I saw my beautiful sister’s picture on Facebook yesterday. She’d attended some event, somewhere. She was HUGE. 5′ 4″ and pushing 2 and a quarter, maybe more, her features bloated, her smile distorted, the tears of a clown – streaming through the digital capture – when no one’s around.
What has to occur – in the heart, in the soul, in the spirit – in order to go from a size 6 to a size 26?And be comfortable with it, pretend that its cute, sexy, pretend that you are owning your girth and somehow, that is a virtue???
My other sister, a carbon copy, feigns acceptance of her fate…or is it resignation?
During the ’60’s and 70’s, both of these intelligent women wore the hell out of their Super ‘Fros, proudly, fiercely as did many beautiful sisters. I sat looking at previews of the film, “Good Hair” starring Chris Rock, saw the scene where Hollywood starlets admitted their use of weaves, bugged my eyes out at the aluminum can disintegrating in a vat of the product black women put on their hair — and into their brains and body!!
What kind of beating does one have to take, psychically, in order to become complicit in their poisoning, their burning and scarring, their embalming…
Their degradation?
I wanted to pick up the phone and I may yet still and scream at my sister, ask her if she does not see the squandering of her youth, her beauty, her health. Our family grew up playing tennis, so getting and staying in shape comes naturally. Becoming a human pinata is the most unnatural of behaviors.
Why and why do we lie about it? Why do we kill and degrade ourselves and make friends with that degradation, that lie? Don’t even mention what KIND of food we eat to get the way that we are, food processed, genetically engineered, Stepford food, robotic, food made for human doings, not beings.
Take back your hair, your dignity, your self respect. Look in the mirror and see the rolls of fat as a crime, and yourself as an accessory to that crime and vow to do community service on your on damaged self.
Kick your drug habit: your chicken bone, relaxer, hot comb, chittlin’s, Colt 45 and all the rest of that jazz you shake, sweat and sniffle for. We need rehabs for both gorging ourselves on bad food and the self-mutilation that we engage in every time a sister gets a perm.
PERM? Like the Department of “Defense”, a perm at nothing but another lie that tells that black is white and night is day. Problem is, the perm also tells us that we are beautiful when it is the antithesis of beauty. Beauty is what you had before they lay the conk on you in the barber’s chair…
And its what God gave you.
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Zina Garrison sues the United States Tennis Association (USTA) after being dismissed as Federation Cup Captain. Two referees of color sue the International Tennis Federation for alleged discrimination in assignments and opportunities. Former touring pro and ESPN tennis commentator MaliVai Washington disappears into the black broadcast media Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile, ubiquitous former player and broadcaster, Justin Gimelstob receives mere fist bumps from both the Tennis Channel and World Team Tennis for publicly discussing his desire to have Anna Kournikova—a former top ten player—sexually assaulted by his brother. Or, short of that, smashing her with an overhead at close range.
Gimelstob’s other true confessions included his pulchritudinous assessments of several other female pro players over an open mic. He apologized—for getting caught—but tennis could hardly sanction him. After all, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA)—which was headed until recently by a white man—markets female players like baby back ribs at the butcher shop.
Something is wrong in the tennis world, but don’t expect an incisive critique or expose to be forthcoming from its ex-champions or the game’s PR apparatus, AKA, “the tennis press.” The incestuous bed that the tennis bigwigs, movers and shakers and “stars” lie in is stuffed with corporate greenbacks that will go BYE-BYE if a peep is heard about small matters like discrimination, fairness, equality or justice.
The next best thing to being a DNA-certified white man in the melanin-deficient tennis world is becoming a member of the United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA). Why you may ask?? Because the USPTA happens to be the premiere training institute for white male teaching pros and the women and people of color who can survive the hazing process. Why shouldn’t I bow down and kiss the ring of tennis’ teaching Don’s and become certified as a “real” tennis pro?
Call it partly ego. I’ve been playing tennis since 1965—the year Malcolm X was assassinated. The men who fed me and my sibling’s bacon and backhands—Dr. Robert Walter “Whirlwind” Johnson aka “Dr. J” and his son Bobby Jr.—coached Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe and dozens of other black players. Tennis was played with wooden rackets back then; strings were made of nylon but just as often some poor animal’s intestines. The balls were white and so were most sanctioned events; a “whites only” policy was mandated by the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA), the Po-Po of the tennis set. If you were black, you simply could not play big time tennis.
The USLTA which was the precursor to the United States Tennis Association (USTA), made sure that colored folks entered their tournament grounds by the back door only. We didn’t carry rackets; we carried brooms or serving trays. The phony superiority and the showy, discriminatory beatdowns of yesteryear are passé in 2009. But don’t be fooled: today’s tennis racism has seeped into the groundwater and morphed into a more sophisticated, subtle, occasionally undetectable, but still toxic brew.
In order to become a tennis instructor at a club, you need the seal of approval of the USPTA or one of its alphabet brethren. Though I’d been a ranked junior and adult, played college tennis and taught for years, none of that experience mattered. Get certified, or else! How did they get between me and a potential employer in a free market economy? How do they get to test me on what I know; who tests them? Its monopolistic, I tell you, that an organization can coerce tennis facilities across the country to buy tennis widgets off of their assembly line. Lord knows though, that a little bit of fear peddling goes a long way in expanding profit margins. The real bottom line for me: I don’t trust “Institutional Tennis” to have my interests or the best interests of people like me at heart. I have seen far too much.
