otherwise, of violence in a Black revolution, to tell us to "please wind up now". I wonder if she was listening in . . . .

Inder and fellow rapper, Bad-Sha Lallaman, split from another hard Asian rap crew Fun>Da>Mental soon after the release of the Countryman EP in 1993. Forming De>Tri>Mental has been a long and torturous process for the pair, not helped by the bad blood that still remains between Fun>Da>Mental's Aki Nawaz, and them. De>Tri>Mental's debut single, released in late April, has received a great deal of airplay on Sydney's 'favourite' alternative station, Cripple J, which seems rather odd after the distinct lack of Fun>Da>Mental from the playlists even during the lead up to the Big Day Out. Maybe it is De>Tri>Mental's focus upon the evils of the 'System' - the 'Babylon' of the single's title - as opposed to Fun>Da>Mental's distinctive accusatory tone. Where Aki Nawaz speaks of the historical crimes of the White man, colonialism, and warns the listener 'You ain't never seen the wrath of the Black man', Inder prefers to talk of evil of the materialist Western culture, and tries to build bridges, rather than distinctions, between poor Blacks and poor Whites - who, he feels, both suffer at the hands of the materialist System. "If we wanted to do shock horror things we would have stayed with Fun>Da>Mental, but we wanted to elevate ourselves up to a different class of politics. Lallaman and I were walking down the street and saw some racist graffiti - Niggers Out and Pakis Stink - and for us that is an indication of the whole System. We - the Pakis, the Niggers, the Jews, the gays - are the people 'in the struggle' and They, the others, are the ones that 'make the struggle'. So, on the sleeve of our single we brought together all the names of the groups who are oppressed but may not fucking know it."

A quick glance at the present state of South Africa, even after the supposed ending of Apartheid, will show that racism and racial oppression is far more complex than laws and heads of state. The racism is entrenched in the entire structure of the society and it will not be until Black South Africans have their share of the land and the wealth of the country, will Apartheid be truly gone. The problem, is however, that most people in the West believe that Apartheid IS over and a Black president is enough to justify the lifting of sanctions and political pressure. As Inder intimates, "Nelson Mandela was in jail for 27 years [and saw how fucked the System was] and look at him now, he didn't achieve shit".

A feature of rap over the last few years has been the turning inward of the criticism, the inward gaze at the problem's of one's own communities. As a result of such a shift in focus, the term 'house nigger' has been reborn through much American rap. During the years of slavery in Amerikkka (are they over yet?) there were, Malcolm X explained in a famous speech, two types of Black slave - the field slave and the house slave. The field slave would try to escape as best s/he could but the house slave, sleeping comfortable with the Master, sharing the Master's food and wine, would tell the field slave 'stop your complaining, the Master is good to us', and if the Master's house was burning down, the house slave would gladly give their own life to fight the fire. Amongst many others, American rapper, and, curiously enough, economic graduate, Paris, has likened the house slave, the 'house nigger' to the Black policeman, the rich Black person, the Black person who sells crack and peddles other 'poisons of the mind', and the Black person who joins the White Establishment. Such a dividing of the Black community from within has, itself, damaged any cohesive struggle, polarising the community between two imaginary extremes - one, the life of wealth and 'sleeping with the enemy'; and the other of poverty, deprivation and paranoia on the streets. It is such division that has seen the rise of highly anti-Semitic rantings from Black ghetto power-brokers such as the Nation Of Islam's (a Black Nationalist Islamic group) objectionable preacher Louis Farrakhan, whose very ideas may have set the original aims and objectives of the Nation back many decades. Whilst this inward gaze has exposed the totallising claims of past politics, it has also opened up the push for concrete political change, to easy criticism from the Right, who use the splitting of Black communities as evidence of Black people's continued 'inhumanity' and 'unruliness'. Not only the goals of the Nation Of Islam have been opened up for attack by the actions and words of spokespeople like Louis Farrakhan, but also Islam itself. When 'Islamic extremists' are immediately presumed to have bombed Oklahoma, now is not the time to open Islam up for unjustified, and xenophobic attack - especially when Islam claims to offer a spiritual path (unlike Christianity, Fundamental or otherwise) beyond the Western materialism of the capitalist System.

The separation of the struggle to change the System and the struggle to assimilate into it, has not just been a feature of Afro-American politics, it has also manifested itself over the years in feminism and recently in the separating of traditional forms of lesbian and gay politics from 'Queer' politics.

Inder Goldfinger agrees; "I would love to say that there is nothing wrong within the Black community but I can't. Maybe, though if you left us alone, stopped pumping drugs and alcohol into our communities, and you were to give back our culture and we wouldn't be forced to adopt your culture, because your culture - your 'God' - is fucking material gain. Your God is the house, is the car, is the jewellery - I have all of those things, don't get me wrong, BUT that is not the be all and end all of society. The whole thing needs to be re-evaluated and we need to take a positive step to say 'NO' but we are so busy lining our own pockets . . . . like what happened with Fun-Da-Mental. Aki [Nawaz] forgot about the struggle and he sold us to the White man, and we didn't know it. That's exactly what happened in India, and in Africa - one man took it on board and said 'what ever you want, you come to me' and he exploited his own kind. In order for us to gain respect we have to learn to love each other WITHIN the struggle before we can ask those who make the struggle, those outside of it, the White man, for respect . . . There are so many people doing good things in the struggle but the struggle is a very difficult movement to be in, because you very easily become a fanatic and you lose your head and think that the whole world is against you. What you need to do is consolidate your voice in such a way that the people who are doing similar things to you, have a similar understanding, a similar philosophy, link up and connect with you".

Inder ends, assuring me, "Don't worry man, you and me are going to survive. They are afraid of the truth, They are afraid that someone might actually learn something from our actions. The last thing They want is questions being asked . . . a cover-up of lies and deceit so don't worry about shit".

Yellow Peril (1995)

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