Welcome To A Hip Hop Understanding
Welcome To A Hip Hop Understanding
< Two Evils
Over the last eight years a new crop of so called “enlightened” Black people are starting to emerge, the “politically enlightened” that is. These people are the ones that got into politics when Barack Obama first ran for president, but really weren’t into politics, they we’re just into wanting to see Barack become the first Black POTUS. They’re mostly under 35 and are a part of the millennial generation that came of age after the internet became a household thing. They’re part of the microwave, short attention span, self entitled, Twitter generation that thinks things should happen specifically for them and immediately after they say something about it.
This generation of Black people has jumped into social media politics head first with little to no understanding of how politics actually work. They think that because they have an opinion and that there are other people that share that opinion, that they are right about what they think and that anyone that disagrees is wrong. This is the furthest thing from the truth, and it’s the epitome of confirmation bias! But never the less, it’s the lay of the social media landscape.
These social media politico’s have usurped true political debate and replaced it with a millennial mindset which is becoming a detriment to the Black political voice that we once shared. At one point we spoke with one voice politically, but over the past eight years, that voice is being chipped away little by little, election by election. And each election cycle we see more and more Republicans being voted into office who seek to destroy all the progress that our forefathers gained after the Civil Rights Movement. And each time we see more and more black people either no voting, or voting across party lines based off of a flawed but prevalent thought pattern among these voters.
The three things that are causing this is; no real understanding of politics, the “what have you done for me lately” philosophy has been condensed because of their short attention spans, and they don’t understand the lesser of two evils philosophy.
When these three things occur within a person we get what we see today and this group of people are getting larger and larger each election cycle.
1: No real understanding of politics means that you are looking at political parties through a black and white mentality, both racially and as opposites of the same paradigm. So what happens is race is applied to everything along with political party affiliations, which means that they are specifically searching for what each party has done for Black people.
2: Add the microwave mentality to that and these short attention span social media politico’s apply their minuscule understanding of politics, and racial biases with the what have you done for me lately mentality and deduce the Democrat party down to within the last election cycle, as a matter of fact, they break it down to the latest news cycle stories that are being ran day in and day out trying to convince you of this, or that.
I’ve seen so many Black people mention what have they done for me lately when talking about politics than I’ve ever seen in my entire life over the past few years and it shows that they have no actual working knowledge of politics before they became “activist” on different social media platforms. And whats really crazy is that the people responsible for starting this dialog and spreading it are none other than Fox news pundits and reporters. Ask yourself what their agenda is? For those that can’t figure it out, its to divide and conquer.
Republicans only win statewide elections when there is a low voter turnout, or Black voters either no-vote or cross party lines. Whats one of the best ways to achieve these results, convince Black voters that the other party hasn’t done anything for them lately, therefore why would you continue to show allegiance to the party.
3: Because they don’t truly understand the lesser of two evils philosophy, they either no-vote or cross party lines based off election promises, which are mostly pandering. Within the last 100 years, the Republican party has been against every social change that has helped Black people in America. They’ve stood in opposition of Civil Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity acts and Affirmative Action, voter registration, etc. So how can a political party trumpet what have they done for you lately, when they’ve never done anything at all for you period, yet a lot of y’all actual listen to this nonsense and show that you believe it by no-voting or crossing party lines! This is where a true understanding of the lesser of two evils philosophy would come in handy.
The lesser of two evils means that if you have to make a choice between two things, could be more than two things, you should choose the one that is the least bad for you!
So in the instance of a two party political system like the one set up now, you should pick the one that does the least harm to you. This doesn’t mean that you’re voting for evil people, evil is just a metaphor, you’re voting for the person or party that will do the least amount of harm to your position in this country.
Now with that said, which party has stood with Black people for over a century, and which has been in opposition to the progress of Black people, at every turn. Which party is actively trying to get rid of affirmative action? Which party has trampled on voting rights across the country? And the list can go on and on, but you get the picture right?
So all in all Democrats may not be actively trying to court the Black vote by making empty promises during the election cycle, but they have tried to beat back the Republican progress by regress machine that’s been in full effect over the past three decades and that has gotten worse since President Obama has taken office.
At the end of the day, if you’re one of these people that has no-voted or crossed party lines because the Democrats have done nothing for you lately, or they’re the lesser of the two evils, and you don’t vote like that, you are the reason that Republicans who have never done anything for you are able to win elections. So when they go on to dismantle the hard fought legislation that our forefathers died for, I’m going to need you to STFU and take what’s coming to you. All you gotta do is look at what Rauner is doing in Illinois!
The Jury Ain’t That Grand
So here’s the thing, the media has conditioned us over the years to believe that a grand jury is the epitome of justice. They make it seem as if they hold value intrinsic to equalizing the deployment of justice when justice may go un-served, but the reality of the situation is that it’s just as flawed as the justice system is.
It takes the same biased people that would serve on a transparent jury and asks them to figure out if a person should be charged with a certain crime, but with no transparency.