These thoughts were from my mind that day I received a message in my junk mail folder. It was a curious email from a USPTA member unknown to me, asking for advice. Seems she’d attended a “USPTA World Conference” event. At the welcoming party was a well-known, self-promoting tennis blowhard who happens to be a musician to boot. He had been hired to “entertain” the tennis professionals in attendance and boy, did he ever. On this night, the email recounted, no minorities were spared his bigoted wit: Jews, blacks, women and even children were all equal opportunity victims of his verbal cyanide.
His collection of punch lines were funny to the crude, the cruel or the silenced. Offended attendees, she reported, slunk out of the crime scene, appalled and unseen,invisible to the testosterone-drunk, hairy honchos running the show.
Doing some research, I found out that the same man had put on other stellar performances across the country: he giddily told one assembled group how one of his favorite teaching pros—a black man—had been in jail most of his life and had to be bailed out to make that particular workshop. Hilarious! At another of his party events, two black women became his “soul hooker sisters,” and he called one of their children “Seal,” the black singer. What a minx! At the club where I work, he called a pair of underage girls, “vestal virgins,” whereupon several club members angrily stormed out.
My new email acquaintance was not about to let her experience at the “welcoming” party pass without documenting every derogatory adjective that she heard, making an initial complaint to her superiors in the USPTA, the sponsors of the event, and the corporate sponsor of the coach. As the Women’s Committee Chair of the USPTA, she was not unfamiliar with sexism and racism within the tennis community. After all, the USPTA is an organization that in 80 years has never had a minority serve on the National Board, has never had a woman win the Pro of the Year award, and repeatedly excludes women and minorities from media opportunities.
Her male superior with the USPTA asked her to document her observations in a written report. She complied with his request to the letter. But she did more: she was moved to object to sexism and racism within her professional community—in real time and with great courage. Nobody had to tell her what she heard was wrong. She spoke with attendees to see how they felt. She spoke with sponsors to register her objections and demanded to know what they planned to do about it. She acted in the face of profound ugliness, while others shrank, or shrugged their shoulders, or laughed at the jokes. She did the right thing.
You’d have thought they would have given her a medal. But, the USPTA, which “actively promotes new membership and programs for minorities and women” and which “supports equal access,” did not support her. They did not support their Women’s Committee chair who believed all of the equality, fairness pabulum put out by the National USPTA office. No. Though some of the racist, sexist rhetoric was spoken in the presence of her USPTA superior, it was she who was chastised and it was she who was “voted out” of her position.
Here’s a case study in bureaucratic sexism at work: after my friend files her formal complaint with the head honcho, the Blowhard miraculously finds out details of the exclusive USPTA report as well as the name, phone number, and email address of our hero, probably through a member of the USPTA testicular brain trust.
He immediately begins a full-court press, complete with unsolicited and increasingly urgent phone calls demanding that she get back in touch ASAP, and an email punctuated by an image of two hands gently touching. How heartwarming! He attempted to justify and explain away his “jokes” to this highly skeptical adult. Bulldozing women who don’t appreciate his hubris is apparently Step Two in his manly-man playbook, for he began to accuse his accuser of not appreciating his comedic timing. She was being too sensitive, too politically correct, too girly.
Finally, she responded to him with a request that any future communication between them be conducted with a third party present. Faster than you could say, “Wam, bam, thank you Ma’am”—out came the law code book and the threats to go straight Johnny Cochran on her feminazi ass.
At this point, the USPTA national office stepped in and did what all courageous, patriarchal organizations do under duress—covered their own ass and supported continued white male dominance! They distanced themselves from their “Women’s Committee Chair and member in good standing by nit picking her every move and playing psychological warfare. “Did you make your complaints to the sponsors of the coach using your official organizational title or did you make it clear that this was your own personal beef?! NO?! Oh, well now, YOU have made a TERRIBLE error. This is an outrage, you have dragged all of us into the mud… now he is threatening to sue, steps may need to be taken as you can well imagine, but we must insist that in the future, please do not use our name in any of your future correspondence…”
The dizzying tsunami of microscopic missteps and punctuation errors by this “mischievous” woman dwarfed the pile of sputum that the respected, big-time Coach had lathered on his audience. In fact, the USPTA indicated that the ONLY actions that were out of line were those of their Women’s Committee chair. Taking a stand against racist, sexist speech at company welcoming parties is not only contrary to the USPTA’s mission, it is a threat to its “hairy back” way of life and must be squelched by the surest possible means: a one way ticket to Siberia.
How else to understand the removal of this woman—without a blemish on her resume – from her post as Chair of the USPTA Women’s Committee, without reason or explanation?! All for challenging racism, sexism and stupidity by one of its Neanderthal mouthpieces. Women and minorities were served notice that they can have access to the benefits of the USPTA as long as they understand their position within the organization: second class. Second-class citizenship for women and minorities is the clear dictum of the head honchos and suckas in charge of this tennis frat house. The mouthy, rebellious ones who seek to improve “access” or challenge the Good Ole Boy mentality need not apply.
My grandfather fought against these kinds of attitudes and shenanigans forty years ago. He knew that racism and other Isms were endemic, that the heart is slow to change, but that the rules and laws must reflect equality and justice. It took Dr. J thirty-eight long years to finally be elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. And it looks like its going to take the USPTA and tennis in general far longer before they understand what it means to actually welcome, encourage, respect and support all members of this society who participate in this great sport.
