Why aren’t we enough?!

In the wake of Brownfemipower shutting down her blog due to racism/racist appropriation, my question is: WHY?!

Why allow the very thing (RACISM) that all people of color should be united in fighting against, to drive us underground, drive us away from our task, to communicate our hard earned insights, fire and passion?

What does it say about our value system when white folks jes bein’ white folks - who we SHOULD know are the enemy - causes us to pack up our mic and pull the plug?

It sends a terrible signal, in my opinion. Perhaps it is simply the destruction of the illusion of the good, progressive white folk that caused BFP to make such a hasty, impolitic exit. What about all of the young, brown/black/red/yellow women who having viewed this spectacle, decide to go off into their corners, do their thing after years of reading about the power of WOC and seeing that power dissolve before an allegedly more powerful, admittedly more privileged, journalistic hack?!

There is NO excuse to not immediately decenter white women - and to rally round and CENTER, brown women, black women, red women, yellow women to this righteous cause…now that white feminists have shown what feminism really means to them:

“Kizzy, git in the kitchen and do them dishes…NOW!”

Aren’t we enough?!

What people of color need to do more and more is to turn to EACH OTHER. Regardless of language, national origin, religion, the white world rests on Plymouth Rock — which rests on all of us!

White folks stepping on our toes - which they so often do - causing such a pyrrhic reaction bespeaks an unhealthy relationship and perhaps, attachment to white folks. It validates their superiority, their power, it enacts/reenacts the silencing that is critical to their controlling us. Why volunteer?

Who benefits from BFP’s voluntarily servitude and acquiesence to the white feminist prerogative to take the brown fruit and not thank the one who slaved over the crop? White cannibals who’ve always feasted on dark meat. Methinks just the opposite tack is required.

I’ve read many of the posts regarding the Amanda Marcotte/Seal Press debacle…ain’t nuthin’ new under the sun, and yet…

Why don’t we have a press, or respect the press that we have? Why don’t we publish ourselves? Why do we concern ourselves with being “credited” for our spiritual property when they’ve been stealing both and more since the muthafucking Mayflower?! They won’t use it like we use it because we have or should have revolution on our mind, not a jive ass book deal.

No, as long as we center them, genuflect to them, beg and entreat them to, ‘pretty please understand our plight’…all of this prostration, without paying MORE attention to what we NEED to be building between brown you and black me…

Believe me, I don’t say this as someone whose never been where BFP is, but precisely because I have been there…and still, I have to keep watch and ferret out those ingratiating weeds that want to make white folks my superior, my God, my master.

To quote Nancy Wilson: “You can have him, I don’t want him, I don’t want him, you can have him, for he’s not, the man, for me!”

White feminists and white liberals/progressives are buttering their bread with white privilege in a cafe called Racism/White Supremacy. Most are completely clueless; a thimble full are in the process of getting it. Maybe. And a couple might even have it. We can’t afford any delusions, and certainly can’t expect square dealing from people who want us to validate their goodness and kindness, window-dress their image at the price of YOUR or MY sanity.

Somewhere an illusory bubble burst, full of white allies and cream pie that splattered in our faces. This was intolerable. Let’s grab a rag and clean each other up, keep each other honest and yell “DUCK” or “INCOMING” when the next bubble whizzes by.

We are enough.

Intelligence is often ephemeral, viral, acquired with little or no effort, surface; wisdom is hardboiled and hard-earned, rooted in lived truth and often, trauma.  One example…

Words by Zuky:

It seems to me that one of the principal sources of confusion when it comes to racial disourse is the stunning lack of clarity and consensus regarding the exact meanings and definitions of the words “racism” and “racist”. Those of us who spend significant time doing anti-racist work end up developing a variety of nuanced concepts surrounding these words, but many people never explore those meanings and instinctively respond to talk of racism with strong emotions and weak understandings. Racism is a complex multi-dimensional interdisciplinary subject which cannot be reduced to an absurdly-shallow bifurcation of the populace into laudable “not racists” and condemned “racists”. Racism is an overarching, interlocking set of economic, political, social, and cultural structures, beliefs, and actions which systematically advantage one racial group at the expense of all others. A statement, thought, belief, assumption, or action can be described as racist when it plugs into the overarching grid of racism, like a node which lights up once it plugs into its compatible network, thus transcending an individual act of bigotry or prejudice and fusing into broader institutions and societal forces.