Like all other things in a racially biased society like the one that we live in, those types of biases seep into every aspect of our system. From hiring practices (Google racism in hiring practices or black sounding name biases), to loans for houses (Google racial bias in subprime loans), to Redlining (Google the term redlining), read The New Jim Crow so that you better understand the racist practices behind mass incarceration, and so on.
What you’ll realize is that racist people control all these institutions therefore they are proliferated with racist thought and biased outcomes, the grand jury is no different than an all white jury of your so-called peers.
As a matter of fact, its even worse, because the defendant doesn’t even get a chance to present his/her side of the story, it’s just the prosecutor in the vast majority of the cases presenting them with the evidence that they feel is good enough to bring a case to trial. It sounds good on the surface, but when you add the fact that the prosecutor has a racial bias, and the grand jury participants have a racial bias, how exactly do we expect the outcome to be non-biased!?
We been conditioned to believe that a “jury” of our “peers” is the perfect way to deliver justice, that the outcome of every single case is in the hands of people that only listen to what the law says and don’t bring any of their biases into the courtroom with them, but the truth of the matter is that it’s almost impossible to check your biases at the door and its been proven time and time again when we see grand juries refusing to indict racist police officers, that murder unarmed Black men, women and children, with the latest being Tamir Rice. A young Black child playing with a pellet gun, who was gunned down within seconds of police officers arriving on the scene. Yet we’ve witnessed grown white men that have engaged with shoot outs with the police being taken into custody alive. How do we quantify that with reason and logic, if justice is supposed to blind and harbor no racial bias? How do we rationalize the fact that a police officer was caught on tape administering a banned maneuver; banned by the police and governmental body, the chokehold, but a grand jury felt that it was a justifiable act?
The law stated that police officers were never supposed to use the chokehold when trying to apprehend a suspect, yet a grand jury sat in a room and came to the conclusion that it was ok and justifiable for the officer to use it on a Black man (Eric Garner) that was panhandling cigarettes! How exactly do we rationalize that a police officer broke the LAW in doing what he did; yet it’s viewed as a justifiable offense, unless racial bias is brought into the picture.
Once you add racism, then it all makes sense, it makes sense that a racist would view a big Black man as a threat!
It makes sense that a Black kid with a pellet gun is a cold-blooded killer just waiting to kill someone, if I’m viewing him through racist eyes!
It makes sense that a Black man (John Crawford) walking through a store that sells toy guns is immediately shot by police officers without them checking to see if the gun was real or fake if we add the fact that the officers who shot him were racially biased or flat out racist!
This is the only way that any of these things can make any sense, period!
I can go on and on saying what makes sense but I hope that you get the picture!
And the reality of the situation is that, a group of white individuals sitting in a room where there is no transparency at all, who harbor racial biases, will in most cases see nothing wrong with a police officer, who has supposedly been sworn “to protect the people and the law” killing and unarmed Black man, woman or child.
At every turn of events we are reminded of this!
I believe that if we continue to use Grand Jury’s they need to be transparent, ALL the testimony MUST be available to the public!
The reason why they claim that they are not made public is for the safety of the witnesses that come forward, but the reality of the situation is that they can at anytime redact the names of the witnesses that testified as well as the names of the grand jury members, therefore making the safety argument moot!
They make them private and allow the prosecutor to have free reign because they know that any half way competent prosecutor will be able to convince a grand jury that a prosecutable crime has been committed, as long as there is no defense present and they actually want to bring a case to court. If they don’t want to actually prosecute, the grand jury will almost always come back with no indictment!
It’s playing out right in front of our eyes right now, for the world to see!
Still Serve and Protect!
Over the past few years I’ve heard an echo growing stronger and getting louder every time a Black man is shot by a police officer, and its not what you think. It’s not #HandsUpDontShoot, it’s not #JusticeOrElse, and it’s not #BlackLivesMatter, it’s “if we don’t stop killing each other, they wont stop killing us”!
This disturbing trend is becoming more and more commonplace on social media sites every time a Black man is murdered by a cowardice piece of shit racist cop. Every comment thread will have some racist white person saying he got what he deserved and a bunch of ass backward negro’s saying that if we don’t respect ourselves why should they respect us.
Well for one, it’s their job! They’re supposed to Protect and Serve the public; nowhere in their job description states that they need to RESPECT us first. Nowhere in their job description states that they are the judge, jury, and executioner. But it does state that they are supposed to apprehend suspects and let the prosecutors present a case where the jury determines if they’re guilty.
They are supposed to respect the law, and if they do that they’ll never kill someone that is not trying to kill them first! And the incidences that bring about anger and protest are the ones that are clearly known to be police acting as the judge, jury and executioners.
But what’s strange about this is that this usually only plays out when the murdered individual is Black! We rarely ever see a white cop playing all the roles when it comes down to a white individual, for some odd reason they RESPECT the law and lives when the person looks like them. Over 80% of all white people that are murdered are murdered by other white people! They kill each other all the time, but we never see white people saying that cops wont respect white lives as long as white people don’t respect white lives.
Why do you think that is?
Well I’ll tell you, its because even though white people kill each other all the time, those same white cops still RESPECT white lives, its evident because they don’t kill white people at the same rate that they kill Black people! So us respecting ourselves, and Black on Black crime has nothing at all to do with why some cops don’t RESPECT our lives!
