“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable,

to point at frauds,

to take sides,

start arguments,

shape the world,

and stop it going to sleep.”

Salman Rushdie

Thanks LA

Aulelia,

No human being is wrong in seeking love from any source. Understanding all of the things around it - the historical/personal history and context is key to me. I think I’m hearing you say that. So, no, I don’t think black women are wrong to seek love in other men.

We are all ‘in-process.’ I’ve sought love in places previously that I don’t plan to seek it in the future. Experience, trial and error, youth, not knowing any better all played a part in those decisions. I assume that’s mostly true for all of us. We have to allow each other some slack for being human - for being people of color who mean well but who travel unpopular paths, who sometimes fuck up.

After all, every fuck (and every fuck up:)) is an opportunity for growth!

We have been and frankly, are, incredibly willing pawns today. Someone profits from us being fractured and irreconcilably enraged at each and estranged from each other. Those of us who can forge new relationships based on understanding the past and each other - must do so.

I am very glad to be talking to you about these issues.

That inferiority complex that you speak of destroys the character of so many of us, disfigures us. We hide behind myths designed to cripple us. Vulnerability, authentic feeling and expression breeds healing: stereotypes, armor and hardness breeds disease, traps the infection inside, perpetuates the dysfunction.

There are no SUPER men or women, only black men and women who have suffered and endured, twisting and contorting themselves to deal with madness, with oppression. Those adaptations that helped us survive slavery, today, enslave us, keep us stuck in behaviors, attitudes, stances that further the internal conflict that the oppressor stage manages from his media conglomerate. We were gifted this legacy and we are the ones who have to alter and end it.

We are all victims; but we are not all builders of a new relationship with each other. That takes healing and wisdom and distance from one’s own pain. Those of us who have progressed to that point have a chance to do that work.

I hope that we can continue to speak with each other and teach each other. I’m not where I want to be by far. Maybe we can help fill in each other’s blanks.

Take care

Maxjulian

I spent time in Paris in 2002 and interviewed a several black expatriates and they all said the same thing: the pathology of US race relations is one of the things that they did not miss about America.

Here, we’re all subject to the music of racism/white supremacy and though some may bitch and moan about it - all of us tend to dance to it.

The disease itself is like depleted uranium; it’s in the air we breathe. And it poisons us, poisons our brain, our emotions, our intellect and our spirit. Poisons our ability to think and act intelligently.

This isn’t something I just discovered; but, this dialogue just recently past, between me and several victims of racism, was nauseating, toxic, the perfect expression of the disease of racism/white supremacy on the cellular level.

I was asked to understand, to feel compassion for black women and what they’ve been through. Well, I am trying to feel more compassion for black women in general, trying to see my blindspots, trying to connect with ‘like minded black women’ who want to and are able to have a truthful, respectful dialogue.

However, I have a limit; and these particular victims of racism who have come here to spew their venom…they don’t get my compassion. Sugarcoating their disease is not helpful to them, me, or anyone interested in getting beyond this rockbottom level. Tough love means telling my truth, telling it to the Universe if nobody else.

Too often, the victims of R/WS prey on others just like them - and then justify it by running their personal oppression up the flagpole. Proclaiming their exceptionalism.

Newsflash: You are not exceptional. Pick up a fucking newspaper and read about the men, women and children of Iraq, read about China and their prison labor, read what’s going on in Nigeria or in South Africa or France.

Learn what has happened and is happening to Native American women RIGHT NOW, who have caught more hell than you’ve ever seen.

None of us are exceptional and it doesn’t help people to coo in their ears that they, among all others, get the Oscar for lifetime achievement in catching hell. That’s a lie. That retards rather than enlarges people.

In terms of NOT taking responsibility for your bullshit, you are definitely not exceptional. Its somebody else’s fault that you are supposedly ‘loveless.’ You are the perfect victim - which means that you can abuse at will. How hard you’ve had it excuses all your excesses…my ass!

We’ve ALL had it hard; what are you going to do about it now that the hardness is in your lap? Point fingers?! Blame everybody else but you? That is no healing at all.