As for defining what makes an individual person “a racist”, I think it’s a pretty fuzzy area, and not a particularly fruitful intellectual direction. Most anti-racists are much more concerned with identifying, understanding, and dismantling racism, than in exposing any individual as “a racist”, whatever that means. Clearly, there are hate-crime types out there who organize their lives around advancing white supremacist violence and such; but most of the racism that people of color deal with in our day-to-day lives — especially those of us who interact with a lot of white liberals — is far more subtle and covert, more of a background buzz than an in-your-face threat. White liberal racism tends to manifest in unspoken assumptions, attitudes, and social dynamics which normalize and center white privilege, while deprioritizing, marginalizing, and dismissing the voices, perspectives, experiences, histories, cultures, agendas, and initiatives of people of color. White liberals who engage in these behaviors aren’t “racists” in the same sense as the hate-crime types, but they are nevertheless participating in the replication and perpetuation of racism. Pointing this out is not “playing the race card”; it is accurate socio-political observation. Pointing this out is not the same as running around indiscriminately shouting “racist!” at every white person within earshot in some kind of rageful frenzy; it is constructive anti-racist critique aimed at illuminating an important but dimly-lit pattern, for the purpose of healing wounds which continue to bleed our society and our own humanity.

From the “Anarchist People of Color, Race, Anarchy, Revolution” website:

“Anarchism calls for a fundamental transformation of society. No messianic leader guides the flock to the promised land, where the government tries to kill them all. With anarchism, no shadowy leadership clique calls the shots for our community. An anarchist solution means people are all taught the lessons and go forward to teach our own lessons so that everyone in the community can lead the struggle. It is a radical departure from the power politics that have been at play in many communities of color. Anarchist revolution is what is needed for people of color now.

People of color are in the crosshairs of this system every single day. Now is not the time to mourn, but to build with determination for anarchist revolution.”

Do you want a fundamental transformation?

I’ve been thinking about the meaning of Wesley Snipes’ pending incarceration. As one who has followed a similar path and refuses to pay for my oppression and that of other black people and people of color worldwide, what does a three-year term for tax evasion REALLY mean?!

It means that any action against the system will be met with maximum retaliatory force. Stealing the wealth of the people and using it to oppress the people is divine law, according to the maniacs who run this thing. And what if we were all Wesley’s, what if we all knew that the 16th Amendment was a fraud, that the Federal Reserve is a private bank, NOT a government concern.   “We are not consumers; “WE are what’s being consumed!”

Do you want a fundamental transformation or to exchange seats on the Titanic, a ship headed for massive icebergs, a ship that mows down black and brown and red fish on its queasy path to oblivion?!

Reformism - voting in new masters, a female or black male overseer for the global plantation - is status quo, handkerchief head politics/existence par excellence. Revolution means that there are no more Gods, masters or slaves. YOU are your own overseer, YOU are the boss of YOU!!

Can you git wit that?!

White folks are lactose intolerant when it comes to the truth!! 

Black folks: you can’t be accepted unless you tone it down, scale it back. Nigga, filet yo’ self!!

You can’t be the “First Black President” unless you chew your words like a cow turning cud.

Don’t improvise, don’t be Jeremiah-ically real, correct, oh, hell, no.

The audacity of a delusion preferred.

White folks don’t want to know the truth and niggas who believe that this Titanic can be righted, saved, steered away from the icebergs are just as delusional as the outraged tongue cluckers on Fox, CNN and the heart-less heartland.

All they can see, the only thing they can think about is their pain, their suffering: “how dare that nigga mock OUR suffering on 911!!” White folks don’t know shit about real suffering, they’re too busy trimming their hangnails. They don’t dare look out from under their intellectual blankets to see the global suffering that has been heaped on millions by their blue eyed government.

So, here comes Obama, the pretty, smiling black marionette, trying to appeal to an un-satisifiable beast, that will use tweezers and a fine toothed comb to ferret out any inconsistency, any faux paux, any racism (imagine that!) and magnify it, twist it into necro- or pedophilia.

And he plays the game, because the prize seems desirable. But what we could really use is some of that community organizing that he constantly brags about. He talks that WE talk, while he seeks an “I” prize. We may get him elected, but I’d be surprised if we - meaning black folks benefit.

If you have to de-bone words, deny reality - if you have to lose your black soul in order to gain the world - what’s it worth?! I’d rather be Obama’s “former” pastor and tell the unvarnished truth. I’d rather minister to the real soul’s of real black, white and green folks than engage in politically expedient, statesmen-like verbal masturbation.

How fulfilling it must be to cater to the white fantasies of a shining city on a hill, formed in a vacant land by courageous, persecuted men who only wanted to breath free. That they could strangle the life out of and make extinct tribe after tribe of Red people - one dare not mention.

For true: If these folks can’t step up at this late date and accept that Rev. Wright speaks nothing but the whole black truth - then we’re no different from those teachers who have low expectations of our students. Put these crackas in remedial Ed and leave ‘em the fuck alone.