Until then: “don’t mourn, organize.” Organize something new, something better! Women and people of color can and should fill the void created by the major league cowardice of tennis officialdom and the tennis stenographers who parrot what they are paid to say. We need to tell our stories in our own press organs and let these ugly experiences be known for the world to hear. We need to create our own organizations that address the particular experiences that we confront in this game. We need to be the model of equality, transparency and fair dealing in the tennis community that we desire to see.
I know one thing for sure: I will never join the USPTA.
“The basic fact is that the United States has organized under its sponsorship and protection a neo-colonial system of client states ruled mainly by terror and serving the interests of a small local and foreign business and military elite. The fundamental belief, or ideological pretense, is that the United States is dedicated to furthering the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the world, though it may occasionally err in the pursuit of this objective.
Since 1960 over 18 Latin American regimes have been subjected to military takeovers – a “domino effect” neglected in the West. US has been crucial in this process, in some cases by means of deliberate subversion or even direct aggression, but invariably important given the substantial economic and military penetration and presence of the superpower.”
From “The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism”
Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
(1979)
1979?!
Why do people act like the US and torture is a new thing? This government has been doing dirt for a looooong time! From its infancy, the bloody birth canal of America, a baby birthed, multiple civilizations butchered.
There is a history that most of us don’t know about which we would do well to learn. Noam Chomsky knows some of it, Howard Zinn knows, James Baldwin, Manning Marable, Ella Baker, John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. Its an underground history, carried on the Underground Railroad. You gotta put your ear to the ground, to your belly and listen real soft and you’ll hear it, hear it springing from your navel, from your nasal passages – a sense, a scent, a tone, a texture, a rumble.
Listen close. That train is a coming.
The hip-nosis: Analysis nonsensical paralysis negritude nullified by a new world order POTUS rippin’ the fraudulent mike, puttin’ a sleeper hold on the people’s domepiece, the spirit gone DOA from too little R-E-A-D-I-N-G, R-E-A-S-O-N-I-N-G in Tut’s tomb, your inner catacombs.
Ali told Frazier that he would see all that his eyes would allow him to see.
Why can’t your no ‘count eyes see behind the beige, colored boy curtain?
The forest-green Courvoisier keeps hitting some of us upside the head with its 100 proof trees and a thousand too many high.
Remove the red, black and green blindfold, African.
Back the ‘F’ up; “don’t think – FEEL!”
“Hurt muthafucka, HURT!!”
Who gets the money from Black Jesus?!
Show me the money and I’ll show you a con man, flim flam, heavyweight champiAN, hoodwinking the racially hoodwinkable, skin deep, scam sleep, paradigm prisoners.
You say be patient and I say I told you so.
Stevie said “You haven’t done nuthin.’
I say, “you haven’t got nothing,” nothing to show for your logical fallacy, race loyalty, cranial self-lobotomy.
Stop being an intellectual panhandler.
Find the truth and the kingdom within.
I love Venus Williams; but Serena Williams is the one. Both sisters have been attacked for YEARS by members of the tennis community under the guise of legitimate criticism. The two sisters are treated as if they are one, interchangeable entity. And they are: they are white folks worst nightmare. A black tennis player who ain’t country club bred and will bust you upside the head and take all kinds of Grand Slam booty.
They are simply despised because they are black and proud and unbowed. This week, the tournament at “Indian Wells” begins – but without Venus and Serena. Eight years ago, an exceptionally ugly incident took place that has been hard to find on YouTube or on video anywhere.
Venus was to play Serena in the semifinals of the tournament in 2001; she ended up pulling out, ten minutes before the match. The tournament sponsors, ESPN and the assembled crowd were all caught off guard. People had been speculating that the matches between the two sisters were fixed , by their father, on what evidence: white folks’ intuition.
The following video is the last game of the final between Serena and Kim Clijsters of Belgium. Serena, Venus and their father had been booed unmercifully at the outset of the match. Watch this video to see how Serena handles racist adversity; then follow the link to YT and check out the entire match, especially the first segment.
And some people question why the Williams family don’t go back Injun Wells. Puhleaze?!
Well, I’ve been silent, too, transfixed by the horror of 21st century warfare visited on a glorified chicken coop. The Israelis, with their Amerikan military hardware believe it is A-okay to use genocidal violence against an entire population, against children, women and men who can’t move, can’t fight, can’t ‘duck and cover’, punished, all, for the ineffectual deeds of a few.
How many Israelis have died from all of the rockets fired by Hamas???? 13. How many Palestinians have died from Israeli rockets? 1000 and counting.
The Israelis claim that they “are not targeting civillians, that Hamas hides among them…and we just can’t help ourselves. ”
We need to pay careful attention to this lie, because this is a familiar lie. We can’t stop the drugs from coming in, the guns from coming in, all we can do is lock up and shoot down the people, the horribly desperate, faceless black silhouettes who are the ‘Houston Hamas’. Shooting them in the back, selling them crack, bustin’ them upside the head, they are all equally dead. And no one cares, no one wants to change the system, not even black folks who should know better.