Until you own your own pain, you are not going any-fucking-where! You hairsplitting muthafuckas who accuse me of ripping on ‘The Black Woman,’ when I’m talking to and about very specific people (who don’t represent anyone but themselves) and then use that to justify your foul nonsense are deceitful at best.

You poke out your own eyes and then accuse me of not being able to see.

I’m not talking about THE Black Woman - I’m talking about YOU - I’m talking about the ‘A-Lone Theorist’, I’m talking about’Las’, I’m talking about the ’s0-called Racial Realist,’ Odile or Odine or O-der.

Yes, I’m talking to and about you- Just You - and those who think like you.

They ‘might’ have good intentions. SO WHAT?! So what, if the execution is hateful, illogical, ensures that they will create and receive, not black love, but a lump of black coal?!

Cowards blame other people for the miserable lives that they lead, for their lack of money, for the poor relationships that they have or don’t have, for their lack of choices. Look in the mirror and resolve that problem looking back at you: see that person for who he or she really is. Fix that person. The more you tinker with that person’s issues, the more likely things will fall into place.

I know this cuz I’ve lived this. I blamed my parents, my siblings, the women I dated, the white man, booze, plaque, for my fucked up life. Only when I took the responsibility - not just for my material life, but for my mental, emotional and spiritual life - did I figure out that the common denominator in all of my mis-dealings was ME! Only then was I able to get a different result out of life.

Years and years of outside help on my insides, have been critical to me continuing to take personal responsibility.

You can’t help the crack addict huddled up with the pipe. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped, who love the pipe, or who love to gripe. You can only heal yourself with the help of God and other supportive people. Voila.

When black folks create the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual distance from this American Psychosis, get their brain and their heart shackle-free enough to see this (and their) racial madness for what it is - then you’ve got a chance. You’ve got a chance to grow and live a life that isn’t proscribed by racism/white supremacy. But if you cannot get your head outside of this diseased paradigm, the same man or woman will drink and/or think like they always have. And that is nothing but pure insanity.

I may love those folks - but I will love them from a great distance.

If you and I can each own our own pain, see how we have been complicit in it, take responsibility for getting out of it, then maybe we can grow up as people - and as a people.

I just deleted a new comment by Lone Theorist. Why?

Because, I’m not posting A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G here that is a personal attack, as opposed to a critique AND an attempt at real dialogue. Those of you who have something to say and know the difference, I invite you to speak here freely. I am VERY interested in hearing from you. Those of you who doubt my sincerity and think I’m full of shit and want to address me like I’m your punk - take your bullshit elsewhere.

PERIOD.

Now, Emerging Phoenix, Sylvia, Aulelia and Bliss, Asa, BygBaby, Field, etc, have all commented here in a respectful manner that communicates to me a desire to have a conversation. I responded to them in a respectful manner - even when they have leveled criticism at me. And that is the level of communication that I not only want to have - I will insist on it from anyone who comes here.

So, Lone Theorist and anyone else who feels the way she does - we can talk - but ONLY if you bring it respectfully, bring it in a real way, BUT in the way that YOU claim that YOU want to be treated. No other way is going to make it

Otherwise stay away.

My hero, my idol, my role model.

‘To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace. I formerly was a criminal. I formerly was in prison. I’m not ashamed of that. You never can use that over my head… I don’t feel that stick.

They charged Jesus with sedition. Didn’t they do that? They said he was against Caesar. They said he was discriminating because he told his disciples, “Go not the way of the gentiles, but rather go to the lost sheep.” Go to the people who don’t know who they are, who are lost from the knowledge of themselves and who are strangers in a land that is not theirs. Go to these people. Go to the slaves. Go to the second-class citizens. Go to the ones who are suffering the brunt of Caesar’s brutality.

And if Jesus were here in America today, he wouldn’t be going to the white man. The white man is the oppressor. He would be going to the oppressed. He would be going to the humble. He would be going to the lowly. He would be going to the rejected and the despised. He would be going to the so-called American negro.’

I had to rip down a good post of mine. It was so good, it was bad.