When we talk down to the white man, we demean ourselves because all black folks know Obama’s lying, by omission. Distancing himself from his pastor - while ostensibly embracing him - makes Obama a political gumby: flexible, but without backbone. If we can’t bring the entirety of our black selves to the table, if our complaints are dismissed as the politics or rhetoric of the past, when the conditions those bitter words describe are happening in this day and time, why we have lost our good black minds.

I’d rather leave this country, secede from the Union, live off the grid than pretend that temporizing is a form of nobility.

” Yo, man… There’s a lot of brothers out there flakin’ and perpetratin but scared to kick reality…”

If you don’t like reality…continue to ignore it!

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

I hear a lot of complaints, but few solutions offered for the problems of black folks. We in the AfroSphere have perfected the stenographic act of documenting the atrocities and petty slights of white racist culture. But, as they say in recovery: “when you focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger, when you focus on the solution, the solution gets bigger.”

Why does it seem that some of us get off on constantly re-traumatizing ourselves? At some point, we have to make a stand. At some point, we - and we can be me, a circle of friends, a neighborhood, a city - have to make a decision.

One decision that has revolutionary implications for black folks is our diet, or as it should be named, “the poison that we stuff into ourselves that we erroneously call food.”

What is the difference between a cow being led to slaughter and us: they don’t have TV in the stockyards. They can see the bars, the barbed wire that fences them in. You can’t. You can’t because your prison bars are internal, bred into you by sophisticated means. Black folks commit Hari Kari every day with chicken wings.

The massive health problems that our community suffers can be massively reversed without a single march, protest or demonstration, simply by taking the pig, pork, swine, beef, fish, candy bar off of our fork or plate, take it out of our mouths. We all know the physical implications of the way that we eat, but there are also mental, emotional, spiritual implications.

What does it do to the spirit of a human being to eat the flesh of an animal? What does it mean that we don’t know what the system of production does to these animals - and what does it mean that we don’t care? How can the spiritual man or woman co-sign the brutality, the savagery inflicted on animals and then complain about the petty bullshit that they suffer? Can one exist without the other? I don’t think so.

Oh, I know, its easy to dismiss animals as things, we are “higher mammals,” etc. That might be true; the problem is, claiming to be higher while actually behaving worse than that which we classify as lower is an American tradition. The white man said he was superior while raping and ravaging whole populations of Native Americans and blacks, ravaging and raping the land for good measure. And the animals. So while I understand the temptation to assert my personhood at the expense of animals, how can I? And how do I know that God/Goddess/The Great Spirit don’t have plans for animals that I can’t understand, see or comprehend? By destroying animal life, how do I know that I’m not sinning my black ass off?

But the good news: The Revolution can begin this second for all of us black folks.

STOP EATING MEAT, FISH, FOWL, CANDY or any other synthetic foods.

EAT FRUITS, VEGETABLES, WHOLE GRAINS, LEGUMES. EAT ORGANIC. SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS!

Live longer, think more clearly, weigh less, be happier. You can do more righteous harm to the concentration camp that is America by not participating in his slaughter of animals and his slaughter of YOU in the process. Niggas in Baghdad and Beantown get treated no different than Elsie the cow. We are nothing but product, profit, FEED for the machine.

If all the black folks in this country resolved to never touch another chicken wing again, by that simple act, the walls of this oppressive, imperialist country would come tumbling down. This country can’t survive without you swallowing lies and chicken thighs.

Once you get clean - and that’s what getting off of these food drugs means - once you have your brains back, you can begin proposing solutions that can solve, rather than documenting the latest predictable white outrage. The white man ain’t gonna change if you don’t change and the most fundamental, simplest change black folks can and need to make is what they put into their bodies.

From Lord Vegan:

Hell, EVERYBODY needs to read this most powerful statement. It needs to be read - carefully.

The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974…involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while…doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements…. [W]e see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.

1. The Genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

[W]e find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation…. As Angela Davis points out, Black women have always embodied an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities…. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation…. Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s…. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men. There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black feminism…. However, we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us, what we knew was really happening…. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people…. [A] handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression…. [A]s we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism.

2. What We Believe

Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work. This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics…. [T]he most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity…[t]o be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough…. Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand…. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism…. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses…. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons…for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives…. [O]ur Black women’s style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political…. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black women’s lives…. “Smart-ugly” crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our “social” lives…. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society…[b]ut we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se–i.e., their biological maleness–that makes them what they are.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are…trying…to address a whole range of oppressions…. We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women…. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of…people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power relationships…. We feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and distributing our work.

4. Black Feminist Issues and Projects

The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex and class are simultaneous factors in oppression…. One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement…. Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue…. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics…. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice.