No, we want a shining prince who will redeem our faith in ourselves – when nobody can do that for us but us. And here he is, given the throne and he says not a muthafucking thing. Nada! But then, what did he say about you during the campaign? He ran as far from you as he could, to Iowa and Indiana, to those country precincts and kissed all those white babies and played race neutral. The Spook Who Got His Foot in the Door by playing you down and his mammy up. And he only spoke of you to chastise absentee black fathers and Rev Wright?!
Today, he allies himself with ‘good guys’ like George Bush. “Good guy. Well meaning. Loves his country.” Loves his country to death is more like it – and you in it. These are the words of our sage black president.
What planet does this man live on?
This won’t be enough for the koolaid drinkers, the true believers, the “my color can do no wrong’ kinfolk. This profile in cowardice will push you, he will work you. One day you will see.
On this day, when the world needs him to say “there is no Hamas, there is no Israel, there is only HUMANITY and that humanity, that life must be respected and not abused NO MATTER WHAT, that genocide don’t fly and that the Israelis ought to know better” and he would, should mean it and back it up with backbone and gristle and teeth…
On this day, not a peep for the Palestinians, not a peep for those of us who want to give him the benefit of the doubt but see the two faces and the forked tongue. Not one solitary word uttered on behalf of children fileted by American daisy cutters and white phosphorous - except for extolling a monster, a beast, praising a man who allowed his people to DIE in New Orleans, who sent other people’s children off to die for a lie.
Some would call Israeli behavior, white supremacy. Others would call the indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people, part of the white supremacist hypnosis . “It can’t really be suffering cuz its just them. ” Some would call Obama a black gatekeeper, a nigga overseer on the global plantation, a boy who ain’t got no quarrel with massa, nor defending massa’s land or ways.
“Plus, who’s got the time to worry about a downer like Gaza when its time to partay! Skeewee!!!”
No, Obama’s focused on HIS big moment, his cotillion, as are so many others, transfixed, duped, had, took, drunk, high, high on symbolism, high on a lie. They used to call Coke “the REAL Thing.” This ain’t no Martin, this ain’t no Malcolm; to quote Larry Holmes, “he couldn’t hold their jock strap!”
I’d have taken white Kucinich over this man, white Ron Paul, over this man. And I sho’ would have taken brown Cynthia – whose politics are fo’ REAL – over this Kenyan snow job. I need truth, naked truth, bareback truth. Don’t give me no pride if it ain’t meant ta save our black hides.
From a comment I made on Brotha Asa’s provocative AfroSpear post: “Is Gay The New Black?!”
Asa, why you always stirring up trouble? LOL!!
Seriously: why can’t we have equality? If the state sanctions marriage and you are a citizen of the state/nation, then the laws should provide equal rights to ALL citizens of that nation – slam fucking dunk!
My religious tenets or lack thereof should not be the basis of determining what other people with other tenets, practices, beliefs, inclinations or orientations get to do. The only foundation that the secular state should provide is a level playing field. If the government sanctions marriage, then marriage should be for ALL CONSENTING ADULTS. And if you want to marry your sister, I don’t give a fuck! (One of the most asinine arguments against gay marriage I’ve heard)
My quibbles or comfort, or somebody else’s phony religious doctrine should not enter into it. That shit is between you and your God and me and my therapist. AND, people’s rights should not be auctioned off or voted on by the ignorant majority; that is a recipe for prejudice, blindness and rank stupidity to reign free.
Nobody who has responded here needs to love or like gay people, gay sex or gay marriage in order for justice, in order for law (HELLO!) to dictate that marriage can’t be Jim Crow’d. Muthafuckas don’t like your black ass and you didn’t like it when they legislated against you; how the fuck can your pretzel logic fail to note the same thing here?!
And I’m sorry for those kneegroes who don’t like Civil Rights metaphors being drawn between gay and black rights. The right Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, the brother in that portrait hanging over your stove, said it himself: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” How the fuck are black folk – of all people – gonna say “you can’t use my experience in the same sentence with gay rights”?! Back in the day, we were likening our experience to Moses and the Israelites – weren’t we, talkin’ ’bout being the lost sheep and how a chariot was coming for to carry us home.
How could we compare our experience in America to those stories detailed in the Bible?! How dare WE?! HOW? Because, when you are under the gun and need some inspiration, need some help, you look for similar experiences and similar struggles that will provide more ammo to your cause.
I hereby and forthwith grant my authentic Kneegro Intellectual Civil Right Property to the gay cause in perpetuity. I do, however, reserve the right to criticize racism among white gays at my discretion.
I’m tired of our bullshit hypocrisy. I’m tired of our “my shit don’t stink” mentality that many of us bring to this debate. I’m tired of us acting like niggas aren’t gay as hell ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong: Asa is on point when he points out that we SHOULD be wary of white folks – gay, straight or pin striped. But we need to grow the fuck up. We have to have more maturity, more discernment, put some of that personal voodoo aside and recognize that we don’t live in a jive ass theocracy…yet, though we know that “they” use religion to do exactly what’s being exhibited here – blind people to their commonalities in order to keep them divided. And controlled
To quote ‘Zel: “the games chess NOT checkers” muthafuckas. Stop allowing your asses to get checkmated by your own dated, archaic, ill considered, myopic, dumb ass moves.
Obama…
Its not the man, its not Obama the person who is objectionable, but bearing witness to the brain-bypass surgery rendered unto a nation of millions, millions who now hold themselves back, utterly, thoroughly. They are knee deep in a delusion, loving madly, deeply a man who they don’t know at all. A cypher, a silhouette, pleasing and handsome, harkening back to old heroes in shiny new bottles.