They don’t respect our lives because they are racist and they believe that a Black life is not as valuable as a white life, plain and simple! It’s been like that since we were stolen from our homeland and shipped around the world as slaves! There’s no way we can change that by RESPECTING ourselves! As long as there are racist who infiltrate police departments, it doesn’t matter what we do, they’ll continue to kill us if they can keep getting away with it.
There’s been no time in our history where our RESPECT for one another stopped racist white people/cops from killing us. They simply don’t care about that, they just hate Black people and when given a chance to harm one they will, especially when they can hide behind a badge and the “fear for their lives”. And as I said the only way they will stop doing it is if they are held accountable, and even then some will still do it!
WHAT WE NEED TO DO IS STAY VIGILANT IN EXPOSING THEM; KEEP OUR CAMERAS POINTED AT THEM AND NEVER ACCEPT THE OFFICIAL STORY!
DEMAND THAT ALL EVIDENCE BECOME AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC!
DEMAND THAT ALL COPS WEAR BODY CAMS!
DEMAND THAT ANY OFFICER CAUGHT CUTTING OFF A BODY CAM DURING AN INCIDENT BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY!
DEMAND THAT A FEDERAL LAW BE PASSED SO THAT EVERY PERSON IN THE U.S. KNOWS THAT IT IS LEGAL TO RECORD POLICE OFFICERS AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT IMPEDING ON THE SCENE, AND REMAIN AT A SAFE DISTANCE!
#JusticeForSandraBland
These are a few things that I haven’t heard mentioned yet, but bring into question the cops motives and the alleged suicide. Read them and let me know what you think.
1) When the cop finally got her out of her vehicle, why did he instruct her to stand where he told her stand. At first pass the average person would say, so they won’t be in the street, and they could avoid traffic, sounds legit.
But now juxtapose that with your own experience or those that you’ve witnessed and you’ll realize that most, upwards of 95% of the time when a police takes you out of your car, they instruct you to stand at the back of your vehicle.
This cop deliberately instructed her to stand in an area where the police camera could not see exactly what was going on. When she moved to put her phone on the car he made sure he told her to come back to the area where the camera couldn’t see what was going on and he searched her off camera. Had he done like most cops and told her to stand at the back of the vehicle, everything would have been on tape.
So he knew exactly what he was doing, making sure that his actions were off camera but in a position where he could be heard! Notice where he is standing, with her just out of the view of the camera, then by the time he throws her down they are both outside of the camera view!
2) If the tape was not doctored or edited like the officers claimed, then why do we have continuous audio overlay. A glitch in the upload of the footage that results in looping of the film would have looped the audio also. There is no possible way for the audio to play straight through while the actual video footage glitches, if they are on the same file. The only way for the audio to play straight through is for it to be on a different file which means that you would need video editing software to separate the video from the audio.
So the software glitch story is fabricated, thus once again proving that something outside the ordinary happened that they are trying to cover up!
3) A News source reported that she was found in a semi standing position. Yes you read that right, semi-standing
This means that she supposedly hung herself by leaning over until she died. What they’re trying to tell us is that her will to live, the strongest urge of any living creature wasn’t there in any capacity, because all she had to do was stand up and she would have lived. Then all of a sudden they come out with a story that she told the arresting officers that she attempted suicide a few months earlier. Which by the way means that the officers should have put her on 24 suicide watch, which means that they should have taken any and everything out of her cell that she could use to harm herself. Which means that there should not have been a plastic garbage bag in the cell. They are at the very least complicit in her suicide for allowing those objects to be in a jail cell with her. And let’s be clear here, no one, and I mean no one has ever used a plastic bag to hang themselves, ever. If a plastic bag is used, the individual always puts the bag over there head and suffocates to death!
4) The media showed a garbage can during the spot and said that the plastic bag was similar to the one seen in the picture. Thus helping to create a narrative that made it seem like the the garbage can and bag were the ones in the cell with her, and that the the garbage bag was big enough to kill herself with!
5) In the footage that shows the paramedics rushing to her cell, something struck me as strange. The cell that was directly in front of the camera was empty, but they had her in a cell in a dark corner where she was once again conveniently out of camera range. Which once again begs the question, why put her in that corner where they knew no footage could be taken of what went on? Notice the empty cell, why don’t they have garbage cans in this one!
6) If they have footage from inside the station of the paramedics coming in to try to save her, then that means that they should also have footage of everything else that transpired in the that area from when she was put in the cell up until the paramedics wheeled her away dead. And they also said that the footage doesn’t show anyone going into the cell that morning but they haven’t released any of that footage.
But guess what, they already have their lie in place for when they say that the footage is messed up or gone, remember the glitch from uploading the dash cam footage, it’s already in play!
7) And lastly where’s the dash cam footage from the second officer on the scene, the lights were on so why hasn’t that footage been released! The second car had arrived on the scene before the this was taken, but if you listen to the first video put out, you can hear when the second car arrived and the lights were on in this video, which means that the dash cam should have been activated in the second car also!