(Excerpts from: The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1986)

I’m a nonfiction person.

History. Politics.

I’ve struggled to embrace the novel. Baldwin, Ellison. Henry Miller reads like a novel, but is in fact a hybrid, as is Anais Nin. I read one Terry McMillan book and have some Octavia Butler, too. I decided to dive head first into some ‘classic’ fiction, particularly fiction by black women.

I bought several Toni Morrison books - Bluest Eye, Beloved, Jazz. And then I bought the Color Purple by Alice Walker.

I avoided this book and the movie of the same name like the plague. I heard, even in my drunken stupor, all of the charges and counter charges about Walker’s book being an attack on the black man, the questions asking: “of all the books about black folks, why the hell are they gonna use this manhating, blah, blah, blah…”

I bought that shit for many years and just never wanted to delve into it. But, I bought it a couple of weeks ago. I bought it in hopes of delving into myself, my fears around ‘what I heard,’ my fear of engaging with subject matter that might teach me about myself. A book that might teach me about black women and their grievances against us.

What a surprise, what a beautiful surprise. Once I traveled through the thicket of Mister’s abuse and that of his son Harpo, his daddy, what captured my attention was the relationships between the women. The love, the resistance, the range of behaviors that the sisters in the book used to deal with a system of oppression. An intersectional system of oppression.

The strength of Shug, of Sofia, of Nettie and of course, Celie was beautiful. What a surprise then that over the years, the men bent, became not more rigid but elastic. The men meaning Harpo and Mister. Did they become angels from heaven? Uh, no. Did they shift, open up, loosen, let go - of their overwhelming control and brutality and allow their black sisters space to be themselves? Yes they did.

Can black people of this day and age shift, open up, loosen, let go - of their overwhelming control and brutality towards one another? Can they, can we own our propensity for martyrdom? Our propensity for emotional and verbal “blackmail” and abusiveness, self righteous abusiveness? Can we make a commitment to get the psychological help that we need to heal before we attempt the impossible: trying to have a grounded grown folks conversation. A grown folks conversation that precludes us vomiting daggers into each other?

I don’t know. Many of us are so far gone, co-opted by this white culture of death, consumed with internalized hate. One of the things I learned once I got sober was how my disease manifested within me.

I believed when I was a drunk, that if I drank enough to cut off all emotional feeling - that I would eliminate the greatest impediment to my being able to think rationally. My emotions, in my view, were a major liability. If I could suppress them, I could win. Nothing could touch me, no feeling could intrude on my “super-rational project.”

What I discovered was that having a ‘Spockian-intellect’ was the liability, that emotion, rather than hindering was a massive aid to me being my truest black self. That having ‘healthy’ emotions, married to a functional intellect was the height of health. My ‘lone brain theory’ had been my disastrous guide and downfall.

Feeling, feeling my feelings, letting my feelings be my guide, getting assistance in dealing with the wreckage of my past and using my head as an able assistant instead of a tyrant - that was “how I got over.”

I ain’t done mind you, but I am like Mister. I am a work in progress. Like Shug, I am powerful and passionate. Like Celie, I was meek, mild, beaten down; now I’m rising up, filling out my body, my skin, rather than hiding in a corner. And like Sofia: under the right conditions, I’m the wrong nigga to fuck wit.

The Color Purple seems like a template, an emotional/psychological template for black community healing. One day, when we get beyond needing an oppressor, a violator, an enemy, when playing the victim no longer pays our spiritual bills and we move to a place of personal healing FIRST, perhaps we will be able to heal the race. If we could move from complete dysfunction as the group in this book does - and encourage and allow each other our process and time to heal our inner wounds without throwing salt in them - “oh happy days!”

Until then…I pray that we can get together, regardless of color(ation), gender or any other pseudo-impediment on the real, on a truthful, authentic basis and lay our shit on the table. Too many of us, in the words of Dunbar, wear the mask…

“WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!”

Stop hiding!

Follow the link….

Two men - me and Seminalson - have begun a conversation on patriarchy. It was inspired by my conversations with Dark Daughta. If you haven’t gone over to her place you should. NOT for the faint of heart and sometimes that includes me.  Actually, mainly that includes me.

You are joining the middle of the conversation - but that’s how some of the best conversations are - and it is very looooooooooooong, but it may be useful to someone.  Oh, and its a conversation that has no end until IT ends…

Here is the current blog post at Seminalson’s (S2’s) house…

Holding racism, patriarchy and our feelings TOGETHER…

Maxjulian said…:

I don’t know what I didn’t get to from your previous post. What is the question.

I feel like you’re telling me that I just need to accept in whole cloth what women, or you say no matter what. Is that correct? I don’t know. I’m confused. I feel like I should consider where and how I agree.