Yes, this nation of progressive, liberal, kente-colored fools holds themselves back by pocketing their eyeballs and any semblance of analysis in deference to a pretty, Negro league shyster.
Personality, baby. Principles, maybe.
One is easy on the eyes, a lullaby to the ears. The other is hard, with sharp edges and hard elbows. Principles require standing for something even when and especially when it ain’t popular, fun or cool, but necessary. Very necessary. The castor oil tastes like shit, but you must admit, it hits dat split.
“Leave the driving to us” and other gently crooned tunes are like Vidal Sasoon: “they want to wash your brains right out of your hair.”
Brand Obama, a formula, a panacea, a new drug in the lab trial to end all lab trials. Except YOU are the animal experiment. You are the rat, you are the monkey in the white room with the white lights and the white tiled floor. Strapped to the gurney in four-point restraints. Caged, run through your paces, poked, prodded, dissected, discarded…
“Let’s see, how long a line, how long a wait will they tolerate. How much misery will they suffer before they break? And what kind of drug will they respond to that suppresses their pain response and gives them, er, hmmm, hope?!”
Obama and the Placebo Syndrome: trading real democracy and real change, for a suit, a tan, a vocal quiver, and a rhetorical shiver.
Faux progressive whites and colored ninnies take the historic, long suffering bait. ‘Our time has come’ and ‘we can sew up all of our unfinished racial business in one fell swoop.’ Two sides of the same sick, shallow, deep-work averse coin. The psychological longing of the lazy flies is, thanks to the master manipulators, easily captured by dat sweet smelling honey: A symbolic turd. A Trojan Horse.
Well…
“You have to ask yourself, ‘do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, PUNK?!
The REAL Dealio:
What do YOU stand for? What are YOUR values and YOUR principles? Fuck the suit being dangled, promising you everything and nothing simultaneously; what kind of country, neighborhood, community do you want to see and what are YOU going to do to get it?
I want to fucking know!!!
To outsource your freedom and your freedom struggle is to lay in a cage and die, die at your own hand, though a white jacketed butcher rips his scalpel through your breast plate. You chose this fate. They offered you the rat poison but only you can take it. Or decide not to.
If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.
Many of my brothers and sisters already have…and…
Place principles before personalities, as they say in AA, and you might see the new day in a new light.
Is it enough to have beige skin? Is it enough to borrow a “negrified” vocal inflection when you speak before a Southern audience of a certain age? Is it enough to simply appear, with your mini ‘fro and your Afro-chic partner by your crank shaft, to gobble up all of the tortured, frustrated, gnarled, constipated dreams and desires of black people?
Should black people (and by black people I mean ALL people, because black encompasses all) give away the store, give away their power, their gray matter, to one who claims to be ‘progressive,’ but who is running with wolves, wolves who want to make you and have made YOU for all of these years, their meal?!
Hilary, the Queen of Race Baiting? Robert Gates, the Duke of torture? Where has he installed one REAL progressive, one REAL radical who will really “CHANGE” the system? No, this election was about change alright, change for us, changing OUR seats on the American Titanic. We are the ones in steerage, we are the ones drowning below deck, the ones who have always been sacrificed, this while “The One” spreads the wealth amongst a few of his cronies and the old guard that he has to appease in order to protect his neck.
That we cannot see the game, cannot see the wool as it slithers around our blindfolded eyes is a travesty. War, unending war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan on its civilian population, unstinting support for Israel and its race war on the Palestinian people. No reparations for the Red Nation or the Black Nation, as the Indigenist brilliantly pointed out. And you call this progress?!
I’m not so much opposed to Obama as I am to self delusion, the massive, collective delusion that I see amongst so many intelligent people. We have been pasteurized mentally, our rawness, our intuition, our instincts have been cleaved from our bodies. What’s left is a pragmatic, cautious, controlled mess.
When they open the concentration camps here, we will shuffle along in lock step like the good little cattle we are. No wonder so many can’t see the connection between the treatment of animals and ourselves: the triumph has been won. When we can’t see the suffering of the cow or the chicken or the gay; when we think WE are better, different, more noble than they – the victory has been won.
Obama’s win – of style, of color over real substance – was a Pavlovian game changer. Now they know, they can throw a nigga out there who sets off all kinds of salivating, feel-good alarm bells, bells that our brainwashed asses can’t resist, can’t see beyond; “we can disarm white progressives and colored folk in one fell swoop, while he continues the same policies that he hinted all along that he was against. And he will be granted, bequeathed the widest berth, because, after all, he is under great pressure, the economy, the Iraqis, etc.” Oh, its that deep.
Meanwhile, the starvation and suffering here which could be ended by shutting down the US military outposts all over the globe, goes on. Deepens.
The only change that ever worked occurred from the inside-out. And it was real people, unpurchased, unbought and unbossed people who were the change.
Yes, we can have change that we can believe in that is an outsourced lie. Or, a kind of change that is incremental, cellular, immovable, because it is grounded in you and your power and your wisdom. YOU.
Every now and then, the Field Negro gives out some blog luv to a brotha and suddenly, my blog stats look like the NASDAQ in the mid-nineties.