So as I sit here thinking about the fact that I found 7 reasons why there’s a problem with this story and I’m not a crime scene investigator or a lawyer, I have to believe that the justice department has noticed these things also, and are preparing to look into the death of Sandra Bland. Another Black face in this every growing collage of Black men and women who died in the custody of those who swore an oath to serve and protect!
If you think that I have valid points and that the justice department should investigate this incident, please share this with your friends and family and call for justice for Sandra Bland.
#JusticeForSandraBland
African + American =
For some time I’ve considered writing a post about this but never found the motivation to actually sit down and start writing, but the other day after addressing a post on Facebook and getting the typical response from so called “conscious” black dudes, I decided to finally pen this post.
So here’s the thing, Black people in this Country, the United States of America, have no true identity! We are the homeless, we are the disenfranchised, we are downtrodden, the oppressed! We seek to belong to something greater than this existence that we have right now in this place, in this space and time. We long for the glory days of our ancestors as if that is all we ever had or ever will have. But I tell you that right here, right now, is all we have and will ever have, here in this country in this space, and in this time. Nothing else! The past is gone, yet it resides within us, and the future is yet to come, but it also resides within us. So with what we have right now, which is the past, the present and the future within, we should be able to create a future similar to our once glorious past!
But in order to get there, we need to come to a realization, one that will piss a lot of you off and others will accept wholeheartedly, and have no problem with.
And that realization is the cold hard fact that the descendants of slaves, with African blood flowing through their veins, that we call African Americans, are Not Africans! Neither are we truly Americans!
We are an amalgamation of these things, these nationalism’s, these concepts, and these ideologies, and because these ideologies are viewed as opposing ideologies, our programming tells us that we need to embrace one or the other, not both. This programming is taught to us by our parents as children, “right vs wrong”, “good vs evil”, “if you’re not with me you’re against me”, and re-enforced in church as the “you can’t straddle the fence” sermon. We’ve always been taught that you have to pick a side, and if we don’t, we’re the one in the wrong, there is no neutral position in life. But this is wrong when it comes down to the African/American debate! I chose to use the examples above to show how the thought process is indoctrinated into our psyches as young African American children, not to debate good and evil or right and wrong!
This is why when we’re confronted with two seemingly opposing ideologies we quickly pick sides. Our programming says its either one or the other, and you will always pick the side of your highest understanding, the one that instills pride in you, which is actually the one that makes you feel the best about your Self. Therefore when one has to choose between African/Black, and American/White we choose to identify with the African/Black first. Those that don’t choose Black first have been considered to be the sellouts and coons back in the day therefore the “real Black man or woman is the one that embraces Africa over America! These so called conscious Black people lay claim that there’s no middle ground even if your mother was white and your father was Black, you must self identify as Black, ask any biracial American. But what they don’t seem to understand is that that very understanding is what the white man, or massa had during slavery, the one drop rule! And if you choose your white side, you’re considered a sellout, a coon, and a host of other derogatory names that seeks to take away your Blackness. And even if you don’t identify as white, or if you have two Black parents but don’t identify with being African, you’re put in the same category, because you have to pick a side, and if you’re not on their side then you’re against them, simply because you’re not with them.
So here we are in 2015 claiming to be conscious Black men but that conscious thought is built directly off the slave traders understanding of who we were to be in this country. The slaves were never meant to be Americans, and generations down the line we are too far removed from our African ancestors, that we are not Africans either, we are an amalgamation of the two. We are now a new people, a people manifested from the remnants of a great race that saw itself decline to the point of colonization and slavery to finally be back in control of our own destiny once again!
Malachi Z York called us NuWabians, some say we are the Moors, Hebrew Israelites, Egyptians, but I say we are all and we are none, therefore we must create a new understanding, a new people.
You can call yourself and African, an African American, or just a plain ole American, that’s up to you, but I will from this day forward, address myself and those in this diaspora in the US, as Afrimerican!
Afrimerican: A people forged from the lowest point of mans existence as slaves, that fought to be free, earned that freedom and began to build. We have fought those that oppose us for over 400 years and we have made great strides. Our birthing pains have been great and there are still more to come. But we must understand and incorporate into our thinking that those that fight against and resist change will always end up on loser’s side of history, it’s inevitable. Therefore we will always be victorious in our quest to change the things that ail our people, it just takes time!
House Negro vs Field Negro (2015)
So I ran across this post in my feed (pictured ) and I was thinking, why do we champion this understanding and embrace it wholeheartedly, because the average African-American will see this meme and feel as if it’s on point!
We tend to act as if every house negro was a sellout and every field negro was a revolutionary, when it wasn’t even close to that. There were far more field negro’s than house negro’s and if they really wanted to revolt, they could have done so at anytime, but they didn’t.
I applaud Malcolm X for introducing us to this understanding, but 50 years later, we must understand that it was a flawed understanding although it was much needed back then. Nowadays not so much, but if utilized we need to tweak it some to make it more accurate.