Having someone wag their finger in my face and holler: “YOU’RE AN ALCOHOLIC/YOU’RE A PATRIARCH” doesn’t seem a very effective strategy to promote self reflection, particularly when one is opening themselves up, trying to remove the shrapnel at the same time. Removing shrapnel from yourelf is hard enough without someone repeating, “you’ve got shrapnel in your leg, you’ve got shrapnel in your leg.” No, I need help ID’ing the shrapnel, specifically, not restating the obvious. And some awareness that I have removed some of it and am committed to removing all of it.

It probably feels good to the person doing that, but having been a part of a little personal transformation, it seems doomed to failure. But that’s just my opinion.

I also grew up in the United States, not Canada, so I didn’t experience it through books, or television or visits. I’ve been a black man all my life - who grew up in the good ole USA of lynching, castration - physical, emotional, spiritual.

So, I know that I have male privilege, male power. And it cuts both ways here in the larger culture. Nigga men are the greatest threat to the white man, thus they have received the full force of his oppressive machinery.

Certainly, I have power over women. I, as a male represent a group that poses the greatest threat to women. Its kind of like the concept of “all white people being racist suspects” from ‘TheCode.Net.’ I get that.

But after we’ve been beaten over the head with theory and studies and books and told we are patriarchs, we who need and must change have to be met on a heart level by somebody, don’t we? Otherwise, its going back to doing my work on my own which I ain’t got a problem with.

I’m looking at the opportunities that I have to exercise patriarchal power; I’m looking at how I’ve used it in the past; I’m disowning and backing away from it when I recognize it, when I see it in real time. Its not like I don’t know that I can be a patriarch - but I’m not married, I’m not in a committed or uncommitted relationship; I’m not a minister, pastor or officeholder. I work from home. I don’t know whether I agree that because I have a dick, that I am an unequivocal, practicing patriarch, particularly because I’ve been working at this for a little while now.

S2, you say I didn’t like what was coming out of DD’s mouth because she is a woman. I wouldn’t have like it coming out of your mouth either.

I know DD is a brilliant person, aren’t we all? We are all brilliantly human, growing, with much to learn and I think its important to keep our individual growth up front.

I am moving through and past this moment with DD, but it is a process and that whole encounter will continue to percolate within me. If you can’t hear how I feel about that, please let me know and I won’t mention it here again.

A part of the messy of this path is that we never get “there;” we get closer, better, stronger, more flexible, but we are never there. Even those with an analysis are weighed down by life, family upbringing, pain, beauty. It is how we negotiate it that is important. I don’t want to be a wooden, patriarchal, archetype and have my humanity deleted or reduced.

We have to allow each other our own individual humanity, our unique story or else we’re talking behind masks, poses, positions.

One more thing by way of metaphor: One of my favorite quotes is by Sonny Rollins - “It took me years to learn what notes NOT to play.” And another by Lee Morgan: “I think a definite style comes with living and experience and travelling until you play what you are, you play yourself on the horn.”

Theory is great, as is technique. But it is the fusion of them with lived experience, wisdom, patience, a little distance that counts for much. Listen to any great artist; they’ve discarded the youthful exuberance and know how to play the notes that count. We’re all learning this; so we should recognize.

So, I look forward to engaging with you where I talk to you about my shit primarily and you do the same, where you can be yourself and I can do the same. But this stuff just had to be as it was. Again, sorry you had to be on the receiving end.

s2 said…:

FS, I hear you.You want me to speak from an emotional place. Well talking about how I used my privilege in Black community was hard for me. I feel hurt when I think about how I’ve moved through the world. There were things that got in the way of how I could deal with how I was treating women. I was angry.
I still am, to some degree. That’s why I need to blog/ talk to you…
I was shut down. I wanted to lash out because of being consistently disempowered by my brother. I think it made matters worse that no one acknowledged my pain.

I’d be crying. ..
and crying…
and crying..
and my dad was like -
Seminalson, what’s wrong? You ok?!

“No I’m not fucking OK…
and you know why I’m not fucking ok!
It’s been 10 years of fucking terror!

What is your soul made of fucking STONE!?”

no answer.
…
…
still no response…

nothing
nothing
nothing

Are you even in there?

You’re family is suppose to care, Freeslave.

You’re family is suppose to fucking care! YOU’RE FAMILY IS SUPPOSE TO FUCKING CARE!

Freeslave, I’m in pain.
I was seeing a counselor, but I’ve stopped for too long…

Okay - back to how I treated women:
Now, true - this doesn’t excuse my abuse of patriarchal power. All men are patriarchs. If you are born a male on this planet - you’re automatically one. But part of me reaching out to you is (and any other men) is to talk about this, share our feelings, thoughts, and do what men are not suppose to do with each other - CARE.