I ripped into certain folk, cuz they’d said certain things that I didn’t agree with. I’m tired of getting into this kind of bullshit with black people. And I refuse to get into it anymore - one day at a time.

Its hard not to with certain folks.

But then its not hard.

I’ve found myself caught up in trying to prove something about myself that is not only unprovable; but is in fact evidence of my own insecurity. Why do I care what strangers who don’t, don’t want to and never will know me - say?

I really don’t.

The rest of you who come here and bring light: I enjoy your wisdom, honesty, logic, candor and love. You know who you are. And I pledge in my future posts to remember to lavish my words and attention on you and our connection and conversation.

Thanks for your positive energy

MaxJulian

I have been exposed to ideas around manifestation and abundance that posit: you get what you think about.

I believe that.

I’ve seen that.

I’ve lived that.

In terms of money, employment, travel, relationship - I have seen tremendous progress in my life. I have consciously invited things in that I previously only THOUGHT I wanted. Consciously.

Before I could invite, I had to acknowledge/admit that I had been the greatest obstacle to my getting what I want. Me.

I believe that the first step on the road to maturity is taking responsibility for your life. I’m in charge of it. No one else. Not the white man, not the black woman. Me.

If I want love, I have to think it - consciously. I have to think that I already have it, because I do. I have to recognize that the Universe is full of love for me, for everyone.

I’ve had a ‘poverty’ consciousness, a ‘I don’t deserve any better’ consciousness. And I’m not alone. I’m working to get rid of that mentality. I’ve seen the results.

Some of us feel very comfortable being poor, miserable, martyred. Its safe. But that’s not for me anymore.

If I want love, I have to think its already present. I have to welcome it. I have to get out of my own way and let it in. I have to recognize that the love is already HERE and it is my thinking that prevents me from receiving it.

Put another way: I’m clear that the way I’ve thought has hindered me in the past. At an incredibly desperate, depressing point in my life, I decided to TRY something different. (Since I didn’t like what I was getting, it seemed like a tactical shift was in order) I decided to PRETEND that my thinking controlled my altitude. And guess what?

I encourage those of you who want love - black or any other colored love - to try it. Check out the video, “The Secret.” Read “Ask And It Is Given” by Esther and Jerry Hicks. I encourage those of you who want greater abundance…check this stuff out. Or don’t.

Rigorous, RIGOROUS SELF-honesty is the key.

On my ‘Black Love, Baby’ post, Lone Theorist said:

“Did you ever perhaps consider that instead of blaming all your problems on black women, you should maybe hold your self accountable for the things you can change?You are not a threat to white people. White people love you, because you do not respect other black people (black women). Instead you have looked at the white man’s definition of beauty and have not removed this socialization. The white man will NEVER respect you, as you have given him no cause to show you respect. YOU obviously don’t love yourself, if you did, you would bed down with women who reflected your phenotype. You would lay down with the women who endured the same struggles with race as you, you would marry a woman who is as angry as you about what this society is doing to black men, women, and children. And you would treat black women with the same respect you would want for yourself. Instead you look up to your white overseers definition of beauty, like a little boy trying to fill out “daddy’s” shoes. Admit you are brainwashed, but stop looking towards the next black woman you see for introducing very valid points about how black men behave towards them.

But you haven’t. If you knew anything about the very Malcolm in your picture (you probably haven’t even read his autobiography or speeches), you’d know that he was against interracial dating, and the pathetic brothers who would run over his own to get a non-black girl. Our ancestors who fought to give us the freedoms you enjoy today are rolling over in their grave.”

Dear Lone Theorist:

You’ve read me all wrong, but thank you, because this is the disease in us that I am referring to. And it is in all of us, though you may think you are immune.

Rage has blinded you, to the point where you can’t see nuance, you can’t even read what I’ve written through your rageful cataracts, can’t understand the process by which we ALL have to free ourselves of the chains the white man has bound us with.

Calm down and listen.

I understand what has led you to this place of overwhelming pain. Who feels it knows it, right? And if you think you’ve cornered the market on hurt, or, that I haven’t experienced pain from being a black man AND experienced pain from the poor choices that I’ve made along the way - you simply don’t know.