When reading the text in the meme it’s very easy to applaud it and think that the writer is a champion of the people but when one actually seeks to utilize wizdom and understanding, then you must ask yourself something! If the house and field negro we’re both slaves, then where’s the division coming from and what made those in the field decide to bring such an understanding to gestation even though it is very negative toward their own people? We’d call that crabs in the barrel or hating nowadays, but its funny how those that don’t equate themselves to being house negro’s love to use the crabs in a barrel analogy for why our people aren’t further ahead than we should be!
My contention is that it’s because the field negro was envious of the house negro! The house negro had a semi-better existence than the field negro, and the field negro hated it. So when the field and house negro were freed, the understanding still thrived but mutated into a different format! It then became the real nigga vs sellout equation! This is where Brother Malcolm gave us his thoughts on our position within American society, and amongst ourselves!
If ones entire understanding is from an oppressed upbringing and under-classed viewpoint then what type of logic and reasoning comes from that? This is why ghetto’s remain ghetto’s!
The understanding utilized to come to the equation set forth by Malcolm X came from an oppressed/field/flawed negro’s standpoint, he was simply taking the entirety of his experience in this country and merging it with the history of his people up until that moment in time! So if the original understanding was built off an flawed mindset, because they couldn’t be in the house, then the vitriol that they spewed to their fellow field negro’s in private, would also be based off of flawed thinking on their part.
Now looking at the meme and adding an envious or jealous understanding to the dynamic of the mansion/house negro equation one must also understand that the apartment/field negro is doing the same today!
How do you criticize the mansion negro and claim that what he’s doing is to keep them checks coming in from massa, yet you work for massa too! Your check is just smaller and you can’t afford a mansion!
And before you go into that selling your soul for money crap, you’re just selling yours for less! Your job helps to support the exact same system that you claim is horrible yet you only seem to get mad at those who have used the system and gained tremendously off of it, but those that are in the same boat as you are alright by your standards.
You’re a revolutionary, a real African, you’re down for the cause, right up to the point that you outpace the rest of the apartment negro’s, then all of a sudden you’re a sellout!
But because the apartment negro’s understanding is the most prevalent, what we see on social media platforms mimic this and makes those seeking knowledge unknowingly prop up misguided understandings such as the mansion/house negro as being bad, but the field/apartment negro’s understanding is considered to be a good thing.
And therein lies our problem! Break the Circle!
3 Levels of Blackness
Average Black people don’t care about the past, are afraid of the future and live expressly for Right NOW!
It’s evident in how they think the past holds no solutions for whats happening NOW and that things will only stay the same or get worse in the future.
So whats needed Right NOW is whatever material thing thats considered hot, not what they actually need, so the people are stagnated once again but this time because they see no good in the future, therefore why try to plan and save for it.
Afrocentric Black people are in love with the past, infatuated with future possibilities, but hate Right NOW!
Its evident in how all their solutions either harkens to a time of Black Majesty, or are set to unfold a generation or two down the road.
So whats needed Right NOW is always debatable, to the point of stagnation, therefore kicking the problems down the road for the next generation.
Enlightened Black people understand the past, make plans for the future and loves Right NOW!
It is evident in how all their solutions borrow from the past, and seek to build a better future by utilizing what we have Right NOW!
So whats needed Right NOW takes precedence over how things used to be in an effort to focus on what the future can be shaped into.
The Average Black person and Afrocentric Black person have interchangeable characteristics within their understandings, because there are a lot of brainwashed Afrocentric Black people who actually help to spread a Self Oppressed mind state to the the majority group, the Average Black person.
This creates a problem because the Average Black person thinks that the Afrocentric Black person is the same as the Enlightened Black person, but in almost every case they are not. The Average Black person does not want to put in the time to gather the amount of knowledge needed to elevate to the level of an Enlightened Black person, therefore anyone that appears to have more knowledge becomes the Enlightened Black person in the eyes of the Average Black person!
But the thing is, in order to make it to the Enlightened Black persons level, one must first become the Afrocentric Black person, there is no way around this. The only problem lies with staying their!
Once the Afrocentric level is reached by the Average Black person he/she believes that they have peaked, thus plateaued on the plain of Enlightenment. This is where the Afrocentric understanding becomes the paramount understanding! And because knowledge leads to the feeling of Power, the Afrocentric initiate feels the new level of respect that is given and seeks to multiply that feeling. In doing so most become lost to the fact that knowledge is ever evolving. At this point is when they fail to seek knowledge and understanding outside of the Afrocentric equation, believing that this is it, therefore they stay on the Afrocentric level but elevate within it!
The Enlightened Black person has traveled the road of the Afrocentric but understood that something was still missing in the grand scheme of themes. They are the ones who decided to seek knowledge outside of the understanding of Afrocentricity and by doing so recognizes the inherent Synergy produced by combining the knowledge from each level of understanding, with knowledge from outside of the Black equation to create a new, ever evolving dynamic, that only seeks to create, grow and evolve further. This is the closest that man can get to the level of God Most High the Supreme Being, The Creator! This is the true plateau of understanding!