Writers lie, including me, about how we don’t care if anybody reads our shit. That’s one of those ’silent fart lies’ that you try to move away from so somebody else takes the rap.
Fact is, I luvs me some attention especially when it comes from someone I respect, rather than the the online KKK. Plus, I gotta give Field props cuz he is breaking attendance records with each blog post.
Field, thank you sincerely for linking me to your blog in your “Blogs I’m Feeling” area. You have my greatest respect and admiration for the way that you consistently provoke, incite, reframe and facilitate conversations about the latest travesty and absurdity in this culture chock full of them.
Keep it up!
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Harriet Tubman
“France offered to integrate them (Algerian revolutionists) into France and they told them, they told France: ‘to HELL with France; we want some land, not some France!’
Malcolm X”
Part of me has wanted to give him a break out of some idiotic racial solidarity which does not exist and which he has yet to claim. But the Indigenist tells the truth here and on his blog (please follow the link) in such viciously accurate fashion that it cannot be denied.
The change identified by Mr. Obama’s run to be the head of state of the most vicious, European-settler political state in human history is not in any way a true alteration of national policy. Mr. Obama has made his intentions well known that he intends to stand by the United States and all of its racist, imperialist and certainly colonialist institutions. Before the reader contests this accusation consider the following:
• Is the new Obama administration planning to honour the territorial integrity of Indian Country and the nearly 400 U.S./Indigenous nation-to-nation treaties all other previous federal administrations commonly ignored?
• Is the Obama administration willing to finally address issues of Indigenous genocide such as the forced sterilisations of Aboriginal women in the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico uncovered by the Senator Church Committee Hearings of the 1970’s?
• Will the Obama government officially apologise to the American Aboriginal for territorial disenfranchisement and genocide?
• Will the Obama government return Hawaii to its ancestral owners?
• Will the Obama government return Puerto Rico to the Taino Nation?
• Will the Obama government return Guam to the Chamorro Nation?
• Will the Obama government address American African Reparations?
• Will the Obama government address the problem of institutional White racism as suggested by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders?
• Will the Obama government officially apologise for African slavery?
Read it all here!
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me? The juxtaposition is scandalous: a new Negro Presidential breakthrough along side the re-shackling of the gay populace of Cali. “Rights Stripped, Prejudice Wins” read the banner headlines. Just as those knotty lynch ropes were being shoved into the dustbin of history, gosh darn it. Not quite.
Some tried to pin the loss in Cali on Negroes. Check how slick the ruling class is. Find a mouthpiece, fire up the Mighty Wurlitzer and put another nigga on the woodpile. Most white folks will fall for it and many did. Negroes barked back and became distracted by the real deal. Why? Because we’ve been programmed to.
Divide and conquer. See our struggle as somehow tainted by the “bad blood”, the immoral lifestyles of the gay and perverted.
Negroes have this proprietary relationship to the language of struggle. We don’t like “close” links made between the civil rights struggles of US and gay people. Why? Because it reduces us, cheapens our struggle, cheapens our victimization by contaminating it with the minor hangnails suffered by white faggots and bull dykes. The fact that some of our black siblings, cousins AND parents are GAY is even MORE embarrasing and worthy of being closeted, sequestered, quarantined.
For some of us and for me today, struggle is struggle. Certainly, they are not identical, the black and gay struggle, but need they be in order to see the inherent injustice of what this culture is putting down?
When adults in this culture are told that they can’t do what other adults, other so-called free people can do because of “who and what they are,” that’s a fucking slam dunk. A two-tiered system of justice cannot stand whether you like the thought of two men tongue kissing, having anal sex or some other activity that seems freakish to you – or not. Maybe it freaks you the fuck out because, in your heart of deepest darkness, there’s a little quiver of excitement, forbidden pleasure that you’re too cowardly to experience. Just ask the reactionary Right.
Your or my sexual comfort level should not be the basis of social policy affecting millions of people who know who they are and who they love.
You can’t deny people freedom when you’ve spent your life fighting for and/or enjoying the fruits of a long struggle for freedom – that is ongoing.
On a higher plane, we, of all people, the so-called Black people, should be taking the lead in locking arms with gays and lesbians and shutting this shit down until all power rests in the people, and all rights that should be enjoyed by all people are extended, shared, granted. Or taken.
If you only stand for justice for your kind, justice for your ilk – you don’t stand for shit. You’re a fraud, an imbecile who doesn’t deserve the freedom that you don’t have.
The highest principles of the State, belong to all of us. This ain’t about your religion. Your religion is between you and your God, in spite of what your imperialist priests and preachers fill you up with. Keep that shit to yourself. If I’m going to hell, let me go in peace without your editorial commentary. Just get your pious foot off of the necks of people who want to live and love as free people.
Until we see the close relationship between freedom struggles of sexuality, class, race and gender, none of those struggles can succeed. Only a unified struggle of intelligent, undivided, freed slaves can win.
The Revolutionary Love of Fred Hampton, Sr.
In the wee hours of the morning on this day in 1969, Fred Hampton, Sr., was assassinated by a coalition of law enforcement officers representing city, county and federal agencies in Chicago, Illinois. These lines, taken from some of his speeches, as presented in the movie, “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” are why:
“I was born in a bourgeois community and had some of the better things in life, but I found that there were more people starving than there were people eating, more people that didn’t have clothes than did have clothes, and I just happened to be one of the few. So I decided that I wouldn’t stop doing what I’m doing until all those people are free.“We’re gonna have to do more than talk. We’re gonna have to do more than listen. We gonna have to do more than learn. We’re gonna have to start practicing and that’s very hard. We’re gonna have to start getting out there with the people and that’s difficult. Sometimes we think we’re better than the people so it’s gonna take a lot of hard work.