I truly hope that, eventually, you will come to know that you aren’t alone in your pain and confusion - I share it - and that you can move out of pain as a permanent emotional state into a place of greater inner peace/awareness/understanding/conviction.

Now, if you know a little bit about Malcolm X, you know that he dated at least one white woman, so I’m in good company. Later on, he renounced interracial dating, pimping, drug dealing - all of which he engaged in. Who and what I fucked in the past is past. (More on that later…)

All of us have unique challenges - Tomism, jungle fever, drugs, alcohol, bling-bling, ‘burnt hair syndrome’, food addiction, obesity, terminal rage - all forms of internalized racism. I can criticize with the best of them: but if my finger doesn’t also point at me, if I fail to look at myself with rigorous honesty and see the ‘disease in me’ then I will likely be a part of the problem, instead of helping create a solution.

You may think that you’re pure, unsullied, blameless, the perfect victim…think again.

My sister, you cannot blame your problems on me and I cannot blame my problems on you, precisely the point that I was making. So we are in agreement on something. That is a start. I didn’t make you angry, rageful: you came here with that feeling. Black women didn’t cause me to date/marry a white woman. I did that all by myself. I did it and take responsibility for it.

I was going to say I regret having done so, but I don’t regret anything because I learned and I am learning from my mistakes. Mine eyes were opened. If it took that experience to learn, so be it. If you don’t like that I had to go through what I had to go through to learn what I had to learn - that’s your problem.

I wonder what you need to learn about yourelf that has NOTHING to do with another human being?

I know one thing: I have seen the error of my ways and continue to try to see. I will continue to pay attention and continue to try to “remove the socialization” of the white man from my being. Removing it is a process, a lifetime process, a process that requires supportive friends.

Its funny. I was just thinking of a speech of Malcolm’s that I saw recently:

“To have once been a criminal is no disgrace; to remain a criminal is the disgrace.”

I have been with white women. Guilty as charged. And I will be with a black woman always and forever.

That vibe, that need to abuse and rake each other over the coals is so anti-’Black Love,’ so illustrative of what I was trying to say, that I can’t see straight. This is the impediment - this internalized, myopic, unforgiving poison - that will prevent you and I from loving ourselves as a people and as REAL black people.

NONE of us are immune - including me. So climb down off the cross, come down here on the ground and deal with the 30 million different ways that blackness manifests.

Is it possible?

I was just reading the website of a bi-racial (white mother/black father) sistah who is obsessed with who black men are fucking and how black women are being mistreated by black men.

The rage, the venom, the hating by these women of these men who supposedly chose Miss Anne over them projectile vomits through the screen.

But where is the love?

I don’t hear it, don’t hear the love, but rather proprietary entitlement: he’s MY man, sounding all the while like an infant that wants what it wants when it wants it.

I hear appeals to racial loyalty fo’ so’, we’re supposed to be together because we’re supposed to be, said with fire. But is that gonna bring a brotha back from the otha side? It hasn’t worked yet, has it?

Perhaps there is another way. I’ve learned only recently that I have to look at my part in ANYTHING that’s happening in my life that ain’t going my way. What part do I play? What is it about me that am I drawing these fill in the blank things to me? You don’t think you have any responsibility - well, pretend for a minute.

Suppose you attract into your life EXACTLY what you think and feel about - ALL OF THE TIME!? Would you take a closer look at the actual internal messaging coursing through you and fix that - fix it before you expect Prince Charming to show up?

Would you learn to have a REAL relationship with yourself, instead of the ‘ bare bones-limited self-acquaintance mirage which characterizes more than a few of us. Yes, we know our anger at other people for not being or giving us what we want.

But who are you?

Do you even love yourself?

I look at those websites and the self hatred, the myopia yoddles: The BAD black man, woe is me.  Three fingers pointing right backatcha.

Let me repeat: Do you love yourself?  Are you sure?

Anger is understandable, but is the proportion? The direction of it?  Where is the anger at the white man who created this hellhole for all of us and maintains it?  There is no contextualizing of experience. One of our faults as people of color has always been our openness. When the white man arrived on native shores the world over, rarely were they met with anything less than generosity. In general, the non-white have been less prejudiced and less exclusive than the white man. I tend to think its in our nature.