By using this understanding to create; more expressions of The Most High’s Oneness with ALL things seen and unseen become manifest! A thought can become a material thing! A thought can become the road map for the future! A thought can manifest greatness or destruction! This is what the Enlightened Black person knows; it’s what the Afrocentric Black person thinks needs to be centered in Afrocentrism only, and that the Average Black person doesn’t care to know exist.
Yet this very understanding actually seeks out the Average Black person, and plants itself as a quest for knowledge of self, which turns their mind towards Afrocentricty, which then blossoms into Enlightenment!
And there we find God!
The Self Oppressed Syndrome
Self Oppression, We’re Headed for Self Oppression! Sing that to the tune from the 91 hit classic Self Destruction, by BDP and various top tier artist of the era, and then read this!
One day I was in a debate with a couple brothers about the plight of the Black man in America, and it seemed like no matter what I said, they’d harken back to a statement about us being oppressed in this country.
Sure, we’ve been oppressed for many centuries here under slavery; The Black Codes, Jim Crow, Redlining, bad loans or no loans at all, unemployment, and now Mass Incarceration, but even when I mentioned all the good things that we’ve accomplished during these same times, they basically threw them out the window and dug right back in with the woe is me, woe is us, oppression talk! So I thought to myself, I don’t feel oppressed, what are they talking about?
Don’t get me wrong here, I understand that being Black in America comes with extra rules and can be burdensome at times, but are we really oppressed in the manner that they continue to propagate?
Can we as Black people honestly say that all the things that I’ve listed above as burdensome and unjust has effected us at a 100% level over the past 40 years? In this time period there has always been a small percentage of Blacks that suffer from each problem, and some from a few of them at a time, but as a people, not even 30% can say that these things have them oppressed!
We’ve had ample opportunity to open our own banks and give loans to each other, but nope, hasn’t happened. You can walk through any black neighborhood in the US and see 100’s of businesses that aren’t owned by Black people; from beauty supply stores, corner restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, nail salons, and a host of other businesses that siphon money out of our communities and never bring it back!
But we surely do own churches, lots of them! And guess what, the churches follow the same pattern, they siphon money out of the community to the tune of $252 million a week, that never goes back into the community! Then they take valuable tax dollars away from the community also, and hardly none of them open businesses to help their unemployed congregation!
Then you have Black people that lay claim to the fact that the man is deliberately keeping us from owning businesses, by making us jump through hoops to get loans. As if a bank or the SBA wants to just lend money to someone without a business plan and a bad credit score, c’mon, it’s just not going to happen!
Now there are instances when all the criteria is met, and we are denied loans, but let’s be serious, does that happen to the majority of Blacks on a regular, no it doesn’t! Or sometimes they might give us higher interest rates than white people, but when these things happen, thanks to hard fought rights, those lenders can be sued for doing so if it ever comes to light. Which it did recently, and the lenders got fined and will have to pay back millions of dollars in restitution to the Black homeowners that were defrauded!
I can go on but you get the picture right, yeah things are not fair, we still have work to do but to harp on the fact that we’re still oppressed is Self defeating! Black Re-Activist want you to believe that your position in this country is out of your hands, it’s what the Man wants or bust, yet every single day we see Black people succeeding in various endeavors and creating a better life for themselves and their families! But for some reason this isn’t good enough for a small but loud group of Black men who lay claim to being the keepers of the Black consciousness, the Afrocentric understandings, and the warrior mindset that will liberate us from this oppression that we all suffer under.
I’ve gone as far as to ask them, do you think, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Jay Z and a host of other Black billionaires and multi millionaires wake up in the morning feeling oppressed? Why don’t they? Even those of us that have small businesses and aren’t even close to being millionaires don’t seem to share in this same thought pattern! Why is that? It’s because we realized that if they strive to be the best that we can be and have something to offer worth value, we can rise above the things that these Black men feel are oppressing Black people.
Oppression
1. the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.
2. an act or instance of oppressing.
3. the state of being oppressed.
4. the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc.
Now think about why these men feel oppressed! It’s because of unjust laws, lack of gainful employment and feeling like racist cops and others can do anything to them at anytime and get away with it. Although unjust laws do create an oppressed like state for Black people in America, the reality of the situation is that, it’s mostly in our heads.
And this is what made me think about the phrase Self-Oppression, I looked it up and I found a few spiritual and holistic usages of the phrase but no one has ever broke it down into a psychological or sociological thinking for a group of people based off the 4th definition for the word Oppression and the adding of self to the other three!
So when you add self to the word oppression what do you get;
1. the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome me, cruel, or unjust manner on your SELF
2. an act or instance of oppressing your SELF
3. the state of being oppressed by your SELF
The 4th definition already lets us know that this could be a feeling that we have, which by definition means it’s coming from your SELF.
So what you get is that a Self Oppressed person believes that he/she is being oppressed by outside forces and reacts accordingly. Every time something bad happens, it’s because they’re Black, and a racist white man hates them! Whenever a black white interaction occurs that is negative, wether it be warranted or not, the race card is pulled by the Self Oppressed, thus adding to the fact that he is being oppressed.