“You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We not gonna fight capitalism with Black capitalism. We’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism. Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.
“Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of the colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Negro imperialism.
“You have to understand that people have to pay the price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then you don’t deserve to win. Let me say ‘Peace’ to you, if you’re willing to fight for it.
“Nothing is more important than stopping fascism because fascism will stop us all. We don’t hate White people. We hate the oppressor, whether they be White, Black, Brown or Yellow. We will work with anybody, coalesce with anybody that has revolution on their mind. But anybody that comes into our community and sets up anything that does not meet the needs of the masses, I will grab him by the neck and beat that man to death with a Black Panther paper.
“I’m going to do my job and I believe that I was born not to die in a car wreck. I don’t believe I’m going to die slipping on a piece of ice. I don’t believe I was born to die because of a bad heart. I don’t believe I was born to die of lung cancer. I believe I’m going to be able to do what I came to do. I believe that I’m going to be able to die high off the people. I believe that I will be able to die as a revolutionary in the international revolutionary proletariat struggle. And I hope that each one of you will be able to live in it. I think that struggles are going to come. Why don’t you live for the people? Why don’t you live for the struggle? Why don’t you die for the struggle?
“If you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not gonna work for the people.
“I might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But you can believe that the last words on my lips were ‘I am a revolutionary.’
“You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.”
Insanity I know well. I’m feeling it by the bushel now, as I negotiate a nascent relationship. I’d asked the Universe for love, for partnership and now, I’ve received it. I’d indicated to the Universe my preference for a woman of color, but she came in another, brighter package. There were several “asks” that I made of the Universe that the Universe decided were not relevant. This time around. There may be others, there may not.
Relationship is challenging and fearsome and terrifying and painful. Being yourself, allowing your darkest fears to leak out, your weakest, tenderest flesh to be exposed to sometimes rough, insensitive, clueless handling is the risk you take to create intimacy. And sometimes I wonder if its worth it.
Should I be marrying my writing, marrying my talent? When have I ever? I’ve always given short shrift to the stories, to the energy, to the flow, to the volcanic desire to burst forth and commit to that eruption – one day at a time. Does relationship with another enhance or interrupt my ability to be in holy matrimony with my creativity? Time will tell.
I’d made an amendment to my request of the Universe that put a color bar on who showed up…and I’m glad that I did. I’ve met a woman who, while white, is deep, strong, brilliant, creative, expressive, in short all of the things that I said I wanted. And there are hurdles. I was reading an article about Juliette Greco, a French singer who’d had a longterm relationship with Miles Davis. Miles was asked by the philospher Jean Paul Sartre, why he didn’t marry Greco. “Because I love her too much to hurt her.” I don’t know that I want to hurt “her” as well as hurt myself.
“Its hard for two people just to love each other.”
Charles Mingus
And it is. Its hard because everyone has a sayso, feels they have an interest in who fucks who across the color line. The barbed wire is as thick on the black side as it is on the white, and the flesh hanging from the razor wire is testimony to the belief that to transgress this righteous bias means death or dismemberment. Spiritual, emotional if not physical.
I’ve felt my insanity today and it isn’t mine, its this fucked up worlds; its the loveless, hateful, hierarchical, naive, vicious, irresponsible, logical, murderous, terrified world that I have to try to live in. To feel insane is only to channel what I see around me and signal my nausea at it, my desire to rise above it, move away from it, vomit it up and purge my system of it.
I don’t want to outsource my love to another until I figure out how to make room for me, my self love. Or maybe that’s what I have to do in order to locate my self love, in someone else’s mirror. Either way, I have to find it somewhere, anywhere or I’ll die.
Will Obama win today and salve the wounds of the black masses looking for a soothing balm for our 400 year headache, while simultaneously cleansing and freeing the white narcissistic conscience and relieving us ALL of responsibility for cleaning up the toxic waste dump called America – brick by radioactive muthafucking brick? Or will John McCain and Diebold steal our collective dream of a shiny black prince riding in on a pain-free libratory stallion that will deliver freedom like welfare on the first and fifteenth? Will these beasts steal our joy and our votes like they stole Malcolm and Martin – “coming for to carry me home” – wielding machetes, slashing at the our poised digits on the computerized roulette wheel that will, we believe, rocket us to a new freedom?
I’ve noticed the strange silence of the AfroSpear on these questions. I’ve noticed my strange silence. I can’t breathe long enough to think and think long enough to breathe. I don’t believe in this system and I don’t believe in confronting it with lies and illusions about itself, treating the people as the ignorant rabble that they are. On the other hand, a black president is BIG. To see a black man of some intelligence and charm who is clearly “presidential” cannot help but move a soul bred in this racial pressure cooker. But my conscience won’t allow me to lounge in a placebo hot tub for long.