Fast forward to today where the same general tendencies are evident, but placed in the context of a racist/white supremacist “brainwash camp” and what the hell do you expect?????

Blacks sleep with whites, whites sleep with blacks, yellows, reds, blues. Certainly, self hate may play a role in many if not most of these border crossings. So what?

You don’t think you hate yourself? How many black women have whisk broom hair, are morbidly obese, etc, etc? Is it fair to look at those cases and generalize about ALL black women, use that as a justification to date white women, or stay compulsively, obsessively focused 24/7 on the shortcomings of black women?

Cuz it really sounds like a justification - creating a blog that is all about how bad black men are - justifies ones being and remaining alone and miserable, which I’m told one can do all by themselves. Without ANY justification or scapegoat at all.

Let’s us take a deep breath, black people. Yes, we have issues, challenges, hurdles, obstacles. But they are both internal and external. Which ones can you control?

You believe in black love, right - LOVE yourself, be love, treat your body, emotions, spirit correctly, marry yourself FIRST, and then maybe, just maybe you will attract what you REALLY want and not what you don’t want - which if that’s all you’re thinking about, you’re gonna attract it anyway.

Peace and Love, BABY!!

“I have yet to see any [society] in this world develop successfully by adopting [wholesomely] another society’s culture. When you adopt another’s culture, your development is stunted because someone else [makes the innovations and sets the standards] and you can only imitate and receive what it exports to you, making you, ultimately, a slave to that culture, not an innovator.” —Wangari Maathai

The Legendary Foundation……..The Root(s)

If my roots do not grip black soil, I’m more than lost.

This is not to say that one should close themselves off from truth despite the package it’s delivered in.

But, white, as practiced in this system of racism/white supremacy, is naturally limiting, tight, rigid, mind numbing, compartmentalizing - even when seemingly untethered from the dominant culture.

Black by contrast and within this context, is white’s opposite: free, loose, expressive, enlivening, creative, expansive. Sighted.

I don’t regret any of my connections with white folks: AWQ, Professor Z, Thinking Girl or anyone else. Even when my train car derails, its a good lesson to learn how to get back on the rails.

Whiteness blinds white as well as black. Siphoning out the internalized racism in me is like kneeling in the riverbed, sifting fossilized bones; internal ‘Ism’ is revealed over time, through careful observation of my behavior, reflected in other folk’s mirrors. Willingness to see is crucial it seems to me. The stink bomb, the learned self-hate, the intellectual cataracts that obscure truth, cause me to move away from ‘my root.’ This can prove fatal.

To fly too closely to white people is like Icarus flying too near the sun. Why do I chose to fly so close to the sun? No matter how well intentioned, no matter how intelligent - you can , as a black man, get burned. You can lose yourself. You can fall from the sky (your arrogance, your folly) and not even notice.

I’m desiring deeper, closer relations with my kind, with those who know me, who can know me.

Reading websites about the state of black male/female relationships, the pain of the black woman, her sense of loss as she sees her man ‘cavorting with Katie,’ has REALLY opened my eyes. (and I don’t say ‘her man’ as meaning some kind of ownership, cuz beneath the skin people are people. However…)

I don’t believe, of course, that people can be plucked off of shelves, that ‘any ole black woman will do.’ But what has made an impression on me is the understanding that black people have a connection beyond measure, that it is not merely history, but a common physio-psychology, a common adaptation to this anti-US society. And this visceral truth has me expectant that my ‘Black Queen’ is on the way! She will arrive when I’m ready. My faith is impregnable, that she does not exist is impossible. I’d doubted, but mine eyes have seen! Her rich brown skin, the unshackled hair, the outsized personality, the unconquered spirit. I’ve imbibed her black brilliance , with her raw essence, her joy and wit. She rides the whirlwind and the good I see in her, she sees in me.

How many times I have walked past her, my brain fixated on something light, bright and sometimes white?

Blackness is light. And it is right. For me.

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” intoned the black baritone in those old United Negro College Fund commercials.