On the flip side a Black man with money doesn’t worry about being targeted by corrupt cops because if he is detained unjustly, he can hire a good lawyer to get him exonerated, a poor man can’t, therefore he feels oppressed by the penal system! A rich Black person or one that owns his own business (rich or not) doesn’t worry about employment, or that he might get fired by a racist boss, the poor Black man feels he’s being oppressed because he has to work for a white man that may be racist and fire him at anytime, therefore boosting the feeling of being oppressed. In fact rich Black people could care less about racist white people, because the things that racist can affect are within their range of getting fixed because they can afford to fix them!
And in reality though, the vast majority of white people are not racist, maybe biased towards Black people but not flat out racist! And to take it a step further, the percentage of Black people that work for small white business owners is minuscule by comparison of how many of us work for major corporations or governmental bodies like the post office and other stuff, so for the most part the fear of being fired by a racist is mostly in our heads, especially because more than likely you would have never been hired by the racist in the first place. But guess what, when unfair hiring practices come to light, thanks to some hard fought rights again, these employers can be sued.
The Self Oppressed attitude keeps you in a position of thinking that the Man controls your life behind the scenes, and the Black Re-Activist who suffers from the same syndrome believes that he’s enlightening the world to the evils of the Man, therefore his points are valid. But have you ever wondered why you can read post after post on social media outlets from these Re-Activist about what ails the Black Community, but none of them have a plan or even concept on how to rectify this situation except for becoming more African centered.
None of them have plans on how to sustain a Black population if we ever became a sovereign people, none of them own businesses, besides the ubiquitous African book Store that sales boatloads of Afrocentric stuff, that a lot of is made in China, go figure!
I love my Black people but at the end of the day, we need to step away from self oppressing ourselves and continue to reach for the stars in order to rise above this oppressed state that the poorest amongst us find themselves in. If each person committed himself/herself to becoming the best person that they could be, this mind state will not exist in two decades. The Self Oppressed will become the successful self and as long as we understand that the things that we feel are oppressing us have to do with money and social status, then we’ll feel like the successful people of today feel. They know that black people still have work to do, but they also know that the future is ours to create and that white supremacy and racism can not hold us back if we continue to strive for greatness and stop Self Oppressing ourselves, we don’t have to worry about being New Slaves!
Black Women Ought to be Ashamed of Themselves/You Are Not The Father!
I was recently tagged in a photo uploaded on Facebook to Witches Brew page, of a Mahogany card, by Hallmark, for Father’s Day. I know some of you are saying “ok”, “and”! Well the card was for Fathers Day but as you can see in the picture it was addressed to Mothers on Father’s Day! SMH!
Last year right before Mother’s Day I made a post to the women in my feed about how, on Mother’s Day, no matter how trifling and fucked up some peoples mothers were when they were growing up, or if they were absentee, you never, ever, ever see men spewing hate about their mother on or before that day. You never ever see men trying to lay claim to being their child/children’s mother too! Never Ever!
So my appeal was to have women think twice before they claim that they had to play father too to their kids, just because the father was a deadbeat and wasn’t around. It makes no sense at all! It doesn’t matter if someone else post it and you like it, stop it, You Are Not The Father! And feeling any kind of way that gives you the notion that you played the role of the father too is borderline psychotic. And if your child post it, correct them right away, it’s obvious that they’ve been raised to believe a lie!
You’re confusing taking them to play sports or going outside and playing sports with your child as being a “father figure” or as something that’s strictly thought of a s father’s duty. My wife takes my kids to activities all the time, and has occasionally shot a couple hoops with my son’s, but was she doing my duties, she wasn’t doing some holy fatherly thing that only fathers are allowed to do, she was bonding with her children as any mother should.
Get mad if you want to, call me whatever but stop laying claim to something that you have no capacity to be. I feel you, you had a tough time trying to raise them and keep things together, I commend you for that. My mother did the same, and I love here to death for trying to keep me level headed enough to not venture out and be part of the problem! She did a hell of a job raising 6 kids virtually on her own with no help at all from my father, and a little help from my siblings father.
But at no time ever did she lay claim to being my father too. She had enough wisdom to know that she wasn’t a father and enough dignity to not think she deserved that accolade, she was and still is all woman! A woman that was strong enough to hold shit down without a man, but never felt like she was a man.
A lot of y’all have it twisted, you’re letting these feminist movements and propaganda create an alternate understanding of feminism that seems to want to see women shown in a more masculine light, and Sisters, you are ground zero for the re-education.
Just take a look at how Black women are being portrayed in the media now; you’re wild, uncouth loud mouthed women who will beat each other into the dirt, just like men, a bunch of Sharkeisha’s. Reality shows have fucked up what a real woman (Black) is supposed to be by elevating the worst of the pack to the top of the pecking order, i.e. Nene Leaks! And no I’m not one of those every Black woman is a Queen kinda dudes, because that’s false propaganda too! Some of you are exactly who you’re supposed to be, just regular people, everyone can’t be Queens, and for damn sure, not one of y’all can be Kings, period! These chicks on the internet calling themselves King this to King that, or calling Beyonce, King Bey are a part of the problem. Stop that shit now and be a part of the solution!