You wrote: “I’m looking at the opportunities that I have to exercise patriarchal power; I’m looking at how I’ve used it in the past; I’m disowning and backing away from it when I recognize it, when I see it in real time.”

Can you expand on this?
You and I exercise patriarchal power just by walking into a room filled with women, and them giving you attention - simply because you are a man. (And let me be clear: I grew up a Black person - as you can see from my picture (!), with the police following me all the time, me not being able to get a cab home, etc. I’m saying this because I want hold the racist experiences I have had, together with the privilege I can wield. I think doing this will keep me from just seeing myself as victim, victim, victim… I’m not saying that is what you are doing. What I am saying is that I want to be friends, and this is one of the ways I think it would be nice to get to know each other.
I also think this work will improve our relationships with other women, and ourselves.
It’s all about looking at ourselves.)

I have an experience of trying to have this discussion with other men over the years - which I am going to post about - and they aren’t emotionally ready, and back away.
You should know, I feel extremely cautious when it comes to opening up with a man, because I was abused for a long time by my brother. I know you’ve talked about AA a little with DD, but I would like to hear what you have to say too, Freeslave.
Talk to me. I’ll listen.

My response…

S2: can you explain this to me…

“You and I exercise patriarchal power just by walking into a room filled with women, and them giving you attention - simply because you are a man.”

How am I exercising patriarchal power by walking into a room? By how people react to me, or how I look or carry myself?

I’ve had people cross the street when I’m walking down the street at night, lock the doors at the stop light. Is that me or them? Am I what they fear or is it something in them that makes them fear me?

I don’t live in a black community, I live in an overwhelming white community. I live with a 50 year old white lesbian who has two partners in an open relationship. She does her thing and I do mine. We get along well. I’m renting from her.

How am I exercising my patriarchal power over her?

I’m asking because I don’t feel I do. That’s not to say that I’m not aware that I am physically stronger, that I can raise my voice, that I could “attempt” to dominate her.

About AA and alcoholism. You know, we say prior to speaking in meetings, “I’m so-and-so and I am an alcoholic. But more and more I buck on this. Is being an alcoholic a noun or a verb? Is it what I do or what I am? What approach to my “dis-ease” makes the most sense, is most accurate, will help me heal?

Its funny because DD just posted something about “the 16 steps,” an alternative conception of recovery that breaks from the - white, christian, patriarchal, classist - approach of 12 step programs. This woman, Charlotte Kasl wrote a book called ‘Many Roads, One Journey,’ about the AA experience for many women, people of color, how it didn’t serve them, how people found alternatives to following the one road of AA.

The objective is healing, not thinking like a good AA, quoting the Big Book, quoting the literature of the program. This is a big part of what informs my coming to this conversation about men and power and how we use it wrongly, how we can be authentic people.

Many roads, one journey.

I have been sober for 16+ years. I have put my shit under a microscope for alcoholism, sex addiction, debting. AA was the beginning of the journey into my real self.

My addiction was all about armoring myself, hardening myself. I was the sensitive one in my family, the sensitive male. “You’re too sensitive” was a curse that I heard often from my father. To cry was to be a girl which meant to be weak, a lil’ bitch, a faggot.

Drinking healed my vulnerability to these charges, allowed my mouth to spew callous taunts, pickup lines, fighting words. I wasn’t bad all of the time but my bad nights were unpredictable. Sooner or later, I’d get into that really negative, paranoid space and say or do the wrong thing. I suffered or mad other people suffer the consequences.

Women were the main objects of my acting out. Going to bars, embalmed with beer, I was trying to get some pussy. I fucked hundreds of women without a thought for their needs, concerns. That’s my side of the street. I’m not dumb enough to believe that they were all merely victims of me. They had their reasons for being there; but speculating about why they were there, why they went with me won’t heal me.

I’ve heard people use the phrase “play the tape” meaning being able to play the tape BEFORE you act. For some drunks, the idea of a drink will begin to feel good again, feel like a good idea. Playing the tape is being able to bring forth the images of the last time you drank to negate the rosy illusion coming up in your head.

Recognizing my patriarchal power can follow a similar pattern and I’ve experienced it. I may have an idea, a desire for a woman, want to say something…or maybe it has nothing to do with a person in my face but just an idea about a woman. I can play the tape and step back from that thought or idea and be like: “dude, do you see where that idea will lead you? Do you see what that means, how that is related to old ways of thinking?

If patriarchy is a verb, it is possible to interrupt it before using it. If its a noun and a dick is all that qualifies you for membership and there’s nothing you can do about it, why worry? Why bother? Why should I be concerned if I can’t avoid being one regardless of what I do?

