Would you rather be right than happy?

Then, you’d probably rather be separate than a part of humanity.

As my friend Pattrice Jones posits below, division is violence. Her wonderful example of the privatization of land wherein one can “own” what God/The Goddess/The Holy Universe/The Great Unknown granted to us all, demonstrates one of the uncivilized absurdities of so-called civilization’s ways… And, its connection to other ludicrous, heinous endeavors. Its ludicrous I should say, EXCEPT, as a means to divide and conquer.

Getting us to buy in to this idea of “yours” and “mine” when it comes to land is only one in a myriad of plots/tactics that divest humanity of humanity itself. Property has to be the most insane invention - this is OUR land. But it is not insane for those who covet their neighbors turf, who live off of others parasitically.

Private property is legalized theft, legalized criminality at its root. Most don’t want to see it at its root. They use the master’s tools and presumptions in formulating their solutions that don’t solve. Audre Lourd and Fred Hampton would say it can’t be done.
Is that division of land rooted in the ultimate division of human beings into classes: male, female, stronger, weaker, black, white, hetero, homo?

Noticing difference is one thing; it is another to HAVE to ‘celebrate diversity’ because people use difference as a guillotine, rather than a mirror, as a reflection of another aspect of YOU!  But we don’t want to see how we are caught up on a ‘liberal, radical, anarchist, black militant treadmill to no where.’ You don’t want to get off; you want to heighten the difference massa has bred into your slave ass.

And don’t let a nigga like me talk about this; I’m a color blind advocating colloborator/I’m a traitor/I’m not giving difference its due.  I’m a “pro-black white oriented black person.”

My daughter is mixed race and when I pick her up at daycare, the little kids yell ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ just like she’s a little kid-buddy of theirs. And she is. Soon and perhaps, right now, her parents are teaching their kids about the box that they must live in, the container that’s suited for them and the one suited for little brown girls. And these children will learn their lessons well.  Monkey see, monkey do.
I believe it kills a little piece of our humanity, the more we fail to see “from the root to the fruit.” I have brown skin; I’m a ‘black man.’ I’m a man; hetero. And…That’s it.’

When do we graduate from our cozy little compartments to human? When do we have the courage to say, “fuck what the white man or white people are doing/have-haven’t done and recognize our overarching, common humanity?  Because they’re sick I need to act like them, think like them in reverse?  I ain’t sayin’ love stupid/whiteracist/sexist muthafuckas; I’m sayin’, in spite of their disease and dis-ease, when are we who get it going to move on a truer truth?  When are we gonna take it to another level, ‘take it to the stage!’ P-Funk style?!
I’m not waiting for some blue eyed/cockeyed white person to do THEIR work, in order for me to do mine. I’m taking my AP Racism-consciousness wherever my intellect and soul leads me. To stay in some ‘black bunker’ that white racism proscribed for me, UNTIL they change, fuck that. Everybody white ain’t unconscious, though many of US are.

BTW: I plead guilty for doing the same thing. I put people in boxes, too. I’m also aware of calling people out who put themselves in the boxes, in the shackles assigned to them by someone else. I’ve learned this way of thinking is a stop along the way; it ain’t my destination.

Too many of us adapt to and riff off of oppression, racism, sexism - and can’t create/see/project beyond it. This is some of the violence we do ourselves.  This is how we use the master’s tools to slit our own throats, limit our thinking, feeling and acting.
Enough rambling, but I’ll be back with more…