I’m coming to suspect that wasting one’s mind on an education that “is little more than a state sanctioned lobotomy is far, far more than terrible.”

Everything useful I learned, I learned outside of the classroom. Certainly, I received lots of useful information in all levels of academia….but who did it serve, to whose ultimate benefit?

Go to school and “get your education,” like a ham, like a video at Blockbuster, like a quart of oil. “Once you get that education, nobody can take it away from you,” so the saying goes. That’s one crime we should welcome: ‘please, take this brainwash education and give me back my fucking mind - I’ll pay YOU!’

I despised school, but I always operated from the assumption that something was wrong with me, I was stupid, I just couldn’t fit in - as opposed to my spirit not WANTING to fit in. Systems have a way of making people think that they should conform to them instead of vice versa. And again, someone operates, someone controls those institutions to OUR detriment, not our betterment.

If only we knew that.

Conflict can be quite revealing in exposing lies and getting closer to truth. I need to be awakened more and more regarding the ways in which I sleep on my own brainwashing. So often, I see reflections of my issues and problems, my concerns, in the mirror of other people. Certainly, there have been times where I project onto others my baggage, what is actually within me. Gotta keep that up front.

BUT…mine eyes have seen anew what ‘education as indoctrination/deadification/mummification can do. I’ve seen it in this dialogue over the academic hypnosis that my friend, PZ has fallen under, or more truthfully, embraced with a death grip. I’m always surprised where people’s stop signs reside, always surprised when people choose to terminate their inquiry into self, terminate their reclaiming of self and default to the false/fake/static identity that AWQ references. The murder of the eyes of a child within them, within us.

The relationship that we (can) have with this culture is to either cogitate, collaborate or medicate. If you’re meditating on it, you can’t fail to see the death-style of it. If you’re collaborating with it, you’re probably telling yourself all kinds of fairytales to justify raping and pillaging the planet. And if you’re medicating, you’re too strung out on shopping pills and gin mills to notice.

But you have a choice, we all have a choice. And I thank my friend AWQ for doing lasic surgery on some of these cataracts of mine that hinder my ability to see.

Living life in this culture can be like failing to read the fucking label on your food: do you really know what you’re ingesting and do you muthafuckin’ care?????

Why you mad at me when I tell you it’s genetically modified, tell you that its poison?!

AlwaysWithQuestions said: “And from that deeper level of understanding, I can also see more clearly how academia operates together with it all, that diversion into false deceptive reflection. And this is bringing together various strands of understanding for me, stuff I have been dealing with one way or another for a long time. I wrote that initial comment about academia and it felt like being at the eye doctor’s where I think I am seeing clearly and the doctor snaps another lens into place and suddently I can see even more clearly — snap, I see this landscape with a sharper eye now. It was like: In that act of writing that comment, I had an increase in fluency — fluency of understanding of how it operates.

And then somewhat later, this person who I know makes a living from that very industry comes here and does that typical relentless breathtakingly deceptive academic trick of co-opting the truth and rendering it harmless and irrelevant by appearing to “state” it. Does that trick right here in a comment in this very same discussion.”

AWQ has called you out before. Are you willing to go beyond the surface and descend into the deep water - swim in the emotional implications of this?

Malcolm X on the ‘March on Washington’ as metaphor:

“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all.”

This is the process by which we become clowns who attend picnics instead of militant direct actions; through which truth is drenched in ‘buckets of words,’ words that distance, confuse, anesthetize.

The process that we engage in here - I hope - is one of siphoning the cream (the lie) out of the coffee (the truth) and making it strong and vital. The siphoning process requires rigorous honesty and deep engagement. Do you feel how ‘academy-speak’ can strangle your truth?

Tired of catchin’ those stares with no backup?

Lookin’ for some co-therapy that only someone with a lil’ melanin can provide?

Are you starving for a connect with other POC in ‘White Heaven?’

Wanna help defeat the “Willie Lynch Syndrome?”

If so….

…WE HAVIN’ A MEETIN’ THIS WEEKEND, YA’LL!

Email me at: antibes13@hotmail.com and I will give you the 411.