This is random, but I’m friends with a sister here. She has a car and I don’t. When we’ve gone out a couple of times, she’s felt funny giving me a ride, the expectation of having to give me a lift, me a man. If the shoe was on the other foot, the most natural thing would be for me to give her a lift home after hanging out. But she feels weird; so I told her, hey, let’s hangout earlier in the day so I can catch a bus, won’t be waiting at the bus stop so late, so you won’t feel obligated.

Now, a part of me is like, fuck, people are people, you have a car, I don’t, I can’t get a lift? I don’t know what that’s about but I’d rather catch the bus than find out.

Today, I’m not dating anyone - black, white, brown, green. It just hasn’t come together for me. And since I got divorced in ‘02, I haven’t had a serious relationship. I don’t bar hop, crack on women randomly for their phone numbers. I did do a little Internet dating at random intervals.

So, I’m a patriarch without a subject, a king without a throne. Except…I do have a daughter and she is such a teacher, brings up so much of my upbringing, so much of my man, control, power.

I get to try to be a conscious parent in a way my parent’s couldn’t be. Yes, the inner patriarch rears its head here and I have to REALLY watch myself. Its not easy and I’ve made many mistakes. I try to steer her this way, but she wants to go that. She wants to watch TV or use my computer to play games. She won’t draw when I suggest it or put her puzzle together. So what to do?

You can’t do that until you do this. Is that right? The struggle continues.

Feelings. FEELINGS. I have a mountain of them. I HURT. I didn’t get the love that I deserved, wasn’t heard or seen. Was belittled. Wasn’t black enough or white enough, wasn’t tall enough or bad enough. I was a nerd, a nonentity. Nothing, a zero. When I went to private school, I was lost, a roach, an idiot. Going to school with all of those white folks I wanted to die. I hated it. I became a clown, of service to their white power. After all I couldn’t be myself.

As I struggle through and out of my cave or prison and come more and more into my own, I will challenge myself to listen to others and to share my stories. I will examine myself and see how the stuff imposed on me has affected me, things like racism/white supremacy, patriarcy, heterosexism. I’m gonna do it on my road.

Our roads may run parallel, but they ain’t the same. And I’ve got to allow you to be you and on your own road and I need to have my road and way respected. Because if its not and I have to think and believe what you do or the way you do about patriarchy or whatever, then that’s an old road that I’ve been on before. And I’m not traveling any old roads.

Peace.

To my brother, Brandon

If black people are going to vote - and I do not recommend it - before they do, they need to organize themselves around “group interests.” We should ask ourselves (if we are talking Presidential politics) “what can this person do for our people?” (Addendum: What will that person do to address the criminality of the federal government and its illegal, imperialist wars?)  “Who OWNS that person, meaning what special interests is that candidate beholden to?” Votes are the means for that person taking office; dollars determine how that politician BEHAVES in office.

Now, if we repeatedly vote for candidates who say they are going to do “X” for us; and those candidates are owned by “Y,” and they end up doing “Z” as in Zero for black people, then we need to do a couple of things:

Begin building another grassroots movement that destroys the current electoral system and creates another - that removes big money, eliminates electronic voting, allows candidates of principle and of little means to compete with anybody, public funded election, free advertisements on television (remember, the airwaves belong to us; but they’ve been handed over to corporate entities. This must be ended as well). The two party system monopoly must be abolished, and of course, money is at the root of it. The two parties cooperate to prevent more participation, prevent third parties. More importantly, there is general conspiracy to prevent “alternate perspectives,” like the fact that many countries have far more progressive political-economic-healthcare configurations than we do in “the land of the free.” The rules to become a “legitimate” party on the ballot are weighted to make it almost impossible to get one going. And again, requiring the purchase of airtime on the “public airwaves” means that the rich get their message across and the poor are fucked.

Now, forget politics. What else can black people do? As I said, voting can’t make us organize our communities to fight crime, drug dealers, the influx of drugs dropped into our community by the government, police brutality, abandoned children, unsafe sex practices, tutoring, mentoring. Obama can’t do that shit for us, right?! So we, in our hometowns MUST get organized.

Study the Black Panthers. They weren’t perfect, but they got some things done. Study SNCC, SCLC, the Montgomery Boycott. How were they able to get black people to rally around a cause or causes? How did they move people to sacrifice for a larger goal or goals? See, politicians, to quote Malcolm, are like novocaine; they tell you, “don’t worry, send me to Washington and I’ll take care of everything.” And we are dumb enough to believe them. They put us to sleep with their promises and symbolism. “Make a woman president/make a black man president.” Meanwhile, they are bought, sold and paid for by white capital.