No, if you, like me, want REAL change, you speak up not down to the people. You raise them up to your level (if they happen to be less conscious); you don’t leave whole swaths of reality off the table in order to appeal to their tender retardation. People know what they deny in their marrow, despite their crossed eyes and arms. Denying them the opportunity to engage with the elephant in the room that we all tiptoe around only prolongs the rampage. You can’t break the cycle if you don’t claim, draw and paint the elephant, admit its existence, tell where and how it crushes you, where it punctures the skin with its tusk and bleeds you. What kind of change can occur when you don’t tell the doctor where it hurts?
And who indeed is Barack Obama? Frankly, I’ve been encouraged by all of the underground associates this man seems to have. Bill Ayers? When other activists during the Vietnam era had shorn their hippie hair and gone to grad school, Ayers and the Weathermen actually committed to confronting the racist, genocidal American military power with a modicum of force. Planting bombs in buildings, in “symbols” of American power and forewarning the building’s inhabitants to get out seems the mildest form of terror…quite different from bombing raids on thatched huts scorched with napalm, burning the human flesh within to a crisp.
In all of the hysteria around Ayers being a “domestic terrorist,” what’s missed is that he opposed the US government which at that time was – and to this day is – a “Global Terrorist,” murdering men, women and children in Vietnam and Cambodia, training the military dictatorships of South and Central America in surveillance, torture and mass homicide at the Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA – men who went on to become the biggest human rights violators in the Western Hemisphere and actually murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. With US training, weaponry and dollars.
Who’s the the real terrorist and when can that story be told? And is it history that we want or mystery?
We will soon find out.
“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”
Alice Miller, Author
The Drama of the Gifted Child
Look high into the sky: its not a bird, but a plane and behind it and others like it are huge plumes that don’t dissipate but remain, sometimes for hours. Often, dueling plumes crisscross the sky and as they hang in the air, they become broader and wider. I saw several yesterday.
Most planes have a “contrail” that dissipates very quickly; what’s the difference? Is there a sinister reason or motive? What is the composition of this atmospheric phenomenon? Is it a “Chemtrail?”
Watch this and see for yourself:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=chemtrails&emb=0#
My sister, Lisa of BlackWomenBlowTheTrumpet.blogspot.com left this query today:
“Hello there!
I don’t think that many “new” bloggers know that AfroSpear and AfroSphere are two separate entities.
I am confused now about them after reading your post.
Are there TWO e-groups now? Why are the names so similar?
Feel free to hop over to my blog and send me an email.
Lisa”
Lisa, you inspired me to try to make a beginning on answering those questions right here.
Having been one of the six members who put this AfroSpear idea into orbit – Sylvia, Asa, Field Negro, Aulelia and Kizzie – I must say that I’m as confused as the folks who email here regularly asking us “what’s the difference between the ‘Spear and ‘Sphere”…“what and why is there an ‘AfroSp(here)ear Bloggers Association’ and a ‘AfroSphere Google Group’?!” Etc, etc.
“And, why are these names so similar?!”
Why indeed. And a related question: Does it help or hurt the cause that these names are so similar?
The name “AfroSpear” was inspired by conversations that were going on at a number of blogs regarding segregation in the so-called “blogosphere.” We chose Afro- “Spear” over “Sphere” because a spear is a tool and we proposed to make the AfroSpear a tool that we could use for education, inspiration and creation.
Rather than complaining about how white bloggers didn’t understand us or our interests – something that sadly afflicts many of our web savvy folk – it seemed like a good idea to create an entity that represented and expressed the aspirations of blacks and other people of color. We believed that it could help us move from helpless and hapless victims to empowered actors on our own behalf.
That shift, we knew, begins in the mind and this site, necessarily, focuses on the domepiece, providing information that brings light to our community, through reports, screeds and provocations of all sorts that tell us what’s really going on and force us to confront illusions about ourselves and our condition. And no doubt, we wanted to get the word out about efforts by people of color to fight the power and who were developing a ‘lil bit of their own.
We created an ‘umbrella’ concept which welcomed black bloggers of all stripes to convene here to promote, plan and process. We encouraged the formation of cells/cadres (as opposed to cliques) of black interest groups that would take on community specific issues. We know that there are black anarchists, gay and lesbian rights activists, feminists/womanists/animal rightists or vegans; we wanted that light shown here, for those of us who possess hetero-privilege, male-privilege or class privilege. In effect, we want/ed some spiritual and intellectual gumbo going on here that could fill us up with more and more light. And I’ll be damned if we don’t have some of that goin’ on here.
We believed and understood from our experiences that it is in smaller configurations that work actually gets done. Most mass movements have and always will depend on the actions of a few dedicated, committed laborers and visionaries.
Clearly the ‘Spear and its offshoots are similar because there has been some cross pollination by folks who were involved here and began participating in other groups. Some became excited with the initial concept and demonstrated their zeal by using the same name with a slight twist. Flattering to be sure, but highly confusing. And frightening.
“Where were they taking this and why?” “Is it being borrowed or ‘jacked?” “Is it my ego or are these legitimate concerns?”
I know I looked on with some trepidation as I saw some folks borrow the name but forget the concepts at root of what we were trying to do: bringing us under one banner that acknowledges our differences, commonalities and tensions and seeks to resolve them through passionate, authentic engagement.
“AfroSpear, we have a problem!” Or do we?!
Is it a branding issue, or is it something more, deeper, darker? Those of us who are a part of the AfroSpear and all of its tributaries should think about this confusing state of affairs and how it should be resolved – if it needs resolving. Clarity and greater coalescing might prove fruitful.