At the end of the day, there is no way a woman can take the place of a man and be a father to their children, the only thing you can do is find a way to get them in front of a man that’s a good father who can teach them what a father is, and that’s it! And the real sad part about this, is that it’s only prevalent in our culture, amongst Black women, go figure!
The “Great Radio Debate”
Chuck D of Public Enemy fame slammed one of the nations biggest urban radio stations, New York’s Hot 97, for its horrible representation of the hip hop culture (read it here). He goes in on the program director for this and goes into the usual diatribe about how corporations are the new plantations, etc. Hot 97’s program director Ebro and one of their top on air personalities, Rosenberg responded (read it here) by spewing the same old, we play what the streets want dogma. “I assume what he was trying to get at is what a lot of people say as far as blaming Hot 97 and radio in general for the demise of hip-hop culture,” is part of what Rosenberg had to say when talking to billboard a few days ago.
Just the other day I was listening to WGCI 107.5 here in Chicago when they were having a stop the violence conversation, and every time a caller mentioned that radio stations and their DJ’s need to be more involved in cleaning up the airwaves, all of the people who make a living from said station went into the same spiel, “we just play what the streets want to hear”! So the question should be, why does the streets want to here this type of music?
Most of you are probably unfamiliar with this debate, but it’s been raging on for decades now, and shows no sign of abating. The debate I’m speaking of is the “radio just plays whats hot in the streets” debate! You know, the go to phrase articulated by just about every radio DJ on the planet when the public conscious raises questions about what gets played day in and day out! It’s akin to the “what came first, the chicken or the egg” philosophical pondering, but with much less gravitas, therefore no one actually writes about it, until now!
To start lets take a brief look into early radio. To keep it short, I’ll just highlight a phenomenon that used to be called “Payola”, or “Pay to Play”. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it’s an industry term for that lets you know which radio stations had DJ’s who would accept payment under the tables to break new music. In short, if you pay us, we’ll play your music! It’s illegal and record industry execs claim that they don’t do it anymore, keyword, claim! As all they did was create a 3rd party system, called independent record promotion, to independently “promote” label artist.
In this Wikipedia article it goes into more detail about it, but it’s been around since the inception of the music business itself. As late as 2005 – 2006, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group were still going back and forth to court about the issue. They eventually had to pay fines to the tune of $10 million, $5 million and $12 million respectively! Then in 2007 four of the largest radio conglomerates were fined also for receiving payola. In 2014 they all claim that they don’t do it anymore, but seriously, the one thing that I’ve learned is that corporations will find a loophole when they need a loophole, period! But lets just say they don’t anymore, and leave it at that.
I contend that they don’t “have to” anymore, they’ve been able to sway the public opinion when it comes down to music for so long that they have literally programmed, pun intended, what the masses want to listen to anyway, so they don’t need to pay to get plays, listeners are asking for it!
I contend that what the people want was systematically programmed into their thinking via Payola. Let us remember, they just “stopped” doing it in 2007, but by that time the “bad hip hop” that Chuck D and other hip hop activist complain about had already been on repeat 10 times a day for 20 plus years. So radio effectively have two generations that have grown up on that type of music, what would you expect the streets to want to listen to?
They made sure that in the early days of hip hop, the artist that rhymed about street life and culture got major airtime. They kept groups like NWA and artist that rapped like them in the spotlight and pretty shortly thereafter the streets all across America started to change. Most will say that it was by coincidence, that the streets were ripe for the violent explosion that came along with what was dubbed as “Gangsta Rap”!
But living through those times and being a person that was more conscious thinking, I know that there were various other artist with great music that weren’t getting any airplay at all. All the conscious brothers like Common, The Roots, Slum Village, Dialted Peoples, Pharoahe Monch, Talib, Mos Def, etc, had dope ass songs that never got radio play. Why not? The streets knew about these cats, but the radio stations weren’t playing them. While Little Kim, Foxy Brown and Trina was getting all the airplay for women; Bahamadia, Rah Digga, Jean Grae, Lady of Rage and other non-sexualized female rappers were struggling to get on a late night mix.
There has always been a disconnect between whats played on the radio and what hip hop heads think is the real cultural expression, but when looked at closely, and knowing the fact that record execs were, and still probably are paying to get records broke using some “loophole”, it’s not a farfetched accusation to say that the industry engineered the “whats hot in the streets” mantra by paying to get songs that would have otherwise died a horrible death in a crate played continuously throughout the day. Thus creating a whats hot on the streets mind state in the youth.
If you think I’m reaching, ask yourself this, how many times have you found yourself nodding your head and singing the lyrics to a song that you know you don’t like? Then tell me whats hot on the radio is always whats hot in the streets, or does hearing a catchy tune repeatedly make it stick in your brain even when you don’t like it. Now imagine what a 5 year old in the back seat thinks about that catchy little hook and beat!
Lupe Fiasco wrote a song about it, (listen here) and guess what, it didn’t get any radio play, at all, and please don’t say it’s because of the hook and name, they could of made a radio version if they wanted to push that message!