Voting is the science of teaching people to outsource their liberation, their autonomy. These devils promote all of this rhetoric that they don’t believe in (yet we do) talking about how wonderful democracy is and alladat. They’ve never practiced it at any time in the existence of this country. Yet, we are going to “buy in” and hope that its gonna work for us, hope that that man or woman we “send” away to the Congress is gonna “work on our behalf.” That’s a fairytale by definition. We’ve been sold out in every form imaginable…and still we rise and claim voting is gonna set us free.

No, these strong black women and men got some serious shit done back in the day that can be a template for OUR WORK… why can’t we see this?

If you believe in our people then you should ask yourself, who taught you to look at voting as the holy sacrament. Voting is a tool, nothing more and a weak one at that. To keep using a tool because, “our people died trying to get it,” when it doesn’t work?! Our people in their graves would look at that like, “fool, what the hell are you doing?! We won’t you to win, not fetishize something that keeps you on the plantation!”

All of these “strategies” or “options” that I have described are the work that is necessary whether you walk into a voting booth or not. And this is by no means a comprehensive list, nor was it intended to be.

Vote if you want to but understand that it is of limited to no value. Until there is revolutionary electoral reform, the puppet masters, the ruling class, whatever you want to call them, will continue to bleed voting of any relevance or any usefulness to us.

Think about it!

From the film, “Enter The Dragon:”

Teacher: What is the highest technique you hope to acheive?
Lee: To have no technique.
Teacher: Very good. What are your thoughts when facing an opponent?
Lee: There is no opponent.
Teacher: And why is that?
Lee: Because the word ‘I’ does not exist.
Teacher: So…continue.
Lee: A good fight should be like a small play…played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming…ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself.

Consider this a metaphor.

Stolen Legacy was a book about the Greeks stealing everything they knew from the Egyptians.  Stolen Legacy 2008 may include the theft of the New Hampshire Democratic primary.  Go here and check the stats.  They don’t add up.

Seems that Katherine Harris works for Hilary now, at least in spirit.

Crazy Baldheads

The Tears of a Clown - Vocals, by Ms. Hilary Clinton.

Tears that might have won her the precious presidential nomination.

The tears of a white woman - as opposed to the Tears of a Clown - where ain’t no mountain, nor no polling deficit high enough.

These tricksters will pull out all the stops.

Here is Bill Clinton heading into Ron Brown’s funeral. Watch carefully…

Yep, he loves black people about as much as the fox loves the chicken gizzard. The fox will say anything to get you on his plate and make you his… or her meal.

The Tears of a White Woman are the greatest weapon this side of a knitted rope. Ask Emmit Till and a thousand other black men rotting on the vine, how strong them beige tears can be.

Heading into political oblivion, my white sister went to the well, literally bathing her face in water from her political makeup kit.

And one mo’ thang (said in my most Obamanesque lingua negra): Polling appears to be used to keep fools on that psychofragilistic-rollercoaster - what’s gonna happen, fuckin’ wit dem expectations and high hopes and then dashing them on the rocks like dem Spanish Conquistadores. They tell you Obama was up by double digits. You believe it, of course; then you are shocked, shocked when it doesn’t come out the way they told you it was ’sposed to. Did they play you, so you’d be surprised/disappointed?  Hmm. They play ya any other night of the year - why would this be different?!

Hell, this is the Oscars of manipulative, missionary mind control: another state, another dog fight, South Carolina here we come, Round 3, a fucking choreographed puppet’s dance - only you are the puppet.  Dance muthafucka, dance!

Follow the bouncing ball while they rifle through your cranium, stealing your lint, coin, brain cells, vote.

Ronald Reagan said it best: “Here you go again…”

Who has 150+ military around the globe? Whose military patrols international, as well as, restricted, sovereign waterways? Who has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the last decade? Who talks “World Peace” out of their mouth and practices genocidal war at the drop of a hat, out the side of their white neck?!

The muthafucka quoted above.

That ANYONE buys this, that we are still at our computer screens and NOT in DC going Filipino on these bitches and showing them some REAL People POWER…its a travesty. We need to organize to stop the “Greatest threat to World Peace” that lives in the White House, in the Pentagon, in the Congress, in the corporate boardroom, in the plush suites of the international bankers.

It’ll take a “nation of millions to hold these muthafuckas back.” We’d better get to steppin’ on a real crusade, instead of this Dancing With the Stars they call primary season. See Barrack foxtrot, Hilary breakdance, Edwards and the rest of ‘em waltz.

Be a spectator while they talk about rearranging the deck chairs on your Titanic! I think not.

We gon’ see what’s really going on real soon.

The GREAT Mario Savio, Ladies and Gentleman:

He knew it then, how come you don’t?!